Exploring Ningbo

I found Titanic! Leave to me to fly to China to buy it for 1.50 instead of 40.00 on Amazon.

The buddah statue in Ningbo

Photo taken by our wonderful tour guides David and Mike from church

I found it! I haven't gone in yet- I do have some self control people.

The river funs through the middle of the mall, and what a better place to go fishing? I thought so too.

Ningbo Tian Xi Square (downtown) at night, it reminds me of NYC so i'm basically in love. I can't wait for Spring when the lighted fountains go off like Belagio.

A cute shopping center we found.

Take notice of the matching pajamas. You bet my parents will be getting some of those as their gifts.

Ningbo at night. It is breathtaking.

The boardwalk, who knew there were palm trees? Fun surprise.

Getting to explore Ningbo was so much fun! It is the size of Farmington to Provo and contains three times as many people as Utah's entire population. The people are so nice and willing to try to help us around with their "english." Teaching is getting better everyday and i'm trying my best at it.

Hope your week is awesome, take a warm shower for me!

Love

Megan Anne

The Right Place

They ride these scooters everywhere- notice the gloves attached. And sidewalks are a perfectly acceptable place to drive them too.

Me and Caitlin at a festival outside of the mall we walked to.

We bought cotton candy, that tasted like peaches/fish, and we possibly overpayed way too much for it.

A local chinese kid helped us order along with pointing- so we got peach oreo shakes accidently?

The house where we went to church, it was on a little island surrounded by water.

Happy Birthday Mara!

On a side note: the rocks on this Island have speakers in them so whenever the government comes they play creepy music the whole time.

I slight feel like i'm in hunger games.

Me and Caitlin doing the signature pose in some bamboo shoots.

The people here are so nice and love to say "hallo" and love to take sneaky pictures of us.

I'm still counting it as a success if I go to sleep after nine- and i'm getting use to eating rice at every meal.

Funny note- at the mall they play American music and yesterday they played Christmas music all day- I am in the right place I tell you.

The Pink Room

My roommate Jill in her tewobear sweatshirt bought at the market

Our room: where we keep the heater on all day and the door closed so it is a sauna. But that is literally the only warm place in China so i'm happy!

Our front room. No couches? Frost on the window? Sure.

The drains don't work so whatever goes down comes out on the floor.

And it slightly looks like chainsaw masacre....

Our washing machine- still need to try that.

I'm not kidding. The squatter. We finally found a sit down toilet 2 bus stops away that we may travel to if necessary.

The deathly showers. (notice the HP reference Jules) Ice comes out of them instead of water, so that makes for a quick way to get 7 girls showered. Supposedly there are three hot water times and we've tried them all with no success.

Our courtyard.

We have a fridge,  microwave, watercooler, and an explosion of pink.

It is such an adventure. I know it sounds bad- and it may be- but it is just making me appreciate everything even more. I learned to use chopsticks very fast once I realized that was all I could use to eat. They are amazing with them, it is unreal. Basically I sleep from 8 at night to 4 in the morning. We went to the mall, which helped us all out a bit. Everything is so cheap, i'm in heaven. And we are moving to a new apartment in a few weeks so that will be nice hopefully. The whole school is gated in like the great wall with guards, so that makes me feel safe, but somewhat unsure of why it is necessary. For my mom- we have a purified water station in our room so i'm only using clean water.

I'm happy we found:

A track

Tennis courts

&

Oreos

I know it will take so much adjusting, but I also know I am growing so much everyday.

Thanks for everything!

Erin's birthday



Post fire incident



Luckily I brought another cake topper- and yes those are otters





The beautiful birthday girl





Okay we're not smiling? Thanks for telling me.





The balloons were inspired by the Chinese New Year



Erin's birthday party included:

her cake starting on fire

balloons with fortunes in them (which invited the boys to pop them nonstop)

Photo props

management shutting down the "wild" party

and lots of fun.

craft day

Yesterday's craft was photobooth props for my best friends birthday party and then to take on to China for the little kids to play with. I found these printables on ohhappyday.com my recent blog crush. Exacto knife cutting is not as easy and does not look as good as hers did, so i had to bear the noise and nail file the edges. I'm excited to see them in action.

a little recap

 Over the weekend I:

finally took my diana film to be developed (i'll show them once i get them back)

declared my major as graphic design

played croquet

witnessed the most awkward proposal at our ward dinner and i pray for her sake that it was fake

went to a fire on the bonneville shoreline

tasted cake bites at sweet tooth fairy {picture 1}

tasted REAL bbq brisket for the first time {picture 2}

went to Julie and Sydney's concert where they opened for Matt Costa! {picture 3}

somehow got sang happy birthday to and had my mouth unexpectedly filled with far too much whip cream {picture 4}

Happy Chinese New Year!

Old Projects

Today I finally finished a project that has been lying around unfinished for over 2 years. Now that i've graduated it kind of seems useless-but just call me super senior when i use this at picnics.

I kind of love the gold D, it reminds me of all of the tacky gold metallic items we would collect during high school to parade at the games.