There has been a lot of things that have happened since the last blog post. This past week has been CRAZY! Monday we found out that our classes were being canceled because of the school sports day. Let me tell you about this sports day. It's like a mini Olympic event. Each grade learns a dance or some weird entertainment show and they have opening ceremonies where all the kids are outside around the track just watching. Then kids run the track, throw the javelin and other throws and jumps. While all of the other kids are sitting in the bleachers playing on their phones... We were supposed to run against the other Chinese teachers but they saw some of us running around the track earlier in the week and decided that they didn't want to run against us. But classes were cancelled for everyone Wednesday through Sunday so Cyd, Lizzie and I took a bus to Chong Zhou where we saw Cyd's kids that she taught last year. They were WAY cute! We stayed the night there and explored the city. We had lots of fun and I found myself a knock off Casio watch that looks exactly like my blue one! :-) We left that afternoon and got back to Ningbo that night. Friday we have soccer with the Chinese teachers at 3. Lizzie, Keelan and I went and played. I have to say, Chinese P.E. teachers might look a bit heavy but they are freaking fast!! We played against all these Asian guys and Lizzie and I were the only girls. I didn't do too bad and my soccer skills were slowly coming back but these guys were brutal and all a good head taller than me so they were pretty much knocking me around like a rag doll. I pulled off some pretty cool foot skills and was totally getting around them until I was involved in a huge take out. I slide tackled this pretty big guy and he lost his balance and we ended up tumbling around and colliding. I ended up in the fetal position with him sprawled on top of me. He was perfectly fine. I got up with a knee that was already bruised and swelling. Couldn't really even walk on it... But I kept on playing ;-) It was really fun and I can't wait for next Friday to do it all again! Except that next Friday the high school boys want to join so it'll be really rough...but fun!
Saturday the school took us to Hongzhou. It's this really pretty town. We had our coordinator Angle with us and we went with a tour group which was cool. The tour leader told all the other people in the group to look after us and make sure that nothing bad happened to us. A lot of the people in our group asked to have their pictures taken with us. We went to West Lake which was absolutely beautiful. Then we went to a couple of different temples and tea houses. We also went to a silk factory. It was all really cool.
This last month we have been discovering some fun places in Ningbo. We found a night market that's only two bus stops away from our school that has some fun clothing and jewelry and some amazing street food. We also found a fantastic hair salon. Something interesting here is that it is men who are usually the stylists here. Every now and then you'll find a woman doing hair but not often. You haven't lived life yet until you've had your hair washed, colored and cut by a beautiful straight Asian man! Just sayin. The guys at the salon we go to are hilarious. Sonny, the owner, doesn't speak a lick of English but through the Chinese we've learned we found out that he is quite blunt and funny. His wife (couldn't spell her Chinese name if my life depended on it) helps him out and they have a little boy who is about a year old and always has a Mohawk. There is Tony who is freakishly tall and very shy and it doesn't help him that he only knows a few words in English. And there's O-wen who speaks a little bit of English and is pretty funny. Tony went out to smoke and O-wen said to us that "Smoking... is bad for health." that's when we asked him if he smoked and he got all red and replied "sometimes." It was funny to see him so embarrassed but not surprising since most of the men here smoke.
I never thought I'd say this but thank goodness for McDonald's!! Seriously, some of the food here is crazy! I don't even know what most of it is . Honestly I don't really want to ask either. But we figured out that people here don't really look at their food. They just eat whatever is in front of them. So having a hamburger and knowing exactly what's in that hamburger can be very comforting. I don't think I'll qualify as a picky eater anymore when I get home.
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