Sick Strings

This was my busiest week yet in China. Thankfully, I am currently enjoying a week-long vacation (a Chinese National Holiday... but I don't know what holiday... I'll try to find out for next week)! Since my last week was so busy, that unfortunately makes it a rather uninteresting week for you to read about. I'll try an fill you in on some of the good details, but this could be a short one!

My First Chinese Class!

While I teach here in Xi'an, my school gives me the opportunity to take lessons in Chinese. This week I started! I meet twice a week for an hour with two different teachers and the classes are one-on-one. It's definitely intense and it would be a little intimidating, but thanks to my two years of study at Western Washington University, I am able to spend the whole hours speaking only Chinese (I was even able to skip the first book and start in the second). I have been dieing to get these classes started and I already feel like I've learn so much after one week!

Class Party!

As a reward system (or punishment... depending on behavior...), my students receive a star rating for each day: 5 for a perfect day and 0 for the worse day EVER (I've only given out a 4 star day yet). In addition, they can gain or lose stars for they behavior during the day.

Long story short, after the class has received 150 stars, we get a party- and what better day for a party then the Friday before a week-long vacation?! It was a lot of fun. We played games, ate pizza and watched a movie. Although, there was a slight problem with the pizza- in the US, two medium pizza would probably be good for six 5th graders but there were only two pizza sizes at the place we ordered from; 9 inches and 12 inches- both tiny in comparison to American standards. We ended up with only two 9 inches, so I had to order a second and grab some junk food from a nearby convenience stand. I'll definitely be getting at least three 12 inches next time! I tried to sneak a little work in, but as you can see, I had little control on party day!

Getting Sick... FINALLY

I've managed to be completely healthy this first month in China. I've continually heard about people getting sick from my coworkers and other travelers to China and i was starting to wonder if I had missed it all together!

That was arrogant of me.

Thursday, I was exhausted. It was like I had a really bad cold, but no symptoms- I didn't have a runny nose, sore throat, fever, etc.- my body was just tired. I managed to get through the day and fell asleep very early.

Friday I felt great! So, naturally, I ate nothing but pizza and sweets (thanks to party day) and stayed up way too late chatting to friends. Then, Saturday, it hit me- and hit me hard! I finally rolled out of bed at about 12:45 pm only to roll onto the couch. Then I would only move to visit the restroom where I experienced some bonafide Chinese diarrhea (or, more accurately, "the Bu" as called by my fellow Bonus Room Brothers). It was a long, difficult day. And, to top it off, I watch a very, very, very strange movie. The name of the movie was Strings and words can't quiet describe it. I'll say this: the opening scene is a puppet suicide... yeah- weird.

Another big accomplishment for the week was ordering Chinese food from a restaurant with Cari that had no pictures! Normally, I restrict my dining to places with a pictured menu so I can point and grunt at things I want, but on Friday Cari and I took a chance and we managed to orders some really good tasting food! It was a big step for me.

Well, like I said, short and not horribly interesting. This week is a vacation for me so I'll hopefully have some more exciting stories for next week. Although, no promises- it's feeling pretty nice just relaxing!

Thanks for reading!