Technically i made chinese kids cry

You know what's awesome....when on the cleaning ladies of your building knocks on your door at 7:30 am to have you walk around the kitchen with her writing down and teaching her the english names for things. soooo random.
Earlier in the week i showed a movie in my listening class. it was so much fun. We watched the last x-men movie. Each kid has a computer in front of them and a set of head phones. i've already seen the movie so i took my head phones off and decided to do some work will they watched. So i take of my headphones and the room is completely quiet with all the students intently watching. all the sudden all kinds of noises start coming from them. It was so great. they would all gasp at parts and talk out loud to the film. At one point a character died and some of the girls starting sniffling at getting teary eyed. they were so into it.
Today i did a whole class on halloween in my one speaking class. Some of them could care less, but most of them really enojyed it. I even brought ina bag of american candy and had them say trick or treat before reaching in the bag. my folks actually send me a little package with halloween candy in it. Including a bag of candy corn....which i have to admit is already gone. I didn't eat it alone though!!! i shared some of it with natalia...she had never had it before.
there' s going to be a halloween party on saturday at the one bar we've been going to, Alibabas. i'm so excited! i love halloween and can't wait to get all dressed up. Jess and i are going to do a joint costume together. hee hee. i will probably have loads of pictures so no worries. and if any of you want to send me pictures of your costumes that would be great. i'm so curious about what some of you are doing this year.

I'm so far behind with posting pictures....so here are some more from my travels earlier in the month when i was in Liaoning Province.

First off are pictures from Shenyang where we went to see the Benxi Water Caves that have a hug under ground river you can travel on and all kinds of crazy rock formations.

This was the mucho moldy Hotel we stayed in.
The next we went to go check out the water cave.
Before we actually went into the cave, we watched a "crocodile show" it was awesome. the end.
The show started by just having different performers dance or sing in the crocodile pit.
First up were these 2 adorable dancing girls with crazy claw fingers.
Then all the sudden the crocodile show turned into a full on drag show. SOOO GOOD! This lovely Drag Queen did quite the act. She/He dance all around with a rather bored looking snake
The next drag queen was waaaay prettier. Her gimick was singing and going back and forth from her femae range to her male one.

Look at that croc....that is the face of humiliation.
Then it was time for the real show.
Basically the main par tof the show was swinging the little croc around by it's tale.and this was the portion of the show in which the handler poked the croc in the face with stick.

The entrance to the caves
inside the caves

Fun little restaurant where you have to fish for you dinner.
This was a tiny tiny little town...Qian Shan..home of the thousand lotus mountain.
the place was kind of like a ghost town. So small it didn't even have a town bank.....but it did have a GIANT cactus

This was the walk up to our hotel. It kind of looked like it was out of some horror movie because it was so deserted. When we walked in we scared a poor boy who was asleep behind the counter. It also had small dogs roaming around everywhere.
The chicken dome!
Personally, number 4 and number 7 are my two favorite rules.

Last weekend the university had a concert thatw as basically a freshman talent show. both students and teachers performered in it. I knew a couple of people who were in it so i decided to come out and show my support. i was so glad i did. It was quite the event.
The girl in the pink dress in my friend Jamie. Her dress was so hideous it was breathtaking. Jamie's role in the show was to be an announcer with these four other students, each representing a different country. The boy on the end was chinese, then jamie the american, the next girl was korean and the other boy was japanese.

These are teachers from Canada, who sang crazy Canadian folks songs.

Oh Jamie and her dress.
This is my friend Nate. He sang The Smashing Pumpkin's song Sweet Sweet.
look at him rockin' out.
Various students performing...
These kids sang a duet together...but what was amazing was they were so akward and shy about singing a love song that they could barely even look at each other.

Ok...they have this really funny but amazing custom that while a singer performs people run on stage and hand them flowers. They do this for every act. This woman was a teacher and VERY VERY talented. Kinds kept running on stage and handing her more and more flowers. By the end of the song she could barely hold on the the microphone.
Jamie performing in a skit. It was all in chinese so i had no idea what was going on.

It was really alot of fun. Way more entertaining than most american talent shows.

I feel bad that i have been lazy about updating lately. I have loads of new pictures to post. Just need to find the time to really sit down and do it. I really wasn't ready for it to be monday already. The weekends just fly by so fast. i'm not a fan of mondays because it usually means i have to spend my evening coped up in my room planning for tuesdays which are my crazy hectic days. I have so much to do tonight. I still need to figure out what i'm doing in my speech classes as well as my writing class. It always takes me forever to plan for writing. it's the one class that i feel so shaky with...and sometimes rather unqualifed. i also still papers to grade that i need to hand back to them tomorrow, and reading and correcting their papers always takes longer than i'm expecting. but at least it's fun to read.

almost over night the seasons have changed. the nights are getting rather cold. it think it may offically be sweater and jacket weather. My apartment got pretty chilly last night, but the heat isn't being turned on until mid nov. so i went out today and got myself a warmer blanket just in case this cold weather keeps up.

I feel like i may be having a bit of homesickness. I don't really want to come home....i'm just missing people. I think it's because the longer i'm here, busier i am and the more i go out, the less time i have to e-mail or talk to people back home...and i suddenly realized how long it's been since i heard from some people. I've only talked to my sister once since getting to china, and i kept help wishing i had a better sense of what was going on in her life and wish that i could tell her all aboutwhat i'm up to. It's also been ages since i've spoken to elizabeth. It's just sad to feel like i'm falling behind on people's lives.

On friday night a bunch of us went to a dinner thing at a restaurant that was free for westerners. I ran into a guy named nick who lived in the easton area, which is really close to where i went to school. then later in the night i met a chinese guy who when he is in the states lives in philly. There was something about being able to talk places back home that was really nice. While i was talking to nick, soda came up which made me think of A-Treat and just how much i could really go for a cream soda. Everytime i really start craving something from home i've been trying to the treat myself to something that i really really like here in china that i wouldn't be able to get back home. so to try and get my mind off of cream soda i got milk tea today with dale. And i got a bit of US tv the other day. jamie bought seasons of the gilmore girls! yes i'ma nerd and love that show...so we spent an after noon eating moon cakes in her bed and watching gilmore girls

I got my hair cut and colored the other day! The cut is pretty much like i had it before...but the guy did a really nice job trimming it up. I'm in love with the color. back home i always color my hair myself because it's cheaper, but in china it's soooo cheap to just have them do it for you. jess got her hair cut as well and had hers colored for the first time.

New hair!

maybe tonight when i need a break from lesson plans i'll have time to just get on and make a big random picture post.

taking tiger mountain by strategy

Here are some pictures from Jess and I's visit to the Tiger Mountain portion of the Great Wall. This is the most eastern part of the wall, so it is also very close to our crazy friend North Korea. what was nice about this section was it doesn't get very many tourists...so it wasn't crowded at all.

Entering the little town outside of the beside the great wall.

I actually liked this little town quite a bit. it was very very pretty and the people were really nice.

Jess and I ate at a really great restaurant before starting our hike. the staff was super nice and friendly and the outside dining area had really cute puppies everywhere.
Thank goodness for this meal. God knows we needed a good meal to give us enough energy to take on this portion of the Great Wall.

At the entrance...and ready for some Great Wall action.

Beginning the journey. hahahahaha not too bad a picture of my butt. hahahaha

Everwhere you look is an absolutly breath taking view. i'm not one much for landscape pictures, but i found myself taking a million. it was just so gorgeous.

Hanging out at the Great Wall.

Even puppies climb it.

An unrestored section.

somehow it always seemed we were running into the people with the puppy. i defintly wasn't complaining. it was soooo adorable.

two very exhausted girls.

As we were leaving, Bus filled with chinese soliders on break pulled in. there were hundreds of them, and they seemed to be quite entertained by jess and i. A few of them asked to get a picture taken with me. they were really funny.

Like I said, They Loved us!