Lights! Camera! Dreams~!

Last Update

2011-06-23T20:51:00.000-04:00

Note from Suki: The last post was actually sent to me sometime last week. This one was just yesterday. Lindey comes home on Sunday.

--------------

This is my very last update at Jiangxi Mayflora International. We have just about six hours before a bus comes to take us away to Guangzhou.

The performance that we were supposed to do yesterday never happened. I’m not sure when they decided to cancel it, but they did and didn’t tell us until a half hour before we were supposed to do it… I don’t really mind, truly. Instead, we went to go say goodbye to our kids and hang out with them. It was just the most fun I have ever had, even when some of them think it is hilarious to pull down their underwear while I’m filming.

There’s a hole in my heart.

I don’t want to be so overemotional about things, but I have always had a hard time letting go. I may bounce back easy, but it’s hard to just let go.

I haven’t truly cried yet, actually. Not even when saying goodbye to the kids, mostly because I don’t think it’s sunk in that we’re not coming back and I will probably never see any of them again.

It broke my heart saying goodbye to Lory and Colt. They are the two kids that I came to love as much as my own nieces, who are the children I will love the most until I have kids of my own. I hung out in Colt’s dorm room and we just cuddled up on his bed and he showed me his elephant and was just so happy to see me. He got so sad when I had to say goodbye. He has this thing about doing running-jumps to give me hugs. I am going to miss him.

Lory was even harder, because Lory actually asked me to stay and started crying. He told me to not leave the school, or at least go to Japan with him and his family instead of going back to America. At some point, he laughed and called me a bad teacher for leaving him and I just wanted to cry. I am going to miss this boy so much, he has been my precious little friend for this semester.

We said our goodbyes to the teachers we’ve known and everyone else. I have now removed everything from my room and just need to do a last minute mop-job.

In three days I will be back in the States and back with family. I’m excited, but I wish traveling around the world was easier. I would love to return to China, to come back to Jiangxi Mayflora even, if just to see my kids. There’s so much more to see here and I think it’s a great country, even if I cannot comprehend the language and sometimes the hygiene really sucks.

It'll be really hard to not be around the girls. We've just grown so close and I can't believe I can't go to Desi wedding. But we'll keep in touch and hopefully meet up in the future.

I think I’ll just send this off now and call it good. All the other stories will come once I’m back in the States and everything else.

Farewell, Mayflora. Farewell, my kids. I have loved my stay here and I hope you all have amazing lives and time finds you with a smile on your faces.

Overdue Update

2011-06-23T20:49:00.002-04:00

Okay, I totally meant to write this up before, but I am easily distracted and there were things going on here.

Not much happened between my last update and last week, but last week was actually rather eventful. For one, it started our last month in China (but more on that later). It was also Children’s Day!

Now, I’m sure you guys have heard me bemoaning the fact that Tim wanted me to sing the Titanic and I did not want to sing the Titanic song. For one, I just don’t like it that much. -_- and another, it’s really hard to sing for me.

So I finally convinced Tim to let me sing something else, maybe a week and a half later… On request from Bryndi, I was going to sing Colors of the Wind because the other girls were painting while Raza and I were singing.

Well, that lasted a while until we did a stage rehearsal and realized the two songs were not enough to paint the whole picture of flowers (it was a big picture. 2x4 ft? Something like that.) So I offered to sing another song to give them time and Tim immediately jumped back onto the Titanic song…

But long story short, the other girls decided they wanted to sing the national anthem for the third song, which defeated the purpose of the third song, but since the first verse is so short, they decided to cut out Colors of the Wind and pre-paint some of the picture (it turned out that they pre-painted A TON of the picture, but whatever)… and thus I was singing the Titanic song again.

The weekend before Children’s Day, Lory invited all of us over to his house for his little sister’s birthday, on Saturday. Saturday comes and it’s maybe 2:30 in the afternoon when Tim gives Kim a call and says that we have to rehearse in four hours. Kim tells him that we have plans with Lory and he says to cancel them, basically. 8( Strike numero uno. He actually GOES TO LORY and asks if he really did ask for us to come over to his place, and Lory says yes. Next thing Kim knows, Tim is saying that Lory is okay with the teachers coming over the next day. Somehow I don’t think Lory really had a choice in the matter, but the problem lies in the fact that Tim cancelled our plans for us, four hours before he needed us. None of us were down with that. I especially am not down with this, because later on I found out that it was the entire program running through rehearsal and if Tim couldn’t be bothered to tell us until mere hours before, I wasn’t really willing to cooperate. I realize that’s a crappy attitude, but Tim has lied and used us SO MUCH before and this was just… not okay.

So that evening, the other girls decided to go check out this little run down restaurant that’s across the street (it doesn’t look like anything but a brick house falling apart) and they rather liked it. But anyways, they were basically escaping Tim completely and were going to walk around for a while and everything… I didn’t go to the restaurant, I just ate the normal food before heading up.

I decided that even though Tim already spoke to Lory, I’d go to his mom’s place to see if he was there. Tim came up the stairs right as I was leaving and asked where I was going and where the girls were. I answered (truthfully, mind you) that I didn’t know where they were, because they’d gone to get dinner but that had been an hour and a half ago. He starts WHINGING at me that we all need to go to the stage to practice and I need to call them (dunno how he expected me to do that, not like I have a phone to do that -___-) and he always tries his best to tell us when things are happening, which is complete BS, really, because there’s actually this other party that the other English teachers told us about and Tim hadn’t even mentioned AT ALL, but anyways… I basically flipped out. Tim knows that it is in the ILP contract that teachers get the weekends off completely and he had the nerve to tell us last minute and cancel our plans and just… no, I was not okay with it and I told him so. I didn’t yell or anything, but I was definitely angry and he stopped trying after that, trying instead to get Kim and the rest on the phone or something. By that point I’d left to find Lory.

Turns out he wasn’t and I went to check if he was in his classroom, which he wasn’t either. So I spent some time watching James and Thomas play basketball, which was completely adorable. They were so excited (and actually kinda good) and three feet shorter than the other boys playing, cause they were all 7^th and 8^thgraders. XD So cute.

It was actually almost 9 by the time the other girls came back and sometime after that, Tim called Kim, telling her that we needed to rehearse the next day… which Kim told him no, because we have already told him time and time again that we don’t do things on Sunday for religious purposes. And really, we would have done it, except he whines at Ashley and Bryndi and then tries to convince Kim and all this ridiculous stuff and we were just… not happy with him.

We did say that yes, we’d run through the program on Monday after classes, and it’s not until we’re heading off to this rehearsal that we find out this performance isn’t on Wednesday, June 1^st (Children’s Day), it’s on Tuesday. Why we are only finding out the day before is beyond me, wtf.

But rehearsals went well, really. My voice kept on breaking in the last part of the song, but everyone else there seemed to love it. After our performance, I nipped onto the other side of the stage to say hi to Lory and watch his skit (he was playing the piano for it ♥) and then he and I hung out in the audience for a while before heading off to his place. We played some games and stuff and guys, I just love this kid so much, I don’t want to leave him at all. D: D: D: my heart, omg.

And thus the performance came upon us! It was super crowded, obviously, since there were tons of parents and siblings coming to the school and everything.

Performance went great. My voice still broke, but the crowds were enthusiastic. Sam and a couple of the other kids came up to give us their little hand clappers and glow stick bracelets, and at some point, this girl came up, gave me a flower and a hug. So I felt pretty good about that. After the performance is when we got our next surprise!

Tim had mentioned to Kim on Monday that he was thinking of taking us with us when visiting this other school in the province and maybe we could run through our little program (me and Raza singing, the girls painting, the nation anthem, etc). We’d be staying at a hotel, maybe do karaoke, and of course, he’d feed us. It sounded like a great way to spend the weekend, so we said that was fine.

Turns out that he didn’t say June 4^th, he said June 1^st (which sounds exactly the same, argh) and so that was… Well, the next day. So we got up really early, sat in a van for hours, and eventually arrived at this school.

It was smaller than Mayflora. It only ran from grades 1-8, had about 700 students, and was rather charming, but I think I like Mayflora better. Our kids are cuter. (My bias, can you feel it?)

But we were warmly welcomed at the school. We had lunch with a couple of the headmasters as well as the director of the school, and it was just HUGE. Ridiculous, there was so much food we couldn’t eat at all…

Tim took us around to see some sights. We saw a pagoda that was supposedly 2000 years old, which I honestly don’t believe because the entire thing was made out of modern brick… but it was fun. The stairs were fun, actually. The way you go up the floors and stuff. Ashley decided she wanted to build a pagoda for her kids for a playhouse. I really liked it, despite the fact that it was six stories or something and I am really not that good with heights.

While we were on the top floor, I spotted what looked like a graphitti spider (since there was plenty graphitti around)… Turns out the spider was real. Ashley screams, I freak out, and we decide that it is obviously time to go.

Kim jumps out on me as we go down to the next floor and I literally just sit down and start crying while laughing, my systems were all freaking out and just… haha, it was hilarious, but my heart was trying to jump out of my throat. Good times.

Also with the pagoda (and we actually saw this first) was the ‘biggest dinosaur fossil’… which was roughly the size of Linus and much shorter. Definitely not real, either… Uhm.

Haha, at some point, Raza actually JUMPED IN and crawled under the wood skeleton thing and just… ahahalsdfj I don’t even know. Raza’s actually pretty hilarious, once we started talking. It took a few weeks, but yeah, it was fun.

[Insert a week happening]

Sorry, I realize this update is so long overdue, but I’m beginning to realize a couple things. I have 9 days left until I’m back in the states and today is my last day of teaching.

I don’t want to write these stories, I want to just tell them to you. And I also don’t want this to end. Time flew by so much faster than I was expecting and now it’s time to say goodbye… I don’t know, it’s hard.

But I’ll leave some quick summaries, just to remind myself of what’s happened.

♣ The rest of Children’s day was spent at a different school where we were fed three different dinners, went to a karaoke lounge for the first time in my life, and several people got drunk. I think Raza and Tim got drunk three times in the space of ten hours.

♣ I am currently winning at the one who’s gotten the most here in China, since I kissed a soldier on the cheek during the Children’s Day performance. There was tons of cheering and the headmaster and everyone else later told me that it was a story to last a lifetime. I find it amusing that I don’t interest guys in the US, but here, I am going to be one of those cool little legendary things that he’ll probably brag about later.

♣ Tim really is ridiculous drunk. And he loves the Titanic song like nothing else. So does everyone else in China, I was thanked by several people for singing a song that brought back adolescent memories or something like unto that.

♣ Vacation wasn’t anything exciting, really. The girls went to Guilin and I stayed here at the school. I was dragged off to this English party that I thought I’d gotten out of since the other girls weren’t there, but I was a judge and it was just kids from our elite department… except for Grade 6, which are my ELE kids. Not sure why they weren’t there, probably they had to do some test or something. But I judged, I sang, my kids were adorable and Lory somehow knows how to play ‘Teacher wants me for a Sunbeam’, ‘The Wise man and the Foolish Man’, and ‘Once there was a snowman’ on the piano. When this happened or how this happened, I have no idea. But they were so cute and I’m going to miss them a ton.

♣ I watched a lot of movies on vacation, some of which were pretty awesome. Tangled, Unstoppable, Inception, and A-Team, to name a few. I also liked the Italian Job, which I had never seen before, for some inexplicable reason, despite the fact that it has been on TV for ages and all the other Kids had seen it at Nana’s a million times before. But yes, I liked it. It’s better than the Oceans movies.

♣ I was unfortunately stupid and tried to watch I Am Legend on my own. It was broad daylight and someone had told me that if I could watch the newest Sherlock Holmes movie, I could handle I Am Legend… Yeah, right. |: I didn’t even make it forty-five minutes into the movie, I started freaking out. And then I couldn’t sleep for two nights because once the lights were out, I started freaking out more, thinking things were going to eat me. Yes, I realize I am far too old to be scared of monsters under the bed, but I am. (Luckily this sleepless night thing ended when the girls got back and I sleep just fine.)

♣ I haven’t started packing yet.

Yesterday was my last day of ELE and I got all my kids to write down their Chinese name, their English name, and fingerprint their piece of paper. I’m going to scrapbook this somehow. I’m going to miss them so much.

Yesterday was also my last day of proper teaching since today we’re running through our end of semester program that ILP presents to the parents. Yesterday I did coke-floats, which were actually extremely successful, in that the kids loved them and that I could keep the ice cream frozen despite not having a cooler or anything to keep it cold proper. The wonders you can do with bags and bottles of ice and a couple towels. Win? I think so.

Lory and Colt are going to be the biggest heartbreaks leaving this school. They’re my babies. I’ve watched Colt grasp a ton more English during this program and he’s just the cutest thing ever. He lets me hug him and holds my hand and everything. And Lory, of course, has always been a favorite too. They both just hand on me and let me hang on them and I just… it’s going to be hardest to let them go. I’ll miss all the kids, of course, but those two are just so sweet and amazing. ♥

But as much as it’s going to suck leaving, I’ll be happy to be going home. It’s weird not being able to vocally talk to my family and this is the longest I’ve ever had to go without seeing my parents. Also, Valerie has had her baby and it’s a girl and I’m so excited to see her, I cannot even say how much. (But I guess the battle for the first nephew is still on? Who will win!? FIGHT-O!)

I also just miss America. I realize I wasn’t able to pick up on Chinese the way some people expected me to – none of us did, really – but I’m just waiting to be somewhere where I understand what people are saying most of the time. And losing celebrity status will be a little odd, but not being stared at all the time will be nice too. I’ve decided that I can skip the being famous thing, I’ll just be rich.

Well, I should shower and go down to lunch now. I might update one more time before I get back to the states, but I might not. At this point, it really is just wanting to talk to people, not write this stuff down. But anyways, toodles!

Beijing and Shanghai

2011-05-26T09:58:00.002-04:00

Okay, well, I’ve hauled my laptop on me with this vacation. :D I AM IN BEIJIIIING as I type right now. It’s super exciting.

The first bit of our trip was… well, a 16 hour train ride. Guys, I am boss with these things by now. Desi, Ashley, and I were sitting together (with Nicole, Bryndi, and Kim nearby.) We got super lucky for the first part of the trip. There was this girl who goes to school in Nanchang and going to Beijing for vacation with her sister. She’s studying English and she’s a freshman and her name is Kisha and she fed me cookies and cracker and she was adorable. (Run on sentence, say what?) She was fun to talk to.

There was also Tong. Tong was a 25 year old… boatman of some sorts. Almost a captain but he wasn’t… military? Anyways, he’s been to the Philippines and India; he likes name-brands (he sat down because he saw me reading his Armani bag); and his English was pretty awesome. We just spent a couple hours talking about Jackie Chan, ridiculous puns, and our teaching in Mayflora. It was super sad when Tong left.

Also, I will have you know, I read the entirety of Watership Down in about five hours. I love that book so much. ♥

The train was super annoying though. |: Like, it started out super, STIFLING HOT when we boarded. My legs started sweating, guys, my LEGS. So gross. We were just all slowly dying and suffocating and we were like that for a half hour before the train to move and the air-con turned on. And then the air-con turned FREEZING. Like, I was shivering and all this crap… and on top of that, I hadn’t packed a long-sleeved anything and I was in shorts. But once we got into Beijing and out in the real air, all was well. It’s cooler than Mayflora, but it’s not cold. It’s almost like San Francisco weather right now, even when it started raining and everything. ^^

But yes, we arrived in Beijing~! :D We got into the city around 11AM and got picked up by a guy in a van. And his partner in crime. Guys, you have no idea how hilarious some of the situations we get into are. But anyways, we talked him down from 2000yuan (because who the heck is that dumb? U_u;;) to 120 for all of us to our hostel (which was quite a way off and so that was probably cheaper than taxis.) Ahem.

I like this hostel a lot. It doesn’t look all high class and whatever, but I like the comfortable lived in feeling. The staff is super nice, our room is nice, etc, etc, etc. The location is awesome too. We’re right next to the Tian’an Men Square and the Forbidden City is within walking distance and the whole block we’re staying in is a big shopping/food district, which we spent the rest of the day exploring. It was awesome. :D

After we dropped our stuff off in our room, we set out to get to the bank and get food (because I hadn’t eaten anything in the past 24 hours besides a pack of oreos and a vitaminwater… Go me.) It took us a while to find the bank… Long story short, people kept on sending us in a million different directions and we ended up at this ‘Bank Of Beijing’ which we tried out of desperation and it worked! Haha, we’ve never had anything but ATMs from the Bank of China work for us, but yeah, it was awesome.

After that, we went back to the road our hostel is on and checked out this noodle place that we’d seen coming in. It was called ‘Californla Noodle Shop USA’, though I didn’t notice the typo on California until Kim pointed it out. The engrish on the signs. |D I am thoroughly amused.

But I got this nice beef noodle soup thing for lunch… Ate it the fastest. +_+ Guys, it makes me feel bad, I’m like a bottomless pit among my fellow teachers. (Actually, Nicole is the bottomless pit, she just doesn’t eat as fast.)

After we ate lunch, we decided to go check out our area and spent the rest of the day shopping and exploring. There’s a lot of neat stuff here. :D I’m super stoked about some of my purchases and |: for the ones they are intended for, you better too or I keep them.

Well, that’s all for now. Time to sleep and then tomorrow it’s the Forbidden City, Tian’an Men’s Square, and possibly the Pearl Market. Whoot.

[Insert Time Passing Here]

… Okay, so I haven’t managed to update this thing until… well, it’s Thursday. 8D;; We’re in Shanghai. Which I am completely in love with and have been since we stepped out of the train station. I wish to convey to you how some parts of this city look like they stepped straight out of a Pokemon city but it’s bright and cool and the alleys still stink but the rest of it is just so gorgeous and I am in looooooooooove.

But! I shall go ahead and try my best to recount the past few days in Beijing.

We ended up not doing the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square until later, but we went to the Temple of Heaven and the Pearl Market. My main partners in crime were Bryndi and Nicole. It was pretty rad, really. 8Db The Temple of Heaven was like a… park with a bunch of different palaces for different things. Like the Temple for Praying for Good Harvests, or something like that. There was a Palace of Abstinence and we had a guy from South Dakota to take a picture of us in front of it with us doing V-signs (for Virgins 8D). There was some other cool things like the 70 year old door. Apparently the door was created when the officials were concerned for the health of Emperor Qianlong (or was it Qinglong…?) who was very old and so they made this door in the outer wall of one of these temples so it was easier on him.

Well, Qinglong was afraid that his descendents would abuse this privilege and thus decreed that no emperor could pass through the shortcut until they were the age of 70. (Apparently nobody after him lived that long so the door was never used besides Qinglong)

After the Temple of Heaven, we moved onto the Pearl Market. I did get pearls. They’re super pretty and they’re black pearls, because I’m not much of a pearl girl in general and I’m even less of a white pearl girl. I had fun helping some of the other girls pick out their purchases, especially Ashley. The Pearl Market is actually only one floor of the building it’s in. There’s the Pearl market, an electronics market, and a clothing/shoes market. I didn’t much like the electronics floor. Who wants cheap knockoffs that you can’t even tell if they work or not until you leave the place? The clothing market was okay except some of the ladies were complete bullies. U_u;; Like, nobody tried to touch me, but Bryndi, Nicole, and Desi were all telling stories about being yanked back into stores because the vendor wanted to try and bargain them higher.

(I have, by the way, gotten rather good at this haggling thing. n_n/ )

But Kim says I’m also the last person she thinks will get raped. 8Db Apparently I look tough. Who knew? Anywho. That was our Saturday.

Sunday was up to me, Bryndi, and Nicole to plan because Desi, Kim, and Ashley were off to go do their whole sleeping on the Great Wall thing that was too expensive for us to try. We skyped into church (sadly we did not get the sacrament, there was nobody in Beijing T_T) and then decided to go see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. We didn’t actually go into the Bird’s Nest, but we did get to go into the Water Cube. (For those who don’t know, these are the stadiums in which the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics were held.) We got there by subway, which was actually rather fun. I haven’t been on a subway since San Francisco.

Guys, it was so legit though! Like, they let you into the pool area and they play clips from the Olympics and it was just SO COOL and the Cube is actually a pretty cool construction. O: Like, it’s… made of bubbles, to be honest. I liked it a lot.

We didn’t do much else besides that. Went back to the hostel, hung out a bit, went to bed early because we were having our own early morning trip to the Great Wall.

… Which was even more legit. Like, it’s a super long drive from Beijing. +_+ On little sleep, anyways, I felt so dead tired while we drove. But then we got there and it was just awesome. We were in the Jinshan section and there were lots of ups and downs and slopes and stairs that were so steep you had to practically climb up them and everything. I brought a couple rocks from the Great Wall for souvenirs and everything. We had a blast. We met some kids from the UK and did the whole climb with them and it was a lot of fun. :D

It was just really impressive. Just the section we were in stretched for as far as the eye could see and just… super wow. *w*

Randomly but I feel like I have now done the five major things that people do when they go to China. I’ve gone to Beijing and Shanghai; I’ve seen the Terra-cotta Warriors and Pandas; I’ve climbed the Great Wall of China. I’ve done a ton of other stuff too, but I feel like I definitely covered the major bases.

Anyways, I will… uhm. Omit certain parts of that night and the next day because there are stresses and stories to be had that don’t need to be repeated and it can mostly be blamed on hormonal imbalances.

On Tuesday we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I was… uh, honestly expecting more of the Square. I mean, it was nice. Big. Long. But overall, nothing wow-worthy. (Might be because we just walked through it instead of buying tickets to all the exhibits on the sides?) Anyways, it didn’t take us long to go see the Forbidden City itself.

I read that the Forbidden City is the biggest royal palace in the world and I believe it. The place was huge. It was like… well, a village or palace city (no durr, think of the name, Lindey u_u;;;). The buildings just went on for forever and they all had these different purposes that it was almost a little ridiculous (like halfway points between two different receiving buildings for resting and the emperor slept here and the empress slept here but sometimes they slept there and… and what not). But it was gorgeous and fantastically stunning and it was definitely worth going to see.

After the Forbidden City, we went to this highly recommended snack street… which was honestly just a huge rip-off (what the crap, I could buy meat on a stick near my hostel for a third of what they were trying to charge) and I ran into a handful of biatches that I probably would have slugged if I was less nice than I was. I did try snake! It was really good, actually. Almost like chicken, but different. Nicole and Bryndi were brave and tried the fried scorpions on a stick (none of us were brave enough to go do the scarabs…) Bryndi ended up puking… Luckily I missed this part of things, Ashley and I had moved on to try and find a different store.

After that we ended up in this clothing market. I didn’t really do much there, I hadn’t even wanted to go in the first place, but eh, it was fun to find stuff with Ashley. We got some ties and met this really awesome guy in one of the shoe stalls. We were trying on shoes and needed smaller seizes so while his coworker was trying to get them, we just sat there and chatted. He grew up in Suzhou, moved to Shanghai when he was 18, and then came to Beijing a couple of years ago. His English was great, just saying. We had a ton of fun just talking to him and Ashley ended up getting the pair of shoes. Sadly, he could not go down to the price I was willing to pay for the purple leopard skater high tops that I was looking at, which was probably a good thing because I did not need them, even if they were so me and completely GORGEOUS.

After shopping, Bryndi and Nicole split to go see the Olympic Gardens at night and I hung with the other girls as they got expensive Coldstone’s ice cream and then we took a cab back to the hostel. It was actually rather fun, we were having this running commentary about how long it’d take and what number it’d end on and how we’d split the bill. Ridiculous. ♥

Once we got to the hostel, Ashley and I went back to the shopping street near our hostel (which I’d frequented many times before, so I had buddies.) I just had some last minute purchases and one of the vendors was super nice and gave me a gift! I now am the proud owner of a little rabbit statue with a pepper necklace. It’s so cute.

Thus came Wednesday, which was the day we left for Shanghai. By this time, due to the amount of walking we’d done, my feet were completely in ribbons of pain. So we all decided that as lovely as the Summer’s Palace sounded, we weren’t going to do it. Instead, we went to see a mummy.

Yes, a mummy. They had Mao mummified and placed in the center of the Monument Square. It… actually kind of made me sick because I felt so disturbed after we went to see it… him… it? I don’t even know.

We didn’t do much else that day. Wandered around, tried out some last minute things, and took pictures with our favorite vendors. I also got a picture of this guy’s pink and orange hair who worked in one of the hair salons along the street.

Thus the train from Beijing to Shanghai came. (I got to keep the ticket for this train, I’m super stoked, it was the one ticket I wanted.) The station was so crowded, it was insane. We got there easily enough and started to get to the boarding area. I was trying to follow Bryndi with my two bags and it was just kinda hard and I bumped into this guy. He said ‘Oh my god, I’m sorry’ and I just sort of flushed and looked up, shaking my head.

Guys, this guy was so cute. He just smiled at me and we pressed into the crowd again to get to the gates and he started again: “Hi, my name is Kevin.”

So I introduced myself and we compared tickets and it turned out that we were not only going to the same place and in the same car, but we had seats close to each other. He was super sweet and offered to help carry my stuff, but I was fine, so he helped Bryndi with one of her various bags.

Turns out that his seat wasn’t near mine, it was right across from me.

Guys, I don’t think you understand how instantly I fell into like with Kevin. (Shoot me now, I’m blathering about this in public, but oh my gosh. ♥) He was just so cute and hilarious and he didn’t actually speak that much English, but I will shamelessly admit that his legs and mine were draped all over each other and I had butterflies. (Of course, he did ask Desi if he could kiss her and let her sleep on his shoulder, but whatever, excuse me for not being tiny and blond and adorable. xD;; Ahem.) Anyways. Some of the girls in my group definitely dig these UK guys that we run into. Me? Yeah, I think most people know by now that I like them asian boys. 8DDD Haha, so this was my one flail. Not only was he a handsome asian guy (I mean, he was good looking. Not amazingly gorgeous, but he was cuuuute~) with stylish clothes but he was a part-time model AND he is a hairstylist. Not just for anyone, but for models for all the fashion shows and what not. I actually have no idea if the model part was real, but the hairstylist thing was legit. He showed me this video of him on this stage cutting this girl’s hair for like a video class and stuff. He was joined by his teacher (who was suuuuper good looking. *w*) and the models getting their hair cut were so cute, omg. D: One of them ended up with this super teased pig-tail look and I loved iiiit. (Also, let me just say, Kevin looks super cute in glasses and a bowtie. n_n/)

… So yeah, ridiculousness aside, I also read this book called Sarah’s Key during the train ride. It’s about the Holocaust for the Jews in France and parts of it were devastating (as almost all Holocaust stories are), but the ending was just a bit too cheesy and stupid for my liking. Definitely not as good as the Hiding Place and Briar Rose, which shall both forever be my favorite books on that subject, fictional or otherwise.

So that was today and now we are in Shanghai! I’m actually trying to finish up this update asap because I am dead tired, but once we arrived here and found our hostel, we went out to eat… Lunch was okay, but the place wasn’t –great- or anything. Then we went down to this area called Old Town and did some shopping. Actually, Ashley and I went to see this Chinese gardening park place and then had Dairy Queen Blizzards, it was a rather nice date. The rocks were super cool, you have no idea. (Or rather, you will once I upload pictures.) It was just so pretty and there were flowers and it was green and lovely and. I liked it a lot, which says a lot right now, because I’ve actually been sick since Monday. So look at me, I’ve stopped being such a wimp about things too! :D Go me.

Anyways, not much to say for after that. 1TYM PLAYED IN THE STREET WE WERE SHOPPING ON. It was exciting. :D Also, I got some small trinkets for my kids’ store for super cheap. \o/ Pleased, this one is. (On the other hand, I had to buy this gaudy hand-strap for my flip video because it broke while in Beijing and I couldn’t find the other half of it before we left. U_u;; Ugh.)

But it is late, I am finally clean, we have two more days in Shanghai, and then it’s back to Mayflora for us. I’m actually looking forward to it, I miss my room and the kids and everything else. But yes, we’ll go rock Shanghai first. n_n/

[Insert the next morning]

Being sick surely is troublesome. Also, for some reason the net won’t let me connect at all and I have no idea why because everyone else in this hostel seems to be able to. Maybe I’ll ask the front desk later, though it doesn’t really matter much.

[Insert more time passing]

OTL

Haha, I’m really bad at keeping this updated, but I am again without wireless (the desktop works because it has direct linkage or something, I don’t even know) and Tim isn’t around so we can’t get this fixed. He better be back soon though.

It’s now Thursday, May 12^th.We’ve been back at the school for a few days and lots of stuff has been happening.

To wrap up what happened in Shanghai… well, I suppose nothing significant, we spent a lot of time just wandering. We went to this sort of Silk Market thing which I didn’t really care for much, but Ashley and I did get a few more ties… Haha. Bryndi and Nicole ended up getting dresses fitted and stuff, so they went back the next day, but… To be honest, what we did the most in Shanghai was eat ice cream.

It’s a weird thing to spend money on, I’m sure, but we haven’t had ice cream in ages and getting it at the school is difficult because you’re either dealing with yucky leftovers or battling against a thousand boys before it becomes the yucky leftovers. Hm. Yeah. So we had ice cream a lot. It was so good too. ;o; You could get a chocolate Sunday for a dollar and those things come packed with chocolate syrup, I loved it so much.

We saw the Bund too, because that was near where we were staying. The Bund is apparently high class shopping (ie Armani, Prada, etc) against the river and a walkway and…at night it is super gorgeous. We spent hours just hanging out, wandering around, and it was awesome. The lights! The buildings! We made this friend with this adorable little 16 month old toddler and awww, he only tried to hold my hand. I couldn’t get a picture of him though, it was too dark and if I turned on the flash, it would have blinded him. But he was super adorable. Not as cute as my nieces, but cuuuute.

The next day we went off to explore. We went to a Pearl Market like we had in Beijing but the one we ended up at was… expensive. O_O It was like a legit jewelry store and they were like ‘No bargaining’ and stuff so we… ended up not staying very long. They did show us the difference between fresh and salt water pearls with hands on demonstrations. It was pretty cool.

But then we were left with nothing to do, so I suggested we go to this underground shopping place my friend had suggested when I asked her for places to go in Shanghai. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but it was basically this mall underground. Pretty rad. I liked a lot of the clothes they had there and they had some really awesome high tops (which I have fallen in love with). I think I win for finding the place, really. At first we weren’t sure if it was really something we wanted because there’s a floor on the same level as the station and it’s like… nothing but wedding and prom dresses but then you go up and it’s got all the normal clothes and stuff.

Sadly, I was really trying to find this place where they had Johnnys phone charms and unfortunately… looks like the shop jumped ship or something because I found a place with DBSK and Johnny pictures but the displays were all tattered and the new merch in front of it was all normal girl stuff like rhinestone jewelry and stuff. Meh.

But I had fun running around. I made friends with a kitten, everyone else bought some cute stuff, I did too… And then we went to go down the food section and got lunch and ice cream and then went aboveground to eat it.

… And then there was the Korean Kreeper (as he has been dubbed.) I’m sort of tired by then so I’m in a daze, but I come back to my senses when I hear someone say ‘You’re like Cinderella’. This guy has come up and he’s talking to Kim and Ashley and he says he’s Korean and he’s studying English in Shanghai and some other stuff and suddenly he’s says again “You’re like Cinderella” to Kim and then “You’re Snow White” to Ashley and finishes it up with “And I’m Mickey Mouse”. After that, he went to give us all a hug and a weird double French cheek thing (you know what I mean) but instead of touching cheeks on both sides, he like… open mouth kissed/licked Kim and Ashley. After seeing Ashley’s face, Desi and I quickly went ‘DO NOT WANT’ at him and he just patted my arm and left. Seriously, so CREEPY. +_+ We’re not convinced that he was involving Kim and Ashley in some weird sort of self fantasy and I promised to write them a book with a villain made just so.

Eventually we went to the station and got on the train to go back to Nanchang. It was an overnight thing and we got to Nanchang around… 7AM. It wasn’t really eventful, we mostly slept and dozed and stuff… But Tim did NOT come pick us up, despite the fact that we told him and even moved our train to arrive at a more convenient time. Ew. So we ended up getting on a bus… a bus that was already jam-packed and they were trying to pack all of us and our luggage (which was considerable at this point, omg) and it just WAS NOT WORKING. But it was working enough that they were going to leave… until a policeman got on and said it was too crowded and removed all the people who weren’t in actual seats, which included us. We were freaking out for a bit because the bus started moving with our luggage still on it, but someone stopped it and we got our stuff and were put on a different bus going past Mayflora and only a few too many people sitting in the aisleway.

I have never been so ridiculously happy to see the school. It just rose out of the scenery on the left and I went HALLELUJAH. The other people on the bus thought I was amusing as I kicked the guys in the aisle out of the way because… I was sticky and dirty and gross and I just wanted to take a shower and everything. The shower was glorious. We seriously did nothing on Sunday besides shower, eat, and sleep.

The next day was pretty fun! :D My family all got on Skype because it was Mother’s Day in the US and Jonathan was able to skype home :DDD It was a ton of fun and KAELYN SAID MY NAME. ;o; Whee. So did Vivi and Lara but they were considerably older when I left (which feels like forever ago, despite only being a little over three months.) But yeah, that was a great few hours, definitely worth skipping lunch over.

Going back to teaching was interesting… I mean, I had a lot of fun, it was just a bit… well, weird. It was great seeing all the kids again, I missed them so much. And hey, they missed me. Even my ELE class. :D

However, we haven’t really done much in the way of teaching… the first two days were just fine but during the second class on Wednesday, Angel comes bursting into our classes, telling us that we need go to some meeting and our kids have to go back to their regular classes and then yelling at our kids to hurry up and whoa. +_+ So we rush the kids back upstairs and Thomas was so cute while he pushed us out of the classroom all ‘Teacher, go go go go go’ but… haha, we were so confused.

And we didn’t really DO much. Turns out they’re filming some sort of advertisement for the school and we’re a huge part of that, so they’re putting a lot of us in this. So we met some of the crew for filming, Angel worked out bits of our schedule, and they took a few pictures… Was it worth pulling us from our classes? Eh, not really.

But apparently we don’t teach for the rest of the week. I mean, we didn’t teach today and I don’t think we’re teaching tomorrow. Because of filming. They had us in this meeting room and this whole thing is total bs, what they had us doing. Like, they had us being part of a ‘meeting’ which we never are. They had us in the teachers’ office, in the cubicles, on laptops… we don’t use the offices at all, we work out of our apartments. So on and so forth. Apparently they’re doing even more stuff tomorrow and Kim and I are… sort of teaching. I have no idea, it’s just completely weird.

Anyways, we’re also moving from the dorms to the hotel apartments that they’ve built for us… I’m sort of ticked, to be honest. By the time we move, we only have five weeks left here at Mayflora. I don’t want to pack up again (because we packed up to swap rooms right before vacation. I’m now in Ashley’s room) until we go home. Also, it’s just going to be a pain, it’s up six flights of stairs and there is no elevator and we not only have to move our stuff, but we have to move the supply closets as well.

Life is so eventful, hahah.

And thus the time in Shanghai passed.

[Update right after moving, warning of frustrated Lindey.]

I figured I should just document this in a different entry because it’s… ridiculous.

So I ended up not teaching the rest of the week, which actually disappointed me a lot. We definitely didn’t do anything that was worth not teaching. I was actually rather ticked throughout the whole thing.

We wasted an entire afternoon on Friday doing nothing. Literally nothing. Four of us didn’t even have to do anything at all and they wouldn’t let them leave for some reason until hours later and Kim was held back nearly as long as I was. I nearly missed dinner because they ‘needed’ me for fifteen minutes out of four hours and obviously that meant I couldn’t go to dinner the entire time (I ended up eating dinner in the crappy cafeteria near our old apartments). It was such a waste, I was so pissed off. Basically we were just filming in a classroom setting and the kids were great and all, but it was such a waste of time. I spent half the filming (because when I wasn’t on camera, they just had me in the classroom, in a corner, while they filmed the students going ‘Welcome to Mayflora!’ and stuff. I talked to our students, because they were on the building opposite where we were and some of them came down to see me, like Grace, Kevin, Nate, Beer, and Angel.

But it turned out to be a fun night. The girls all got changed while I was finishing up filming, we got a basketball from Tim, and we played Horse and Pig for a while. I actually won! :D It was fun.

Actually, it became one of the best nights I’ve had in Mayflora. I had fun with my group and after we wrapped that up, I headed off to our kids to see if any of them were playing piano. I was a little earlier than usual, so most classes were actually still working on homework, but the grade 1 class had gone home… but Lory was there. And he was playing piano with this kinda pretty woman that I’d never seen before. I assumed it was his piano teacher because I know he’s more advanced than Wendy, the woman who helps the other kids who play piano.

Well, I wait around a few minutes to say good night and he introduces her. Turns out it’s his mom. Enter my surprised face. I asked where they were going and he said ‘home’. On impulse, I asked if I could see where that was (because I was dying to see where our kids stay, they’re on the other side of campus and stuff) and they both said yes.

T_T It was so adorable, they kept on calling me pretty and cute in Japanese.

We ended up going to Lory’s Mom’s apartment (whose name I don’t know because I’m horrid with Chinese names and she didn’t have an English or Japanese one…) and I guess she’s a teacher here! They offered me some grapes and watermelon (FRESH FRUIIIIIIT ♥) and Lory showed me his pet chicken, which is only like, two weeks old maybe and super cute. :O!!! He named it ‘Small Brown’. Not so original, but he’s so cute about it, asldjf.

After that, Lory’s mom excused herself to go get Lory’s sister… I didn’t even know he had one! But apparently he has two. He mentioned one being eleven and in Singapore, but his little sister lives in the school with him and she’s one year old.

She is super cute. She warmed up to me so fast and she just giggled and laughed and asked me to tickle her and it was just sooooooo adorable. I love this family, can I just adopt them? I even got to ‘talk’ to his dad on the phone, who is in Japan. I didn’t really say anything, nor could I really hear him. I just had the phone shoved at me and said ‘Hi…?’ and then Lory said ‘No, no, in Japanese!’ so I said ‘Konnichiwa’ and made everyone happy.

Lory actually tried to get me to stay at his mom’s apartment for the night, but I told him that wasn’t possible. They gave me a chunk of watermelon for the other teacher’s and Lory ended up leaving with me because his sister stays with his mom, but he stays in the Elite dorm with his classmates. So I got to see their dorm, which is nice, and they have a caretaker and everything and Sam decided to do a little underwear dance for me. Guys, why are these kids so cute, can I just keep them? Bryndi and I were just talking about it, and I’m pretty sure I’m just going to bawl the entire time I have to tell them I’m going back to America and not coming back. Especially Colt, Jack, and Lory, but really, I love all of them. D: They’re just so sweet and excited to see me and that goes for my ELE kids too and I just… It’s hard thinking about never seeing them again after this.

But… Before I get to sentimental, I shall go on with what became a very crappy weekend.

[Insert many hours and much hilarity]

I would go on about how crappy this weekend has been, but I just spent three hours with Ashley, Kim, and Desi in utter amusement. I can’t breathe much, but it was too good a night to spoil with such trivial things such as the fact that the internet doesn’t actually work and we have no hot water. :3

Hot dogs will never be the same. ♥

[Current notes]
I'd just like to say that we finally have hot water and internet and I no longer want to kill people -that- badly.

Pikachu and Food

2011-04-24T08:30:00.002-04:00

Haha, updating finally. I’ve meant to do this for ages but kept on putting it off. I’m not even sure why.

Let’s see… We switched our area of teaching again. I’m teaching Games now and it’s… actually it’s frustrating! It’s not that the kids don’t understand most of the games and how I explain them, they pick those things up perfectly well… but it’s not about learning how to play the game, it’s about speaking English. I was doing so well in Kitchen and now I’m having to learn how teach a game and play it while getting them to talk a lot. My last review came back horribly. Boo. T_T

Oh wait! We had our mid-semester visit last Sunday/Monday. Halfway through the semester, the ILP directors go out to visit all the schools and check on the teachers and what not. Steve came to see us and he was super nice and a lot of fun. ^^ He was telling all sorts of cool stories about other teachers and his own ILP teaching experiences and what not.

Guys, Director Visits mean the schools are trying their best to impress and omg, I ate so much food. We went to go pick him up at the airport and Tim took us out to Pizza Hut. This was the first time I’d had pizza since leaving the states.

It. Was. Heaven.

I got this stuffed crust pizza with seafood (crab, shrimp, squid) and pineapple. So good, soooooo good.

That was Sunday and then the next day they moved classes into the morning. We normally taught from 2:25PM to 5:00PM and this was… well, 9AM. Haha, it threw me off so bad. But the kids liked what we were making and were super awesome and all, so it wasn’t too bad. Then we had a huge lunch and I ate a ton. Then we had a couple meetings and checked out the new teacher’s apartments.

Guys, I’m so jealous. D: The new teachers are in the hotel, which is nearer to where our kids stay and their hallway leads to the roof and there are places to hang your laundry and just. Super jealous.

After that, we were just hanging out until dinner came around and we had another big dinner. +_+ Annnnd I was actually still pretty full from lunch, but I still stuffed myself because the special dinners are just always SO good. While we ate dinner, they played videos of us teaching on the big screen in the main square (which you could see from the dining room we were in.) ORZ, HOW AWKWARD I LOOKED, WHAT THE HECK. D8

And then Steve left. It was a pretty quick visit, but we all had a lot of fun.

… And then the frustrations returned. Turns out that after the mid-semester visit, they decided to change the schedules. Without telling us. So our ILP classes are now 25 minutes later and our ELE classes were at different times. Stephanie (the English teacher for my ELE class) was asking me that morning if I was too busy to teach the class and I was so confused at why she would think that, but it’s because I was late… because nobody bothered to tell us the times had changed. Ticked me off so bad.

But we’re all adjusting and what not. Thursday is the start of our next vacation and we’re doing a Beijing/Shanghai/Great Wall trip. So not as much traveling and what not. I might take my laptop, I don’t know. Depends. Will talk to Nicole about that…

I’ll just finish this update off with a quick funny story.

I’m not sure if I’ve told you guys about Nate. Nate is one of our Primary kids and I’m not sure what he has, but he is a kid with special needs. Often very frustrating, but I’ve discovered that he really remembers song lyrics and what not, so I try to get him to sing and behave… doesn’t always work, but anywho.

We’re rotating one day and I’m talking to some kids in his class and we start talking about Pikachu, because he is a classic and a great conversation starter. This is with Sam and Ted and Yao-yao. Suddenly Nate starts singing at the top of his lungs and I have never heard this song before, I don’t even know how he came up with it or anything, but he’s all…

‘I HAVE A PIKACHU IN MY ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM’

It was just… at first it was kind of obnoxious, but looking back, it was just hilarious. He sang that line over and over and over and it was just so loud, we had some other kids just staring at us in confusion. Hahah.

Happy Easter, everyone! ♥

We had a fun easter. On Friday, we decorated paper bags for our easter baskets and the easter bunny visited us early! Cadbury chocolate eggs, I was in heaven. *w*

And today was good too. Church was great and we’re having a devotional with just the six of us later on tonight. ^^

My kids. ♥

2011-04-16T17:16:00.000-04:00

Kimmi told me that I needed to write shorter entries. Mom said I needed pictures with people in them. Here is something to please them both.

So one of the things I did last week besides the normal teaching and planning, we had to create and write our skits. We’re doing an end of semester performance and each home group has to do a skit of some sort. Our theme, we decided, were fairytales/Disney. Bryndi is doing Peter Pan, Ashley is doing Snow White, Desi is doing Shrek, and Nicole is doing the Wizard of Oz.

I chose my favorite Disney classic ever and that is the Lion King.

It’s so PERFECT! My kids just fit perfectly into their roles and I’m just so excited even if it totally fails, because… I don’t even know, it’s just so much fun. Because it’s my home group and all, I have to write the script for my skit.

Guys, I cannot even begin to tell you how much ridiculous fun I had writing it. Here’s an excerpt from the script. I don’t even, it was just a scream to write. I was giggling the entire time.

Timone&Pumba: Hello~

Simba&Nala: *startled* AHHHHHH!

Timone&Pumba: *also startled* AHHHH!

Timone: We mean no harm!

Pumba&Simba: DON’T EAT US!

Nala: … *facepalm*

Yeah, I had way too much fun. It’s dorky but WHO CARES AT THIS POINT!?

In the name of pictures, I present to you my cast. Sadly I have no pictures at the moment of Kevin, who is my Zazu, but I’ll try to get a picture of him in the future.

Oh! And because I forgot one before, here’s a picture of Ashley. http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Ashley.jpg

And with that, I present my home group/cast for Lion King. I warn you now that I don’t know their ages because 1) China apparently does the whole one year older than they actually are because they’re born at the age of 1… and 2) they lie about their ages. 8D!

This is Grace. Grace is the only girl in my homegroup and she’s a sweetheart. Automatically Nala, obviously.http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/106.jpg

This is Andy. Andy is… well, if he isn’t the oldest, than he’s definitely the biggest. He’s Mufasa. http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/031.jpg

This is Gobster… who is a pain in the rear, but he can be a cute chub when he needs to be. He’s Pumba. http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/027-1.jpg

This is Phillip. He can be a bit of a snarkbutt at times, so he’s my Scar. http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/030.jpg

… Admittedly I saved the best for last. I LOVE ALL MY KIDS, but if I had to pick ones… It’d be Miles and Colt.

This is Miles. He’s truly adorable and intelligent and sweet and he’s just got this humor that translates so well, despite the language barrier. Look how cute he is. :( He made the crown box while we were in class and posed just for the camera~!♥ http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/009-1.jpg He is my Timone.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/004.jpg This is Colt and he’s just the most energetic, enthusiastic, and sweet kid I have ever meet. He loves learning whatever I’m teaching him, he picks up fast, and he’s actually fond of me. He’s my Simba and I have mad love for the kid.

No Kevin, even if he’s a nice kid and I want to show you him. He was at ping pong practice and was therefore not around for pictures.

That’s all for now. I’m actually thinking about taking a nap while the girls are at painting class.

Ciao!

Epic long update of doooooooooooooooooooom

2011-04-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

Guys, she isn't joking. This is an EXTREMELY long update. VERY LONG. SUPER GINORMOUSLY LONG. And to top it off, I have to go through and link her pictures up properly because it didn't transfer from email to blog which wasn't really that difficult to do because blogger is smart like that. But hey! Pictures. -Suki

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

… So, I expect this update to be freakishly long because I just got back from a nine-day vacation and there is much to update about! There’s actually some stuff to update about from before the vacation. Oh, and you lucky people, you get a handful of pictures from me. ^-^ Only a couple though, cause I’m resizing them and I’m only doing that to a few cause it’s a pain to get them to decent web-uploading size. 8D;;; Just know that there are like, 800 pictures to be had for this vacation. I had such a blast~!

But let’s start to all the stuff before that.

First off, is the explanation of how we ended up with this nine-day vacation when we were initially just supposed to have a four-day one. Well, we were making plans for our four-day one, planning to go to Yongzhou/Guilin (I think), which is apparently a very lovely, scenic area; more a touristy hotspot than anything, but it sounded like it had a lot of fun stuff for a couple days.

Well, we’re trying to get Tim to help us buy train tickets and he asks if we can push our vacation back a day and the school will extend it as well, so we’d be teaching all week but we’d only be teaching the Friday of the next week (that Friday being the first of April). It turned our vacation into six days.

So we decided that the Saturday before we leave (the 19th of March), we’d go into Nanchang to get some food to backpack with us, at least for the first train ride (more on that later, obviously). Well, at first Tim was saying that we could go to Nanchang with him that day and go shopping while he went to a meeting.

Turns out the school wanted us at that meeting. We had no idea what that meeting was, but a day before we went, we were told that we’d be going to it and things might happen. (‘Maybe we do acitvity’ as Tim put it.) Well, we’re sort of required by contract to get weekends off and this definitely did not sound like having the weekend off… so Kim went to Tim and said that if we did this meeting, we’d get the 19th of March off as well. He agreed. Thus our four-day turned into six-day and then onto a nine-day vacation. And Guilin sounded fun, but Ashley (our resident, super amazing vacation planner) was pretty sure it wasn’t going to keep us occupied for nine-days, so we moved that one to the last four-day vacation (because we were supposed to have two four-days and one eleven-day vacation and all) and ended up doing… a lot of things. More on that later. Right now, the meeting.

This meeting turns out to be a little college expo for Mayflora students. There’s only about twenty or so students there, but they have a guy from Michigan, a guy from Quebec, a guy from Arizona, and a girl from Australia repping various colleges (and a couple private high schools). You should realize how excited we were to see white people (which we haven’t seen since we left Hong Kong) who speak fluent English (which they all did). Except the girl from the Australian school, she was Chinese and all. But anyway.

There wasn’t really much point of us being there except for the English speaking factor… we didn’t even interact with the students at all, the schools just did their presentations and waited for kids to stop by their tables if they were interested. So we hung out with the reps instead.

The first guy Nicole and I talked to was this man called Juan and he’s from Western Michigan University. It was fun talking to him. ^^ He told us a bit about his previous trips to China and the other places he goes while trying to get foreign exchange students. I didn’t realize that a lot of schools apparently have a certain quota to fill of exchange students every semester. Anyways, he ended up leaving after the first hour or so because he had to get to a plane and fly to Shanghai for another expo of sorts. But he was nice to talk to.

After that, we wandered a bit and ended up settling between the guys from Quebec and Arizona, hanging out with them for pretty much the rest of expo. Why wouldn’t I want to hang out with the super tall, blue-grey eyed, French speaking dude? Haha. Anyways, their names were Robert (Arizona, older dude) and Nicholas (Quebec, only 25 :O~!) It was fun getting to know them both and talking about… a lot of things. We covered a lot of subjects and just had fun hanging out. Nick told us about all the places he’s been and where we should go if we ever go to Quebec or France or Italy, etc. Nick was actually super interesting to talk to because he’s only 25 and he’s been almost everywhere in the world besides Southern Africa and Russia, I swear. He also owned a bar and sold it at some point and all this other stuff. Super cool dude. Nicole, Desi, and I had tons of fun talking to them both about lots of stuff.

Randomly, but in the middle of that, we had lunch at the hotel buffet and mmm, yummy food. :D

It was overall… a drag to be there. But we had fun hanging out with the reps!

Nothing too special happened after that… Oh, that is until Tuesday comes around and we find out that Peter, the Indian foreign teacher, has already gotten fired. We have no idea what happened or why it happened or anything at all, but he was gone by the next day, having only taught five days and already had at least one vacation to Hong Kong (because we had to teach his ELE class, I remember that much. Oh, and that ELE class misses me and Nicole, awwww ♥) So yeaaaah… Peter is gone.

An update on that, but the other foreign teacher is here. He’s from Pakistan, apparently, and he makes me think of Johnny Depp (I only saw him briefly, walking back to our dorm). I will give more details if we ever speak or anything. So yeah, the school might replace Peter, but who knows, really.

My notes say I was supposed to talk about Kung-fu master, but I don’t really have much to say… except that my kicking apparently impresses the male students (ZOMG, A GIRL CAN ACTUALLY KICK!?!?!?! LE GAAAAAAAAAASP -_(\ harr harrrrr) and he managed to bruise my arm THROUGH the foam pad. The last time he gave me bruises with the pad was because the end of it was slamming into my upper arm. But no, my lower arm started bruising from behind the pad, because of his kicks. But haaah, he didn’t make me stumble. TAKE THAT, YOU SHRIMP! 8|

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten all of that out of the way… shall we move on to the vacation?

The first thing you need to know is that three and a half days were spent traveling be it on a bus or a train. Like, this vacation was pretty hardcore. We went a lot of different places and saw a lot of different things, but due to our school’s location, we’re pretty far from EVERYTHING there is to see, so it was inevitable that we’d have to do some traveling and taking trains is cheaper than flying and all, so… trains it was.

Second train of my life and it was… an interesting experience. Due to the fact that Tim didn’t purchase our train tickets until the day before we left, not everyone got sleepers. Kim asked around, and since the other tickets were cheaper, I opted to take one of them, along with Nicole and Ashley. What we didn’t realize was that they were ‘standing tickets’. There are three kinds of train tickets for super long train rides in China. There are the tickets for the hard sleepers and then there are the ones for the seat coaches. If you’re from the starting destination, you can purchase a seat ticket. Everyone else gets standing tickets. Which means that besides everyone sitting in their seats, there can be up to twenty or thirty people just standing in the narrow aisle ways, waiting for the people in the seats to get off so they can have the seats. Yeah… lots of fun. We had standing tickets. Spent three hours standing up and constantly squishing myself around because they kept on having carts going up and down and it’s not like there’s a ton of room in the aisles. This train ride was 20 hours long. As you can imagine, I thought I was going to die.

However, the foreigner card worked in my favor and a girl offered me a seat. I swapped out with Nicole after a few minutes because the smoke (she was hanging out in the coach connection area, where everyone’s allowed to smoke) was making her sick. But then the guy sitting across from this girl ended up offering me his seat. So it was Nicole, the girl, who spoke some English, and her boyfriend sitting on each other (they switched off) and across from them was this lady (I have no idea about her, she didn’t speak any English at all) and me. On the other side was some random family of older people and the guy who gave up his seat for me was bunking over there as well.

Ashley was separated from us, a little bit. She was with Nicole and was talking to a couple guys who spoke some English (one of them was a complete douche, talking about how he wished all of Japan died in the earthquake and I was ready to slug him, but Ashley handled that nicely). Then some guys offered her a seat further down in the car, so we didn’t see her until the next morning.

It was certainly an interesting experience. I… well, don’t know a lot of Chinese. I’ve picked up some phrases and what not, and I’ve been wanting someone at the school to teach us some Chinese, but Stephanie is busier this semester than she was last year and we’re also super busy with our ILP classes and ELE classes and what not, so… yeah. Anyways, don’t understand enough Chinese and most of these people don’t speak English besides the girl, so we’re having this conversation without actually having a conversation because nobody understands anything besides the girl, but they all want to talk to the Americans. And the guy who gave me his seat kept on making fun of me! I have no idea what he was saying, but he kept on pointing at me, making some comment, and then he’d start laughing and everyone else would too. And the girl wouldn’t tell me what he was saying. Weh. :| Not that I thought he was saying anything bad and it wasn’t like he wanted his seat back. I offered to get up again a couple times and everyone was like ‘SIT DOWN, WOMAN’. u____u So yeah, no idea what that all was about, but they were all super nice. Oh, randomly, but the girl’s boyfriend looked like Jackie Chan.

Didn’t really sleep that night. The train left Nanchang at 10PM Friday evening and I didn’t even sit down until 1AM Saturday morning. I dozed off at one point but that only lasted about an hour and half, maybe. Eventually all the people we were hanging out with left and nobody else was getting on, so we moved to where Ashley had ended up. We got hit on a lot on this train. There was this one guy who would do nothing but stare and say hello over and over and over again and then he’d smile all big whenever one of us looked his way.

I’m not sure how it all went for the other three except Bryndi’s metal waterbottle nearly brained a kid and Kim’s hard sleeper section had a convict and all his guards in it. 8D! Exciting times.

I was so glad for that train ride to get over. I somehow failed hugely and lost my ticket (I have just now found it) and Nicole was a sweetheart, giving me her ticket and then going up with the phrasebook to tell the man that she’d lost hers. They totally didn’t care about it, actually, thank goodness.

It was about 6PM when we got into Chengdu and thankfully we had someone from our hostel picking us up. His English name was Alex and he was SUPER nice. I don’t know, he was just adorable and funny and super helpful. And I loved that hostel. It was called the Traffic Inn and it was just… I don’t know, it was awesome. The set-up was just so nice and it wasn’t like, super fancy or anything, but the rooms were nice and comfy and they had western toilets and all that stuff. And other foreigners. It’s not like I don’t love Chinese people, they’re great, but having grown up in America, I’m not used to where everyone… looks the same. So yes, we did get ridiculously excited over seeing foreign people.

Pic of our hostel. There were six beds and all, which was perfect for the six of us and I liked the shade of green. ^^

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/TrafficInn.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/TrafficInnHallway.jpg

Not that we were staying there long. We had the evening to spend there and then we were moving off to Kangding for a day and a bit. We ended up going to the Sichuan Opera, which was not at all like the European type Opera, but rather much like Takizawa Kabuki, face-changing masks and shadow puppets and all. It was a lot of fun! Here, have your first picture. I don’t have a lot of pictures of the opera, mostly because I broke out my flip and was taking videos.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/SichuanOpera.jpg

We did it through our hostel so we had transportation to and from the opera and hostel and there was this Scottish lady on the bus with us. I can’t remember what her job was, I think it was an accountant, but she was talking about stuff to see like the Tibetan street (but we were going to see a Tibetan town, so we never really considered that, but anyway, she was nice.)

Random cool story was that there are no smoking signs around the opera house but there were these guys smoking right in front of us. Bryndi was brave, tapping them on the shoulder and pointing at the sign, trying to tell them to stop smoking (because it would seriously have sucked if they’d smoked the whole opera) and they actually put them out! :D Happy day.

Again, I really liked seeing the opera. There were lots of random skit-type things and dances and no coherent storyline, so far as I could tell, just random small stories, but I loved it. There was this section where they put all but one light out and this guy did shadow puppets and then there was an actual puppet master woman and her puppet did a million things that she controlled with… one hand or something like that. But yeah, it made me think of Takizawa Kabuki… only, you know, Chinese. And not as many boys dancing around. Anywho.

It was actually kind of late by the time we got to bed and I didn’t wake up until I absolutely had to, it was so comfortable and warm. But since we were in Chengdu, an actual city, we had arranged to visit the home of the members who lived there and take the sacrament, so I ended up getting up eventually.

Going to church in Chengdu was such a nice experience. Everyone was just so nice and welcoming (there were about twelve people total, but five or so of those were kids) and it was just nice to have the sacrament after so long. I feel bad for not remembering the name of the people who were hosting it in their apartment, but here, have a pic of their place.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/ChurchHome.jpg

Oh, I guess I should explain everything else. We were supposed to be trying to get tickets to Kangding. Kangding is a Tibetan town… in China, rather than Tibet. We can’t go to Tibet because of our visas, so Ashley really wanted to see this place. However, I guess they close the surrounding roads during march and Alex was telling us about how sometimes the police will pull foreigners off the buses to Kangding and turn them back. I guess the bus station next to the Traffic Inn wouldn’t even sell us tickets, but there was another station near the train station, so we were considering going there, because they also had a bus to Kangding and they still had tickets. But we weren’t sure if we wanted to risk it because it was still March (the end of it) and there were the stories about getting pulled off buses and what not… not really fun-sounding, to be honest. We still hadn’t decided if we wanted to by the time we were at church.

Sister Weaver, one of the sisters there, an older lady, offered to let us hang out at her place and we could make cookies and stuff. We almost took her up on that offer, but in the end, we chose to try for Kangding and set off to the second bus station.

They did have tickets and they did sell them to us! Kangding is about an 8 hour drive away from Chengdu and it’s nestled in some pretty dramatic mountain scenery. Here’s a picture of one of the more greener areas. I swear, there was this point in time where we were driving and suddenly BAHM, there was snow. X_X I did not dress for snow. I had no long-sleeve shirts and all I had for warmth was my SF Giants jacket, I was pretty nervous about how this whole thing was going to turn out. (It was cold, but the sun was shining, so I never really felt all that cold. :D )

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/OnthewaytoKangding.jpg

Since it’s such a long drive, they made two stops to let people go use the toilets and get food or drinks, etc. One of the places was at this little kitchen place and we ended up getting noodles. It’s literally just this random kitchen on the side of the road, but the noodles were pretty awesome. (For less than a dollaaaaaaar~♥)

When we got to Kangding, there was a slightly sticky situation where we didn’t know where our hostel was and Kim’s phone wasn’t working. It was supposedly near the bus station, but we didn’t really know where.

And we had this herd of people wanting to be super helpful, but it was hard to tell them that no, we didn’t need a taxi or another place to stay. Some guy even called his English speaking friend, trying to help us out. Eventually we got a hold of the hostel and it was like, a block and a half away but we’d have never found it on our own because it curves back into this second street that’s almost like an alley and then the actual hostel is even farther back into the mountain.

Guys, this hostel was hilarious on so many different levels. I swear, it was like a bunch of college kids were like ‘Let’s make a hostel!’ and the Dengba hostel was born. It was just a wood and wall structure, super new and all… built into the mountain. I kid you not.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/HostelinthemountainKangding.jpg

The way the hallways and stares were structured with bare wood and all made me think of those computer/video games, the kind that Jonathan used to play all the time. The Tom Clancy ones? Yeah. There’s a video about that and all. Somewhere around this time, Nicole and I decided that our trip to China was like a video game and we were leveling up and all that good stuff.

We got there kind of late on Sunday night, so really, all we did was get our rooms and go to sleep. Kangding, again, is in the mountain. It was so cold and there were NO heater, so we were kind of convinced we were going to die… but they had super thick blankets (and extras) and underneath the sheets was a heating blanket! Yay!

I was super comfortable, but for some reason I couldn’t really sleep. I lay awake, thinking about this and that and the other for hours, dozing occasionally, but I kept on waking up about a half hour later.

Until around 5AM. That’s then the rockfall happened. Yes, rocks falling down the mountain. And our hostel is built into the mountain… Nicole and I were on the third floor along with Ashley, but Bryndi and Desi were on the first floor and Kim was on the second one.

It wasn’t like there were a ton of rocks falling or an avalanche, but it definitely was hitting the building and making tons of noise… Gave me a heart attack. Ironically, it wasn’t until after the rocks fell that I was able to fall asleep. Slept solidly for another four hours.

It wasn’t until the morning came that we discovered there were some small casualties… mostly Kim’s window. Yes, she was in the line of fire! Had the rock been any bigger or fallen faster/harder, it might have actually gone through her window and hurt her. As it was, it only broke her window frame and stuff. She ended up staying with Ashley.

Really, the rocks only fell that one time (well, twice, but within ten minutes of each other and not again after that) but still. Interesting times.

Anyways… Nothing was really planned for Kangding, sight-seeing wise. It was just a play by ear thing and we decided to just explore the place.

Speaking of playing by ear… I loved this thing. It’s a circle of tiling in the middle of this square and I guess at night, people dance around it and stuff. I just liked the musical notes carved into it.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/CircleofMusic.jpg

And here’s a picture of Kangding. At first, to be honest, I was sort of thinking that we’d gone through all the trouble of getting there and it was going to be just like every other Chinese town we’d seen, but it really was different. The people were different. It was just… it was a really fun experience. (I admit, I also did some present shopping here, just telling y’alls.) The people were just so colorful and... actually, they’re taller too.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Kangding.jpg

We visited one of their temples while wandering around. It was just SO colorful. I loved it so much.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/KangdingTemple.jpg

We got some street vendor stuff to snack on while wandering around. I got this deepfried sticky rice with red bean patty and it was sooo yummy. There was some other stuff too. Guys, food is so cheap heeere. X:

Speaking of food, we ended up going to this one restaurant, purely because it said it had yak meat on the window. Yaks are apparently a big thing in Kangding and none of us had ever had it before, so we decided to try it out. For three bucks, I got amazing Yak dumplings and some Tibetan noodle soup dish (and milk tea). There were some other dishes and they were all sooooo good. Except, the other three wanted to try this butter tea thing and it tasted and smelled like watery mac and cheese stuff… not good at all.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Yakdumplings.jpg

But the dumplings were sooooo good. *~* Seriously, I was in love.

So that’s pretty much how Kangding was. It was a great experience, probably the least touristy thing we did the whole trip and I actually loved the whole place a lot. I missed out on the night-life and the dancing because after dinner, I was just so tired, I ended up crashing as soon as we were back in our hostel, but apparently the others have pictures, so maybe I’ll be able to show y’alls that later.

We spent a second night in the Dengba hostel (with no rocks falling) and got up super early in the morning to catch a bus to Leshan.

Leshan… we only did one thing there, really. It was another 8 hour bus ride and the place we were going to closed at 5:30PM and it was already 2PM by the time we got there on Tuesday. So we got a bus to take us to the Buddha and then we got a bus back to the station because our bus back to Chengdu left around 7:30PM and that’s pretty much all that happened in Leshan.

Which was impressive enough. Guys, I went to see the world’s biggest Buddha. It was carved out of a mountain and it was MASSIVE. Like… a family of three could have a picnic on his big toe nail. It was just…. So, so HUGE.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/BigBuddha.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Issohugeomg.jpg

And a picture of a bridge we passed on the way to the exit.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Itsabeautifulbridge.jpg

It was a great experience. There was more in the park besides the Buddha and the place was just so clean and fresh, I swear it was the first time I could breathe in without mentally grimacing (Loving it in China, but 99% of this place smells awful or at least bad…) And really, I have a ton more pictures than you’ve seen so far, I promise you (I took at least 800 overall and there are also some videos smattered in there) but I refuse to resize them and so you’ll have to wait until I get back to the states.

On the way to the exit, we passed through the fishing village, which I guess also doubles as the restaurant area. It had already closed, but I thought it kind of looked cool with all the lines strung between the buildings.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Leshanfishingvillage.jpg

I wish to tell you again that if my legs are not completely awesome by the time I leave this place, I will have failed majorly. I cannot tell you how much hiking I’ve done in the past three weeks and how many stairs I have totally pwned. 8| Seriously. So. Many. Stairs.

So it was back to Chengdu… which actually only took about 2 ½ hours… Which was nice. Back at the traffic inn for the night and then on to the Panda Reserves on Wednesday morning! :D

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/PandaReserves.jpg

Okay, so meet some friends we made. There were the six of us going and a bunch of other guys from the hostel, so we ended up hanging out with them while going around to see the pandas. The brits, that is. The French dudes didn’t seem to like us much. Anyways, there were these two guys from London who were taking a five month trip around Asia. So this was their China month and stuff. One was named Jake and the other was named Hilal. Jake is 100% British and Hilal is half Irish, half Yemeni/Arabic. So he’s fluent in Arabic AND he had an awesome accent. They both did. They were also hilariously fun, despite the fact that they smoked and swore (they didn’t smoke around us, though).

Hilal is the one next to me and Jake is the one next to him.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/NewFriends.jpg

Oh, I just realized you probably haven’t seen all of our group! Okay, so it’s me, obviously, the brits, and then it’s Kim (master head teacher), Bryndi, Nicole, and Desi. Ashley is taking the picture, so hold up, I’ll upload a picture of her from before. (She deserves her own pic anyways, for putting together the vacation. Seriously, it was awesome.)

So yeah, that’s our ILP group. ♥

Back to the pandas… Guys, pandas are so CUTE. Like, they’re just roly-poly and they look so fuzzy, I think I might dieeeee. Seriously, I loved just wandering around and squealing over the pandas. There were some adult pandas and some teen pandas and even some toddler pandas. I guess giant pandas birth in the fall, so we didn’t get to see any super tiny babies or anything, but it was so much fun.

The very first panda I saw.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Veryfirstpanda.jpg

Some of the teen pandas eating breakfast.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Cuteteenpanda.jpg
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/EatingBuddies.jpg

One of the more active pandas, an adult male, also enjoying his breakfast.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Randomadultmalepanda.jpg

And this is just here because, hello, Jackie Chan. 8D!!!
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/JACKIECHAN.jpg

Also, the Panda Reserves had Red Pandas as well. Most people didn’t seem to know what they looked like and it was funny, telling them that they looked like cats had mated with raccoons. 8D They were so adorable, I want onnnnnne. It was feeding time when we were around so they knew someone had a bowl of apples and kept on begging the visitors for them. They even started standing up and stuff, until the staff fed them, like below. :D

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/TheRedPandaCoon.jpg

So yeah, it was a lot of fun. We spent the morning there and then headed back into Chengdu where we were left for our own devices. Our train to Xi’an didn’t leave until 10 that night, so that left a lot of free time… more wandering!

First thing we did was try hot pot, which I guess is a dish Chengdu is famous for.

Lemme tell you this, hot pot is not a dish you should order when nobody speaks the same language and you don’t really know what you were ordering. I mean, I liked what we ended up with, but the others were not so pleased… also, I’m pretty sure we weren’t quite doing it right. In any case, I tried eel! :D

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/HotPot.jpg

After that, we headed off to the People’s Park. It was nice… I mean, there were lots of people there, it was pretty, there was lots of stuff going on. People dancing and singing and there were tea gardens and stuff like that. Nothing utterly stunning, but it was fun to walk through.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/PeoplesPark.jpg

And the trees are blossoming! It made me so happy~.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Myfavorite.jpg

Randomly but… Super Junior’s Sorry Sorry and Wonder Girls’ Nobody are hugely popular, apparently. They’re the songs I hear the most (outside of Lady Gaga). I find it amusing.

After the People’s Park, we ended up going to the Green Ram Temple. It was pretty. I love the pagodas and how they designed the garden areas.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/PagodainGreenRamPalace.jpg

I can’t remember what was so significant about this place, something about the Jade Emperor… but I think the most important part was what happened before I got into the temple. I was just about to go get my ticket when I heard this music. I turn around and voila! I found a guy playing the hulusi and selling them as well!

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/WhyValshouldloveme.jpg

This is the one present I will show you, since the rest will all wait until I’m actually back home. But Val, you should love me. :P I carted the dang thing around with me the rest of vacation and it was a tricky bugger too, because I didn’t want to break it! I also got lucky with that one, all the other ones I found on this vacation were for nearly triple the price, if not more. This one? T’was $7.50. Hee. 8DDD

After that, we went to Jewelry Street. Took us a bit to get there, we ended up in some park before that… but then we found it and all was well. Jewelry Street is basically a street of stores all selling – wait for it – jewelry. And it’s super expensive stuff too. But have a picture of my favorite part (aka, the insane statue).

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/RandomStatuetoloveonJewelrystreet.jpg

There was also this girl at the very end of the street and she was doing this… it was like a tea dance. O.o It was pretty cool. You can’t really tell from the picture (she was across the street and it was hard enough getting that one) but she’s pouring it from behind her neck. I thought it was so cool.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/TeaDancer.jpg

After the Jewelry Street, we wanted to find the night market… it was kind of a ways off, so we figured we’d get a taxi. Couldn’t get the stupid taxi, so we decided to walk there and try and get a taxi on the way… never happened, so we walked for forty-five minutes and eventually found it. Bryndi and I had fun singing Moulin Rouge on the way there. It’s the Jinli Temple Faire and it was fun. I wasn’t much for most of the merchandise but at the very end of it, there’s the food market and it was AWESOME. I tried a couple different things (including quail on a stick, yummm~ and fried ice cream! :D) and was well pleased.

Our next train ride! Chengdu to Xi’an, 16 hours long and due to the fact that they’d sold out on all the seats, we ended up getting sleepers that time around. It was a little crammed on the top (the top sleepers are cheaper) but in the end, it was great timing, I slept through the night and then you can get down and have seats along the hallway during the day. ^^ I think it was my favorite train ride, if only because I wasn’t conscious for eight hours of it.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/SleeperTrain.jpg

We were heading to Xi’an to go see the Terracotta army but we ended up doing a lot more than that. Ashley’s sister went to China with ILP a little over ten years ago and was still in contact with one of her ELE students, Chris. Chris was now living in Xi’an, so we enlisted his help with getting around the city and to the Terracotta Warriors. Originally, we were going to see this gigantic bronze Buddha, because it’s the tallest statue in the world, but I guess Ashley skyped with Chris while we were finalizing plans and he was like ‘Why would you want to go see the artificial Buddha?’ so we ended up axing that out of our plans before we even started. He told Ashley that he’d wear his Northface so we’d recognize him… hahaaa.

We did eventually find Chris at the station… or rather, he found us. All was well in the end, whatever. He took us out to lunch and it was super, super yummy. I have apparently built up a decent immunity to spicy food… Who’d have thought? Haha, but we had all sorts of stuff, including sweetened and stuffed lotus root and awesome bowls of noodles. I really am a noodle girl, this vacation made me so happy because we ate a ton of noodles. X: Anyways…

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/NoodlesChristreatedusto.jpg

We ended up getting a guy in a nice mini-van to take us to our hostel after we met up with Chris… and guys, the hostel’s location is hilarious. The Han Tang Inn is my second favorite hostel that was stayed in, it was just so nice and pretty and everything… it’s in the middle of this shady looking alley, I kid you not. It was hilarious when we pulled up to the hostel because we’d just driven through this dingy alley and Chris gives us this weird look, all ‘Where in the world did you even FIND this place?’ But the hostel turned out to be super nice.

After checking in, we started talking about what to do (over lunch, actually). It was too late to go see the Terracotta warriors that day, so we were talking about things to do in the meantime… and eventually it turned into cutting our next stop out and staying an extra day in Xi’an. We were going to go to Denfeng Friday night, which I guess is the spiritual center of the world (as well as super close to the Kung-fu capital of the world) but we decided it’d be better to see the stuff in Xi’an and have ample time for the terracotta warriors.

Our first stop was the wall of Xi’an. Xi’an used to be a capital of China and this wall is anciently old and rather thick. It encircles the inner part of the city and it was pretty cool, to say the least. We were supposed to bike around in, but a government official was coming, so they were roping off this one section and closed the bike rentals early. We decided we’d just wait until tomorrow and decided to walk around a bit. Have some pics of the wall.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Lookatthewall.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Xianwall.jpg

After that, we headed off to the Antique Street, which was a vendor street with all sorts of stuff like personalized stamps that they’d put on pretty rocks and lots of fans and other stuff. I did get the second half of J&K’s presents but I shan’t tell you what they are. ^^ It was a nice stop though.

We were supposed to go see the Bell and Drum towers, but it got to be too late for that (as well as the Muslim Quarters) so we decided food was the next thing on the list.

And so we headed off to dinner. Chris took us to this crazy noodle place, run by Muslim Chinese. Yummy noodles (and cheap) and we tried plum juice! It was okay. It was a bad combination with the noodles, but Byndi likened it unto drinking a smartie and it was kind of like that.

After that, we went to this bakery to get stuff for lunch, because the Han Tang’s food was expensive and there weren’t very many good places to get food near it either. The bakery was called Maky and it was so cuuuuute. All shiny and pretty and the pastries looked so good. I restrained myself from getting the mango pudding and the cheesecake and got a loaf of red bean bread, which was a great breakfast. ^^

We finally headed back to our hostel and just hung out for a while, talking about various things like college applications (because Chris wants to move to the US to get his Masters) and our plans for the next day. We decided we’d meet up at 9:30 the next morning and head off to the Terracotta warriors and everything else would happen once we got back.

Chris didn’t show up at 9:30. We waited for an hour before we decided it was better to leave him a note with the hostel and go by ourselves. There are buses that go specifically to the Terracotta warriors from the train station, so we just did that.

Once we got there, we’re walking through the village part surrounding the Terracotta… museum? area. A guide stopped us, offering to give us a tour of the place, and at first we didn’t take it, because it was 25yuan each and we didn’t want to feel like we were rushed. But she went down to 15yuan each and promised that we’d have time to take pictures and stuff whenever we needed it.

The Terracotta army was SO COOL. I didn’t realize that they’d only been discovered within the past forty years. O_O I thought they’d been around for a lot longer. Nor did I really know the story around them, which is also pretty cool. Rather than trying to tell you myself, I direct you to the ever so helpful wiki page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_warriors

And here are some pictures to go along with. The kneeling archer was by far my favorite piece, he was just so detailed and he photographed awesome. :X But I’ll not send you a ton of them, so here’s just a couple.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/WarriorPit.jpg

It was hard to get a picture that really showed how impressive that pit was. +_+ With all the warriors in it and all. It was soooooo cool.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/theterracottawarriors.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/HorseandWarrior.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Kneelingterracottawarrior.jpg

It started raining while we were at the Terracotta warriors, but it wasn’t too bad. We finished up the tour and the lady took us back to the village and ordered lunch for us (which was nice because ordering on our own can be such a pain). After that, we headed back to Xi’an.

We ended up getting there later than expected and Chris was waiting there for us. I felt bad, because he lives like an hour or more away from our hostel and had now spent about five hours on buses because he’d come (twenty minutes after we’d left for the warriors), gone back home, and then came again at the time we’d told him we’d be back. But I guess we were both late and it made the scores even.

But once we got to the hostel, we had a mess to fix. Originally we were going to head over to this other hostel we’d booked, because the Han Tang Inn didn’t have any rooms available for us the second night. But the first hostel Ashley booked ended up emailing her, telling her that they’d accidentally hadn’t updated their online availability and didn’t actually have a room for us. We booked a second hostel and got the confirmation and everything, but while we were collecting our stuff from Han Tang’s baggage room (because we needed to check out early and we didn’t want to haul our stuff around) and the guy was asking about where we were going. He checked their rooms again and they had two three-person rooms available and offered them to us instead (business, business, business).We talked it over for a bit and Ashley went to call the other hostel before making a decision… turns out the second hostel didn’t have our reservation AT ALL. So in the end, we stayed at the Han Tang again. It was more expensive this time around, because we had two different rooms and they were nicer rooms, but it was nice that we even had rooms. U_u;; Seriously.
Anyways, since it was raining, we weren’t able to bike the wall… Chris said that since we’d already seen the Bell tower, there wasn’t much in the way of excitement on the inside and the Drum Tower was pretty much the same… So we went to go eat dinner (Chris took us to this dumpling/dim sum sort of place) and then went exploring a bit. Hit up the super cheap DVD store and checked out a couple other places as well. (Randomly and slightly off-topic, but Chris is a total germaphobe. He carries three different hand sanitizers and actually, that’s a good thing, because using them before eating meals was good, but he gave me and Ashley weird looks for getting street vendor food because ‘hello, diarrhea’ sort of thing… It was hilarious.)

Xi’an was probably my favorite city of all. I just… liked it a lot. Have a picture of Xi’an at night.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Xianatnight.jpg

We ended up hanging out in the hostel for hours and hours (stayed up pretty late too). Nicole took some April Fool’s pictures where she pretended to get engaged to Chris (because she had a fake engagement ring and all). After Chris left, we separated to our respective rooms and passed out for a couple hours, because our train left in the morning on Saturday.

One of our hostel rooms at the Han Tang Inn.
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/HanTangHostel.jpg

There’s a high speed train that goes from Xi’an to Luoyang, but we took the normal train, because it was four hours longer, but it was also a fourth of the price for the high speed train. Luoyang was our last stop before heading back to the school and we were there to see the Longman caves.

Saturday was probably the most miserable day of the entire vacation. It was wet and cold and FREEZING. Like, Kangding had snow all over, but it was sunny and nice, so I never felt cold. But Luoyang was grey and windy and we were just dying. On top of that, this hostel didn’t have any private rooms like the other ones did, so we ended up being split into two groups and staying in the common rooms. Co-ed common rooms, too. :O There was a girl staying in the room when we got there and later that evening, Alex arrived. Alex was this super nice guy from Germany who was going around China on a three week vacation. It was fun talking to him. The other two people who had the room booked didn’t show up until late in the night and I think they were two Chinese dudes. Anyways. This hostel was okay but hardly amazing or anything.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/LuoyangYouthHostel.jpg

Since it was too late to go to the caves, we ended up going to this place called Shanghai Street… Bryndi, Nicole, and I got separated from the other three because the taxis dropped us off at different places and we were the ones who didn’t really want to shop anyways, so it was a little miserable. We did get super cheap dumpling bun things from a street vendor and there were a lot of cute clothes, but we ended up heading back to the hostel to just wait for them there. So. Cold. Ugh.

Anyways, the next morning we got up super early to get to the Longmen caves, which is why we were in Luoyang. Took a bus to get there and it was a nice, foggy morning. Much warmer than the day before though, thank goodness!

The Longmen cave Grottoes are… amazing. It’s like this entire civilization of Buddhas carved into a hillside. Big Buddhas, little Buddhas, it was just ENDLESS. The whole thing was just riddled with little niches and caves and Buddhas, Buddhas, Buddhas… The west caves were the most impressive, but the east caves were cool too. We also went to see the temple that was part of that area but called it quits before we got to the tome. Have some pictures.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/LongmenCaveGrottoes.jpg

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/GrottoCloseuphand.jpg

And this was just one of the many amusing Chinese to English signs. If you can’t tell, the sign in the back says it’s the ladies restroom.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Gottalovesigns.jpg

So yes, that was truly impressive to see. O_O Though I kind of wonder why they felt the need to make the Grottoes, but I haven’t read up on that yet.

There was a little shopping district in between the bus stop and the entrance to the caves and it was fully alive by the time we got back to it after the caves. One of their specialities (I guess?) was this thing that was like… pulled sugar. Like, they’d have this blog of hot candy on a hook for people to watch and they’d just pull these strings and strings of the candy and lay it out to harden and once it was done, they’d just sit there and cut it up into small pieces. It was pretty cool. Have a pic!

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/ShinigamiOtaku911/Sugarpulling.jpg

I ended up buying some and it’s okay. Not my type of stuff, to be honest, but nice enough. It’s almost like it’s spicy, which I think means it’s some sort of ginger candy…

So that was…. Sunday. And then it was time to head back to the school. The train ride was supposed to be 14 hours and we’d get back to Nanchang around 3:30AM. And we ended up with another round of standing tickets. Nicole and I were in a different car than everyone else, but I guess we got lucky. Nicole was in a seat by hour 2 and I was in one shortly after. Apparently it took until hour 4 for the others to get seats. D: Ouch.

Nicole and I were a popular hotspot for our train car. Lots of people liked to come and stare and talk to us, even though they knew we wouldn’t understand anything they said. We named a couple of the ones who spent most of the train ride with us. It made the train ride tons of fun and distracted me from my stomach, because I was fasting. (Which is hard to do when traveling, but I figured it’d be good to get at least one church thing done properly that Sunday.) The train had some random, unexpected stops, so we didn’t get off until just past 4AM, but we got to Nanchang in one piece! Almost back to the school.

The last part of the journey was the most frustrating. We get to Nanchang and Kim’s phone starts working, so we give Tim a call to see if he’s picking us up, because he’d said he’d see what he could do about it and all that good stuff… Well, I guess he wasn’t picking us up, so we had to find our own way home.

We ended up finding a bus that would go past Mayflora… Problem is, it was PACKED TO THE BRIM. I thought I’d seen some bad buses in China where they were crammed in like sardines, but there was no comparison to this bus. It was so crammed, I don’t even. I had this woman using my backpack as a pillow and then I was squished between another woman, Desi, and the railing that separated the driver from us. Couldn’t move an inch if I wanted to. Luckily for us, there was no traffic at 5AM and our driver was booking it, so we got there in an hour instead of an hour and a half/two hours it usually takes to get to and from Nanchang and the school.

Got back, passed out for a bit… Got up, HAD TO TAKE A SHOWER BECAUSE I STANK SO BAD. Ugh, it was so gross, I don’t even. Teaching went surprisingly well that day, but now I have a ton of stuff to do because I don’t have any of the supplies for this week’s lessons and I passed out after dinner (It’s Tuesday now, just so you know.)

I think you should be proud of me. We estimated that each four day vacation would be $200 each and the eleven day one would be $600 ish. Obviously the vacation turning into nine days threw that out the window, but Ashley said it would take about $400 total and I will have you know that I did it all on $375 and that is including buying some presents and food. (Actually, most of that money was spent on the actual traveling, like train tickets and getting into things like the Longmen caves and what not.)

Epically long update is epically long and I have stuff to go do now. I’d like to make a list of requests now and that is pictures of preggo Val and updates on everyone’s lives. 8D Isolation, I has it. Talk to me peeps.

Unintentional (?) whining

2011-03-16T12:07:00.002-04:00

New update about the past events… There have been quite a few!

First is Peter. Peter is the other foreign teacher. We thought he was the foreign teacher they had last semester, because we saw pictures of this white guy and everyone kept on talking about how there were the ILP teachers and then this other foreign teacher, the one that is taking over my Friday ELE class (which I will talk about later.)

Yeah… Peter’s not a white dude. He’s legit Indian, speaks fluent Hindu, English, Chinese, and a bit of Arabic. It’s like he came straight out of Outsourced, I kid you not. He’s a pretty fun guy. Weird, strange, but fun. He likes to play little tricks on us, like when we went to Fuzhou, he kept on telling the Chinese people that Ashley spoke fluently and stuff like that. He wants an arranged marriage because he thinks love marriages are silly and doesn’t like the movie ‘Stranger than Fiction’ because it wasn’t real enough for his tastes. So we have someone else to hang out with on occasions, but apparently his mother is not happy about it at all because she thinks he’ll start fooling around. |: Riiiight.

Okay, so you know how we did five days of kung-fu last week? Yeah, well, on top of that, my kung-fu teacher likes to pick on me. We use this foam pad thing that you strap to your arm and you hold it while other people punch and kick it? Yeah, he stuck that on me and proceeded to slaughter my arm. And I’m being serious, he was really punching and kicking. He did that on Thursday and Friday and between that and a bit of tai chi, when Saturday came around, both my arms were killed (I still have purple bruises all over my right one) and my right leg was sore to the point where I almost cried when I put my pants on.

Did I get much rest? Uh, no. Like I said, Saturday, we ended up going to Fuzhou. Angel showed us how to use the public bus system and it’s… not pleasant. I’ve seen crammed buses. I’ve been on some pretty crammed ones. This… was like, sardines. There was no breathing space. Then we got to the city and we just kept on walking around and around and around and I was freaking limping, I couldn’t help it and walking down stairs made me want to cry, but you can’t stay on campus unless someone else stays with you and I know everyone else was going crazy because we hadn’t gone off campus for two weeks… So yeah, I didn’t want to insist on staying home.

The plus side was that there was super cheap ramen. It was amazingly yummy for like… five yuan? Gigantic bowls, too, I loved it.

The way back home was even worse than going to the city, because I had to stand most of the time because it was so crammed. Like, I was jammed between a rod and the driver’s seat and every time he shifted gears on the bus, his elbow hit my butt/hip. Yeah, so fun. u_______u

So okay, that was Saturday… Sunday is the day of rest, right? Right?

Because last Sunday was district branch meeting, they moved fast Sunday to this week. I fasted! So no breakfast and no lunch after church either… then the monastery trip comes. I figured I’d go because… Well, I didn’t think it’d be that bad. They’d have to have places to sit and it couldn’t be that bad…

Oh, was I wrong.

It’s like a museum on the base of a mountain, with over 500 Buddhas and lots of… well, they said they were all women monks, so I don’t know what you’d call those. Some of them were definitely women, but there were ones where I honestly hadn’t a clue. Ehh.

What was really weird was that Angel and Tim acted like they’d never been to the place before and it’s three blocks away from the school. O_o did not make sense to me. It was kinda weird though. I will not even begin to expound on some of the weird ideas that popped into my head when I saw some of the Buddha statues.

This is just on the base of the mountain. No big deal, right? It’s nice enough, if you can ignore all the garbage and the occasional beggar. There’s this guardian statue that I liked a lot, though I thought it was interesting that it was facing inwards rather than outwards. Again, more strange ideas.

… but we’re going up to the actual temple part of things…. And guys, it was up a legit mountain. Like, I cannot tell you how high we were and there were stairs and they were so steep and I’m not sure how I managed it, but I did it in decent time. My leg muscles were spasming and our bus driver kept on hovering at my shoulder (Nicole says my cheeks were flaming red by the time we got to the top) but I made it.

The view was gorgeous. By the time we got to the mountain, I had breathed in so much incense and the temple was undergoing construction, so we just walked around the surrounding buildings, mostly. Annie, one of my ELE students, was visiting with a friend and her friend’s family, so she was all excited to see me. ^_^ Made me happy.

The trip down wasn’t so bad, except my legs were spasming so I nearly fell down twice. Then the monk ladies were clearing some path or something, so they were asking anyone going down the mountain to help them carry down tree branches. Carried down a couple limbs for them… Mm, carrying them wasn’t the problem, I was more concerned about the tree Kim was carrying. Nearly brained me on accident. D: D: D:

So yeah, so much for resting my legs. Luckily we took Monday off kung-fu and then canceled it on Tuesday due to the fact that it was raining and cold.

Kung-fu again today and I’ve bruise my knuckles, done something weird to my ankle (again), done something weird to my hip (idek what’s up with that) and my master punched me three times. He was holding back – but even then, it hurt. Darn men with their stupid upper body strength! He flexed his arm and had us touch it and the stupid shrimp is a rock. D: (I say this because he’s shorter than me.)

But I think he thinks I’m crazy or something… might have something to do with the fact that I am the only one here on campus running around in a t-shirt and shorts. u_u Anyway, other security dude showed up and they taught us some new things. I learned how to break someone’s wrist and a… a set? I don’t know what they’re called when you do a series of forms. But yeah, they kept on making fun of me. Ugh, it’s not my fault, I’ve only been doing this for two weeks, jerks. :\

Master has a 2 month old baby. I think it’s a boy, but whatever it is, it’s cute. He showed me a picture as we were leaving.

So tiiiired. D: We had tai chi before kung-fu, and it was only maybe 15 minutes, but it uses muscles that I swear, I’ve never used before.

I’m such a baby, I know. D: Waaaah.

Oh, oh, on top of that, we only taught for like, a half hour today. Tim came in this morning saying there was some meeting we had to attend. Basically we sat pretty with speakers blasting our ears off while a bunch of the staff got awards… Was a bit weird. I’m glad that Nicole told me I was still wearing my cat ears before the headmasters and deans went up on stage, because it was probably bad enough that I was mouthing along to some of the music and constantly moving. It lasted for like, two and a half hours! Hadn’t a clue what the point of the whole thing was and the headmaster’s speech lasted for like… 45 minutes, but whateverrrrr.

I’m trying to think of what else happened, but I’m so tired. Internet is being weird, so I’ll just be saving this and sending it off tomorrow morning.

By the way, Elder Laulusa, I am wondering why, of all the things you had to quote me on, it was me talking about my boobs. Really. |:

|:

|:

|:

|:

Anywho~ The sleep is for me.

Oh, oh, wait. Before that, I need my little bookworm moment.

I started the Hunger Games. Jamie and Val really liked it and Nicole brought the whole series, so I figured I’d give it a try.

I’m kind of afraid to go beyond the first 50 pages. It makes me think of Battle Royale and… Uhm. ;o; I don’t know, I kind of majorly do not want.

I don’t know, we’ll see. If not, I shall just keep on re-reading the books I have. X:

Oh wait, and I didn’t talk about my ELE class. It’s actually not mine anymore, now that Peter’s here, but it was the older class of 16-18 year olds on Friday. So Nicole and I were teaching them and we decided it’d be fun to play Jeopardy and give American coins to the winning team. Nicole did most of the actual talking… I did crowd control. Because, while they love to stare at us, half of them are totally awful at actually paying attention to the lessons. The boys in the back, as clichéd as this may be, were the troublemakers. There’s this one guy who looked like a gorilla (in a good way, sort of?), a pretty boy who was obviously into his hair and clothes (and scared of me), and the boy who kept on taking pictures of us with his phone.

Yeah, they all learned to keep their heads frontward, in their chairs with all the floor, and not talking. If not, they either got hit on the head with a handbook (paperback, I promise) or I drew on them with chalk.

Gorilla dude, at some point in time, actually stood up and moved out of his seat, kind of stretching. Mostly just to get a reaction out of me. Okay, this guy is like, twice my size and he just gave me this smug look when I told him to sit down.

Guess who slammed him back down into the chair in front of the whole class? Oh yeah, me. |: Don’t mess with me, mister. I may be half your size, but I’m still your teacher and I am not some pansy like the boy sitting next to you.

He behaved better after that. |:

I’m almost sad that we won’t be teaching them again, because Peter teaches them now that he’s here – they’re closer to my age and some of the girls are super nice. Buuuut~ Eh. I’ve got enough on my plate and there’s this other boy who kept on hitting on me and I’m like ‘YOU JUST WANT MY GREEN CARD D8< OR BRAGGING RIGHTS’ seriously, why else would you hit on me. Go hit on Nicole, at least she’s cute. U_U. So it’s less of a hassle.

Speaking of my other ELE class, my Grade 6 kids, I am having to tell them exactly what words they can and cannot say. This wasn’t a problem the first few weeks, but Philip, one of the older boys, decided it’d be sooooo cool if he pulled out the f-bomb and all the other swear words.

Mister, not in my class.

He also likes to pick on Jason, the boy next to him. Not like, in a bully fashion, but he’s a little on the harsher playful side. I taught them the green frog song and he kept on hitting Jason when we did the ‘squish squash’ part.

Guess who got laughed at by the rest of class as Teacher Lindey hauled him into a corner and made him stay there? Oh yeah, Philip.

That aside, they adore me. They always stick their heads into my ILP classes (because it’s on the same hallway) to say hi. ^_^ I love them, they’re so much fun… a bit of a handful, but fun.

Oh, oh, speaking of songs being taught… one of my drama lessons involved travelling into space. I taught the classes ‘Rocketship’ because I remember Kaelyn really loving it. They LOVE it, especially Colt and Gobster, from my home class. They sing it all the time and it’s just the cutest thing everrrrrr. I also sing the chickadee song at them and they think that’s great fun too.

Anyway... sleep fore real.

Update of Doom

2011-03-13T23:00:00.002-04:00

Message from Suki, Sister of Lindey: She sent this Wednesday and I'm just getting it posted today (Sunday). End of Message.

So yeah, internet was out for... three days? 8D Fun times. Anyway, long update of doom.

Okay, so our internet it out. D: Boo hissy. I type this up right before bed, so this is… uhm, Monday, March 7th. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY. ♥

I would have celebrated and bought myself an ice cream, but I’m trying to be good and not get snack foods unless I’ve been really good. Which I was today, but by now, the store is closed. But anywaaaay…

It hasn’t been that long since I updated, but I just wanted to send this out and tell y’alls that I AM LEARNING KUNG-FU! ^_________^ Super, uber happy right now, it was one of my goals while I was here. I think our teacher is a student… I think. He looks older than the 18 year olds I’ve worked with so far, but that might be just because he is totally kick-butt. I haven’t seen him do all the legit stuff, but I guess he was showing off in Bryndi’s ELE class and offered to teach us. :D Who could possibly refuse?

Actually, I almost did for tonight. Today was stressful with Nicole’s class (Nate was… yeah, let’s just not go there) and I made little Mark (cutest kid EVER) cry. Not intentionally, but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and two Chinese teachers plus Ted AND Jack had to help me sort things out. I felt bad, but he was also kind of ridiculous about what he was upset about. Anyway, that class stressed me out and then dinner was… well, I don’t really like complaining, I actually LOVE most of the food served, but today was a bad dinner. +_+ I am not a fan of lotus, peppers, or eggplant… and those were the side dishes… So I some cabbage and rice. The other girls usually grab noodles or chicken sandwiches when dinner is bad, but I’m trying so hard to be good. D: I don’t want to spend the money and honestly, let’s face it, I need to lose the weight.

So after dinner, I ended up falling asleep until it was kung-fu time and Nicole woke me up and my stomach hurt! So I was like ‘… Do I really want to?’ and I was going to back out… but then I told myself: Rin, don’t be a sissy, you’re never going to do anything if you’re like this.

And so I went~!

And I’m so glad I did. Seriously, I’m so out of shape, but our teacher (Master Fu, I can’t say this without giggling) says that Bryndi and I have lots of talent… I think it might just be because we’re the more aggressive girls in the group. After Master Fu said that, Ashley was all ‘BUT I’VE NEVER HIT A PERSON BEFORE T_____T’, it was so cute.

So yeah, Kung-fu. We just did a basic kick and the basic punches (… well, I call them punches, one of them involves your elbow…) but it was awesome. :D I’m going to be sore in the morning cause I jack-knifed my spin doing a right hook thingy, but I’m so excited. I thiiiiiink (and this is just from what Casey told us tonight) that we can do this every night, Mon-Fri. We’re so excited.

Also, in a spurt of self… something, Bryndi, Nicole, and I decided that we’d start buggering each other into running. Ashley runs and so does Kim, but I’ll admit, I’m a total slacker and it’s gotta change. It’s one reason I chose to come to China now, rather than waiting. I’ve got to be doing something, rather than wasting time. (Which I will also admit, I’m a pro at.)

…I was going to end it at that, but Kim just walked in with 100 yuan to split between me and Nicole, from Tim. Apparently tomorrow is Women’s Day and that means we get money. Guess who is going to treat herself to either a chicken sandwich or ice cream tomorrow. Boobs, thank you for being here. n____n

Anyway, the internet is still down… We have a training meeting, planning meeting, ELE, regular classes, and kung-fu. Sounds like a full day to me, so I’m off to bed and I’ll add any edits if anything utterly momentous happens.

Edit: It’s now Tuesday night and our internet is still out. ELE class went great. ^^ We talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. A lot of them said they wanted to be CEOs or ‘Bosses’, but didn’t have much else to say. Others wanted to be chefs, pianists, and professional sportsplayers. One girl even said she wanted to be the Queen of Ping Pong, which I found hilarious. 8D

My class is apparently much more curious about me than my fellow teachers’ classes, and so they ask a ton of questions about me. I told them how I wanted to be a filmmaker and even showed them my baby flip to demonstrate (I also took a DVD that Nicole had brought with her). They wanted to know if I wanted to make films or act in them and did I like musicals, etc.

Somewhere in here, Annie and Angel showed me this paper with a song on it. It’s this Carpenters song and they wanted me to sing it, but I only knew the chorus, so I sang that for them. Apparently it impressed them, cause they all asked me to sing a song at the end of class and applauded me and told me I was the best. T_T Guys, I am so not a good singer, but it was so cute.

ILP classes went as well as could be expected. O___O I don’t know what’s wrong with Nicole’s class, but I think they’re driving everyone up the wall. Mark was sobbing, Jack was running in and out of classes (he’s a brat, but he usually behaves) and then started pouting at me when I made him behave, TED was acting like a headless chicken and he’s usually one of the better ones, and Jason, Yao-Yao, and Reece all took turns becoming monsters. D: Guys, I love this class, but I was ready to strangle them all. Other than that, it was going great. We have this week and next week to stick to our section of teaching before we start rotating, so I’m only the drama teacher for a little longer.

It’s almost kung-fu time. Hopefully by the time I get back, the internet will be working… Meh. I wasn’t so sore when I woke up this morning, but right before our ILP classes, my back started KILLING me. ;o; T’was not fun. But then I put pain-a-trate on it and all was well. n_n I’m so excited for tonight, I don’t even. (Master Fu actually walked by my ILP classes several times and said hello. He’s actually not a student or a teacher, he’s a solider… so I guess that would make him part of the security here. Yes, there is a lot of security here.)

Edit 2: Back from kung-fu and still no internet. Tech-geek was here with Comrade and Flora, but apparently they didn’t want to intrude too long since we were ‘tired’ and said they’d be back in the morning. +_+ To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded they keep us up all night, but you know, they need sleep too.

Kung-fu was fun. :D I got scolded a few times for not kicking correctly on first try, but I told myself that I’m not going to be a genius to start off with and he still said very good. I think he also called me ‘tiger’ at some point. :DD I like it when he goes ‘ouch’ when I punch his hand, so far he only does that for me and Bryndi. Makes me feel good, you know?

After kung-fu ended, Casey showed us some tai chi. She also said that she’d teach us it and if we learned it well enough, we’d all do a performance on the 1st of June. I didn’t hear this bit, but apparently it’s some kind of bet (says Nicole). And we’ll get uniforms. n_n I am excite.

Oh right, and I forgot. Apparently we’re being harassed. Some boys dropped a couple bricks off at our door. Personally I thought it was kinda harmless, the boys just stuck them there and ran off, but Kim got pretty :\ over it. We also had someone dribbling a ball across the walkway of our floor REALLY LOUDLY and his accomplice came out of one of the dorm rooms on our floor… I don’t know if it counts or not, but Kim talked to Tim and told him to make an announcement during their morning assemblies that they’re not allowed to do stuff like that, but 8D If they keep it up, guess who’s gonna chase after them with a broom?

Anyway… Sleep it for now. Hopefully by morning we will have our internet back and I’ll be able to send off this monster of an update. Unless something else magical happens, but hopefully all that will happen is teaching and more lesson planning.

Edit 3: It’s morning on Wednesday and obviously Techy hasn’t been here, but I just wanted to say that I am SO SORE. T_T Sheesh, self, you suck. Pain-a-traaaate, come to me. But I’m kind of excited for today! Master Fu has stuff in the evening, so kung-fu lessons are earlier in the day, Casey is showing us some tai chi, and we have Institute! I’m excited, I haven’t been since I was way young and I don’t think that counts, cause I was only ever there when there were hang out parties. 8D!

Oh, and we finally figured out skyping into church. Sort of. We’re still not sure why 95% of the times we dial in, it goes wrong, because it’s the same exact way we dial in the other 5% and that works. +_+ But we attended our district conference. :D Which I think was like stake conference and t’was very good. ^_^

I’m doing lesson plans right now and reading Fahrenheit 451. NICOLE BROUGHT IT, I AM HAPPEH. ♥♥♥ ^_______^ I meant to bring my own (or whoever owns it) but I totally forgot in the packing panic and was all sadface-y, but Nicole has it and ALL IS WELL 8D! She also brought the Hunger Games, which Val and Jamie seemed to adore, so I figured I’d give those a try too. O: Ashley has run off with my Goose Girl, because she needed some happy ending goodyness and I’m trying to get everyone to read Ender’s Game. 8D! I love my group, have I said this yet?

Edit 4: It’s now 7 PM, evening. If you can’t tell yet, I’m going insane. Internet still has not been restored and I’m getting a little antsy. +_+;; Tim, please restore it now, I know other people have internet and it’s kind of required that we have it and I’m mostly just wanting to get in touch with Mom and Dad. ): So if you would please stop cockblocking us.

But since there is no internet, I will just update you on the happenings of today… nothing really stood out except that Lory was crying. (I think his name really should be Laurie, but that’s what is written on his token bag, soooo…) But yes, dearest Lory was absolutely sobbing at the end of my rotation. I didn’t see what happened initially because Victor was also very upset and Max (Victor’s best friend) and I were trying to get him to line up. (Max ended up drawing lines on his face and telling him something in Chinese and Victor cheered up). But because of that, I didn’t see what happened, Bean-Bean and Bill and Lilly were just pointing at him and he was crying.

I started trying to comfort him and figure out what was wrong (all the while trying to get Charlie to be quiet because he was chanting something in Chinese and it was SUPER LOUD. I didn’t think these were connected). I was just so confused and then Bill and Lilly are saying something about how Lory isn’t Chinese and he’s not American and all this stuff… and then Lory leans into my hug and whispers so quietly, “Teacher… I’m Japanese.”

My heart just broke. D: I guess Charlie was chanting something mean at Lory because Lory just ended up crying harder and Bean-Bean tried to squish Charlie into the wall after that. I held onto Lory until Desi came to rotate the class, but I felt so bad for the kid. T_T I suppose it’s possible that he’s not Japanese and they were being mean about something else, because I’ve had other kids claim they were when they obviously weren’t… but I dunno.

._. I’ve just never seen Lory so upset before.

It was also evals and my evals are seriously dropping. D: It was AWFUL. It’s just so, SO hard to keep them on track and understanding when I don’t have a book to help illustrate my point and Bryndi’s class was… a nightmare. T_T I bombed so bad and I’m just headdesking because last week’s evals were SO MUCH BETTER. D: D: D: AUGH.

+_+ After a quick dinner was kung-fu… which was good. I’m so sore and I cannot run to save my life, but it was good. I need to get better balance, but I’m still keeping up well enough. He showed us this really cool spinning kick and I cannot get my body to twist smoothly enough to do it yet. Rawr. Something to work on.

Alas, everyone else is off to painting class and that leaves me all alone and since it’s only 7, there’s no students around either. Rawrs. I think I’ll take a quick nap and then wander around outside.

Randomly, but I thought you’d like to know. The lighting for the outsides of the dormitories… are sound sensitive, not motion sensitive. 8D! Tis kinda amusing, cause you have to stomp your feet to turn them back on. Or yell. Whichever method tips your cow. (I like the latter.)

Oh, and I finished Fahrenheit 451 before ILP classes. I love that book so much. ;o;

Edit 5: Woke up and the internet is back. YAAAAAAAAAAY :DDDD Sending this off and taking a shower, hit me up with all the deets of your lives, yo. ♥

This Week The Trend~♫

2011-03-07T07:43:00.002-05:00

I’ve actually been meaning to type this up for ages, but you know, life gets distracting. ^.~ Update on week two shall commence!

First off, it’s going to be the 7th here in about an hour, so Happiest Birthday wishes to Dad and Lilli. ^_^ Also, belated wishes to Emma, Matilda, and Gracie. (Even more belated to Suki and Lara. D: Aish, I fail.) ♥♥♥ Hope you all had a ton of fun.

So it was our second week teaching our ILP classes as well as carrying out our TA duties with the older classes(our ELE classes). My ELE class is grade 6 and they’re 12-13 year olds. I have four girls and fourteen boys and I actually know all of their names now, which apparently impressed their Chinese English teacher.

I like my ELE class. They’re handfuls, they just want to play games, but they’re also rather responsive and eager to work with me, doing their best to explain things to me in English and so on. ^^ I teach them for about forty-five minutes in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I might have a second ELE class of 16-18 year old kids, but I’m not sure about that one. Right as we were heading for breakfast on Friday, Kim informed us that Tim wanted us to teach this class… in like, an hour. But it was older kids and I was curious, so me and my roommate, Nicole, decided we’d go ahead and say yes, at least for that day. It was a ton of fun, though they’re don’t have as good of a grasp on English as either my ILP classes nor my ELE class. But yeah, it was fun. They all think I’m crazy cause I was running around in my t-shirt while they were all in their coats, but IT WAS TOO HOT, OKAY. u_u; really.

Anyway, regular ILP classes… Thursday was super hard. I nearly ended up crying by the time five PM came around. It was my first time trying to teach a drama class without using a book as a plot focus/visual reference and it just went AWFUL. They were all disasters and right at the end, Jake, this little seven year old, thinks is hilarious when he runs his hand over my boob. Yeah, kid, not cool, ESPECIALLY after I told you no. Guess who got a severe scolding. |:

So yeah, between everything that happened, I nearly cried Thursday and I was DREADING Friday. ELE in the morning kept me distracted, but I just did not want to teach the ILP classes.

But we got there and we got started… and everything turned out surprisingly well. It’s a challenge, getting them to concentrate without the book to explain the story, but it was SO MUCH SMOOTHER than Thursday. It also turns out that we only teach until four on Fridays because they have computer classes that day. We teachers spent the hour between classes and dinner just wandering around, talking about Disney classics. (: I don’t think I’ve said this yet, but I LOVE my ILP teaching group, they are awesome.

To prove they are awesome, I will now relate to you an adventure… that I missed. I was kind of tired after dinner so I told myself I’d take a quick nap and then we’d all hang out. I wake up three hours later and apparently missed out on all the fun. Kim, Ashley, Bryndi, Desi, and Nicole all dressed up in the most ridiculous clothes combinations they could come up with and went around the campus to do impromptu photoshoots.

Guys, I don’t have the pictures with me right now, but they were EPIC. Seriously, we did a slide-show and I about died. These girls are totally my kind of crazy.

Apparently they tried to wake me up, but I slept through that. Oops. D:

What else is there to update on… Oh! Bryndi’s birthday was yesterday, so the school prepared a special dinner for us. :D It was great, guys. Like, they have this thing where they… I think fry the shrimp. They’re whole, so they still have the tail and head on them. I eat them whole. O: It’s AWESOME.

Nicole and I also got to keep the leftover juice, which made me happy because ZOMG JUICE. 8DDD

Speaking of Nicole. I feel the need to share more about her, because we live together. She is awesomeness. Not that they aren’t all, but I’m glad we’re roommates because our personalities coincide together rather nicely. :D She really likes classics (as in, the literary ones), Singing in the Rain era movies/musicals, and writing. It’s a lot of fun.

Her family is much more bent on seeing every moment of her life, they skype nearly every day. Since I live in the same room, they are inevitably curious about me as well.

I even got a letter from them in the mail. It’s from her younger brother and is basically telling me ‘KEEP BREATHING, INHALE, EXHALE’. He’s a scream. (This is the result of me being ‘too quiet’ during one of Nicole’s skyping sessions. XD)

But yes, we geek out over a ton of stuff together, we’re also the kind to space out and huddle in our own little worlds, which occasionally worries the rest, but it’s a lot of fun. :3

Oh, and on the subject of food… I’m starting to get tired of rice. They rotate through all the other dishes enough to keep me occupied, but rice at every meal… aish. I mean, I could potentially just not have the rice, but almost every meal has a spicy dish (and the spicy ones are usually the really good ones) so I end up eating rice with it. Not to complain, it’s just a LOT OF WHITE RICE.

One last thing before I go is talking about Lory. Lory is a student who was added to our ILP classes. He’s one of the smallest and youngest, but he’s also one of the most advanced kids in our entire group. He’s an attention hog, liking to shriek ‘TEACHER, TEACHER’ to get it from us during class, and he’s super sweet and affectionate.

Did I mention he was a little piano genius? ♥ Kid started playing the piano while we were cleaning up and it was just awesome. He could play Fur Elise, Do-Re-Mi, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas without even looking at the keys and it was just THE CUTEST THING EVER.

So my favorites are probably… Jack. Ted (who is in the same class as Jack and almost as advanced, but not quite. He makes up for this by not being as much of a butt as Jack is), Lory, Gabby, Mark, and Reece. I will show you all pictures as soon as possible, they are the cutest things ever. ♥

Jack the Monster

2011-02-26T22:37:00.001-05:00

Okay, so it’s Sunday right now and I’m finally getting this update written up. First week of teaching overrrr! So far, so good? No blood, right?

It’s been an interesting week! Almost all my lesson plans are finished for this week, but we also start ELE (which is like, supplement teaching for the high school English classes) this week, so we’ll see how that goes on top of our classes.

Funny little story about my favorite monster, Jack. Jack is the kid I was calling Jason in my last update. There is a Jason in the class, but the first day, we didn’t have nametags and Nicole (their home teacher) was a bit confused on their names that day. So Jason is actually Jack and he’s a little monster.

He’s messing around wiiiith… I think it was Ted and suddenly his chair just falls forward. I stop what I’m doing to go make sure he’s okay and everything and he just curls up in this ball, his face all scrunched up and whimpering, even when I get him back in his chair. I’m worried, you know, because it was a pretty loud crash, so I’m just asking him “Are you okay, are you okay?”

After about half a minute of this, he looks up at me and just smirks.

LITTLE MONSTER, HOW DARE YOU. u___u;;

He is still my favorite.

On the last two days, we got our evals done. For the first month, we get evals twice a week and after that it’s once a week.

Guys, I bombed so bad. I know I’m new and we’re all struggling to adjust to teaching and dealing with eight kids in a class and everything, but I swear, the classes Kim sat in on were the WORST. It was Nicole’s class (so the one with Jack) and the first three days, they were amazing. One of my better classes, every time.

Then they all turned into MONSTERS. I have no words for it! I mean, none of them were super… terrible, they were just all over the place and they wouldn’t pay attention and they’d get into fights and one of them is apparently slow in the head or something and he wouldn’t behave to SAVE MY FRIGGIN’ LIFE and it was just bad, bad, BAD.

Ahem.

So yeah, wasn’t thrilled with that. I wasn’t the only one struggling, but it’s just… ugh. On top of that, all the books that were supposed to be in our supplies, so I have to figure out how to get Drama done without books (and in training I went through, that's the one thing I heard about Drama. Always have a book with pictures). Such is my life. Ahahaha.

Anyway, we went to… Nanchueng(?) yesterday! Just to restock on some supplies and some of the other girls wanted to go shopping for clothes and things like that. We had awesome dumplings and I also discovered the best street vendor snack EVER.

Candy covered strawberries. They were AMAZING. It was just fresh strawberries coated in hard candy mixture, like what I used to make lollipops way back when. Just a light coating to make them all stick together but still easy to bite off… Ah, so good, so good. I loved it. Nicole and I also bought some strawberries and grapes (50 US cents a carton for the strawberries, it was awesome) because the one thing we lack in our diet is fruit of any sort. I’m happy. ^^

We found the boxing club on Friday night! It was pretty awesome to watch, even if I have no idea how it works or anything. It was fun to see which ones were better and why and stuff and the nice thing about it was that they actually ignored us. 8D;; Made me happy.

Tim says that after we settle in with teaching and ELE, he’ll help us join some classes and things like that. We don’t actually see Tim a whole ton, because he’s working a lot, but we hang out with Angel all the time. But Angel’s more into the hang out, girl time and food... I want to learn kung-fu, nabit. D: So we’ll see. It’d help if I woke up to at least go take walks when the rest of our teaching group goes on runs, but me and Nicole are horrible with waking up in the morning… well, not horrible. I’m always up around 7, but still.

Ashley had this idea where on our 11 day vacation, we’d see if we could get a group of the senior ELE students to go with us on our trip (the one that I’m not sure if I’m going on, but anyway). We’re going to run it by Casey, one of the English teachers here, before submitting it to Tim and the school, but it’d be lots of fun! We’d be able to continue helping them with English and they’d be there to help translate. Win-win situation, no?

I really need to take more pictures… I just keep thinking that I’ll be here for four months, why rush? Anyway, I really will get all those pictures from Hong Kong resized and sent out.

We have skype credits, so hopefully we’ll be able to tune in later today for Church!

First Day of Teaching Over

2011-02-21T19:13:00.002-05:00

It’s Monday night and I have survived my first day of teaching.

Barely.

I had prepared for doom and it… wasn’t too far off. Better than I was expecting, but still pretty bad. One of the main problems is that my home group (the group of about seven to eight kids that I’m ‘in charge of’ are kind of a super bad combination. Even my head teacher agreed, so we’ll be shuffling the kids around a little bit.

The kids are adorable, though. Some of them are sweet and nice and totally willing to play along with everything. Others… not so much. There’s this adorable little girl called Zoey and she’s sweet and everything, but she’s also a little monster who cries crocodile tears when you do something she doesn’t like. 8| Little girl, if you would behave, than I wouldn’t have had to send you to a corner, and I know you understand me.

Some of the kids have really great English! It’s surprising, we were sort of expecting everyone to be super fresh, but it’s a huge mix.

My favorite is a little smartmouth called Jason. He’s one of the older kids, maybe eight or nine? He’s got the basics down really well and he’s an avid reader. I’m not sure why I like him so much, he’s not in my group even, he’s in Nicole’s and he’s a tooootal brat, but it’s the kind of bratty I can work with. He makes fun of how I dance, he’s very insistent that I hear about every single time his classmates misbehave (which means he’s yelling ‘TEACHER, HE’S SPEAKING CHINESE’ at me every two seconds), and he’s got the attention span of a goldfish. But I likes him a lot, I cannot tell you why.

Poor Bryndi was a bit of a silly-head and wore a nice dress and high heels, she had blisters by the time we finished teaching. We actually didn’t teach every single rotation, due to some scheduling slip-ups. We took a picture of our ‘survived the first day’ look. We survived! And I still adore being called teacher.

I ended up getting almost sick at dinner, I’m not sure why. I think it’s because it was high tension while I was teaching and then we went straight to dinner, so I wasn’t settled. I didn’t eat a lot and I just felt gross… Meh.

After dinner, we headed back to the apartments…. You know what’s really funny is that the other teacher and caretakers encourage the kids greeting us, so when a class passes us, the teachers all have the kids chant ‘Hello, Teacher!’. It’s so cute. ♥

I crashed once we got into our rooms. I was just SO TIRED, it was insane. I slept for about an hour and woke up like I’d been hit by a semi. To wake myself up, I went for a walk.

I think the boys (cause the dorms we’re in are only boys, as far as I can tell. Most of the school is boys, though, soooo….) think I’m crazy, because here I am, the weird American teacher, running around their space in my crazy knee high socks and my stupid shorts. So much staring, I wanted to laugh.

So that’s how the first day of teaching was! It was an adventure and I have no idea how I’m going to make this work for the next four months… but we’ll just have to make it work. It’d help if we actually had a proper supply closet, but we don’t seem to have a third of the things that the last ILP team supposedly left us. Ah well.

Anywho! Congrats to the Athens Branch for becoming a Ward. I’m really sad I couldn’t be there, but I heard it was pretty awesome! ^___^ And it’s a little belated, but congrats Kaelyn for finally teething, I know your mommy is super happy with that.

Anything else?

Oh, Val. My teachers want to know when your baby is due in June. 8D I totes cannot remember.

Not Yet a Teacher

2011-02-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it’s been a few days since my last update. Saturday night right now, we’l l see how I do with this one.

When I last updated, we’d just been around for a day or so, but I think we’re getting the hang of things, though we haven’t started teaching yet. Meals are at 8, 12, and 5 and since this week had a lot of parents dropping their students off, we also were asked to stay in the main office for an hour or so every day… basically they were just putting us on display, ‘cause we’re their newfangled American teachers.

Wednesday and Thursday also held special surprises for us… we ended up teaching! Sort of. Basically they stuffed us into a huge classroom with fifty to sixty kids and told us we had an hour.

… Basically we ended up singing a ton of camp songs. I used Da Moose and Big Buffalo and others. The Frog Song is especially popular.

I learned something while doing this though… Being called ‘Teacher’ by enthusiastic kids is incredibly awesome. My ego loves it. :DDDD They also like the way I flail around when singing. Hehe.

Besides that, there hasn’t been too much out of the ordinary until last night and today. Last night there were fireworks because of the Lantern festival! They were setting them off in the middle of campus and it was pretty awesome.

This morning we got woken up at 6AM with Chinese pop music. I guess the kids here have classes on Saturdays too, or something. It was a great way to wake up, if just a little on the early side.

Then there’s the fact that most, if not all of the students are back now… our teachers apartments are above and below teenage boy apartments. I walked outside to take pictures of the construction outside our dorm (they’re building another one and the brick laying seems to be going super fast.) I get a tap on the shoulder. Turning around, I find four teenage boys smiling at me and asking me if I’m a teacher and where I’m from and if I could take a picture… Random, but I took a picture of them and showed them it. They got all hyper and said thank you and then ended it with a ‘You’re so very beautiful!’

Guys, I’ve never been called beautiful in my life, this is hilarious.

Oh! Also, while we were hanging out in the office, one of the Chinese English teachers gave me a Chinese name. It’s Lin Qiaoyin and it apparently means something about having a sweet voice. I will have you also know that among the people we’ve met, I’m known as the crazy, noisy one. I slide on the cafeteria floors and the Chinese thinks it’s a scream.

Tomorrow will bring a new adventure or two. One is sponge cake! I guess on Sundays, the cafeterias serve it, which is something unusual. Another is skyping for church! We’re part of the Chinese International District Branch and it’s for people all over China. So we’ll be skyping for Sacrament meeting and then doing self study for Sunday School/Relief Society… Though I can’t seem to get lds.org to work, so I’m not sure if it’s blocked or what.

People should be proud of me. My tolerance for spicy things has shot up from what it used to be, because… Well, people kept on telling us that the food was going to be bland and I will admit, the rice does get kinda old (but come on, I’m in China. Durr, there is rice everywhere), but there are always three to four side dishes and there is always at least one spicy one. Tonight’s was this potato and duck floating in pepper sauce dish. It was so good, but goodness, it left my lips burning after the first bite.

I’m not quite sure what else to say. Once it gets less wet and cold, I’ll go around and properly explore and take pictures! And of course, come Monday, I’ll be able to tell you about how my first day of ‘proper’ teaching was.

Toodles for now!

Hong Kong to Mainland China

2011-02-16T08:38:00.002-05:00

Sorry, it’s been a few days since my last update. Things have been crazy since we left Hong Kong! So I’ll just take the time right now (since no one is awake – it’s 6:30 AM) to catch y’alls up on things.

{No 1} Hong Kong’s touristy things.

To start off, Bryndi is safely here. Like the rest she is short and nineteen, go us. I’m excited about our whole group, we get along really well.

Anyway, George picked us up at about ten on Saturday morning for our bus tour. Just so you know, the bus seats were lined with the exact same material some of the buses from the Academy were. Bit of nostalgia, yo. 8)

Our first stop was Victoria Peak. Way high up, had the most awesome views even though it was super foggy and windy. Nicole’s ears even plugged up and it took her the longest time to get them to pop once we went back down. Everyone was freaking out because of how crazily our bus driver drove us up there, but… I had fun? 8DDD It was awesome, the roads were so narrow and there were so many cars and our bus was HUGE. But the trip up was fun too, you had more awesome view of the water and boats and everything is so greeeeeeeen. Having come from Ohio, where everything is dead and brown and freezing, it was a great change of pace. :D I do have pictures, but again, lazy.

On the way back down, we did nearly have an accident. There was construction on the road and the workers manning the signs for traffic managed to have both sides saying ‘Go’, so when we drove through, there were cars coming the other way and we did a hard break and I nearly faceplanted into the seat in front of us. Lots of angry Chinese yelling, but the other cars backed up and we were able to get through with no harm done. (:

Next stop was the… we think it’s called the Stanford market, but we could be wrong. Anyway, it’s basically just a huge street faire sort of thing. Jewelry, toys, clothes, paintings, you name it, it had it. I will just have you know, Suki, that I have a present for you when I get back. You had better like it, ‘cause it’s completely GORGEOUS. )8 Just saying . ♥

We did some bartering too! It was funny because Kim’s the only one who’d really bartered before so we had her come over and help us with it when we were looking at things. It’s fun, though not everyone does barter, so it gets a bit confusing… Anyway, not a whole lot of excitement there. We saw some reaaaally pretty dresses and things like that, but we also saw them at the… I think it’s at the Ladies faire? Something like that. Some other street faire thing we found while in Hong Kong.

Next was Aberdeen. George called it the Typhoon shelter and we got to go on these little boat rides and see the Jumbo Floating Restaurant! It was soooo cool. Kind of made me think about Spirited Away. We also sailed through what looked like fleets of gypsy boats. I have no idea what they really were, but it was awesome. The water was this really intense blue-green color too… Lots and lots and lots of fun. The boat we were on were adorable and the fisherman manning it had pictures of his wife and kids and it was cute.

Our last stop was a Jewelry factory. It was pretty much just a quick tour of how they hand make all their pieces (which lasted about five minutes) and then we spent the rest of the time in their showcase rooms where lots of Chinese ladies tried to talk you into buying things (which lasted about twenty five minutes). The jewelry and figurines were super pretty, especially all the jade and pearl. For some odd reason there were saddles propped up in random places.

That was the end of the bus tour and goodbye to George. The rest of our stay was ours to have fun with and have fun with it we did. After we got back to the hotel, we went in search of food. Ashley and Desi were pretty hesitant because of the noodles last time, but Bryndi wanted to check out one of the places we found and it turned out really good. We all got different things and they were all pretty good dishes… I can’t remember what the others had, but I got this seafood curry and it was pretty awesome. ♥

After that, we were going back to the hotel to make plans. A bunch of girls wanted to go to the temple and then to some light show that George had told us about, but since I had been up since 3 AM and Bryndi hadn’t slept well since she had been through her whole ordeal with delayed flights and coming to Hong Kong by herself, and Nicole’s feet were blistering, we decided we’d go see the temple the next day and we’d take a nap and then take Bryndi to go see the area around us, since she hadn’t been with us the night before. We actually didn’t sleep, but we rested and then went out and explored and then we headed back and stayed up talking until the others came back from the light show. Sadly, I was out like a light before 9 PM came.

… And woke up at 1 AM. It was so frustrating! I couldn’t go back to sleep though, but I tried for about… five hours. Our internet was down because Desi had accidentally tripped over the cord and I hadn’t fixed it properly until morning. Anyway. So it’s Sunday!

I’ve already gone on my spazzy-flail over Kisumai debuting, but it was such a huge thing and Desi thought something was wrong and Nicole thought I was crazy. I actually skyped with a friend, just to spazz at her about it because I was freaking out and crying and I couldn’t concentrate enough to get dressed properly. Yes, I am that pathetic.

But after that all was going on, we set off to go see the temple. Bryndi had gotten the directions and said that Kim told her the temple was on temple street.

… Lemme tell you guys, there isn’t another street that we ever saw that was the total opposite of where the temple would be.

I think it was the slums, because it was horrible and just… yes, horrible. I’m sure there were worse, but we were sort of dying and gagging and wondering what the heck we were doing there except that was the only Temple street and everything and Bryndi swore that’s what Kim said. (Kim says she didn’t, but we just settled on them both misunderstanding each other.)

The only good thing about that trip is I was in a taxi for the first time ever. Not that it was amazing or anything, but hey, TAXI. :DDDDD

So we go back to the hotel, figure out what was wrong and check out of the hotel. We checked our baggage with the concierge because check out was at noon and our transport to the train station wasn’t picking us up until three. So off we went to the temple again, this time with the help of clear communication and adorable bell boys. Oh my gosh, they were adorable. ♥ I tried to get pictures of my favorite when we left, but I couldn’t from the angle of my bus seat. But Nicole asked him how to say Goodbye in Cantonese and he just waved and got all smiley, going ‘Bye-bye~!’. So cute.

To the temple!

It was so amazing; I can’t even begin to say. It was raining, but that didn’t really detract from anything. We spent about an hour there, just looking and sitting and feeling great. It was such a beautiful place to be and it helped clear out all the scummy feelings from the morning trip to the slums and just… amazing. I’m really glad we managed to make it because it was such a great thing to see, especially since traveling meant we really couldn’t go to church. (Well, we could have, but we didn’t really know that until after we got back from the temple.) But seeing the temple was fantastic and definitely the best highlight of the whole Hong Kong trip.

(Oh, and we saw missionaries on the way back. We ended up rolling down the window and screaming ‘we love you missionaries’ at them and they did hear us, but I think they probably though we were just crazy. ^.~ )

After that, we were picked up by a travel guide person called Matthew. He took us to the train station and explained what we needed to do once we got into the main land and everything like that. The train ride was only about two hours long, not that bad at all! I read Goose Girl most of the time. Ah, I love that book so much.

Now, once we got into the other station in… Gangzhou, I think, we thought we were supposed to be meeting out Native Coordinator and going on an overnight bus to our city… Well, t’was true for our Fuqing companions, but t’was not so for us. We met our native coordinator! His name is Tim… and he explains to us that he has a bus that will take us to a hotel and then he’s taking us out to dinner and we’ll drive to our city the next day.

The hotel wasn’t all that amazing or anything. Kind of run down, but nice, you know? The dinner, on the other hand, was awesome. Tim ended up just ordering for us because it was kind of hard to tell what things were like from the pictures and none of us spoke Chinese and Tim does speak English, but it’s sometimes hard to understand him. But he ordered a million dishes and it was all pretty awesome. Some of them were these hot plate dishes where they have this metal frame and they put a fire in that flame and then put the dish on top of it so it’s all sizzling when you dish yourself some.

Ashley’s dinner conversation mostly consisted of asking Tim if she was doing anything that might offend anyone. Just a tad bit paranoid, as she will admit herself. Everyone else ewww-ed at the chicken that was served with its head, but… eh, it wasn’t that bad.

Our driver also ate dinner with us and nicknamed me ‘The Strong One’. Not sure why, but it may have to do with the fact that I have broad shoulders and fifty pounds on everyone else. Hm. But he liked that one a lot. He’d constantly poke at me and do this shoulder flexing thing. It was kind of hilarious. We ended up naming him Arnold, since he didn’t have an English name and we had no idea how to properly say his Chinese name. So yes, Arnold. He actually smokes, but he does it smartly, so we never ended up breathing it in, thank goodness.

So after dinner, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep pretty instantly. It was only maybe nine, but we had to get up early anyways. Tim served us breakfast as well! There was this little place next to the hotel that was open at six in the morning and they served the most AWESOME dumplings ever. They tasted just like Dad’s wontons only they were steamed. I ended up eating two servings of them, plus a bowl of rice porridge, which was bland, but not nearly as bad as some of the girls made it out to be.

The drive was about eleven hours long, including a stop for gas and bathroom (for those brave enough to use the squatters) and then for lunch, which was gigantic and awesome and I felt bad because there were like, eight huge dishes and we couldn’t eat half of it. So much food. O_O But really, Tim was spoiling us rotten. I guess it really is a huge thing to have us coming to stay with them for four months and he got us snacks for the ride too and always said ‘If you’re happy, I’m happy’. He’s a total sweetheart.

The drive was super long and tiring, but we arrived! And… it was not what I was expecting. I knew the school had campus housing, but I didn’t realize it was basically a boarding school for kindergarten to 12th grade. The campus is SO FREAKING HUGE, I DON’T EVEN. Like… no, it’s bigger than some of the other girls’ college campuses. We went bug-eyed.

Our dorm rooms are nice. There are some problems, but we shall overcome them! One of them is that they’re not very well insulated, so even though we have heating, it doesn’t heat very well. We’ll work something out about that, though. Another is that the teachers before us did NOT clean out their fridges and they’re so gross. |: Guess who’s going on a cleaning spree once it warms up a little more. So rude! We all vowed that we would not leave our rooms like this when we left.

But we met Angel! I’m not sure who she is or anything, but she speaks English and she’s absolutely adorable. She has that cute asian fashion and everything and I want to keep her in my pocket even if she’s three years older than me.

During dinner, we also met the Dean (affectionately called Tiger, I guess. Something about his family name using the same kanji as tiger.) And the Headmaster! We feel like we’re at Hogwarts when we address him. ^_^V

Dinner was also pretty awesome and hefty. I swear, they had better not try and feed us like this all the time or I won’t be losing weight at all. So much food! We ended up trying turtle too, which was pretty okay. It was a lot of fat and the meat tastes like clams. I also ate a fried shrimp whole. It was surprisingly yummy, even if I didn’t peel it and it had its head and tail still on. We did a lot of toasting too. And Tim, of course, had to make fun of us and our randomly weird eating habits. I think it’s Ashley’s fault for being so paranoid, because it’s not like we were eating that different.

Anyway, Angel and Tim got us settled and they’ll be installing the wireless in our rooms soon and it’s cold, but we’ll survive. We do need to get toilet paper… And luckily Kim is rooming next to me and Nicole, because we got a squatter toilet and she got the flushing one. But we have the washing machine and shower, so I guess it’s an okay trade…

Random tidbits, but the exchange rate for money in Hong Kong is 1 US dollar to 7.09 Hong Kong dollars. In the name of pricing… I don’t know. Hard to explain it all and I’ve actually got to go take a shower and face the day. I slept through the night at decent hours though! I went from 10 to 5:30! So that’s all for now~.

Edit: We had breakfast and lunch and went to the city! The city is about 40 minutes away, so the school is actually kind of isolated. Oh! And Chinese roads are insane. There’s a million cars and buses and it’s like it’s okay to go onto the other side of the road as long as you honk your horn and get back in your own lane before another car hits you. +___+ How do they do it? I don’t knoooow.

Oh, and I tried a chicken’s foot. I didn’t really eat it, mostly because it’s way too difficult to eat to be worth it, but eh, the bit I gnawed off didn’t really taste like anything anyways. I think I’m definitely the one adjusting to the food the fastest… So far nobody’s tossed anything at me that’s so different than what I’ve had at home or in San Francisco.

It’s now almost 2 PM… But the wireless router should be installed sometime soon, so after today, I shouldn’t have to wait for internet. It’s required that we have internet access, so we can keep in contact. Cool, nyan? I haven’t found out what stuff works and doesn’t yet, though.

{Crying for the Legit} Happiness can be a dangerou drug

2011-02-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

Guys, my next update has absolutely nothing to do with being in China or my personal life at all. Except maybe a part of my heart.

I finally got my internet back and one of my friends has emailed me. (And I get a million tweets as well.)

Kis-My-Ft2 is debuting.

To most of you this means nothing at all, you may not have even heard of them (though if you know me long enough, you'll at least be able to recognize them.)

Old movie is old, but. Guys, I can't even coherently. My fellow teachers are looking at me like I'm insane and I'm half crying and I'm flailing and my fingers are shaking and I can't breathe and I think I really am going to cry and ... yeah, I'm crying.

I've been waiting for over two years for this to happen and I just. It's amazing and I'm so proud and excited and I have no idea what's going on except they're debuting in May and it's going to be amazing.

They're just special to me, really. It's hard to explain but it's beyond the pretty boys on skates thing and I just. I grew along with them, I guess you could say? I just. I justaksjdf;lasjdkf.

Soraodujfla;sdjf;l asdfj;asldfj ;sal fkjlowirejlasdjfl;skjfjlasdf;lsmjfsj.

Sorry, this is degrading, I cna't skjasldk type or spell or breathe and mom and everyone else alsdjf li sgoing to thing I'm pathetic and I am but I AM SLDKFJ :SLDKFJ PROUD OF IT, NABIT. PROUD. PROUD OF THEM AND OF ME BEING THEIR FAN.

EFLKSJDFLK :SJDF!

{Smells Like Adventure} Aka, OUT OF THE COUNTRY, AAHHHHHHH

2011-02-11T15:40:00.000-05:00

Okay! Proper email/blog post, since it’s a good point to write one. It’s now 3:25 AM in Hong Kong and sleep is being evasive, boo. );

But it gives me several hours to document the saga up to this point! Let’s start from the very beginning, a very good place to start~♫

{No. 1} Columbus to Salt Lake (and the horrors of packing)

Okay, so long story short, I don’t like UPS. They’ve made my life a total pain for the past week or so because they were insisting on delivering everything to my grandparents’ house in McArthur – and then, when I absolutely needed something, they didn’t deliver at all; the excuse was ‘bad weather’ and there was barely ANY SNOW AT ALL. Way to fail, UPS, way to fail.

The box that they didn’t deliver was my Melaleuca order which had everything from meds to vitamins to bathroom stuff that I kind of needed. So it’s Tuesday night, I’m supposed to be at the airport by 5:30 the next morning, and I don’t have any of this stuff at all. Cue rising panic (that I had mostly been ignoring up until that point.)

Luckily Mom was able to pull enough things to get me by and everything looks like it’s going to be fine, but still. Ew.

So Mom ends up driving me to Suki’s house and we get there at 3 AM. Obviously nobody is awake, but hey, we have a key, no big deal. We crash for about an hour and a half before Mom takes me to the airport. She helps me get checked in and walks me up over to the security gates and then it’s FLY, LITTLE BIRD, FLY… Sort of. *laugh* It was kind of scary, you know? Like, I’ve flown without adults before, but I always had Kimmi and Josh with me too, so to be totally alone was a very weird thing. Luckily there was wifi and I got to talk to Dad and some of my friends before boarding the plane.

Okay, now I’m just going to say this once, but because of how late I was booked on all flights, I was always sitting with strangers. The most friggin’ uncomfortable thing ever, especially if you’re sitting in the middle seat. Which I was until I got to Salt Lake.

The flight wasn’t too bad, overall. Long-ish, but we also got emergency clearance because two of the passengers were having some sort of medical problem, so we were rushing to get them to the paramedics. I’m not exactly sure what was wrong, but there was a couple doctors on the flight and it didn’t seem overly serious, just serious enough to get us there fifteen minutes early.

My first layover was in Phoenix, AZ. I actually remember it from when I flew out to San Francisco with Dad a couple years ago. It’s an okay airport, I guess.

But oh, great! My gate is on the entire other side of the airport. Cue lots of walking! And on top of that, the flat escalator walking things…. Most of them were broken. Guys, my carry-ons weigh a ton. +___+ It was not a pleasant experience.

But I do get to the gate okay and I had about an hour to kill. Ended up going to Burger King which wasn’t actually that expensive for airport food and the burger didn’t suck as much as the last one I had.

Boarding the flight was fine. It was only about a three hour flight to Salt Lake, if I recall correctly. I did attempt to sleep on some of these flights, but that didn’t work out so well. But the nice thing was that even though I had two strangers on either side of me, this couple with their two young sons were sitting right behind me. Cutest thing ever. The boys talked about everything from wanting to snowboard and ski to their favorite dragons. I suppose I’m a creeper for listening in, but it was hard not to and they were just so adorable!

But yeah, flight to Salt Lake went just fine.

Uncle Brent lives in the area, so he was able to pick me up and hang out for a few hours. We went to In ‘n Out, which all of my friends on the west coast have been telling me to get since they found out I didn’t do it while in San Francisco. It’s an okay burger. Definitely better than MickyD’s, but nothing like Five Guys. But the pricing makes it totally worth it. Two bucks for a decent cheeseburger isn’t something to sniff out. So yeah… not fantastic, but nice.

Then we headed over to his office. Now this is where you can totally tell that Uncle Brent and Dad are related… the first ten minutes in Uncle Brent’s cubicle is spent explaining where all the food is. There are no papers being filed in the filing cabinets, that’s where all the food is. So I ripped off some snacks, stole some wifi, and ended up leaving with a gigantic thing of beef jerky, which really helped on the flights. ^-^V I actually just finished it. But yeah, it was actually mostly me in the cubicle because Uncle Brent had to do three interviews and stuff. It wasn’t bad though! And it was really fun to hang out with him and get caught up on his life and catching him up on my life (especially the nieces. Val, he thinks it’s very strange that you’re already pregnant with your third.)

Then it was back to the airport, pick up the luggage, and off to the Delta terminal! We were one of the first people there, but Jill, one of the ILP reps, was there too, so Uncle Brent and I said goodbye and it was now ILP time.

Luckily being one of the first ones there meant that I was one of the first ones checking in. Poor Delta flight worker, she was so impatient to get us all checked and then her eyes just kinda went wide when she realized how many of us there were. There were… sixty? We met up with a handful more in LA, but most of us started out in Salt Lake and there’s about seventy of us total. Mostly girls, too. Kim, my head teacher, says that ILP just naturally attracts more girls. Which is good, boys are distracting and dumb (:P) and there are no boys in my group.

So more hauling of the carry-ons! It was so insane how much walking we had to do. The flight to LA was short and uninteresting, for the most part. The flight attendants were sweet though, and asked that the other passengers wait a little bit to let our whole group off because we needed to get to our Korean Air gate.
… Okay, so LAX experience was a monster. We had to get to the international terminal and that is in a different building on the other side of the airport. On the second floor. Our shoulders were –dying- by the time we got to the place and through security and everything. (This is, if you hadn’t noticed, a running theme.)

{No. 2} On the way to Hong Kong!

But it’s exciting! You know, we’re LEAVING THE COUNTRY. And besides the Head Teachers, not many people had left before, so we’re all tired and jittery and excited.

I’ll apologize in advance for not taking many pictures. I think there’s only one picture before getting to Hong Kong and that’s of the plane we flew on.

Guys, the international planes are HUGE. OH MY GOSH. Double decker planes and I really liked the Korean Air ones because every seat had its own personalized entertainment system with movies and games and everything. The movies were impressive, actually. They had things like Secretariat and Megamind on it. Oh! And music~! I got to listen to V6, TOKIO, Kanjani8, and KAT-TUN. Kind of awesome, I don’t know. I’m only dreaming, dreaming~♫

The first flight on Korean Air was to Seoul and it was the longest. Eleven hours, I think? Extremely long. I slept through about six hours of it, I think! I missed the first meal, which was supposedly very good, but I wasn’t all that hungry when I woke up and the flight attendants were happy to serve me drinks and a snack because of it.

Let me tell you guys… the Korean flight attendants are ADORABLE. Their uniforms, their mannerisms, they were so, so, SO cute.

We landed in Seoul and had to walk all the way over to the transfer terminal and then to the gate we needed to board at… which was the farthest one away. We’re tired, sweaty, and my feet were swollen. .___. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. BUT! We were in Seoul, how amazing was that. (Sort of, I guess. Aren’t airports considered neutral territories?)

We had about an hour and a half to wait before boarding our next flight and then it was on to Hong Kong! The next flight was only about three hours long, but we got a meal. ^_^V Bibimbap (I think) with seaweed soup and some sort of kimchi like thing only it was made with like… zucchini or something. And red bean rice cakes. Yummmm~. Bibimbab is basically some meat and veggies and mushrooms with rice and red pepper paste.

{No. 3} The final arrival~

And then we’re in Hong Kong!

Surprisingly, customs was painless. Just hanging a form over and then exiting!

I have more pictures of this part of the trip, but I’m lazy and therefore am not uploading them.

We met our tour guide for the next two days. His name is George and he’s that typical funny, middle-aged Chinese guy. He knows all the right jokes to make the girls laugh (there are about thirty of us at this point, mostly girls, plus two guys). And the drive into the actual city was awesome. The scenery was amazing! And I do have pictures of that, so no worries. Lots of fog though, I guess they had a sudden warm spell, but it’s supposed to be colder today.

We get to our hotel, which is a nice place… they had a bar called the Sip Sip Bar! 8DDD Ahahaha, I laughed so hard seeing the name. They also have a cake shop that is decently priced, so guess who’s getting a peach custard bun when the world actually wakes up.

Okay, so before we go on to the adventures of exploring Hong Kong, I’m just going to intro my fellow teachers in the same school. Besides our head teacher, Kim, we’re all short and we’re all nineteen. Except, perhaps, for Bryndi. Bryndi is the fifth teacher on our trip, but one of her flights was delayed, so she wasn’t with us. Kim went to go pick her up with the tour guide last night, but since they’re in the room next to us, I have no idea what’s happened so far with her.

But there’s Kim, my head teacher. Ashley, Desirea (I think that’s how you spell her name) and Nicole. And me, of course. So far, so good, we all get along very well, even though we all have different interests and personalities. But hey, some of them like anime too. (8 So we’re doing good.

Anyways, they room us by teaching group, so it’s me, Desirea, and Nicole and then Kim and Ashley (and hopefully Bryndi) are in the room next to us.

So we’re finally in our hotel rooms. First thing on my agenda? A shower.

Guys, my feet and calves are so SWOLLEN. On top of that, I have bruising damage on my shoulders from all the carry-on hauling. I don’t mean to sound like a baby, but it was intense. Thank you, Pain-a-trate, you are a live saver. ;o; - The rooms are nice. To use the electricity, you have to insert your card in a little slot at the front of your room. Handy for conserving energy! There was also some American snacks like Pringles and a kit-kat and drinks! Which included about three to five small bottles and cans of alcohol. ;D Awesome.

Kidding, we haven’t touched them.

So we decide that the next thing to do is get some money exchanged and go exploring! We’re hungry and everything too, so seeing what’s around and getting some food would be great.

Guys, if you’ve ever, EVER been to Chinatown in San Francisco, I will just have you know… the area of Hong Kong I’m in is basically Chinatown x 239480. I suppose that’s not a surprise or anything, but it makes navigation a breeze. It doesn’t really matter that not many people speak English, they know enough to barter and to get the right food, and it’s just… exactly like Chinatown.

The exchange rate here is about 7 hong kong dollars to a US dollar, just FYI.

So we walk around a ton. Some of the others get souvenirs and things like that… There’s a lot of really pretty, cheap stuff, but eh, nothing I was really looking for. But there was a huge street fair and tons of shops, and it was a lot of fun. I got hit on by an asian dude trying to get me to buy a pair of earrings. I laughed. :P The things they do to sell things, ne?

But after a few hours, we decide to head back. Our feet are still in rather questionable conditions and we’re hungry. So we end up heading back and Nicole and I stop at a pastry place and get a few buns. The buns that Dad brings back and the ones here… no difference. But yummy. :D I had a custard bun and this… nori wrapped meat one. They were both really good and they were like… 7 bucks each (so about a US buck each. Whee.)

We stop at a different vendor because Desi, Ashley, and Kim want food. I end up buying some octopus balls (WHICH WERE AWESOME) for six bucks. Which is about… hm, 85 cents in US money? But it was gooooood.

The other three ended up getting this chicken stuff, but I think… we’ll have to say they were disappointed. X: AHAHAHAH. They weren’t expecting what they got, I think. Ashley nearly cried (half laughing) when she tried her stuff. They all got these ramen chicken type dishes and I… well, wasn’t’ going to stop them, but you could tell that the place we were at wasn’t really the noodle type place. I ended up eating part of Ashley’s stuff and it wasn’t bad, but it was… well, chicken flavored things and definitely not the best. Ah well, they will learn. (They will also learn how to use chopsticks…)

Then it was back to the hotel where we played this really dumb ~Love Truth or Dare~ card game and ended up having long conversations about baby names in an attempt to stay awake late enough that we would sleep at decent hours. Obviously you can tell this didn’t work out so well. We crashed at aboutttt…. 19:00 and I woke up about 3:00. But oh well, we’ll adjust all the way eventually. George is picking us up in a bus today and we’re going to see a few different places and then exploring again in the evening. I’ll take more pictures and all that good stuff. I have some pictures I took just for Dad, Val, Mom, and Reed, so you’ll be getting them eventually.

This is stupidly long, but I figured it’s a good wrap up point too. I’m a bit tl;dr right now, but hey, we’re all caught up on events now. I’ll write more after we get to Linchuan and you can always ask questions for the next email/post. ^-^V (which will probably be done by Suki if blogger is really blocked in China...)

[Something closer to panic]

2011-02-09T06:18:00.000-05:00

I'm mostly posting this just to make sure I have everything set up with Facebook, but I might as well get in the habit of writing things out like this, right?

Mom was wonderful and got me all worked out with getting baggage checked and everything. I think.. I think I'm good to go. Thanks, Mom. ♥♥♥

I'm sitting in the airport right now, on my way to Phoenix. Once to Phoenix, I'll be on a plane to Salt Lake... I'm not sure what's happening in Salt Lake, it's possible that I'll be sitting around for four hours and leeching the wifi while babysitting my two gigantic suitcases.

After that, it's on to LA. Then Seoul (sadly no Kpop star-stalking, though I'm sure Ukiss will be flying out somewhere, they're always doing that.) Then it's on to Hong Kong! - I am also unable to stalk ABC-Z because I was two weeks too late for that. Feel my woe. (Not that I'd know where to look for them, but omg, Tottsu. ♥)

Anyways, I'm super tired. Due to some 'flat tires' in the packing/leaving process, I have only had about an hour's worth of sleep. Super, super tired, but maybe this will help me adjust to new timezones since I'm already getting messed up.

I'm sure nervous, I'm not going to deny it. I've never flown by myself before! Let alone... well, you know, left the country. We'll see how this goes!

After this, Kim and Suki are taking over my facebook and blogger. Actually, that's a reminder, I need to go send them my passwords and all that. Anyways. Uhm. Ahahaha.

Time to go! Love you all, especially to the ones I didn't get to say goodbye to. ♥ Wish me luck!

[Something closer to very insane] - A tale of the girl who looks clueless

2011-01-31T10:44:00.002-05:00

Hm, I figured now would be a good time to update this blog, it's been a few weeks, hasn't it?

Let's see. I turned nineteen!

I will admit, this is kind of scary. Turning my last teenage year coupled with the last Harry Potter movie coming out... I feel like my childhood is ending. I don't know how to act like a grownup! I'm not ready to not be a teenager. I am, likewise, not ready for the Harry Potter Saga to be over. It's been a part of my life since I was seven! Oh noes! :( I'm sure I will figure out how to go on without a new installment of my beloved childhood friend... and not being a teenager.

It's inevitable, but I can't help but get into the slightly panic mode of keysmashing at the thought. LSAKdf;lasjdf Woe is me.

My friend has been linking me to all these blogs. They're all blogs about normal everyday things, but they're so interesting. The writing itself, you know?

I want to write like that!

I'm not sure how one does that, write in such a way that you can turn the most mundane things into interesting posts full of clever wit and fun words. I still can't write a short story properly to save my life, so we'll see. Maybe one day I'll figure out how that works. (Maybe you have to be an interesting person? Hm, I'll have to work on that too.)

On the subject of writing. Have I declared my love for Neil Gaiman?

The man is seriously amazing. He's gotten into my top 15 favorite authors and he's just utterly fantastic. He's the writer for Mirror Mask (which I have not read, but I loved the movie) and Stardust (which I have read and adored. The movie was great too.) He also wrote the Graveyard Book, which is basically the Jungle Book only in a cemetery. Amazing read.

One of my favorites of his (in a slightly disturbing matter) is his short story retelling Snow White. You know, I hate the disney version because it feels so fake and vapid... However, the original tale and all the retellings are usually much more gruesome. I enjoy it, in a morbid fashion.

His short story on the tale is found here. Tis quite amazing.

Jared once observed that all the Laulusa girls' favorite authors are ~~male~~ female (as Suki has pointed out). Suki and I were quick to prove him wrong, but it made me think about my favorite authors and how many of them there are. I'm definitely the type of person to find an author I like and then proceed to write everything they've written until I've exhausted their supplies (the exception being Ray Bradbury, I'm surprisingly lacking in that department. Will resolve as soon as possible.) - Anyways, I decided to list my top 15 favorite authors.

In no particular order, just as I name them off the top of my head.

1. Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game will continue to be one of my favorite forever books. He's Mormon! He's probably one of the greatest idols in my life, I adore him. I am slightly obsessed with his short stories about dreams.)

2. Ray Bradbury (His short story on Abraham Lincoln's assassination is so compelling. Fahrenheit 451 will never not be utterly fantastic. I love his vivid writing style.)

3. Shannon Hale (Goose Girl is another all time favorite of mine. I wish her continuations of that verse had contained the same fairytale wonderfulness. I enjoyed them, but Goose Girl is the best. Princess Academy is also pretty great.)

4. Robin McKinley (Sunshine is the best vampire book I have ever read... and one of the best books I've read in general. Aerin is one of my heroes. Beauty is a fantastic book... I could go on and on about her.)

5. Terry Pratchett (The day his stories stop getting written will be tragic. His Discworld series is one of my favorites and I just... There are no words. I don't even have a favorite book of his, I love them all. I am, however, overly fond of... well, actually, I like all the characters in Discworld.)

6. JK Rowling (She may not be the most brilliant writer, but she's an amazing storyteller and Harry Potter will forever be my childhood. It's all I need for her to be here.)

7. Anne McCaffery (I've mostly read her Pern series, but that's also another part of my childhood. Ruth and Ramoth are my favorite dragons, F'lar and Lessa are my favorite dragonriders, and I used to have a major crush on Robinton. He makes me want Benden wine to exist.)

8. Neil Gaiman (I've already spoke about what books I love but I just lovelovelove his writing style. It's just... I don't know, I like it.)

9. Patricia C. Wrede (I found her because of her Dragons series and AHAHA, it's epic. I love the humor and characters. She's written some other great stuff like magicians in England and stuff like that.)

10. Isaac Asimov (I admittedly haven't read much of him either, but his robot stories always had this quality that strikes deep. It's an interesting topic to touch into, I think. I loved how everything went back to the Rules and how you can bend and twist clearly stated things.)

11. Cornelia Funke (She's written many stories I've enjoyed from her Thief Lord to the Inkheart series and Dragon Rider. I think it's amazing how well the books were translated!)

12. JRR Tolkien (I feel like I'm being predictable saying his name but the Lord of the Rings trilogy was something I read as a kid. Love them. And the Hobbit! I've read some of his other stuff, but I cannot bring it to mind if I liked it or not...)

13. CS Lewis (Another rather predictable one, I suppose... Narnia, anyone? But he's written some other great things like the Screwtape letters.)

14. Tamora Pierce (I'm not sure if there's anything of her's I haven't liked. Alanna's is my favorite set, but all her books are pretty epic. I liked her Tortall books over her Circle of Magic books.)

15. Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also like a Salmon Of Doubt, which isn't exactly fiction, but he's such an enjoyable writer. I wasn't really aware of him when he passed away though. I feel like I missed out on an epic era of towel toting.)

There are more. Many more. I feel like I'm missing several very vital ones, but I cannot think of them at this time... Oh well.

I realize this is totally pointless and not all that reflective on my life, but I figured it was something to post about. Posting later about China and all that once I get a bit more information, right, right?

~~Also, I think I should change my layout. Hmmm. Not sure about that one yet.~~
Edit: Changed! :D With lots of color, because I love color.

My, oh my.

2011-01-14T11:47:00.000-05:00

So a lot of things have happened in the past... week or so. Around last November, I had switched to the Fall track (Aug-Dec) for my Chinese exchange from spring (Feb-June).

I get a call on Saturday asking me if I can please switch back to Spring because they're short teachers and they're willing to knock six-hundred bucks off the deal.

... Long story short, I'm going to China in February.

My face right now is something like this.

+_+
♥_♥
X_X
n_n
^_^

Oh, and if we're going into horizontal faces, it's something like this.

8D
)8
8D

8DDDDDDDDDDDDD

Anyways...

Departure date is approximately on the 9th of February and for the most part, things are taken care of... except for the actual packing and what not. Nana is a gem and wants to buy some of the wintery clothes I'll need and what not. ♥ Mom is using me as slave labor in exchange for a shiny MinoHD from Flipvideo. (See it here). My camera lust, can you feel it? I've been wanting this little baby for a while now. Nothing near to an actual, for the real camera, but for me, it's beyond awesome. I am excite!

If you happened to be giving me a birthday present (it's coming up on the 22nd ^.~)... well, normally I'm not one to ask for something, but in this case, I'm going to ask for cash. Impersonal, I know, but the green stuff gets you places. For one, I have paid for the exchange, but there's always things to do abroad. (And you all want something when I come back, right?) - also, there's this matter of trying to get a new iPod. Unfortunately I doubt I'll get my hands on one of those this time around. Must find a cheaper replacement for my iPod that went kaput! (The one I'm looking at is this one though... aish, when did they discontinue the 80GB one? Sigh. Obviously out of my reach right now.)

In any case, I am excited. I've never been out of the country before! Uwaa, such a new experience. And no, I don't speak Chinese. I am part Chinese though, so this is also something important as a kind of heritage thing. Which reminds me, I need to ask Dad some questions... Except wait! The Dad is actually home now. Hm. Oh well, I still need to ask him stuff.

I also feel slight victory at being the first of the Laulusa kids to be out of the US (five minutes in Canada does not count.)

If I were to try and express the excite-ness but it would look something like this below. ↓

LSKD:FJLS KDJF:LSJFLSDJF:LKJ!!! LKSJDF:L SKJFSLKDJF ~!!!! lKJ:LDFKJ: LSDKJF ♥♥♥♥♥♥

... Something like that. In any case... Yes. I should get back to cleaning something up.

OH WAIT!

Pictures for you all. Taken from the ILP website from the various Chinese locations (There are 8 in total and I probably won't know where I'm going until next week, maybe longer...)

Aren't they adorable?♫

Prettyyyyyyy. Cuuuuuute. *wibbles*

Black holes and revelations in your mind.

2010-11-05T20:49:00.002-04:00

I find that as I start to write this, there are words teeming in my mind, all wanting their own voices and I have to pick and choose to figure out which ones are right for this.

Initially, all I wanted to talk about was how job training was going, but then I went to update myself on current k-pop culture. I have since been distracted from the subject entirely.

It was an issue about a rookie male idol being accused of raping girls during middle school. Now, I want to say that I am setting the issue aside because this is not about whether he really raped her or not.

I'm not quite sure what this is about, but I assure you, by the time we've finished, we'll have found out.

What really triggered this all were the comments. Now, I am aware that you can't judge people by the internet, but I started to realize how ignorant some people are on the subject of rape.

To start off, I'd like to say that I know this is a sensitive subject. I also know that I am no expert on the matter, whether it be through personal experience or research.

But some of the comments made me absolutely sick.

Some of them ranged from the questions of 'Why didn't this girl come forward when she was raped years ago?' to 'Is she just doing this to get attention?', which personally, I think is bad enough. But it got worse. Below is a direct quote from a commenter on the post. (Though, I did edit the language...)

I'm not going to deny that I'm NOT tough on women because I will be the first women to say I am. I'm just very tired of women who don't assert themselves enough to gain power or empowerment in any unfavorable situation. It just makes me sick and I'm so f****** embarrassed to be a women when this kind of situation comes up. It only reinforces the "women are weak" stereotypes of which I cannot even begin to support for any reason.

I honestly... I have no words for someone who actually has the gall to say something like this. What made it worse was that she wasn't even trolling, this woman seemed believed every single word she was saying and I have no doubt that there are others like her out there, people who have absolutely no empathy for victims of abuse or rape - not even just women, but any victims.

I took five minutes to try and imagine what it would be like. And I know that there are gaps in my imagination because it's not something you can understand unless you've dealt with it.

But even just trying to imagine it, I cannot comprehend what victims must go through and what they must live with for the rest of their lives. Someday these people will be made whole again and they will be happy. Maybe not in this life, but they will in the next one. I truly believe that.

As I read these comments, some filled with so much ignorance, I started thinking to myself. As some of you know, I want to be a filmmaker, and I realized that I wanted to make a film. A film that is so realistic that people watching would realize that it's right under their noses. So disgusting and vile and real. I want to open eyes and give people mirrors and ask them 'This is who you are. Look at yourself for a minute. Would you trust yourself? Would you be afraid of yourself?'

I understand that the majority of the global population is good people who just want to live another day, but that's about 7 billion people. Among those people are men and women who walked straight out of nightmares that never should have been dreamed in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like people don't realize (myself included) that these people exist outside of dramas, books, and movies. They could be walking down the street next to you.

I'm not trying to make some gross generalization, I do realize that people are aware of them, but in my limited fishbowl...

Maybe it's silly to be bothered over this - but there are so many movies made that are so stupid, so meaningless. What a waste of time, money, and life. There are voices left unheard because society doesn't want to hear them and because there are so many people crying wolf that maybe nobody would believe that voice if they stopped to listen.

I don't want to be the one making third rate movies that people buy popcorn to watch.

I want to be someone that makes a difference with something she is passionate about. I still have my voice, don't I?

And maybe my one voice doesn't matter.

But maybe it does.

And if it doesn't now.

Maybe someday it will.

Perhaps this is just the ramblings of dramatic child, but I've run out of words to tap out. If you read this, thank you.

It feels like insomnia~♫ But it might just be insanity.

2010-10-14T10:07:00.000-04:00

Restless!

Sort of.

I still cannot chew without feeling the urge to cry and it's been a whole week. I still sleep a lot too.

I think there's something wrong with that. Right? Suki said that she was definitely back to eating normally by now and tomorrow it will have been one week since my wisdom teeth came out! I didn't even have all four!

Body! Work with me here!

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon feeling like I was freezingly hot (which does not make sense, I know) and extremely dizzy, even when lying down. After consulting with a friend about it, I realized that I had taken painkillers on an empty stomach. After some (questionably tasteless) mashed potatoes and a drink, I passed out for an hour. Woke up and all was well.

I'm not sure if that was really the problem, but whatever it was, I'm glad it's over.

I feel like changing my layout again though. I'm not sure to what.

Off to go finish my chocolate protein shake. I actually like staring the mornings out with them, they don't make me feel like throwing up. Same with Attain shakes.

Yay for being healthy~?

Mmm, anyway.

Ciao~♪

My amusement.

2010-09-24T14:06:00.000-04:00

My mom showed me this email about a week ago. I need to stash it somewhere so I can bring it up every now and then and laugh my lead off. 8D♥

_________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your 'Always' maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts.

But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there's a little F-16 in my pants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? I'm guessing you haven't. Well, my time of the month is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I'll be transformed into what my husband likes to call 'an inbred hillbilly with knife skills.'

Isn't the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-Hygiene Division, you've no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customer's monthly visits from 'Aunt Flo'. Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it's a tough time for most women.

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants... Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: 'Have a Happy Period.'

Are you f------ kidding me? What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness - actual smiling, laughing happiness, is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything
mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? FYI, unless you're some kind of sick S&M freak, there will never be anything 'happy' about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don't march down to the local Walgreen's armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn't it make more sense to say something that's actually pertinent, like 'Put down the Hammer' or 'Vehicular Manslaughter is Wrong'.

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that, effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullshit. And that's a promise I will keep.

Always. . ...

Wendi Aarons
Austin , TX

In the strange confines of the mind.

2010-09-15T12:30:00.001-04:00

I almost never show anyone else what I write outside of things I write for school. I write a lot, but I'm never satisfied with what it is to say that I have written it. Mmm. But I wrote something last week and...Mou. I like it~! It's weird. Very weird. And no, it's not amazing, I already know that. But I like it. And since I write for my own satisfaction, that is all that matters.

It was somewhat inspired by Fahrenheit 451 and strange dreams. The premise is vague, as are the characters. A genetically elitist society of sorts, but I can't tell you much beyond that.
____________________________________________

→ Glass Eyes

The doctor sat there, strong and handsome, his bright blue eyes clear, filled with a warmth that seemed to follow him everywhere. Though he sat still, so still, he was wrapped up in a grace that seemed to defy all the rigid confines of reality. He had a near glow of perfection.

I knew the man well, having become acquainted years ago. How had we met? A seminar? A house party, perhaps. Maybe even vacations and winding destinies were the answer. I didn't remember anymore. I knew him well. My attention, however rapt, was not for him.

It was for the small girl who sat next to his chair, nestled in a contraption I had not seen outside of historical simulations. A wheelchair.

She was lovely, pale as if she was bathed in moonlight, the shimmer on her skin dancing and winking as if she was aglow. Delicate, pointed features – like that of a pixie, the little faerie that were so popular among youth.

Her eyes were what had me so enthralled. They were like glass, perfectly smooth and flawless – crystal ghosts that would haunt me for an eternity onward.

It was her eyes and the wheelchair. I couldn't look away. I didn't want to. It was as if she were a flame and I was a moth, dancing closer to my death. Such an apt description, I had no words. I just stared, a ice cold wrapping itself around my heart.

The doctor held up a hand and I shut my mouth, unable to remember what I'd wanted to say in the first place.

“I know.” He said simply. “I know. But when she was born.” He glanced sidelong at the little girl. “We knew already, of course.” The doctor spoke slowly, each word carefully given its own weight. “'Kill it, kill it, kill it' they told me...but I looked down at her. And she wasn't alright...I knew that. But she was so perfect. And she was...she was mine.” He drew his gaze away from her, looking at me, his eyes calm and steady. “I couldn't do it...”

“My wife – ah, you never met her – she never knew,” He continued on. “I hid our child and before I knew it....my little girl had no mother.”

“She was quite an ageless beauty.” I agree quietly. I had, of course, never met her, but the holograms had been enough.

“I think she got her smile, don't you?” He was back to looking at his child, “They never got to meet...But~,” gently reaching a hand out, he brushed fingers through her dark hair. “She's still her mother's child...”

“Doc...” I murmured, unsure of what to say, of what I could say. He cut his gaze to me, giving me a small smile.

“I don't expect you to keep it a secret...I don't expect anything from you.” He told me finally, standing up and moving behind her wheelchair, grasping the handles. “This will be the last time we meet.” He suddenly looked so tired, like a shell of who he had been mere moments before. “Thank you for being my friend. And thank you for listening.” He carefully wheeled his daughter out the back door and no other word was spoken.

I sat there, feeling the tick, tick, tick of time and unsure of how I was. Clocks, time, all irrelevant unless you liked digging through history.

I thought about her.

I thought about her eyes.

Those eyes.

Slowly pulling myself to my feet, I turned, heading for the front door and letting myself out. I felt dazed as I walked down the street, as if someone had pulled a shade over my eyes, transforming everything I was used to into something so familiar but so alien.

I felt lost.

***

I never saw the doctor again. They disappeared, but there were whispers, always whispers. He'd fled, they'd found him, he'd resisted, they'd shot him.

I never heard anything about the little girl.

***

Somewhere out there, under the sky, she lies. Her eyes are heavenward and the stars are reflected in those eyes, those eyes that fade in and out of my memory, perfect and smooth as glass.

They hunt for her.

Kill it, kill it, kill it they chant at me.

And somewhere, far away, her eyes close.

____________________________________________
→ The End

Nothing fantastic or anything, but I do like it. ♥

Completely off topic, but I feel the urge to change my layout. Going to get on that! ー笑ー

Oh look! It's a wild post!

2010-06-20T15:40:00.001-04:00

Everyone get out their pokeballs!

Ah, nah.

Just thought I'd make a quick post and say Happy Father's Day to my dad.

Because he is awesome, I get my geek from him, he compares my personality to the hull integrity of a ship, and he's my daddy. ♥

(Having said that, I feel bad for not making a post of Mom on Mother's day and my defense was 'BUT I SAW HER AND WISHED IT IN PERSON'...but I'll be seeing Dad this evening, so...I just fail.)

In other news, I'm wearing dangling earring and it's so AWESOME!

♥

EDIT: And as I have just been reminded, it's also my mom's birthday!

So happy birthday, Mom. ♦ Thank you for giving me the dominant half of my personality genes. 8D Love youuuuu~

Dusting off the skeletons in the closet.

2010-03-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

My goodness, has it really been over two months since I last updated this thing? Wow! Talk about some epic fail there, huh?

To Do list of updates:
♥ Legal Birthday
♦ China
♣ Hair/Clothes/Makeup (lolwhut?)
♠ Books!

---

♦ Legal ♥ Birthday ♦
January 22nd, 2010. I turned 18. Of course, it's just the number that comes after 17, right? However...

MWAHAHAHAHAH, I AM LEGAL!

Well...not that being 18 brings anything awesome, truly. What the heck, I don't want to vote. Drinking doesn't happen until 21. (Not that I want to drink, but as Suki says, it's the fact that I COULD.)

Anyways, I decided that since my 16th birthday basically didn't exist, that I was going to do something for reals for my 18th birthday. Me, my best friend Emma, Kimmi, her best friend (and my good friend) Chelsea, and the lovable adorable stick Holly, all went to the Easton Mall.

...Can I say that I'm kinda in love with this place? Who knew that Ohio had decent shopping?

Emma spoiled me for the day and we hung out while Kim, Holly, and Chelsea ran around elsewhere. We checked out the bookstore, which was heavenly, got makeup at Hot Topic, ate Chinese, and got smelly spray. ♥

To top it all off. We got to see Avatar in IMAX-3D. If you haven't heard me talk about Avatar, I am sort of, kind of, completely in love with this movie. This is my life. I love movies. I adored Avatar. I would have seen it a million times if I could. Getting the DVD? Heck yes.

Oh wait, but that wasn't all. This actually happened the first thing we got there, but I got my ears pierced. I am the first of my sisters to get this done and it was something of a victory. It actually didn't hurt and while the earrings I have in my ears are a pain to try and take out, they're pretty and I love having them pierced and I'm keeping them.

---

♠ China ♠

So. This all begins several weeks ago. Maybe a month or so. I'm on facebook, playing...right then, it was Country Story, I think. I blame Kim and Suki for this, honestly. I'm playing this game and I look at the ads...what do I see?

'Travel to Mexico! (LDS standards)'

Why I clicked this, I have no idea. I really have no interest in Mexico at all. I don't want to go there, I don't really like spanish, Mexican food is good, but not my favorite.

But despite all that, I find myself clinking on the link.

Long story short, I ended up showing this site to a few people and will begin the application process shortly. I'm hoping to spend 5 months in China early next year, teaching little kids English.

I am excited.

I mean, it's not for sure...but very likely at this point? I'm working out some details, such as references and where the heck all the money is coming from, but. We'll see how it all turns out.

---

♣ Hair ♥ Clothes ♠ Makeup ♣
My hair grows at insane rate right now. Kim keeps it cropped short, but really. She JUST cut it and it's already looking shaggy. What's up with this? My fringe is as bushy as ever, but. I love my hair. This haircut rocks too. Out of the way and everyone seems to think it's cute. Yes, I am shallow. Yes, it matters.

Clothes. I started designing again. I've got a lot of projects lined up, but right now, I'm butchering hand me down shirts. It's pretty fun. I sit upstairs at Nana's and blast music, because I found all the good XM stations. Mwahahah. My wardrobe is slowly becoming more crazy and colorful and I LOVE it. I want to go on another shopping trip, but I'm not sure for what. I just want a spazztastic hoodie and maybe jeans that actually fit me. I lost weight since last spring and my pants don't fit properly. Ugh. Do. Not. Want. (Though, I'm perfectly fine with the actual losing of weight, I just don't like not fitting my pants.)

Last but not least, I have started wearing make up for no reason except that I like to. I only really wearing eyeshadow, which I think is why I wear it at all. My eyeshadow is really colorful (and it sparrrrrkles~ ♥) so it's really just like wearing a pair of gloves or a scarf to me. When did I become a girl?

---

♥ Books ♥

So for the past week, I've read quite a few books. More then I have in the last two or three months, probably. Sadly. >> I haven't been reading that much lately, but I picked it back up. I have read, in the last week.

Fairest
Sunshine (again)
Deerskin
Princess Ben
Lord Sunday
Memoirs of a Geisha

There are two or three I don't remember. There was also Rose Daughter, which, I am sad to say, I put down and didn't finish because I found it horridly boring. This is the first time that has every happened to me concerning a Robin McKinley book. I was rather shocked.

That being said, all of the above books should be read, if they haven't already. Memoirs of a Geisha is FANTASTIC and I loved Lord Sunday, though I'm sad that the series is now over. I love Garth Nix.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card is next on my list, after I finish reading Little Women. It's been a while since I last read it, so it's been nice. We reserved the movie too. Yay, Christian Bale. ^_^

Anyways...I have written enough, I will try to post something more often, and oh my gosh, I love fuzzy socks.

Ciao ♥

Burning of a history~

2010-01-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

Oh wow, so it's been nearly a month since my last post? Man...okay, I really will do better, I swear. (Though, why am I so concerned, who's reading this anyways?)

An update on my life is that people are crazy, boys are stupid, and I turn 18 in less then two weeks. How freaky is that? I can help chose the next president. O_o Holy crap. Well, who knows where I'll be over the next few years.

I'm not sure if I really have anything important to write about, except that kids my age worry me. Actually, it's not just kids my age but those a little younger and a little older.

We had a sort of book report last week in Young Women's where we all brought a book we loved (excluding the Inheritance Cycle, the Twilight series, and Harry Potter), and talk about it. The writing, the setting, etc. Obviously not to give away the ending, but anything else goes.

Well, I was originally going to bring what probably equals my favorite book. Ender's Game. Ender's Game is just so powerful to me, I love it. You can enjoy it on so many different levels. It's definitely not a kid book but I read it when I was about 8. I understand it a lot more now, but my love for it began then. I happen to think that Orson Scott Card is brilliant and if anyone wants to be proud of a Mormon author, they should be proud of him, no Stephanie. I love Ender, I love Bean, I love Petra, I love Val, I even love Peter.

His stories are beautiful, even the ones he says he doesn't like. I read a series of short stories, some relating to his bigger works, like Magic Street, and others that were about things such as this strange aging and insanity disease or how the elephants are the gods. He creates such strange new worlds and you just get immersed in them. I find that amazing.

Anyways, to get back to the story, I was going to use Ender's Game for my book report but I couldn't find my copy. So two hours before I was supposed to go, I was scrambling around, trying to think of a good replacement. I love books and our tiny trailer is filled with ones I like, but none that I felt quite took place of something like Ender's Game.

And then I found it, stuffed in my bag, where it had resided for several weeks due to me wanting to read it and always forgetting. A stunning classic by an author I adore completely. A book that was more then worthy of my book report.

It's cover was worn and beaten from several siblings getting to it before me. The pages are brown and a book wrom has found it's way into some of the pages. It smells old. Yet all of these things make it just a little more special to me.

Fahrenheit 451.

The temperature at which books burn.

This was another book I read when I was only 8 or 9. I didn't understand it very well back then. I was confused at the plot, puzzled at events. It took me a few more years to really get a better grasp of things, or maybe I just needed to ask Jamie to explain it all to me. But the words, Ray Bradbury's writing, stuck in my mine. Especially the title, it's tag line, and the first two paragraphs, where Ray Bradbury likens Guy burning books to a conductor of the symphony of the burning of history, or something like that. My memory fails me. It's a gorgeous beginning and it just keeps on going.

I love Ray Bradbury's imagery in 451. It's something that is contained in all of his books. He's written several different styles in the various stories he's published, but they always still feel like him. I recommend his collection of short stories 'I Sing The Body Electric'. There's story in there about Abraham Lincoln assassination and it's absolutely fantastic.

So I brought a classic to my book report, right? I can't even tell you how many in there hadn't read either. Either! Ender's Game is considered one of the finest of modern literature and Farhenheit 451 is a classic. But I think there was only two people in the room besides me who had read either book. Jen and Ellie. Ellie is no surprise, she actually reads more then I do. But we have some other readers and Aubrey hadn't even heard of Ender's Game.

Let me put this out for you. Everyone in that room besides Laurie and maybe Ruth had read the Twilight books. I know kids my age (mostly girls, really) who think that these books are literature. That they're a classic! That they're the best books ever written!

...Isn't there something wrong with this picture here?

Okay, to be fair, it's perfectly okay to like a book that isn't a great classic. Take Harry Potter for example. It's definitely not literature, but I do love it to death.

However, like I said, I'm not calling it fine literature, I'm not calling it a great classic. It's a wonderful story but it's not genius. To think that things like Twilight or Harry Potter are works of fine art...just sort of means you don't even understand art.

Another thing that bothers me is how much kids don't care about these stories. How much more concerned they are about teen gossip, video game plots, and Twilight. They can't be bothered to read anymore.

Seriously, how is it possible? I don't know, I come from a family of book worms. Well, I'm not sure how book wormish my parents are, but all of my siblings are readers, their are just varying degrees. If I had to name the one who reads the most (even if it's not current) it's probably Jamie. I know Kim's near the bottom, but that doesn't really mean much, she still reads more then the average person.

I just can't quite imagine not having that love for books. I wasn't like Suki, I didn't teach myself how to read, but I did learn it quickly and I moved onto the big books early one. Before I was ten, I'd read the Lord Of the Rings, Narnia, the Screw Tape Letters, Farhenheit 451, To Kill A Mocking Bird, Ender's Game, and Harry Potter, just to name some major ones. Now, granted, I didn't have the best grasp on those books, but subsequent readings have cleared up a few things for me. But I have always, always loved books. I tell people who asked me, I didn't spend a lot of time playing with dolls or hop scotch, though I did both. My siblings and I grew up in the library. South High, I knew where all the good spots where. I'd just flop out in the aisle and read and read and read. Some of my favorite series when I was younger were things like the Saddle Club, the Magic Attic Club, and of course, manga (more on that later). Wasn't a huge fan of any of the American Girls. Molly annoyed me, Kit was a brat, Felicity made me want to stab my eyes out.

Since then, my tastes have changed. Favorite authors are like the two mentioned above as well as ones such as Eoin Colfer, Patricia C. Wrede, Robin McKinley, Anne McCaffery, and the list goes on and on. Other books that reside in my top books are books like Brair Rose by Jane Yolan and The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, both books about the Holocaust. Goose Girl by Shanon Hale (another author Mormons should be proud of) is another favorite.

There are plenty of others, but this post has gotten long! And spanned a whole day of writing. In any case...Uh. Yeah. Okay, bye.

My not-so-grown-up Christmas List.

2009-12-13T16:24:00.000-05:00

Christmas time is just around the corner and I'm just getting around to posting. Not going to lie, being sick on and off for the past three weeks has really sucked.

So what's up with the world of the Rin? (Yes, I am the Rin. Rin-Rin Samurai!...Not that most of you would get that.)

Nothing much. I'm sick, I wasn't able to film my next music video and am now scrambling to find something new to use for the contest. I want that Hey!Say!JUMP tshirt!

...Scratch that, just looked at the site again and no tshirt. Insert me crying.

...Replacement price? Hey!Say!JUMP's photobook. Insert me flailing.

Do I want? Yes, I do. I have already seen scans of the photobook and it looks so good, oh my gosh. And since it's from Japan and Johnny's Entertainment...it's freaking expensive. Meh.

So I've still got to come up with something! And I have no idea what. I'd film something with just my siblings, but I don't have any ideas. It majorly sucks.

But I'll now get off of that subject and onto the real reason for this post. Now, I'm totally not one for Christmas lists. I think it's sort of selfish to inflict what you want on other people. But it's my personal blog and I'm really just voicing what I want. (And if you notice, most of these have a practical reason for being on here.) And honestly, my birthday and Christmas, I just felt like giving people an idea about what I'm looking for is a good idea...? It's a little different then just saying 'I want this' and 'I want that'

Or I'm just wrong and acting like a hypocrite. In any case.

Rin's Christmas Wishlist!
Insert dramatic music here. (:

1 - Cash.
If you can't think of anything, I totally love getting cash. Some people think it's impersonal, but I've got big dreams that need saving up for and money is the only way to get there. So yes, cash is on the top of my list. Every little bit helps.

2 - the NEW MinoHD FlipVideo
Found Here. As anyone reading my blog knows, I'm a film student. I love watching/studying/making films and all that. I haven't filmed many of my own movies, one of those reasons is because I don't have my own camera and I have to mooch off my grandfather or my sister. I'd rather not. I've stalked out a million reviews on this thing and it's basically all I want and will need until I go off and attend school or find an internship of some sort. I have a $15 discount because I'm a fan on Facebook and while that's not a huge difference, this camera is still cheaper then most cameras out there and I don't need a huge fancy one, I just need a simple and easily transported on. I'm really dying to get this one. I have so many ideas and I can't film them, just because I don't have a camera when I have the idea. (Also...I'd like the tripod that goes with it. And the underwater case. Both would come in handy!)

3 - External Drive
My laptop has a 300GB drive...and it's nearly full. This is because raw film and even film re-encoded, can be butthuge. I'm not one to discard footage, because you never know when you'll need it or when you'll want to watch it. Or mess with it, like I do. 1TB external harddrive would be lovely, not just for more space, but for a backup incase Jin bites the dust. I don't want to lose any of my docs, music, movies, anything. So that's why this is on my list.

4 - iPod
I suppose this is the most frivolous item on my list so far, but there are still good reasons for this! I had an iPod last year and it was just so utterly fantastic. It was so nice to not have to lug CDs or anything else around. Just load all my music and videos onto my iPod and I was good to go. It was nice for car rides because we'd all just take turns picking a song and I could have music that everyone liked and we could just change songs if somebody (*coughmomcough*) didn't like. Music is like my oxygen and lugging my computer around to listen to music in the car is a pain! I miss my iPod (80GB, black) so much and he was so useful (his name was Momiji) so that's why this is on the list.

5 - T-shirts
Right, what would I possibly want with tshirts? But these aren't just any tshirts, these are special! Okay, so there truly is no good reason for me to want these, I just can't help it. As said above, I really want a Hey!Say!JUMP tshirt. I just love the group and it'd be so awesome to get one of their concert tshirts. I have other things I'm saiving up for, so it's not like I can get one myself. I almost equally want a Kisumai tshirt, which is my second favorite group in the whole wide world. They're on tour right now and the shirt is so awesome.

Of course, there's a ton of other things I 'want', but those are the only things I truly, truly want. Maybe now that Dad has a job, we'll be able to eventually work our way to where I can afford most, if not all. (SHIRTS!)

In any case, my head is spinning and I think I might take another very long nap (the last one was about 4 hours long.) Being sick sucks...I like sleeping, but not this much. Ugh.

Anyways, bye-bye, all you lovely peeps. If anyone actually read that, I give you cookies.

First post on the last day. Oh, November.

2009-11-30T14:55:00.000-05:00

Aaah, it's already the last day of November and I haven't even posted once! Failfailfail!

But the month has definitely been busy. Somewhat problematic, but I'll spare you those boring details and go onto some high lights of the month.

NaNoWriMo: Aiiiish. I did my best, but I only made it half way through. 25,000 words is HARD! I sort of feel like I hurt my brain doing thing and...who knows, I might finish up the book eventually. Just like my last book, Midnight Shadow. We'll just have to see. I ended up really hating how bad my writing gets on a time crunch, so...hello re-writing. Definitely looking forward to it next year, if I have time. Hah. But it was very, very fun. The writer in me went a little crazy, but it was a good outlet!

On a sidenote, I know my vocabulary isn't the most extensive one out there, but yes I know what the word 'quarrel' means. :3 Just so you know.

Video projects: After the summer's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, I was left without a camera and with too many ideas in my head. Alas, I have yet to save up enough to get my own camera, so I am reduced to bumming off of my sister. And now my grandfather, who has a shiny new do-hickey. Anyways, on the 4th of November, a friend of mine showed me this video. It was Big Bang talking about their new single Koe Wo Kikasete (=Let Me Hear Your Voice) and how they wanted to hear their fans' voices and so please send them messages. And somewhere in there, there's this thing about if they really like your message, they'll send you something back.

Something from Big Bang, heck yes, I will. But I very much did not want to send in a video of me going 'Ohmygah, Big Bang, I love you so much'. Not that I don't love them, they're one of my favorite groups. However. Not going to do it.

And besides, I can think of other messages I'd rather send and I'd rather they watched. And so it gave birth to my latest project.

Overall...I'm actually really proud of it. Granted, there are some major slip-ups in cutting and I definitely was boring with the camera angles...but overall, it's still pretty good to me. And there need to be more friendshippy stuff going on out there (though, yes, I know, song isn't meant like that, but hey, I can interpret lyrics as I wish.) Kimmi and the rest did a great job, too!

So...we'll see what happens with this. Even if nothing comes from it, I improved my mad skillz. ;D

Other then that, nothing significantly great seems to have happened. I have a bunch more to post, but I'm waiting for December to be here before I do that. Until later.

Ciao~

Life.

2009-10-31T22:11:00.001-04:00

Rode the most rockiest horse in the entire world and now my butt and legs are SORE.

Haunted a trail and hurt my throat.

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow.

I'm feeling really weird.

End up update.

NaNoWriMo~!!!

2009-10-22T10:23:00.000-04:00

So, one more post after this to reach my goal. Probably I'll do one closer to Halloween.

But NaNoWriMo is almost heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!!! I'm so excited!

For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National November Writing Month. Shortened to NaNoWriMo and then just down to NaNo.

In short, NaNoWriMo is where a bunch of people try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Challenging? Heck yes!

I participated last year and I only got 8,000 words, which is roughly 14 pages. And it was hard to do that much!

One thing you should keep in mind. Don't nitpick over the story. Just get a vague idea and write it. It's quantity over quality in this game. I had a problem with that last year, so my story wasn't that great and neither did I finish. Or come close to finishing.

But now I have my trusty laptop Jin! And another year of writing experience. I'm so going to do this. I might kill myself, but Oh. My. Gosh. It's such a challenge and it's one that I know I could actually do! I'm not that great of a writer, so ones about quality of writing gives me no chance.

So anyways...I'm excited for this! I think there are prizes for those who win, but really, I don't care about that part. I just want the victory of winning it, period!

Off to go draft an outline or something. :D

You lose. I win. Or in my own story, it would be. If I were fiction.

2009-10-20T10:33:00.000-04:00

Oh wow, it's been a while since I last posted! I need to post at lest two more times before the end of the much to reach my goal, huh?

Halloween is on it's way!

What are you dressing up as?

I'm trying to be Alucard, but I don't think I'll be able to do that...I can't find his coat. Wah! Anybody have a long, red coat?

One a slightly different track, what kind of Halloween do you like? I like cool Halloweens with amazing decorations, food, and costuming. Lots of games too! I also love it when Halloween is cute. Little kids running around as pumpkins and butterflies and just looking so ADORABLE as they trick or treat. What's not to love about it?

One thing I greatly dislike about Halloween, which some people might say I'm against the main point of Hallowen, is the scary parts. I hate the fear factor of the whole thing. All the horror movies and scare houses and gross-ness. Please, keep away, thank you.

I am a very easily freaked out person. I had nightmares over Legend of Sleep Hollow WISHBONE-style when I was a child. I am that pathetic, yes. I do not like. At all.

Really, blood and guts aren't that bad...when they're in war settings like Lord Of The Rings. But when someone is being a freaky chainsaw man, that's just...uh, no.

Another problem is that I'm high empathetic. It's easy for me to imagine things that I hear. Listening to torture is really, really freaky, because my brain automatically starts trying to make me feel the same things. I will happily stick to Harry Potter and feel like I'm playing Quidditch.

So yes, I much prefer traditions of running house to house and getting candy and being cute, or even just cool. It's much more preferable! Another thing I love is how cheap candy is after Halloween. Hello, yes please, I don't care if it's late, candy is candy!

One book I just have to mention is Ray Bradbury's 'The Halloween Tree'. I found this book in the Athens Library last year, one of those limited/special editions. Signed copy and it had all the various drafts and notes he wrote. The story itself was brilliant, as all Bradbury stories are. It's a must read, especially around this time of the year. Get a mug of warm apple cider (not hot chocolate, it's not really that kind of book), sit next to a window where you can see all the leaves change color, and enjoy!

Fall is coming along~!

2009-10-08T21:33:00.000-04:00

So, it's well into a week of this month and I haven't posted for over a week. Time for a new post!

Today, I'm going to talk about my role-models. Or rather, one in particular. I hesitate to post about people I admire in person, simply because...well, I find that awkward. (: So obviously this is about someone I don't know. But I still admire him very muchly. In fact, I'd love it if one day I was called the girl Teddy.

Because yes, his name is Teddy.

Teddy Park is 31, an idol and now one of Korean's hottest music producers. And honestly, he's just freaking amazing.

Meet Teddy~!

He debuted 11 years ago as the lead of the korean hip hop group, 1TYM. They were a top boy band, the predecessors of Big Bang, who Teddy works closely with. He's written songs for artists like Se7en, Big Bang, and 2NE1. Right now, he's working on producing Taeyang from Big Bang's solo album and 2NE1's full length album, which will both released soon enough. I can't wait!

Sometimes I'm not so sure why I admire Teddy so much. I mean, it's not like songwriting is my thing. His character itself is simply fascinating, though. Recently Interscope Records asked him to produce a song for Lady Gaga, which he declined. While I think this is a great thing all by itself, since...well, I like Poker Face, but Lady Gaga herself sickens me.

But his reason for declining was something that really caught my attention. This is something I pulled from an article written on allkpop.com, concerning the matter.

In a recent interview with Star News, Teddy revealed that he has a rule that he keeps without fail when producing music for an artist. In order to give a song to a singer, he must first know that singer very, very well. It's only after he knows the singer really well that he can produce music that he believes fits the singer's style and personality.

Teddy explained, "I think that the music producer plays the part of setting a middle ground between what the composer was aiming for and the singer's intention. There were a lot of times when I was offered a large amount of money to compose and produce, but I turned the offer down because I didn't know that singer perfectly. I think that's why I've only worked with YG artists so far."

I found that really neat, really. He's got a lot of talent and he still says there's so much more for him to do. And he's got such an obvious passion and affection for music, it's his life, not just professionally.

He's also got some quirks, like how he always wears hats or headcoverings because he thinks they make him look less weird. Personally, I think he looks great without them, but the headwear is amusing to see.

In any case, it's hard to put down in words how amazing I think this man is and how much I wish I could end up more like him. He's just.....yeah, okay, giving up on that.

I will admit, I do wish I could have a song written for me by him. I doubt that'd ever happen, but I'll keep a hold onto that wish and dream. We'll see what we can do about it. (;

Here's some songs that Teddy's written or appeared in.

Lollipop - Big Bang & 2NE1

I Don't Care - 2NE1

Sunset Glow - Big Bang

One Love - 1TYM

Prayer - Taeyang

The Leaders - G-dragon (Feat. Teddy & Cl)
(This one never had a MV, but I love it so much I couldn't resist posting it)

/end of Teddy post.

Just be happy I didn't do a Danny fangirl post. Because while Teddy is my idol, Danny definitely has the fangirling attention.

Wanna grow up to be biiiiig~

2009-09-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

Ahaha, so this subject has kind of been dwelling on my mind, on and off for the past several months. What do I want to be when I grow up?

I'm 17, almost 18. I'm nearly an adult and I still don't really feel like I've grown up at all. But whether or not I feel that way, I'm running out of time to decide that sort of thing. I know I've said I've mostly decided, but mostly still means there's room for those other dreams to gang up on you and make you sway.

So, what did I did I say I wanted to grow up to be when I was younger?

A dolphin.

I kid you not. I have very vivid memories of telling everyone I knew about how I wanted to grow up to be a dolphin. Not just any dolphin, but I was going to 'grow up to be a baby dolphin'.

In some ways, I don't think my way of thinking has changed much since then. I'm still rather illogical. Like, instead of picking a steady, decent paying career field, I'm looking to settle in a highly competitive and difficult field of stardom.

Actually, I AM settling in the stardom. The question for me right now is: What aspect of this dazzling kingdom do I want to be a part of? It's a hard question. There are so many aspects of it that I love.

I love film. Every aspect of it. Filming, editing, acting. I do actually want to do things like audition for movies. It's not just backstage for me, it's front stage too.

I'm not really sure where I"m heading right now. I'm taking a dance class, maybe two. It's exciting, really! Dancing is one of the few forms of exercise I actually enjoy.

I honestly don't know if I can make it big. I want to and if I let that want become strong enough, I can make it. But it's hard, already. I got a late start and I'm the kind of person who needs someone to hold my hand, to be my cheerleader.

But we'll see what happens.

On a random side note, I got a hair cut. My little sister, Kimmi, gave it to me. I really like it. I kind of look like a guy in the picture I took on my webcam.

...I really have no idea what to post about.

2009-09-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of hungry.

Doesn't that make this post epic?

I figured I'm allowed to have at least one post of complete fail every now and then.

On a brighter, slightly slippery note, I'm an expensive girl. Bring it!

Feeling that way.

2009-09-16T15:55:00.000-04:00

And update on my life? I have footage for two music videos and a CM. I'm working on the Primary Kids MV, which is currently stressing me out. Due to technical difficulties, I'm still loading the footage onto AVID. I have until the day after tomorrow.

Woe is me.

After that, I don't really have deadlines, since the other two are simply personal projects. The CM probably would only take a day or two, and the other music video is just crazy fun.

On that note, I found something I really, really want. Well, several things.

One thing I really need, and I mean this as a real need, is a new power cord. Mine got screwed and we can't get a new one right now. Guys, it's kinda hard to make and edit videos when you have to depend on a shared power cord with your dad, who works on the computer fulltime.

Another thing that would be great for my budding film career. A camera!~ But really, me getting a decent camcorder is so impossible right now. But then a friend of mine suggested something. I looked it up, fell in love, and now I'm looking to get my hands on THIS - http://www.theflip.com/store/UltraHD.aspx

Small with good quality, I looked into a ton of reviews, and for the level I'm on, it's good enough. It's also several hundred dollars cheaper then my alternatives. While borrowing my sister's camera, I really did realize how many ideas come to you when you have the actual chance to capture it! So I really, really want it. It'd be a nice start to my budding career, no?

Also, I want a mic. Or a decent recording device. One has to have good audio for things and camera mics just aren't good enough!

I think that's about it for now?

I'm waiting for this crap to lad so I can make it.

By the way, Val, if you read this. How do you get this blog to post in your FB notes? Or do you just post a note AND this post?

My style, my stage, so fresh, so clean.

2009-09-09T08:10:00.000-04:00

My hair.

That is what this post is going to be about. You might wonder why I'm wasting an entire post on my hair. The answer to that is: I would like to keep this regularly updated and that is all I can think of right at this moment.

So yeah! My hair. The picture above isn't actually all that accurate. It was taken at the end of June and my hair grows very quickly.

I'm actually really proud of my hair. I used to hate it when I was young, wanting to be a blond or a red head. To this day, I still think I should have been a red head, but I've come to love the hair I have. Not brown, but not black either. Dark chocolate. If it gets really long, I start going blond at the tips.

I used to also want the flowy, willowy straight hair. If the picture above doesn't show it well enough...Well, let me just tell you I have dense, extremely curly hair. Again, something I've learned to love just as much. I keep it short, because I think it looks better and it's easier to maintain.

I'm not the only person who loves my hair. My hair is probably my only truly attractive feature. I get more compliments about my hair then anything else. I've had complete strangers come up to me to say how much they love my hair. If they're teenage boys, they might possibly even grope it. This usually results in a scolding, since I don't particularly like people touching my hair without express permission.

What makes my hair stand out?

Well, it's 100% natural. Since I've never permed, asian permed, dyed, or done anything else to it, this is pretty much as real as one's hair can get. It really is that curly. I think the only difference between my hair in the pic and my hair with no styling products is that my hair without mousse in it frizzes into a fro. No fun, guys, no fun. That was a nice thing about being in Cali. NO HUMIDITY.

Aaaah....I think I'll keep my hair short. In fact, I want it cut right now...but anyways. Night for me. Goodnight, Moon.

Books, the love of my life.

2009-08-23T21:52:00.000-04:00

Well, truly, I have lots of loves of life, but reading and books are a very special one to me. I have memories of books like 'Go Dogs Go' being read to me when I was little, along with other books like 'Are You My Mommy?', the Bugg books, 'Bears in the Night', etc.

And then I was around 7 and my sister Jamie agreed to read me the first Harry Potter book. She would sit down with me and read a chapter.

...But as soon as she read the first one, I was so in love with it, I didn't want to wait until Jamie had time to read to me again. I was learning to read, but I wasn't that great.

Guess what I did?

I read it. The entire thing. I don't remember how long it took me, but I loved the whole thing. Sure, I got some words wrong like 'Prefect' and 'Ronan', but I remember loving the characters, the plot, everything. I went on to read the rest of the books and joined the mob in my house for the 4th book up to be released. I pre-ordered the last two books and I am now the proud owner of the first two.

Harry Potter wasn't the only thing I read. I moved to other books. I read almost everything I could get my hands on. I don't know about anyone else, but the adults in my life seemed impressed that I was reading Anne McCaffery and J.R.R. Tolkien by age 8. A lot of the trouble I got into when I was younger was disappering into the bathroom with a book when I was supposed to be cleaning. Mom constantly had to take books away from me and my siblings. At least half of us siblings are book addicts, though I know we all love books to some degree.

There's something magical about books. Something not even films can compared to. The pure magic of words is amazing. A good writer is able to make any world appear so real to you, leaving your active imagination able to delve in and look in between the writing, making things up to make it even more real.

I love alternative realities. Something to escape to. A fantasy just at your finger tips.

I still love books. Patricia C. Wrede, Diana Wynne Jones, Robin McKinley, Tamora Pierce, Orson Scott Card, and all my other escapes. I adore them. When I was little, I wanted nothing more then to write like them. Creative writing is still a passion of mine, but I now accept that I do not have the pure talent these people have.

There is a dark side to writing. Cults! Yes, I am talking about Twilight. I'm sorry, but it's not worthy of all the attention it is given, for many, many reasons. Reasons, I won't list because I get very heated about this. Anyways, please, kids, if you're going to read something, read something worth more then a piece of dirt.

...Okay, yes, I'm done on that.

Anyways, it's something I wish other kids loved as much as I do. I don't always have time to read, but when I do, I always enjoy it.

It's something I will always love, reading, though I am going into it's 'nemesis'. Film is what steals attention. It takes less time, less thinking, and less imagination. But words are still what makes a movie, right?

The English language is difficult, but also so lovely. I want to learn other languages, but well...I speak english, and that's what I'll continue using it, right?

In this instance, I feel kind of like a failure.

2009-08-15T10:16:00.000-04:00

So today is my cousin Matt's homecoming. He's been gone on his mission for two years now and has been back for a few days. Time to partay! I can't wait to see him and the rest of the Ex-Tex gang. It's been years, really, even though we're in the same state.

And the reason I feel like a failure is...well, I never wrote him. I didn't write Jasmine, Ladd, or Karl either!

I don't know what it is, but I have an aversion to such things. I can't actually write mail! I can comment, blog, email, and even text (when stealing someone else's phone), but I don't write mail.

One reason is because I have bad writing. I'm a much better typist then I am a writer. Or whatever you call it. Italics are the bane of my existence, and my printing doesn't really look that much better. So really, I'd rather just type something funny and have it be a little less special. As long as the other person can read it, that's all the matters.

Another thing reason is...half the time I don't even know what to write. Take my missionary cousins. I love hanging out with them, but when away, we don't exactly interact much. I've gotten better at keeping in touch through Facebook, but really, I don't talk to them much. What to write to cousins on mission? I never had a clue. So those letters never got written.

Who knows, maybe someday I'll actually write a missionary. There was one person I totally would have written, but he isn't able to go on a full time mission, as much as he'd like to.

So again, those letters will never get written.

I don't know, I find it kind of funny. I remember all of my older sisters writing several missionaries and I haven't written a single letter. Is this a good thing? Probably not. Am I okay with it? Totally.

That's just me though.

~Lindey

Oh! For my music corner. Meet my new creation, Candy Pop Remix. This was a test video to help me figure out parts of AVID, my video editor. I still have a long way to go, but this test clip is finish!

Aqua's Candyman meets Big Bang's and 2NE1's Lollipop music video. Love both songs and they just really go together...This clip has several really off parts, but I'm moving onto new projects. So enjoy this and remember that you got to be among the people who got to see my early movies before I was famous. *winkwink*

Sunrise, Sunrise...I don't really understand the rest of the words.

2009-08-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Back in Ohio, adjusting and all that stuff. At least it's been cool! I've only felt like I was dying for maybe an hour or so. It is really weird and I get sticky because it's wet here. Straaaaaange!

Other then that? Well, my new-found sewing skills have caused a sort of spree. I've been repairing/modifying a bunch of stuff. It's fun though...Sewing is kinda therapeutic. I mean, not that I need it, but it's still nice.

Other then that, I'm remembering how to run around being a vet's assistant, milking, etc. No glam for me right now. But it's all good.

The play I'm in is majorly messed up. My part is small...Haha, my part was made up! But we'll see how it goes. I dunno. I just missed all my drama geeks.

Ugh and Guh are spelled the same.

2009-08-01T09:45:00.000-04:00

And kind of have the same meaning. Very much unlike FTW and WTF. Not so similar.

But that's not why I'm posting. It's the day of final exhibition and flight out of here...

But that's not why I'm posting either.

There you go! Comment, rate, tell all your friends to watch it! :D I know it may not seem like much to you, but I love this project. As said in the movie info, I would have done so much more to it but...sadly, it wasn't possibly right then. Maybe someday I can go back and fix all that I wanted, but for now, simply enjoy my very first film project!

All I need is one more day with you...

2009-07-31T10:05:00.000-04:00

Hah, Simple Plan, how I used to love you so. Not so much anymore, but I'll admit to still listening to your stuff. Heck, I still listen to *NSYNC! But that wasn't really what I was writing about.

Today was the last day of classes. Somehow I can't believe it's already over. Isn't six weeks supposed to be a long time? And yet, I'll be back in Ohio soon enough. Not going to lie, I don't want to go back home. The weather alone is making me twitch right now.

Ah! But I do have something to show you guys. But it'll take a few hours to actually load...so hold on that thought!

Also, I must go pack. Ugh, do not want!

We went to Chinatown today. I got there much earlier then Dad did (I walked from classes. It's a nice walk!) Actually, speaking of that walk....Do you know how many high end fashion designers have stores right next to Chinatown? There was places like Prada, Armani, etc. The really fancy stuff where nothing is under $300.

Then you walk into Chinatown and they claim to be selling Louis Vuitton bags. Hah, yeah right....

But anyways...Walking around. Right as me and Dad met up, I found this store that Auntie Helen and I had spotted about a week ago. It was a 'Going out of business' sale. And they had beautiful dresses! 50% off = About twenty bucks. So wanted one...but omg, I went today and it was seriously the last day and I found the most gorgeous red silk dress and it was only 10 bucks!!! YAY ME~!

And yes, I did buy a dress. Have I told you guys that I've worn a dress on weekdays? I know you all must be gasping, but yes, I am a girl. And I do like wearing dresses....sometimes. It all depends on the outfit and such.

Ah, must go pack. Ack...Do not want.

Curtain's finally closing. Go on and take a bow...

2009-07-28T18:51:00.000-04:00

The song doesn't really go at all, but I don't know, the chorus kinda fit for me. I like this version of it over Rhianna. Well, after you get to Minji's part. Ah, she and CL have really good english. I know CL has it because she grew up in San Jose (Do you know the way to San Jose?)

Anyways...I now have only one period of each class left! I'm so sad...And this gray weather isn't helping it at all!!!

Fashion Merchandising: We did our presentation on Monday. I was so nervous and honestly, I have no idea how well we were critiqued. I know I accidentally messed my notes up, because I had a headache and wasn't reading the questions correctly until the end of things. And I couldn't write. There were so many cross-outs, I was just not wanting to turn it it. Ugh. But I'm glad it's over! Basically, even if our company was considered a flop by the rest of the class, we passed. That's all I care about. I must say, I liked being in this class, but the class itself is not something I like dealing with. I suppose it's nice to know about this side of things, but it's not really was I'm interested in. We DID watch a film on Marc Jacobs, which was absolutely fabulous! I loved watching it, it was AMAZING! Love that man. And there was another designer and I though he had some brilliant designs, but sadly, his name fails me.

Fashion Construction: Aaaaah. Sewed my bag all weekend to finish this class. I have that letter of recommendation now, or rather, the ability to have that letter. I'm happy! I got the strap on my bag wrong, but I didn't want to rip it out to change it. Aaah, we had cream puffs today! Chris said he was so proud of us so he got them. We don't know...who he picked from our class for the 'Most Excellent Student' Award. He's talked to all his other classes about it, but not ours. We're all kinda edgy. Not competitive, but we're all wondering who is getting it. I'm going to say this is my favorite class. I made so many friends in this class and I'm going to miss them all so much. I'm going to miss the girl dates where we'd go out to lunch at the nearby cafes and talking about the silliest things. Thank you, Facebook, I guess that's the best thing we can do right now.

Advanced Acting: So yeah, we filmed yesterday. I'm pretty happy with the final result! My scene with Campbell was the shortest, but it was actually probably the best. I don't want to sound vain, but there were some major messups in the other scenes. This scene was a major challenge for me. I think it's because I'm such a weird kind of girl, I don't relate overly well to the types of girls I'm casted as. But yeah, happy that's over. OH! And I showed the class how good a screamer I am. I think I nearly killed Keeler with my 'death' in one of the games. It was fun!

Motion Pictures and Television: We're finished our movie! We have two versions! The Girl version and the Boy Version. This has to do with who edited, because there was a team of boy editors and girl editors. Due to how big our team ended up (we stole two guys, so ended up with five members.) It's really hard to try and edit like that, so we split and just said we'd do our own thing and see how it turned out. I think both versions are fantastic! I love things about both and while most will probably think that the Boy version is better, I'd love to point out that both boys had more experience and had edited videos before while we girls were all coming fresh from other areas. I was a fashion student, Theresa is a photograper, and Abby is a comic artist. So we were figuring out a lot of things for ourselves! I had one huge disappointing moment when I found out that Final Cut Pro is only for Mac. AVID is very confusing and I know how to use Final Cut, so I wanted to just get that...but yeah, Akanishi is not a Mac. Argh!

Other then that? My bus driver says he'll miss me. I keep him company in the mornings and stuff, so it's been a ton of fun. I'm going to miss him. I'm going to miss my friends, I'm going to miss my teachers, I'm going to miss Auntie Helen.

I don't know. This is the kind of school I can totally see myself getting into. I enjoyed this! All of it, even the parts I whined about...There was still this feeling of accomplishment. This was stuff I'm good at! You guys all know that I'm not exactly smart. I struggle academically. But these classes are my kind of thing. And according to all my teachers, these really are college classes. I feel like I lucked out on my teachers. All of mine were the best of the best, really. Much more intense and willing to push us and treat us like adults and that sort of thing. Like Mr. Cascio. He was advised to teach us to just do 'In Camera Edits' which is basically just taking specific shots, in sequence, and some other stuff, just so editing is 'easier'. But it limits you a lot in a different way, so he taught us how he films and edits and I loved that.

It was similar with all of my other teachers. They'd personally done everything they'd taught me and that gave it a different vibe entirely. I heard so many other students complain about their classes and how boring and easy they were. Mine where challenging! I loved it.

So yes, I think I know exactly what I'm aiming to do in life. Or at least the general area. Film! I love fashion, I really do! But I'm not quite as driven as some others so I don't see myself as becoming my own house, or Marc Jacobs, or anything like that. But I do love it, so things like costume design would still be fun! And the world of Film, because yes, I want to be part of all those major motion pictures, is so vast! I don't even know what I want to do in it, because I love almost ALL of it.

I already posted music at the top, so I guess I'll just call this finished. I'll be home by Sunday. I can't wait to see all my family and friends, especially my nieces! Facebook pictures just aren't enough!

So see you soon, and that's all!

Jaa ne~
Lindey

Post for my little sister.

2009-07-24T23:25:00.001-04:00

Okay, so classes is just finalizing final projects. Guys, you'll be hearing more about his later.

But this is a post directed at Kimmi, though the rest of you can enjoy. As most reading this do NOT know, Wonder Girls (a five member girl group) recently made their debut in the US, opening for the Jonas Brother's US concert tour. Their first US single is the English version of 'Nobody', their huge Korean single.

And on Monday they had their first TV performance. I have no clue what show this is, but I thought their performance was awesome! Hard to think that Sohee and Sunmi are still in high school.

I love this song and the performance, because it's so 'That Thing You Do'! (Which is a movie I love)

The english is a bit strange if you're used to the korean, but I think it worked out nicely!

EDIT - Check out the PV! Exactly like the Korean one, but isn't it just so THAT THING YOU DO?! <3 Ah, I love so much.

Yoobin <3 Rapper girl!

Strange happenings.

2009-07-21T22:28:00.000-04:00

So this morning I woke up. It was about 5:30. My alarm is set for 6:30, so I'm go 'Okay, I can sleep for another hour, right?' and I go back to sleep.

I wake up and my alarm is really quiet....and it's 7:22. I need to be at the bus stop by 7:45.

So what do I do? I panic! I rush around to double check everything and get ready and stuff. I get to the bus stop on time, but my hair isn't done, I haven't had breakfast, and my outfit wasn't what I'd wanted to wear today! Not exactly happy.

So I rush to my building but I'm soooo hungry and I know I won't last until 11:20 on an empty stomach. So I quickly pop into the Working Girl Cafe (a place I'm now in love with. I get free soda!) for a muffin. I get this HUGE chocolate muffin and it was only two bucks! (I don't really know if that's a lot for other places like Ohio, but for here, that's really, really nice!)

Classes have been going very nicely. The one I'm mostly happy about is MPT. Kat, Mr. Cascio's assistant, really liked how well we were handling the editing. And according to Mac, Final Cut Pro is what most movies are edited with. Somehow I can't see this, since it's so simple and uncomplicated, but I guess most the difficulty is with the special affects or something like that? I don't know, it doesn't seem like Final Cut Pro is advanced enough.

Acting is going okay, I guess. I like acting, but this scene we're working on for our final project. I don't like. At all. I have to try to be off book by the day after tomorrow. Guys, memorizing lines is hard for me!

Fashion Construction...I've passed the class but I don't have the last project done yet (which I need, because I want that letter!). I just HAD to pick the most complicated bag. D: I'm going to have to work hard!!!!

Fashion Merchandising. It's okay. I don't know, not my thing.

Oh! Lindey Music Corner!

This is Kim Taegoon. He just debuted in January this year and I must say, he's amazing. I'd only watched this video because Kim Jaejoong (from DBSK) was part of it. But the song just caught me and it's one of my favorites!

Eventful life is eventful!

2009-07-20T00:44:00.000-04:00

Nearly another week since my last update! Hontoni gomenasai!

I'll give class updates, a flail, and post some music! Then I'll probably go to bed.

Fashion Merchendising: We went to the Asian Art Museum. The main exhibit was the Lords Of The Samurai. Dad can attest, I have wanted to go to this place since he drove me into San Fransisco for the first time. The exhibit was for our last field trip. Oh wow, it was so amazing. The works on display were gorgeous! The way they painted on fabric was exquisite! And the samurai armor and swords. Yes, very amazing! But me and my friends didn't eat lunch there so we ended up with some free time after going through all the art exhibits. The Asian Art Museum is across the street from City Hall, which has a playground. Yes, I played on it. I wasn't the only one!!! Karen and I were dorks together and it was just fun. Then we noticed that down the street that was next to the museum...there was a street fair. Guys, it was so awesome! So pretty, so cheap. I want to go back there and get that powder purple spider web skirt. Yes, a skirt. It was gorgeous. I did get a necklace though! It's also pretty. All back and hearts and ribbons...Ahem, anyways. Last field trip. Starting tomorrow, we're in the classroom, working on our final project.

Advanced Acting: Okay, I'm going to act very unprofessional with this section and use lots of keysmashing. But LAKSDJF:LKADJF:LSKDJFLSDK, Guys, the guy that was bothering me DROPPED OUT OF CLASS! :D :D :D :D :D :D Mom says I'm overreacting, but I DON'T CARE, OKAY!? Creepy slime is creepy, m'kay? Even class sleezeball noticed this. aslkdfjasldkfj but now i have a new partner and things are good, though omg, I need to work on my script more. BUT GUYS I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN I FOUND OUT!!!!! ^______________^

Okay...Done with that.

Fashion Construction: I have officially passed this class! We were told that we had to finish two projects to pass. I'm still doing the last one, to get that letter of recommendation, but I don't have to rush or anything! My skirt turned out nice and goes well with my top. I'm happy!

Motion Pictures And Television: Have I said that I'm in love with this class? This has to be my favorite! We're editing now, and it's just so much fun!!! Theresa and Abby say I'm a good editor and I'm the one doing most of it right now, following their advice and direction, since I understand the software much better then they seem to (not like it was really that difficult? But I guess it was.) Anyways. Video is looking fabulous already and we haven't even started putting in special affects! I'm hoping to sweep the AAU off their feet with this video...Or at least the nation of Youtube!

Speaking of movies...I SAW HARRY POTTER!!!

Okay, not the midnight showing, though I really wanted to. Homework, sadly, did not allow for that. Sad, yes, but OH MY GOSH! It was so good!!! And really, while taking this film class, I really started noticing how brilliant you have to be to make these sorts of movies. It's more then just the acting and the affects. The camera angles and the lighting tell nearly as much of the story as the people in it! I thought the editing to the story was very well done. And I did cry when they mourned Dumbledore's death. That's actually something rare.

One actor who impressed me beyond belief was Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy. He was so tormented and scared...I loved it! Emma Watson was also excellent! Well, all the actors were good, but those two really stuck out to me. And Helena as Bellatrix. Oh my gosh, she is one freaky but awesome lady.

Aaaah...Yes, it was so worth it. I would love to go again and really study the cinematography of the movie!

And now for my music.

This is FT Island's new song 'I Hope', just released a few days ago! FT Island stands for Five Treasure Island, because there are five members. I have to say, I love this song and the music video was just cute with the time travel and the little kid. I guess the movie is a sort of tribute to Grease, or at least the time period. I personally think it's a lot like 'That Thing You Do'

Hongki's vocals always amaze me. He's only 19! His hair is just a bit too red in this MV, but I guess that was part of the Grease thing. Jonghun, Minhwan, and Seunghyun all looked cute and happy...Well, so did Jaejin, but what the heck is up with his hair? I don't know.

I do miss Wonbin though. Maybe if he gets a real solo career, it won't be so bad. But listening to Soyogi makes me so sad!

But Hongki...His voice for Bad Woman live...was amazing. I need to look for live performances of I Hope. I love that FTi is an actual band rather then a boy band (though I'm a sucker for them) I love musicians. :D Anyways, enjoy and all that, I'm off to bed!

T-time is tickin', t-time is tickin', tickin'

2009-07-14T22:24:00.000-04:00

Aaah, it's been nearly a week since I last updated! My apologies to you all. I'm sure you've missed me, right? Psh!

So what's new in my life? Passed the halfway mark and that makes me so sad. Might as well go into updates on each class.

Fashion Merchandising - We went to Haight/Ashbury. Amazing shopping area full of vintage clothing, ethnic stores, and jewelry stores! Some places were really pricey, others were a great deal! We went there because of Mendel's, a fabric store. It...was decently priced, I guess, depending on what you were looking for. We got fabric swatches and those were free. Like my teacher always says: We like the word FREE. Our concept board is coming together and hopefully it'll look as amazing as we think it will! PurpleX, coming to YOUR city. Haha, yeah right. One thing that amuses me is how much I don't keep up with the fashion news. Maybe it's just because my view of fashion is different. But my teacher pointed out that even if we're not into that kind of fashion, it's something we, as designers, merchandisers, buyers, anything, have to pay attention to. I'll try harder!

Advanced Acting - As some of you know, I'm having some problems with this class...But for now, I'll just concentrate on what I like. I don't really want to go into details, you'll find out when this is all over.

Fashion Construction - HAVE I SAID THAT I LOVE THIS CLASS!?!?! Okay, it's hard work. We have to handstich a lot of stuff...but it's still a blast. We're working on the A-line skirt and I have to have it done by Friday. Let's see if I can get more done before Thursday. I think I can have it done, it's just hemming right now. I want to add stuff, but that can happen later! OH! Oh. My. Gosh. Okay, I just found a new reason to want to live here in San Fransisco. Chris (our teacher) showed us the most amazing fabric store!!!!!!! It's called Discount Fabric Warehouse. Guys, I am in love. This place! They had EVERYTHING! From silks to satins to demins to canvases to organzas to cottons to ANYTHING ELSE! Those beautiful double colored silks that you wish you had a ballgown made out of? $6 a yard. I kid you not. It was amazing...And they had a billion trims, ribbons, zippers, buttons, etc. Guys. I'm in love. Have I said that yet? Our class wanted to just MOVE in there. It was that fabulous. Guh...

Motion Pictures and Television - We finished filming! Yesssss! And today, we watched it. Guys, we're just newbies, but we're proud of our work! I was an actor in it and I got called fierce. This makes me happy. I'd rather get called fierce then a princess. I can kick butt, no lie. And the teacher really was impressed with our shots and everything, though I guess we really owe most of that to Theresa. She's awesome, guys. We start editing next Friday and I'm just SO excited! I've heard a lot of complaints about the other MPT teachers and it makes me laugh. Our teacher is amazing and he really knows his stuff!

Other then that? Oh, funny thing. Most people think I'm around 15 and they get really surprised when I tell them I'm 17 1/2! Well, my bus driver, the one that picks me up in the morning. We've gotten to be buddies. He thought I was 19-20. He also said I seemed like an easy going, fun girl, the kind that guys prefer to hang out with. Whether or not he's correct, it was nice to hear someone say that. Oh, and we share the same weakness. Asians. Only, obviously he's into the ladies, I'm into the dudes. He tells me stories about his girlfriend and work, I tell him about the various moments of fail in classes. It's fun!

I love this school so much. It's really nice that I'm doing so well, even if I've had no experience whatsoever! I mean, I'm not the best, but that's fine with me. I can learn, I can get better. Who knows? Maybe I CAN become the best.

Harry Potter is coming out and I'm sad that I probably won't be able to see it until this weekend. Very, very sad! Guys, I have loved Harry Potter for over 10 years.

Aaah, I should stop writing and get more sewing done! I'll talk to you guys later! Sayonara!

~Lindey

Busy bee is busy

2009-07-08T22:26:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, so I have a ton of homework to work on. And really, it's all fun so I don't mind!

Fashion Merchandising - Purplex is going very well, I think! We're starting to get stuff for our concept board and the class is really really cool! We're supposed to be going to an Japanese exhibit soon and I simply cannot wait!

Fashion Construction - We're on the A-line skirt now and I've gotta say I'm a bit nervous but also excited. I'm not getting as adventurous as some of the other girls are, but I did alter my pattern and I'm hoping that it'll all turn out okay. My material is different. It's black raw silk! This stuff is crazy awesome, I love it to death.

Advanced Acting - Sensei got us the play and I've read most of it....Meh, I don't particularly like it. It's not even just the swearing, but the characters are just kinda...well, DUMB. Well, one's a cheater, and he's automatically just dirt, because that sort of thing pisses me off. Another one breaks up with a really sweet guy just because he said her face wasn't super amazing. I'm sorry, but that's just stupid to be THAT sensitive. Along with that part of the comment, he said something I found so sweet! I dunno, maybe it's because I've never been considered cute or pretty, that sort of comment wouldn't hurt me. Anyways, I'm off to finish reading that as soon as I'm finished this post.

Motion Pictures and Television - OKAY! Guys, the music video....we only were able to film maybe a minute of actual production (that means we have like, ten minutes of fiml), but it looks SO GOOD! Sean looks great for the demon and I'm the angel. We're having some problems with casting and all that, but our teacher really likes our group! I'm so excited for the final product. Hopefully editing won't be impossible or anything.

Yes, Mom, I'll try calling more. Things have just been crazy, really. And I did talk to Kimmi though and we talked. It's not that I don't miss home, it's just that I get so sidetracked with things!

Ah, well, back to work for me.

4 times, minna clap clap!

2009-07-04T02:23:00.000-04:00

Okay, update before the weekend! WEEKEND, HOBABY! <3

Update for this week. Ah, so, so busy! All four classes keep me busy and entertained and I'm having a lot of fun while learning.

MPT - Turned out that the camera literally ate our CM D: We still have glitched parts of it, which makes us even more sad because it really was a decent filming. I cry. We also filmed a sort of dramatic short about the Russian Mafia and I was the silent girl thug in a big hoodie. It was fun! Theresa and Abby's Russian was SO FUNNY. Mac filmed all of it for us, and he has a killer accent too. My accents suck so much lately. Theresa and I have similar brainwaves because we totally came up with the same idea. Music video, instead of a short film, because we're more interested in cinematography and being able to tell a story without words. I mean, I'll let acting class take care of dialogue and all that. Our project will be of a fallen angel and that's all I'm going to say because it's a secret. ;D

Fashion Merchandising - Karen, Sofia, and I have our concept, we just need to start making our concept board. That was why I posted that poll, and thank you for those who filled it out, though most of them were on LJ. Purplex is our company and purple dresses are our product. I don't know how much else I'll be able to explain.

Advanced Acting - Teacher finally pointed out the obvious and said I have trouble concentrating. Duh. Still have those few guys who are really getting on my nerves. How much sex can they really talk about? Ah well, they usually shut up around me by now. Lindey is not always nice, please realize. Final project is some play called Reasons To Be Pretty, I think. Or scenes from it. Whatever.

Fashion Construction - Aaaah, I've lost so much sleep over this class. It's hard to handstich! And basically that's what we do, handstiching all three projects. The halter top is done and it's SO CUTE! The A-line skirt is draped and we'll work on it, starting Tues. But guys, my class is so creative and so ahead of the other classes. I'm not the most talented, but I remember things the other girls don't, so I'm still really helpful. I love it. *rolls*

Aaah, found an awesome scarf at Pier 39! I was there with Jasmine, my cousin. We had so much fun! Pic can be found on Facebook. And yes, it's pink. Lindey is a girl and she does like pink, though she won't declare it her favorite color, because that would be a lie.

Cooking. I love cooking. I love her always loving my cooking. I love how much she eats. I love Chinatown and Safeway.

Music of the day.
James Blunt - You're Beautiful.

Don't ask why I'm posting this, most/all of you wouldn't get it.

Going to sleep because I am dead. And I don't really get to sleep in tomorrow because of a ward breakfast thing. Guh. So not fair.

Homework. Help. Urgent.

2009-07-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, homework, HELP ME OUT GUYS! Like, I suppose it's not life or death, but I'd still like good results. It's 21 questions, please just fill it out so I have something to turn in on Monday.

1 - How old are you?
2 - Where do you live?
3 - What type of area do you live in? (suburbs, city, rural)
4 - What is the climate where you live?
5 - What do you do in your free time?
6 - How do you get your money? (ie - working, parents, etc)
7 - How much of your money is spent on clothes?
8 - What sizes do you wear?
9 - What kind of clothes do you wear?
10 - Do you like dresses?
11 - What's your favorite dress cut/style?
12 - What do you think of the color purple?
13 - How often do you wear dresses?
14 - What do you wear dresses for?
15 - Where do you shop?
16 - Do you prefer to cover or show your arms and legs?
17 - Are you label conscious?
18 - Are you label loyal?
19 - Which do you prefer: Quality or Low Price?
20 - Which do you prefer: Comfort or Style?
21 - Where/Who do you get your style from? (Designer, celebs, etc)

Please and thank you! <3

OH! And for my music pimping. Ever heard of the song Insomnia? The original is by Craig David and it was covered by Wheesung. Both are really, really good! Even if you don't like Korean, Wheesung is so GOOD! So I give you both of them for your enjoyment.

Ah, hontoni gomenasai!

2009-06-30T03:03:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm sorry for not posting recently! Blogspot doesn't save drafts like LJ does and so I always get distracted and forget to post and it doesn't bring back up what I've typed. I do not like muchly.

But let's return to the more important point of this post. Update on my life! Well, as it turns out, the Academy had plenty of material that they were willing to offer us students for FREE. Hah, so happy about that, one less thing to spend money on. ^_^ I used black with bright flowers on it for my halter top. Mr. Applegate was telling us about how the fabrics we chose reflected our personalities. When I asked him what mine meant, he said it meant I was more daring and wild. Mmm, accurate? In a way, I suppose. We'll start sewing the halter tops tomorrow and I bought my needles today. So excited!

Fashion Merchandising. Ah, this one is fun and okay. My group has a pretty good idea of what to do for our concept board, which I will not reveal until a later date, because....well, top secret, yo! Ah, I kid, but let's keep it for later.

MPT – Filmed a CM on Friday. And lucky me, Mac joined our group, so instead of me having to act like a dude, we actually had a dude acting like a dude. 'Twas lovely. I think our shooting went very nicely, though we were lucky that Theresa (one of the other two girls on my team) was able to stay long enough to film everything. Otherwise, it would have been me behind the camera and that would have been a disaster. I think the CM is going to turn out really cute once we edit it. Our teacher is an amazing guy and completely interesting and know exactly what he's doing. It's great.

I had my first real performance in Acting. It was a neutral scene, where we got to make up the backstory. My partner and I were one of two boy/girl teams, so we tried to do a boyfriend and girlfriend having relationship problems. Mmm, teacher and the other students liked it, even if we tweaked it and performed it 4 times. Gah. I dunno, I was having problems working with my partner. But it was nice to see everyone again.

Other then that? Totally went to Safeway and got 10 bottles of Sobe. Guys, I'm so ecstatic about this. ^___^ I have so many different kinds! But mostly of the mango melon, which is one of my favorites. This'll last me a while. I only allow myself one drink a day and that's on school days. So two weeks. We also got Alfredo sauce and she really liked the pasta I made yesterday. I feel so pleased.

OH! But my current favorite cooking experience was today! Dinner was marinaded salmon, sauté bok choy, and blueberries. Oh. My. Gosh. It was so good. Thank you so much for the marinade recipe, Karu! I love how much I get to cook and how much she loves it. She eats a ton! And she bought us more white peaches while she was at Chinatown today.

Living with Auntie Helen is actually pretty nice. I mean, at first I was just really nervous about it all, but it's fun, to tell the truth. She worries just a bit too much and her need to save everything it just a tad bit strange. But overall, completely enjoyable. ^^ We enjoy laughing at MJ news, because that's all anyone seems to be able to talk about. My opinion on the matter? Well, I never really liked him, due to a certain older sister, but I'll acknowledge that he was a legend and that he revolutionized the music, dance, and fashion industries. However, I still thought he was a creeper.

And I don't particularly wish to end this post on MJ, so I guess I will reveal something about myself. Most of you guys already know this, but I'm a sucker for Asian Entertainment. Mostly Japanese, and mostly Johnny's Entertainment. One of my dreams is to work for JE to revolutionize their costuming. I love the boys, but the costumes are....well, beyond cheesy or crazy. There are some good ones, but the rest must go!

I'm also a big fan of K-pop. Rain/Jung Jihoon is something of a favorite right now! Ever seen Speed Racer? Well, he's in it. He also has a movie coming out this November called Ninja Assassin, which looks really, really good!

Here's one of his songs, titled Rainism. I love it to death and I start randomly singing it. Maybe not the most original song and the PV is just weird sometimes, but I do love his dancing and singing.

I make it Rainism, the rainism~

Yes, I'm a nerd, a geek, and a dork. :D

Done for today!
~Lindey

To the world at large.

2009-06-26T09:47:00.000-04:00

Ahem. Getting lost in a city is scary. And God does work many miracles because he helped me get home in one piece. Let's end that story at that.

Mmm, what's next? Ah, I possibly might get really scolded in my fashion construction class. Why? Because unlike the rest of my classmates, I have responsibilities outside of classes, and I'm also taking four classes. There's homework in all but one...no wait! That one has homework too.

So really, do I have time to just waltz to a fabric store? No! Do I need fabric for my next class? Yes! Do I have fabric? Hah, no.

In my defense, I haven't had time since Tuesday, when I got the assignment. On Wednesday, I was grocery shopping and Dad left. And yesterday...well, was a whole new adventure in itself. I tried yesterday but the shop closed a 6! What the heck! *indignant*

Grr.

So I dunno what'll happen today.

SHOOT! And I have to buy cherries and cherry coke. And remember a hat.

Oh holy crapola....

Man, this life just keeps you so busy! And it's not like I slack off, I just...have someone who always needs to know where I am so I try to stick around close. This will change after I get my cell phone replaced. Seriously guys, I need one. And I'd like it to come with texting, because then it'd be easier to contact certain people, including my MPT teacher. Who I love to death already and he recognized me yesterday!

But that is beside the point. I can't leave without that stuff...Shoot.

And yeah, life has just been crazy, so this isn't my fault.

Well, anyways, must go and finish getting ready!

Ciao!

Hello, networld, I'm here now!

2009-06-24T09:46:00.000-04:00

So I figured with a lot of my family and friends wanting to keep up with my art pre-college summer, it's be a good idea to get a blog. I already have several, and I prefer to blog on Livejournal, but that's for completely different purposes and I'd rather use this one for people to follow!

So, an introduction.

Hiya, my name is Lindey Laulusa and I plan on ruling the world!!!

:D

*coughs*

I mean, I'm 17 and heading into the idol industry, not particularly set on any which career, just as long as it has to do with film or fashion. I'm not an 'art' person, meaning I am completely hopeless at the fine arts thingy. Aaah, but I discovered that as long as I'm creative, I should be able to get by without the ability to draw very well.

Anyways, I'm attending the Academy Of Art University's Pre-college summer program, which is basically where high school students take college level art classes. Classes vary from still life painting, to fashion designing, to acting, and etc.

I'm sad that this is the only summer I have to attend the Pre-college program, because it's already blowing me away! I'll have to really decide in the end, but I already have my heart set on attending this college full-time when I 'officially graduate'.

My classes are as follows - Fashion Merchendising, Advanced Acting, Fashion Construction, and Motion Pictures And Television.

Fasion Merchendising is the class where we students discover the techniques of finding, refining, and promoting fashion merchendise. The end goal is to SELL THE PRODUCT, as our instructor has already told us. Our first assignment was to research etsy.com (which my eldest sister adores), and also find a design in a fashion magazine and redesign and reinvent it. I'm pretty nervous about that, since I'm not a good sketcher at all, but I think it turned out really nicely! Sorry, no pictures. I haven't a camera to take one with.

Advanced Acting is, obviously, an acting class. How advanced is it? I can't tell yet. I was really, really nervous at first, because I don't have very much acting experience and I wasn't sure if I'd be up for this class, but I met some of the other students of the class and they were just as nervous as I was! So it's aaaaaaaaall good. :D I think this is my favorite class, because the students really interact with eachother. Seriously, we got together, played an ice-breaker, and BAM! We were all chatting, and laughing, and teasing like we'd known eachother for years. It's a lot of fun, the other kids are fun, and our instructor looks and acts like a slightly grayer haired Steve Carell. Mmmm, I love it!

Fashion Contruction is basically where we learn how to make clothes from the draping process to the actual finished product. Our teacher is funny and has an amusing accent! All of our projects will be handsewn and displayed in the final exhibition. We're making a halter top, an A-line skirt, and a messenger bag. He already said I drape like a costume designer, which made my day!

Motion Pictures And Television is a really interesting class, especially because we exclusively have our teacher as a pre-college class! We're his first and only high-school class and he's freaking awesome! And unlike other MPT teachers, he's a cinematographer, which gives us a completely new and more useful angle into filming a movie. In our first class, he showed us a few of his college class work, and some of it was SO BAD. And they PASSED! Yes, we pre-college students are already bent on proving to be better then them! I have homework to storyboard a 30sec CM, but that's fun too, because I love our idea. *Top Secret*

So those are my classes! I'll be posting in more detail as the weeks go on.

As for the rest of my life? I'm living here with Auntie Helen, who isn't really my aunt, she's my great-aunt. She lives on one of those crazy streets that you see in Princess Diaries, but not the one that the filming actually took place on. The flat is ancient and full of a lifetime of stuff, but I love it. The view from the kitchen and my room has the bay in it and it's just beautiful waking up with the sunrise! The city here is just wonderful, crawling with the most bizarre combination of people. Half the people here speak an Asian language or Spanish as their primary language, unlike moi, who only speaks English. Along with the people, the city itself is a melting pot of old styles and new, combining into a one of a kind city that you won't forget. It's not as crazy as NYC or something like that, but I love this city!

Also, the weather. Mmmmm, the weather. Let me tell you this. No humidity is amazing! Since I've arrived it's been nothing but sunny, breezy bliss. Aaah, heaven has weather like San Fransisco.

Added bonus to being a student. FREE SHUTTLING AROUND THE CITY! I just look up the AAU shuttle schedule and viola! I can get where I want for free. The bus driver who drives me in the morning is really fun. I seem to be the only person he drops off at the main building from his route, so we spent 15 minutes yesterday talking about different food chains and how this coast has Jamba Juice but not Dunkin' Donuts. It was fun.

Well, that's all for the first post! It's longer then I thought it was. I'll try to update daily, but if not, I'll just talk to you when I can! Signing off!

~Lindey