no, the table didn't break the toaster

Wan shang hao! Today has been one of the worst/funniest/longest/most stressful days in China so far. Hold on tight, kids.
But before we begin, I’ll tell you a little bit about the latest picture album: I love my job. And I really do.
1. Epic. Adorable. 2. Corned beef obviously. I’ve been stressing about the fact that I won’t be able to have it on St. Patrick’s Day here. Good news: I found some. That doesn’t mean I’ll be eating it though. Maybe I’ll just buy it and dye it green. That’s festive enough. 3. My favorite British cereal. 4. I just thought the ketchup bottle was cool. 5. They didn’t even have a boy’s choice. It was weird. 6. Abby’s interesting pastry that had sesame seeds in it. It was bought from an Italian pizza place in Zhongshan. They’re starting to get really confused about their ethnicity. 7. Me and Abby…so excited for pizza! 8&9. Pizza! Delicious. 10. Fefe. 11. Shane. He’s also on my favorite list. 12. Fefe. 13. My Roman. 14. Jay. Ok so I actually love all of them a lot. 15. Shane again. 16. Haniel. Such a cheeky little boy. He yells “bu yao” at me all the time and then laughs and runs away. 17. Fefe. 18. Shane, just being adorable. 19. Roman. 20. Abby and our cute friend, Candy. 21. Shane. We were making moroccos with toilet paper tubes. He was more interested in just looking through them. 22. Me and Roman. 23. Kevin. 24. Joyce. 25. Umm Joyce again :) 26. Abby and Terrance. 27. Abby and Emily. 28. Jay. 29. Jim! I love him too. He always looks so angry. But he laughs all the time. It’s funny. 30. Haniel. 31. Justin. He has a bit of a crush on me. It’s so cute! At least it makes him well-behaved in my class. 32. Jerry. Such a ham. 33. Aiden. 34. Belinda and Ada. 35. Again with Abby. 36. Carson causing havoc as usual. It’s a good thing he’s cute and so sensitive so it makes me feel guilty if I get mad at him. 37. Purple and Josh. 38. Me, Aiden, and Purple. 39. Abby and some Chinese children we found on the street. 40. Aiden and his heart. We made it together. 41. I love them all. Aiden, Josh, and Justin. 42. Me, Purple, and Belinda. Belinda grabbed the camera at the last second and ended up getting cut out of the picture. I had to put it on because my mother doesn’t appreciate not seeing any pictures of me. There you go mommy. 43. Jack. Small, adorable child. He would easily fit in my carry-on. 44. Dave. 45. Jordan. Such a stud. 46. Andy. 47. Jack. 48&49. Me and Fefe. 50. Me and Kevin. 51. Abby and Kevin. 52. Again, laughing this time. I thought it was cute. 53. For a Red-Sox-fan friend of mine. All I have to say is I don’t see any of your team anywhere in China. Yankees are superior. 54. FHE with my flatmates. 55. We were laughing. 56. Quite a bit. 57. At our school with Sarah and Abby. 58. In front of our school bus. 59. Epic. 60. At the other school where we eat dinner. The one that feels like a prison. 61. Me and Abby singing in front of the travel agency for about a hundred Chinese people.
Wow, 61 pictures. That is many. Sorry.
Let’s have a little looksie at this long day of mine.
When I got to school in the morning, I had a wonderful notice that my Visa card had been put on hold. The one that I had just used to book two flights and a hostel. Apparently they were afraid it was a fraud matter because the charges were coming from China. Never mind that I live in China and informed my bank that I would be doing so until June of 2010. Silly bank. So they gave me three different phone numbers I could call to settle the matter. None of them worked from China of course.
Then I got to run off to classes. We were making painted toast. And the toaster broke. Thank goodness I was team teaching with Abby and we actually ended up having a lot of fun with it, blaming it on each other and letting the children take sides. They ended up deciding the fault was either both of ours, or the table’s. We’ll let it take the blame.
To add to it all, I’ve just been missing home a bit today. I think it was all the country music. If you ever want to feel American in China (and all the people staring at you and asking if you’re American isn’t working), listen to country music.
Here’s where it all turns around. I’d like to thank my parents for instilling a good sense of humor in me so that I was able to laugh at most everything that was going wrong. Even if it was through sarcasm. But really, the tender mercies were abundant. I can’t even count how many times I prayed in between classes, and everything worked out. A very nice man at the bank fixed everything for me and I’m still going to Beijing. Abby is one of the happiest people I know and team teaching with her today made it so much easier considering how much was on my mind. Those cute kids pretty much made me forget about everything anyway. It’s just amazing how many small things you can find each day to remind you how beautiful the world is and how much God loves you.
After school, Abby, Jillian and I went to the One Plus One Market. While she was waiting for Abby and I, an old man walked up to Jillian and poked the oranges she had just bought. He didn’t actually say anything but he hinted that she had done a nice job picking them out.
A very official man in somewhat of a green coordinated outfit (if you know what I’m saying) stood about six inches behind me in the queue. I was terrified.
On the bus ride home, an older man got on and sat right in front of us. At the same time, Abby and I turned to each other and said he smelled like Café Rio. We miss it so much. Turns out he just smelled like garlic. Really strong garlic. And it was definitely him because the smell left immediately after he got off the bus.
This evening, we had a bit of a dance party with Sir Mix-A-Lot. Abby knocked off the internet router as usual. But the best part followed with a bit of techno. A choreographed dance: big fish little fish big fish little fish cardboard box cardboard box shopping bag shopping bag looking through the wardrobe looking through the wardrobe beating heart beating heart climb up the flag pole climb up the flag pole bucket BAM bucket BAM. That’s how we do it in China.
I’m sorry this has been quite incoherent. I really don’t know how to bring it all together though. Just thought I’d share a bit of our culture.
Till next time…