Christy, Jana, and I at May 4th Square on our bicycle built for 3

On a Bicycle Built for 3!

Yesterday was Jana's birthday! To celebrate we took her around the city and came across a 3 person bicycle!!! (san ge ren zixingche) We decided to give it a try... It was SO hard! The bike was pretty old and both tires were flat. It was almost impossible to steer... I thought for sure we were going to crash, but once we got going, we did alright:)

On another note... I got to talk to one of my favorite profs from IWU last night! I finally caught her at home!!! It was a lot of fun catching up with her and filling her in on some of the happenings here. She too, had the pleasure of hearing the "dying chicken squawk!" Lately whenver I call people, my phone makes this horrible squawking noise on the other end, just fuzz on my end...

This weekend, my roommate, 3 of our friends, and I have booked a night at the Crowne Plaza!! ( a 5star hotel! ) It should be a fun night of swimming, bowling, games, food, etc... more on that later!

Embarrassing moment/culture stress....

Last week Christy and I went grocery shopping at Jusco. An average weekly grocery cost is about 250 RMB. We brought 300 from our grocery fund. We got to the checkout counter and when the final total came up it was 460 rmb!! We went through our wallets and realized we only had a total of 400 rmb. We handed back items that added up to 60 rmb and said "bu yao" (don't want... ) The cashier took 2 of the items off and then called her manager. When her manager came, she cancelled our whole order... 2 carts full of bags and said that we would have to start over! We told her that we had "mei you shijian" (no free time...) ,"bu yao" and "duibuqi" (sorry) and left... we felt kind of bad, but we didn't have time for her to run everything through again... We decided that we would go out for sushi and starbucks and just laugh about it .... our quote "sushi makes everything better...."definitely applied! The only problem was that when we went to our cupboard the next morning to get something, there was nothing to make! ah! so we made another quick trip to Jusco and were careful not to go over our limit.. we were also careful not to go back to the same cashier....

My beautiful class

Field Trip to the Aquarium

This week is no text book week at school. This means that teachers cannot use any textbooks when planning their lessons. So... my TA's and I decided that it would be a perfect time to plan our first field trip! We left the school at 8:30 and headed to the Underwater World. We saw jars of various once living sea life...Once inside we were able to stand on a conveyor belt that took us through the aquarium. We ended in a big room with a huge tank filled with fish. The students were able to watch the sharks and other fish in the tank be fed by a man in scuba gear. The man even did a few tricks with the fish. There was even a lady dressed up as a mermaid! Afterwards we took the students to the Yong Li Restaurant for some Chinese food.

-->squid in a jar

Julia, Ms. Wu, Sara, and Annie at the Yong Li

Me, as a beautiful blonde mermaid

Morning Beauty View on our way to the bus stop!

Growing Pains...
This year has been a growing one for me in mnay ways! I though I would share a few examples of how I have grown...

Living on the opposite side of the world in a new culture has provided me with many growing opportunities. Not only do I need to learn my way around a city that has 7 million people in it.... compared to a couple thousand in Houlton, I need to learn a new language in order to communicate with the people... this language is a very difficult language to learn! Living here has definitely made me be more dependent on people than I am used to, but has also made me more independent in other areas of my life. My lanugage studies are coming along... taking 4 hours/week now! One hour a week is dedicated only to Han zi (chinese characters!) There is still so much to learn... this is an area where I am growing in independence but often need to depend on other staff members to help me with simple tasks such as going to the music store to buy a violin string or to repair my violin bow. (yes, my violin bow! I brought my violin over with me after Christmas and when I opened my case, the bow was broken... all the hair was completely detached on one end from the bow... not a good thing! )
Probably the biggest two areas that I have grown in are below:
This past Friday it was my turn to lead the elementary chapel...which of course put me into a mini panic attack! We all know how much I dislike speaking in front of large groups of people! It would have been fine if there were no adults in the room, but that would leave me with about 60 kids whose names I do not know, so I kind of needed the adults to be there! I found out about 2 minutes before that their was no one to do the music section of chapel b/c our music teacher was away at a basketball tournament, which only added to the stress I was feeling! Luckily, Kris came up with a few songs! Then I was on! I did a short lesson on sin and forgiveness using Pepsi, buttons, and a pitcher of water. I had the students name sin that is in our life and then place a button in the cup of pepsi to represent our sin. The buttons sink to the bottom, where no one can see them, but as always sin has a way of eventually coming back to the surface, and within a few seconds, the buttons pop up to the top of the cup... We then talked about what we can do when we sin which is to ask our father to forgive us. The pitcher of water represented our father and how when we ask him for forgiveness he can make us clean again. I then poured the water into the cup with the pepsi to displace it and turn it clear... ! Overall I think the chapel went ok, although I am not signing up to do another one this year! But I did survive... with only a little help from my "pink" friend...(Tammi, you are probably one of the few who will be able to appreciate the pink friend!)

This year I have also had to meet once a week with a yarp-ing partner (I got the word yarp from Megan!! and like it much better then Ppartner or thinking...) This means that at least once a week I have to yarp out loud! This is a very BIG, maybe I should say HUGE accomplishment for me! I still don't volunteer to yarp aloud in small groups, but taking steps to work on this! Maybe one day yarp-ing aloud will not cause me a mini panic attack! :)

Buy me a man Fund....

Tonight ( a School night! as Christy would say... we are not old fogies! ), myself and 3 other single girls went to this fun little restaurant called La Villa to celebrate Women's Day. La Villa was hosting a night of live music, specialty drinks (I got a virgin pina coloda...for FREE!!), and an auction... of MEN!! Woo Hoo! So, we stayed until we saw the auctionees introduce themselves (favorite quote- I called my mom and asked her why she give me such an ugly face... no one will buy me.. so she gave me money and I buy drink!) and their talents (which weren't too impressive- the chinese one sang a chinese song and played the guitar (the only real talent), the UK and US kicked a soccer ball, the Italian spoke in Italian, and the vietnamese took off his top shirt...) and then left! There was a chinese, vietnamese, English, American, and Italian up for auction. We weren't intending to bid on anyone, but thought it might be fun to watch.(The winner got a date with the bachelor and a free meal at a restaurant... all the money went to a charity here in China. ) When we got up to leave and pay for our bill, the american that was up for bid tried to stop us from leaving... apparently we were the only single girls there! He then went and got the organizer to come to us and she asked us to stay. We explained that we had to teach the next morning and that we needed to leave... She told us they promised to start the bidding after the next song... we still left! We didn't bother to tell them that we never really planned on bidding... When we got into the taxi we realized that it probably looked like we saw what was up for bid and then left... which made us laugh:)

I guess it is good to know that if I go without a date, I can always buy one!!! ;) So, if anyone wants to make contribution to the Buy Erica a Date Fund so that I can afford to bid... you know where to find me!!!

Questions...

Last week in Book my students finally started asking questions! So, I decided to post some of my favorites...

My top faves are:

Why you can do everything?

Why God has 2 names?

Where are you?!

Why did you make me naughty?

Do you have friends?/Who is your friend?

Why is your name G?

Why G- doesn't have a wife?

What is your mom's name? What is your dad's name?

Why do you like us?

Do you like hotdogs?

Anyways, thought they were cute...

Jana, me, Charles, Kathleen, and Diana

SKIING?!?!?

First off I would like to apologize to Michelle for giving her a hard time about her (former?) website. I used to always tell her she needed to update... now, I am the one who is horrible at updating! Sometimes I wonder if anyone even bothers to check!

I am unable to view my site and until last weekend didn't know it was possible to have comments made sent to my email account! so now if you all leave comments I can at least see them! I miss reading everyone's blogsites! Guess I will just have to wait until summer to catch up on everyone's lives!

and now for the real reason of this blog.... SKIING! I finally went skiing! Being from Maine, you would think that I would have already tried, but I hadn't! (Which you can tell by looking at the next picture...)

I didn't make it very far! It took some serious skills to get back on my feet again! I did eventually make it to the top of the hill... fell again, but it was for the last time! I had a few successful times down the hill and then it was time to head back! And just to prove it... here is me riding to the top of the hill.... and me skiing down the hill! It was a very small hill, but good to learn on. Maybe next year I can try some bigger slopes! I think I found a new winter sport to love:)

Jana (pronounced Yawn- na) (student teacher from IWU who is staying with us) and I before our skiing adventure began! Jana was the only experienced skier in our group. She had the task of teaching all 4 of us how to ski!

After dinner, we all went out to eat.. I now have a new food to add to my list of interesting foods I have eaten since moving to China... Added to duck, donkey and camel meat is.... lamb's head! well, actually it is soup made by boiling a lamb's head! I was not aware of this when I tried it! I learned what I had eaten during my chinese class when I learned how to order different soups in Chinese... my teacher than proceeded to tell me how this special chinese soup was made!!! So, I guess I am not quite as picky as I used to be... I have not, however, tried these... duck heads, also a dish at the restaurant we were at....

Quotes of the week...
" He already knows my name, He knows my every thought, He sees each tear that falls, He hears my every call...." - don't remember the name of the song, but heard it last Sunday and really liked it...

Recently been reading Experiencing G- for my morning readings. Would definitely recommend reading it sometime!

When he speaks to you it is always for a purpose...

Make a habit of taking every word from him seriously, knowing that it is able to judge your heart and mind...

Big assignments require big characters. You will be giving responsibilities in propotion to our character...

hmmm.. there were a lot more quotes that I would like to add, but can't!