Jessica Erin

Xi'an Vacation

2009-04-10T03:09:00.001-07:00

So i made it safely home thank goodness... this vacation was quite an experience for me. We had a group of 5 people going to Xian, it was nice to have a smaller group for once. we left on friday the 3rd for the bus station where we were going to catch a bus to the Guangdong Airport.. after a 2 hour bus ride we came to the Airport and stayed the night their because it was so far away from anywhere to stay at and our flight left at 7am.... well that was a rough night i slept on a hard tile floor with cock roaches YUMMY!!!

We Finally made it to Xi'an we checked into our hostel and all showered and got ready for the day we were walking around town trying to find somewhere to eat.... Guess what i found?!?!?! A FREAKING SUBWAY!!!!! i was so excited to eat their and i thought i would never say that lol JK I love subway.... so that their make my day. then we just walked around and went to some cool shopping places. then we headed in for the night....

On Sunday went on a tour to go see the Terracotta Warriors... it was AMAZING! it is one of the seven wonders of the world and i got to see it.... As you can tell i fell in love once again with this amazing guy lol Just kidding this is a replica of a Terracotta Warrior... while we were seeing the Warriors dont worry i
asked for not even kidding like 10 pictures of me with people... i thought it would not be as bad being in a touristy place but dont even worry it was worse. HAHA so Jodi and i ended up going to hide in a corner so people couldnt find us and ask for our pictures... that was about all we did on Sunday!!!

Monday Rolls around and Jodi and i didnt have much planned we were planning on just relaxing and doning vacation things not being busy all day long.... we ened up hanging out all day long with this Guy we met in our Hostel his name is Micheal(Micky). It was most likely the most fun day i have had here in china surprisingly.... Micky took Me and jodi out to go bike around the city wall that was an amazing sight. it is one of the only city walls left here in china. of couse being me and jodi we decided to rent a double seater bike. it was a freaking blast... Micky and i pulled a joke on jodi, micky slowed down and grabbed on to our basket in the back and stopped peddeling then i stopped peddeling... it didnt take jodi long to notice dang it!!! lol but it was alot of fun untill we tried to grab onto mickys bike that didnt turn out as planned we ended up catching tires and fell over it was way funny all 3 of us were on the ground laughing our butts off... while we had ourselves a little croud watching us.... after we got the bikes untangled we noticed that out double seater bike was making a weird clicking noise... oh well we just turned in the bike and ran as fast as we could before the people noticed something wrong with it....

After that little adventure Micky took us to this awesome Carnival.. Micky paid for us to get these awesome kites and go on these bumper water boat thingys it was a blast... we tried to fly our kites for hours and jodi was the only one who could semi get her kite up and flying....

That night we attemped to go see this awesome water show at the big Goose Pagota but we got on the wrong bus and ended up taking a taxi and showed up right after it ended so we (me jodi and micky) made our own fun we went puddle jumping we were soaked from the knees down it was awesome.... then we were waking and got this brillent idead to get our pictures drawn at this place on the street.... HAHA it was so funny we got a insight of how the chinese people see us... as you can see we look just alike dont you think???? HAHA NOT.... we sat their for at least 2 hours having this guy draw our faces and we thought it was going to be like this glamorous picture. at the end he made us close our eyes and then he would show us. when he uncovered the picture it took me everything i had to not laugh at it... it didnt look a thing like us it was freaking Hilarious... of course we had to buy it so their is mostly our vacation rolled up in a little tortilla for yall!!!!

My family away from Home!!!

2009-03-25T00:05:00.001-07:00

Here's My family away from home.... They are loads of fun... Even though we cant really talk directly to them... They help me feel a little of home here in china. Its amazing we go over to their house every Friday night to have a big family dinner. Its lots of fun i get to learn how to make some kick butt Chinese meals. Even though Me and Jodi aren't Chinese they consider us part of the family now!!! PS. This is Larwence this is the only picture he will let us take with him... But he is our Chinese Dad... FYI

We just gave our Chinese family English names so.... Andy is the boy in the gray and orange jacket, Amy is next to him then me(duh) behind me is Jo and his wife next to me is Sarah, then grandma Becky, Jodi, (momma) Christen, then Kim and her husband Mark!!! A little about our family here Ummmm.... Kim is the one who is teaching me how to cook she cooks for the family every night she is amazing and really fast. her Husband Mark had a wife before but got divorced and that is his son Andy... Andy is 14. then there is Amy she is the only child her mom and dad are Jo and Sarah... Jo has Amy in English lessons every Saturday, but Amy is to shy to talk to us in English... oh well i hope before we leave that she will warm up to us and practice her English with us.... so their is a little about our family... i will keep you up dated on them!!!

Guilin/yangshuo vacation

2009-03-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

So Yangshuo and Guilin was the most beautiful place i have yet to see here in china...

Me and Jodi had a really fun time their... their were tons of things to do their! we took our 13 hour sleeper but to Yangshuo. we got to our hostel at about 5:30 or 6 ish in the morning. we were still
wasted and just wanted to go back to bed but the funny thing is that only one room was ready... we had 17 people and 8 beds between all of us.... on top of all that it was freezing cold. so knowing me i just climbed in a bed and 3 girls followed so as you can tell their was some MAJOR SPOONAGE going on that first morning in Yangshuo...

Later that day we got to ride bikes and go see around the country side of Yangshuo for half a day....That morning it hadnt warmed up at all. we walk out side and expect it to be warm because the sun is out and it is freezing cold.... STILL...... after we got frozen and passed that stage things started to warm up.

I loved the mountains their. not like you cant see that already but it was so awesome it was just tons of tall rounded hills everywhere... it is so pretty. After we rode our bikes around we ended up at this awesome water/mud cave thing... Yangshuo is famous of its water cave and mud cave... we get to the cave and on the boat that takes us in and we never realized what we had gotten our selves into... out Chinese tour guide was so weird its made the cave so worth all of the money....

Funny story....
We were walking through the cave looking at the awesome rocks and all that jazz when the guide stated telling us these really funny things like. "look at that rock it looks like a Beautiful woman washing her hair..." or something like"It is a man fishing... all the fish he ever caught are around him in the heavens..." the funnest one is,"Look at this hand it is a hand with 2 thumbs..." it just got even more funny as the tour went on.

At the end of our hilarious tour the guide took us to this awesome Mud Whole thingy... it was so much fun, if you can already see lol we all werent afraid to get dirty... well most of us lol their was a few of people who didnt really want to but they didnt have any other choice. Mud was flying everywhere and people i got mud in every place you can think of my ear, nose, mouth, eyes, hair, down my pants(thanks to Jodi) and anywhere else you can think of... it was a freaking blast i loved it so much...

After the mud part of our tour they directed us to this hose... they told us we had to wash off all the mud before we could go to hot spring in the cave... OMG!!! that hose is the coldest water i think i have ever showered in i am not even lying. good thing i got it all off in one shower time, most people kept getting sent back to the hose because they werent clean enough yet...

After everyone was finally cleaned off we got to go to the Hot Springs. WOW those were amazing after taking a cold shower... i was finally able to relax and enjoy being warm for about 30 minutes then we got kicked out by another group... oh well

So thats my First day in Yangshuo... I will post the other 2 days later!!!!

13 hour Sleeper Bus? no way!

2009-03-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ok so we all get to the bus station and we are so not looking forward to the 13 hour bus ride on a bus... then we finally got to get on the bus and we found out that we found out that we scored big time with a sleeper bus. It was an amazing experience. Got to sleep next to this creepy Chinese guy. He has some killer earing's, and kept on trying to kill me with eyes... to make this 13 hour trip more exciting, the bus driver always had a cig. in his mouth i swear every 20 minutes. it was horrible i couldn't breath sometimes the smell was so Strong! The good side of the bus was the beds. I am not kidding you they were the most comfortable beds i have slept in, for 2 1/2 months. They were amazing. The movies they played on the bus were freaking funny. You can so tell they were Chinese movies. (this on is for kevin.) The movie they played on the way home was like 1 hour of little kids Farting it was so FunnY! I got this wonderful idea to ask them to play a DVD we got on the TV's so we could watch a movie in English. The bus driver didn't have a DVD player but they did have a list of American movies. it was amazing. So their is my Chinese sleeper Bus Story!!!

THE END...

Ghetto parts of China!

2009-02-24T05:09:00.000-08:00

We met these amazing Chinese people who lived in Cali. for thirty years and now have moved back to there home town in China. today they showed us the most amazing place... they called it "The real parts of china" that we don't see in the town that we live in... the place we went to is this 80 year old apartment in the ghetto's of Zhongshan. Here are a few pictures of the apartment we went to see...

This is a picture of the kitchen that they cook in... the Kitchen and the bathroom are not part of the same building as the actually apartment. first cuz they smell so badly and secondly when anyone cooks in the kitchen the whole area is covered in black smoke. they light the stove with cardboard boxes. that is how they cook everything in the ghetto's of china. Or you could say the old fashion way of doing it.

This next picture if the front door to the apartment we went to... if you look at the door it isn't really closed off from the outside you can see in through the bars. at the top of the door the people told us that those are wooden bars to keep people from getting into your house. you can totally see straight everything inside. the part that you see right behind me is a metal gate i guess you would say that part kinda keeps out stray animals and rats and so forth...

seeing these parts of china really humble me and make me appreciate what i have been given here in china and even more the life style i have at home.

The Wonderful Kids i Teach!!

2009-02-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

This is me and Greta she is a handful... she likes to hang on you and she love English class she is always intrested in what we are doing and she is one of my best students and this is only her first semester in the ILP program.

Me and my favorite student once again me and Elizabeth she is so adorable.

This is my opening calss it is half of the kindergarden class we teach... they are so cute but all thogether they are a pain in the bumm but in the end it is so worth all the stress and sweat i put into teaching these kids to see the love and kindness they returne to me and all the other teachers...

This is Kali and Elizabeth they are so cute but together they both are a big hand full... Elizabeth is my lil helper she is the nicest and i would say my favorite but its hard to tell now... Kali is a hand full i am not going to lie he like to show off to all the girls and practice is pokemon moves on them its really funny...

This on is for you mom.... Her name is Tiffany everytime i see her i think of you even though she is a lil 3 year old girl and Chinese its just her name that really reminds me of you! she is so cute and really quiet its so hard to get her to talk english but thats ok her adorable-ness makes up for it all...

Were China Celebrities!

2009-02-13T03:21:00.000-08:00

So funny story... Jodi and I were bored one day and decided to go out with our Chinese interpreter. we went to this memorial of Mr.Zhongshan the city i live in is named after him. So anyways, we were just taking pictures then Gloria the Chinese interpreter we were with came up to us and told us some people wanted pictures of us with them. So we took one then the people started a line to get pictures with us... Its kind cool i am not going to lie! so after a few pictures Gloria took us to this place were we wouldn't be bugged she got way annoyed of it i am guessing... But Ya It feels good to be a Celebrity here i am not going to lie!!!

Another celebritie event...

it never stops. we were riding our bikes along the sidewalk in Guilin. We stopped at this bridge and a big group of people stopped and asked us to get their picture with them!! haha

Every body likes Chicken! Right?

2009-02-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

This is for all you people that don't think i am going to eat crazy stuff here in china. So i will tell you all i did eat it. I will say don't judge the taste of it by the way it looks. It is very hard to pick up with chopstick's. The first time i tried to pick it up i dropped my chicken foot and screamed way loud because it looks creepy. The chicken foot really tastes like chicken its amazing. accept it has tons of bones and ligaments in it... other then that its fine.

The best teachers of FUNNY faces..

2009-02-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

So when we went to dinner today to kinda meet all the teachers from around the cities close by we sat by this girl named Olive. After dinner we were way bored so Jodi and i started to take pictures of us. Olive stared laughing at us and told us we are the geniuses of Funny faces. So we showed her how to make a "GRRR" Face and she wouldnt stop laughing. Her laugh made us laugh even harder.

Finally we found it... The Hong Kong Temple

2009-02-04T04:38:00.000-08:00

Ok so this is a way funny story, we

finally made our way through all the subway transfers we make it to Cornwall street. that was as far as our directions took us to... so we hike up this way steep hill then figure out it was going no where! so we turn around and guess what.... the temple was like 2 blocks away from where we oringally started from... so thats our journey to find the Hong Kong Temple!

Hong Kong

2009-02-04T02:43:00.000-08:00

This is me using my first squatter!!!