email updates

I’ve been emailing my mom, who has been forwarding the emails to everyone. If you are not on that list, you are welcome to read my email updates here. If you want to be added to the email list, just let me know! Here are the emails, from the first one to the most recent:

5/29/08

Hi!!! I made it to China safely, with absolutely no problems. That direct flight was cake! That’s how traveling to China should always be. The people sitting next to me were a young couple from Allentown, and we had some good conversation. The guy’s brother lives in China (for the past 7 years), so they were going to visit him for the first time. They’ll only be over here for 10 days; I don’t think that’s enough.
I got to New Day around 4:00 I think. I met Caroline and spent the rest of my time with her. I spent about a 1/2 hour with the kids as soon as I got there. And it was absolutely wonderful, of course. Moved into my apartment after we walked around town a bit. Right now I’m the only one living there, but on Sunday another girl is coming, and next Wednesday another one. I couldn’t get my Internet to work last night, so I’m at Caroline’s right now; she’s making breakfast and I’m emailing you. I fell asleep at 8:00 (I fought it until then). I slept hard until 3:00. Then it was on and off until 5:00. I’ve been out of bed since 5. This evening will be fun … hah.
Once I get my Internet working, I’ll email again, with more details of everything.
Have a good night!!!
love,rebekah

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5/30/08

Well, my Internet is working now. It’s DSL, so not quite what I have at school, but it’s still much better than at home! Go figure! I’m really tired right now, so this will be short. Maybe by Sunday I can update you on details. I slept better last night … from 9:00-6:30 straight through. And want to know something funny? I tried uploading the full version of Lost’s finale. Instead of it uploading, I got a message: “Only viewers within the United States can watch these full episodes.” Go figure. I did accidentally watch something called “quick clips,” which gave me a 2 minute long recap of the entire 2 hour finale. So, I do know what happened basically, but it was very condensed.
Anyway. I’m having a great time. The apartment is simple and I like it that way. The water situation has already gotten tricky though. As in, I’m never really guaranteed to have running water. I know that will come back and bite me in the butt a few times this summer. So far it’s only been out when I’ve gone to wash my hands. The day may come when I have shampoo in my hair and try to turn the shower on … that will be fun.
And wow, I’m really tired. Another time I will write something of interest.
love,rebekah

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5/31/08

Alright. I woke up earlier than anticipated. I suppose this is a good time for an email. And mom, I need LOTS of sleep. I love sleep. Once I get on a normal schedule, I’ll be shooting for 8 hours a night.
So, what’s been happening here. Hmm. Caroline and I have hit it off really well. I spend alot of time with her. It’s interesting … she’s very similar to my friends at school, and we have a good bit in common. We even listen to the same obscure music! Today, we (Caroline, Carrie, Jacob, Karen, Byron, Neil, and I) are going to a party hosted by Daxing. That is the district we are living in. We get lunch and get to mingle with the higher ups and be on camera. Yes, my blonde hair has something to do with that, etc, if you catch my drift. Hooray! Afterwards, Caroline and I are spending the afternoon / evening in Beijing. We’re going to go to Wang Fu Jing street (that’s where I bought all my tea last summer). We’ll probably go to the night market as well, which is something I haven’t experienced before, so that should be fun. Apparently, it’s about two blocks worth of street, and it is packed with vendors who sell food on a stick. Anything from fruit to chicken to shellfish to lamb to … starfish. Anything, really. And, we will probably be taking the subway around. That will be a very interesting experience!
Yesterday morning, Kimberly Clark hosted a get together for the kids. Kimberly Clark supplies New Day with lots and lots of supplies. Right now New Day has a year’s worth of diapers from the company. So, we took 19 adults and 19 kids (we were each assigned a kid) to the Kimberly Clark company building. We piled onto two busses. The kids were all dressed up, it was so adorable. Collard shirts and ties and khakis, frilly dresses and lots of bows in the girls’ hair. The party was outside. Karen came and made a speech, as did the CEO or someone higher up in Kimberly Clark, you know, the necessary formalities. And all the staff was outside to play with the kids. I was paired with Adah. She’s living with a foster family right now, and when her foster dad left, she was NOT happy. And she didn’t want anything to do with me (understandable … the last time she and I interacted was almost a year ago. I was not a familiar face). But I took her away from the crowd before we left New Day, and got her to calm down. After that, she was my buddy. She was adorable. She kept talking to me (in Chinese), and on the bus she would repeat words after me, like tree, car, bus, blue, green. When we got to the party, she stuck right with me, clinging on to my hand. The KC staff kept trying to play with her, but she would have none of it. She would ignore them and turn her back. By the end of the time, she did stop ignoring people’s attempts to interact with her, but she wasn’t very open with anyone but me. I think I’ve made a new friend . We got back in time for lunch. The kids were exhausted from playing outside in the sun all morning; most of them fell asleep on the ride back.
My schedule every day tentatively looks like this:
8:00 — arrive, play with the kids in the big downstairs playroom as their nannies get them ready for the day.
8:30 — take the 3-year-olds and older to the preschool
help in preschool until 12:00 (get the 2 year olds at 9:30 so that they can join)
12-1 — lunch break
1:00 — teach English to whomever is around (New Day staff). Yesterday I helped Amy with her english.
various cleaning projects/english teaching/whatever is needed that day until the kids wake up from naps, generally around 3:30
3:30 — play with the kids outside
4:30 — Ben’s enlish lesson (Ben is Samson, the adorable one with all the freckles. He has a family, and they talk on Skype once a week. He’ll be living in Oklahoma!)
5:00 — done. I have the rest of the day to myself.
I each lunch in the cafeteria at New Day. Generally I am eating rice and whatever green vegetable is available that day. If there’s white meat, I buy that too. I haven’t really figured out breakfast or dinner very well yet; I eat those meals in my apartment, and I haven’t ventured out enough to have decent food for meals. I have some fruit and sliced bread and strawberry jam and my Luna bars, and that’s all in my apartment currently. Tomorrow I will fix that, as we will be going to a western style grocery store in the afternoon.
So, it’s been getting chilly in the evening. Go figure. I packed light. Meaning, no long sleeves. No jackets. My flannel shirt is the extent of it, and it’s dirty right now as I traveled in it. It’s not supposed to be chilly in China at the end of May!
The english students had a costume party last night. Very interesting. I wore a skirt and put some braids in my hair and called myself a hippie. Hah.
Tomorrow, another intern is arriving, and Wednesday another one. So, tonight it my last night in my apartment alone. I’m ok with that. However, at one point in time this summer, there will be six of us in here. I don’t know how I feel about that. The last two weeks that I’m here, there’s another intern coming and Caroline said that there isn’t an open apartment at that time, so Caroline was going to have to have her live in her apartment until I moved out of this one. However, Caroline suggested that maybe I move in with her for those last two weeks instead. So, I think that’s what I will be doing at the end of July.
Is this long enough yet? I know it’s long enough for dad. So, I’ll end it now. But, before I end it, this is mostly for mom I suppose:

Philip is still as happy as ever, he laughs at everything. His head looks alot smaller. He’s bonded alot with his foster mom.
Cheryl hasn’t opened up to me much yet. They made her a brace for her leg, so she can walk around just fine. I haven’t really been able to tell her personality yet.
Emily is a wild one. She loves to not listen to what you tell her to do. She likes to cause trouble. They always put her hair in four ponytails. It suits her. She is crazy crazy crazy.
Abigail (Stacy) has been going back and forth between being a girl who doesn’t like to listen, to one who soaks up all the attention you’ll spend on her. She is matched with a family, and yesterday she was carrying around a photo album that they sent to her. It looks like she’ll have alot of cousins who are Chinese.
Evan is alot cuter in person than in his picture. And he is very happy and lovable.
Seth doesn’t look much older to me, but he’s acting alot older. He talks alot (in Chinese). He likes to get under people’s skin occasionally. He is a favorite of most people who are here. A family that Karen knows is very seriously considering his file; we should know within the next few days.
Olivia is a very sad girl. I couldn’t get her to interact with me. I actually only saw her once so far, the first full day I was here. Because later that day she was sent to the hospital because her heart started leaking. So, she is there right now. That day I did see her though, she didn’t smile. She didn’t really interact with the other kids or engage in the activities going on. She sat in the corner very quietly with a frown on her face.
Wendell is adorable and happy and is a people pleaser. So is Cole (Jesse).
Naturally, I’m a bit hooked on Adah right now. She is a very very sweet girl.
Ben (Samson) is still very quiet and seemingly contemplative. He has a digestive problem that I didn’t know about. He threw up four times the other night. And twice yesterday. Apparently it does that in spurts, and more often than not it doesn’t bother him. I haven’t started teaching him yet, because of various things that happened on Thursday and Friday right at the time we were supposed to. I’m excited about it though. He understands english fairly well I think; he responds to me whenever I talk in english to him.
Gabriel is just as adorable as his picture tells. He is easy to make smile also. I got to spend a bit of time with him on Thursday.
Julia is still happy happy happy. And Savannah. Those two are inseperable. They are both so easy to make laugh. And they have amazing bubbly laughs.
Jeremy has become a favorite of alot of people. He loves to be around people and play and laugh.
So, there’s the kids off the top of my head. I know I missed some of them.

Questions, comments, etc … whatever I missed, just ask me. Also, wordpress is not working at all on this connection. Which is weird, because I haven’t had problems with a single other website. Go figure. I put the link to my blog in all the letters I sent out, and told lots of people I’d be updating it while I was here, and now I can’t get to the site and update it. I may have to make another blog on another site, and somehow get the link to the new one on my old one, so that people can redirect themselves.

I suppose this email is long enough. Have a great night!!!
love,rebekah

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6/4/08

Sorry I haven’t emailed in a few days. I’m not even really that busy per se. I wake up at 6:30am most days and don’t need to be at New Day until 8:00 (it’s a 15 minute walk), so I have plenty of time in the morning. I usually spend time making breakfast, and eating it over a book, and check my email and get ready slowly. It’s a good start to the morning. From 8-5 I don’t have time for a computer though. And then I walk back here sometimes, though more often than not I’ve been going into the village after work. And eating food off the street. There’s a vendor who makes the most amazing chicken on a stick. I have got to figure out what seasonings and sauce she uses, it seriously is the best chicken I have EVER tasted. And there’s a restaurant I ate at with more chicken on a stick that is almost as amazing. I ate at the restaurant two evenings ago, and we got 24 chicken on a stick and 10 bbq bread on a stick (good good good sooooo good) and a liter of sprite and one beer (not for me, no worries). Split that between five of us and we all had plenty to eat. And it cost 40rmb total. As in $5.82. I paid 6rmb for my share. 87 cents for a dinner that filled me up entirely, and was extremely tasty. I love China! haha. Oh but the point of that story was that if I go into the village after work, I’ll get back to the apartment around 7:30ish I think. Then I just kind of chill out and write or read or watch a movie until I sleep (bedtime has been around 9:00, though I’m trying to make it later, because 9:00 is not necessary. I just want 8 hours of sleep). Did I ever mention that I’m on the 6th floor? The very top one. I will email pictures of my apartment soon. I walk up 12 half flights of stairs to get to my apartment, after walking 15 minutes from New Day, or even longer from the village. Add that to the amount of food that I ingest on a daily basis, which is generally less than at home. And I still am exercising a bit. Hopefully my clothes still fit me at the end of the summer. I don’t want my pants falling off or anything.
I am THE designated helper for the pre-school every morning. As in, today they needed people to help clean in the morning, so other volunteers who normally help in the pre-school were sent to clean, but Sarah (the pre-school teacher) told me to stay. And, she asks me lots of questions about how her class is being run, and how it can be better, and she asked me to help with lesson plans and such. This is an incredible stretch for me, as I have no idea how to teach younger kids. She gave me a few books about early education that have ideas about crafts and games and etc. I may be sending emails to my friends who are elementary ed. majors to see if they can give me any pointers, because I am really lost when it comes to stuff like that.
Most of the kids have opened up to me now, as I’ve been here for a week at this point. There have been some cute moments. There have been some crazy ones too. I got whacked in the head by a big plastic bar thanks to Wendel (I even have a slight bruise from it). He is a crazy one. Keeping tabs on him is ridiculous, he’s always up and running around to destroy something different every 5 seconds. I am trying very hard to get to know each of the kids. During play time I am trying to be deliberate about not spending time with the same kid every day. I want to get to know each of them and their personalities and I want them to know me too and feel comfortable around me. I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job with that so far.
My third roommate got here today. She’s from Kansas, and she has one semester left at Manhattan Bible College (in Kansas, not New York). She’s sleeping right now. We made her stay up until 8:30. She’ll be working with the school, not the foster home.
My roommate Jovie got here on Sunday. She’s working with Ellie (the nurse) in the foster home.
And in a week or two there are two other girls coming. They are sisters.
I made pasta and sauce for dinner tonight! On Sunday we went to Jenny Lou’s, an international food store. I found organic granola. So for breakfast I’ve been eating granola with fresh mango I buy in the market place (for CHEAP and it’s the best mango I’ve ever eaten) and raisins that I bought at Jenny Lou’s. I also found Newman’s Own tomato sauce. No wheat pasta, unfortunately, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. For the most part I think I’ll just be eating alot of chicken and vegetables, because I can get that all in the village and it’s very inexpensive and very tasty. I think I’ll buy a box of granola whenever I go to Jenny Lou’s, so that I can keep having that for breakfast. Other than that, I’ll be eating lots of stir fry for dinner I think. I bought soy sauce and I’m excited to cut up my vegetables next time I make dinner. And, it’s a gas stove, which is new for me. But I got it all figured out.
Alright, I’m gonna go finish a movie with Jovie. Have a good day!!!
love,me

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6/10/08

Well, quite another few days have gone by I suppose. Things are still going very very well. I did try making stir fry. I learned the hard way that potatos and carrots should probably be put in the pan long before the cucumber and peppers and onions. The potatos and carrots were still a bit raw, but it was good nonetheless.
I am still waking up at 6:30 every morning. And it’s still feels good.
This past weekend was a holiday weekend, the Dragonboat Festival. So, I had off on Monday. Hooray for three day weekends! My roommates and I did some exploring on our own this weekend. I wrote about Saturday’s adventures in my blog, which I hope you are reading, because that’s what it’s there for (rebekahrae.wordpress.com). Monday’s adventures have yet to be written down, so you’re the first to read about them: We went to the Beijing Wildlife Park (different than the Beijing Zoo). Basically, it’s a zoo. But it’s the coolest zoo I’ve ever been to. I have never been so close to some of these animals ever in my life. The animals are in their “natural” habitat, and you walk through plexiglass houses to see them. The monkeys especially were fun, they would chill out right next to the glass and interact with you a bit. Also, we went on a safari ride. For 10 rmb ($1.45) after paying 80rmb to enter the park (11.63), you ride in the bed of a caged truck and are driven through large fields of all different animals. The first habitat we drove through was the bear park. There was a box full of raw chicken right above my head on the outside of the cage. A bear stood on its hind legs to eat it, no more than 15 inches away from my seat. I could have touched it. I did touch some other animals, some type of deer, while I was feeding it carrots and lettuce. I think there where whitetail in the deer park, which I found funny. And, we were the only foreigners, except for one Australian man we ran into once.
I am now the official teacher for the pre-school on their English days. Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was unaware of this until this morning, when Sarah (the teacher) came and found me in the playroom at 8:15 and said “On Tuesdays and Thursdays you can come to the preschool early so that you can prepare your lesson plans.” I was like, what?! So, I taught the preschoolers today. They learned about apples and that you eat them and they are round and the apple we had was green, but there were pictures of red ones. We talked about other things that were round. We rolled balls across the table to each other. We realized that square blocks do not roll. We differentiated between apples and other fruit. We (I) sang the apples and bananas song. And then I ran out of things to do, in 15 minutes. Hooray! Thursday we’ll talk about ants. I’ll be more prepared, since I now have this realization that I am in charge of the lesson plan, instead of a helper to bounce ideas off of.
I have also become Savannah’s private teacher for one hour a day every afternoon. She is 6 years old and can understand English very well. She cannot read, and I do not know how to teach her how to read. She cannot speak in English sentances, and I do not know how to teach that either. And I don’t think the pre-school has the correct books to teach someone these things. Any ideas?!
On Sunday, I bought 9 movies on DVD. I spent 120 rmb. $15.99. I also bought a North Face jacket on Saturday. 170 rmb. $24.71. I looked up my jacket online. I could have bought it for $129 if I wanted to buy it online. Let’s all move to China!
haha. Really though, I am continually having an amazing time here.
Some downsides, because though I am so happy and so content, I’ll give you some reality (it’s not even that bad. There’s nothing terrible here that I’ve experienced.).
1.I want to tell you about Sunday mornings, but (“but” is the unhappy part) my wording should be careful. So, I am playing my violin in the band every Sunday morning. In Beijing! Who would have ever thought!
2. My downstairs neighbors have many boughts of yelling and screaming and other loud noises. I fall asleep to that often. I can hear it right now.
3. Olivia is doing much better physically, but mentally probably not so much (more in the blog).
4. Our hot water in the shower (the only place we have hot water in the apartment, actually) rarely works. The shower rarely has more than a trickle. (I have been thinking more often than ever about cutting my hair off. I almost had myself convinced of it yesterday. But today, before I attempted washing it in the trickle that is our shower, I had it down and looked in the mirror and saw how long it was and immediately changed my mind about cutting it. But I may start thinking about it again, who knows.
Alright, it is time for sleep. Read my blog and comment on it! I like comments, they let me know that people are actually reading it!!
www.rebekahrae.wordpress.com
much love, Rebekah

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6/25/08
I suppose I’ve been doing a better job of keeping in touch with mom than with sending out any emails for her to forward to everyone. So, here is one of those emails! Apparently the last time I sent a big email for all of you was on June 10th. ALOT has happened since June 10th. So here are some stories, in no particular order except that in which I am recalling them.

Teaching is going really well. I am (*gasp*) maybe starting to enjoy teaching? Haha yes. Not that I think I’ll ever do this for anything long term. But it is kind of fun to have the attention of the kids and enlighten them about topics they have never learned before. Ever since the lesson on apples and the next one about ants, we had a lesson about airplanes, one about animals, and yesterday’s was about clowns (which, you can see pictures of the kids’ lovely painted faces on New Day’s site (www.newdaycreations.com/foster) and then click on “scrapbook” on the left-hand side). Sarah, the preschool teacher, asked me to teach about clowns because (I think) there is going to be someone coming to visit in the near future who is going to dress up as a clown for the kids, and Sarah does not want them to be scared. So, I showed them that clowns have red noses and funny hair and they are around so that people will laugh at them, and they are funny. Hopefully the kids took that to heart. I for one think clowns are a bit scary.

Tomorrow (Thursday) I am teaching the kids about the zoo. Before I came here this summer, my wonderful co-workers at work collected money and as a surprise gave me a total of $215 and told me to spend it on the kids. So, on Friday this week, 10 kids and 11 helpers (including myself) are going to the Beijing Wildlife park (since I had such a good time there), and all of the funds for this trip are from the people I work with in Pennsylvania! Talk about awesome! I can’t wait to go with the kids and see how excited they are, and take lots of pictures to show everyone at work. (Kira, you can tell them if you want.)

I’m teaching Savannah English for 1 1/2 hours every day. That is going pretty well. She has gotten a bit more comfortable with me, however, so she doesn’t always listen as well as she used to. But she is a very very very smart little girl (she is 6 years old) and she knows so much more than she lets us know. I’m pretty sure she can understand everything we say around her. So, I am trying to teach her how to read and write. It’s getting more difficult because of her lack of want sometimes, and yesterday my patience was tried to almost its fullest extent (and it takes me a LONG time to get to that point). But, today was better. I just need to keep finding new things to do with her so she doesn’t get bored and instead gets excited about it. And mom put some books in the mail for me to help with teaching Savannah, so I am excited to get those, and I’m sure Savannah will be VERY excited on the day that I go in and tell her that I have brand new books for her to look through and use.

Speaking of, I love to get mail. And my birthday is on July 15th, and I will still be in China then. And I am turning 21 so I don’t need any presents. But, you know, mail in a foreign country could be fun … so, here’s an address, if you care to have it:

New Day Creations
attn: Rebekah Witzer
Qingyundian Township
Daxing District
Beijing, P.R. China 102605

And, of turning 21 and living in a foreign country: I think I might be grown up now. Scary thought? Yes. You see, I cut off alot of hair. I feel like that in itself is part of growing up. Maybe I look older with shorter hair (but then again maybe not). But you know what else? I’ve stopped biting my nails (finally)! I don’t know why and I don’t know how. But I haven’t bitten my finger nails even once since I’ve gotten here. And that is a habit I can’t remember ever not having. And the other day, I had to use fingernail clippers on my fingernails. I seriously think that is the first time I have EVER done that. And I know that may be a bit gross to some of you. Because why would a 20-year-old still be biting her nails? Oh well. I’ve stopped now. And, fyi, I know some adults who still bite their nails. Like, 40+ year old adults. It’s not uncommon. But maybe I’m done with it. So there’s that revelation.

Olivia is back in the foster home. And she is all smiles and just as cute as she looks in her pictures on the website. I haven’t really gotten to interact with her, but she is already a favorite of mine. I’m hoping to be able to get to know her like I have the other kids in this last month. (Wow, one month is out the door. I’ve been in China for four weeks. Crazy!)

There are now 5 of us living in this apartment. This is fine, because we’re really only here at night anyway. It does give me less time to be on the Internet, but I could do good to spend less time online anyway. This also means the bathroom gets crowded in the morning. That’s something I have yet to get used to. And there will be six of us here in a week or so. However, on July 10, there is another intern coming that would make 7 of us in the apartment, and they don’t do that to the interns, they keep it at a maximum of 6 people. So, Caroline asked me if I’d like to move in with her for the last few weeks of my time here. So, I’ll be living on the first floor of a two bedroom apartment with only one roommate for the last part of my trip. Nice. No more stairs to climb (although, I think those stairs are doing me alot of good).

I am becoming a cook. Really. I made homemade salsa, and it tastes good! And, it cost me less than a dollar for all the ingredients I used (3 tomatoes, 1 onion, crushed red pepper, cilantro, and 1 chili pepper). Too bad making it at home would cost much more than that. It wouldn’t even be worth it at home, I think. Ok so maybe that’s the only thing I’ve made, besides pasta and stir fry, but it’s a start. I may as well keep experimenting here, since the food at home is so expensive in comparison.

Last weekend a few of us went out shopping. We went to IKEA, which I have never been before, and now I need to find the closest one to home because it is the best home furnishing store ever. It has everything! And then we went to the Yashow market, which I’ve decided is my favorite market here. I need to go back and finish up my gift shopping there before I leave. I also got a pedicure and an upper body massage. For $10.18 total. This Friday night I am going to the Hot Springs in Long Shi (I think I spelled that wrong) and will be sitting in various scented hot springs and perhaps getting another massage. All for less than $20. You know, I think I could get used to this. Hah.

I suppose this is long enough. I updated my pictures and my blog recently. In case you haven’t checked it out, go to www.rebekahrae.wordpress.com. And there are links to my pictures on my blog.

I think I probably forgot a lot of what I meant to type in this email. Oh well.

love,Rebekah

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7/5/08
So another week has passed, and there have been some fun adventures. While I am writing this, you are all probably out and celebrating the fourth of July somewhere. I’ve already been there, done that, as it is 9am on Saturday right now. I suppose I’ll relay the week’s events backwards:

Friday, the 4th of July, I participated in two separate celebrations. The first one of the day was one I planned, along with my roommate and co-intern Lauren. It was for the pre-school. We taught their lesson on how Americans celebrate this holiday. They learned about flags and the colors red, white, and blue. We helped the older kids make hats out of newspaper and decorate the hats with red and blue foam shapes. When all the kids were together, they all decorated their own flags with red and blue stripes and gold star stickers. (The gold star stickers were mailed to me by my mom last week. I love getting mail!) After the kids finished their flags, everyone piled outside and wore their newspaper hats and held their flags and we handed out noise makers and gold streamers and then we paraded the kids around the backyard and into one of the offices, making lots of noise and emoting lots of excitement. The kids loved it! (And I had a pretty good time myself.)

The second celebration was yesterday evening. There is a group here from LA right now, and they planned a true American party and invited all the Chinese staff and students to join us. So there was a barbecue with hamburger and hot dogs (I ate a tomato sandwich), and potato chips and watermelon and corn on the cob and peach cobbler and rice krispy treats (I did, however, eat my peach cobbler with chopsticks). We had a water balloon toss and water balloon volleyball, we played musical chairs and had a toilet paper relay, we danced to the Macarena and electric slide and chicken dance and hokey pokey and cha cha slide and YMCA. And we made all the Chinese students join in on the dances and games. It was so much fun. And, naturally, the evening was ended with fireworks. Chinese fireworks on the 4th of July!

After the party we invited some of the students over to our apartment. I stayed up later that I have yet since I’ve gotten here (midnight … woohoo! hah), and had such a good time. We taught them how to play spoons (a fantastic card game), and just had fun joking around with them. We made a deal that whoever lost at spoons had to dance for everyone, and funny enough, both of the guys who were here lost at the same time. So one sang and one danced. Good times all around.

Thursday was a normal day, except we had a hot pot party after work. Hot pot is one of my favorite things here in China, though I’ve only had one hot pot experience that I’ve absolutely loved, and that was last summer. So far this summer I’ve had hot pot twice, and neither time was amazing. But there are some students and staff here who apparently like hot pot, and they like it the way I like it (SPICY), so hopefully we’re all going to go out and get some good hot pot in the near future. Wednesday was also the same, except we had a Jiaozi (dumpling) party after work. I learned how to fold the dumplings and also how to make the dough and cook them, so I’m hoping to try my hand at making people homemade dumplings when I get home, they are really easy, and they are so good. Tuesday was a normal day of work, as was Monday. Sunday was a most excellent day. It started out in Beijing and there was a choir of students from Australia who sang at the service! Hooray for Australian accents. We ate at a Tex-Mex style restaurant and went to Tom’s DVD shop, where my roommates bought season four of The Office (yeah, that’s not exactly out on DVD yet … maybe it’s very noticeable that it was recorded during the television airings). We just finished watching the season last night. That’s 6 DVD’s worth of TV. What am I doing with my time, you ask? Haha. We’re going to start watching Lost tonight, as one of my roommates has seasons 1-3. Sunday night, my roommate Jovy and I were invited to Sarah’s (preschool teacher) house for dinner. We got to meet her two-year-old boy, Eric, who was very very cute, and her neighbors. We watched some Tom and Jerry with her son. Sarah made us hot pot (which was good, it just wasn’t as amazing as I remember from last summer), and we all talked for a while, and then her neighbor was outside playing his guitar, so we all went out there and played music together. I played a Pink Floyd song for them, haha. Sarah and GanLu sang some worship songs in Chinese, and some of them were recognizable, so we sang along. We ended the evening singing Amazing Grace in both languages simultaneously. So wonderful. That was such a good night.

So, there was my week.

Might I add here that Sarah so slyly let me know on Sunday that she is leaving for vacation. Actually, now she’s already left. What exactly does that mean? Let me tell you: For the next two weeks, I am the preschool teacher. Not the helper, not the assistant, not the ayi, not the girl who plans two lesson plans a week and teaches them and then steps back and lets the teacher do the rest of the scheduling. Nope, that’s not me anymore. I am IT. Luckily, Lauren is here. So we are slightly tag-teaming it. But Sarah left telling me that she has confidence that I would do great. Apparently she’s able to go on this vacation to visit her family on the sole reason that I am here. She said that she can’t ever take a trip because there aren’t other people who can take over her job. So, I am very happy to be able to be a part in Sarah having the opportunity to visit her family for a little while. I didn’t, however, ever expect that coming to China this summer meant that I’d become a preschool teacher. I did ask to learn this summer, and to be stretched. I suppose HE knows what He’s doing J

Happy Fourth of July!

love, Rebekah

ps. I started biting my nails again. Oh well.

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