Week One

I officially have been in China for a week.. and a couple of days!  Not going to lie, it has been a long week but I have already had some fun adventures!  The weather is FREEZING here.  I have worn the same rain jacket everyday and totally didn't pack a real coat.  We don't have heating in our apartment or at the school.  To make things even more cold, the teachers at the school keep all the windows open.  They believe that they need to let clean air in to clear out the rooms.  When I teach though, the first thing that I do, is shut the windows!  I hope I don't go to jail or anything because of it.  The water in our apartment is also really cold, and so taking a shower is not fun.  We are all hoping that the weather will start to get warmer!  I think by Wednesday the weather should start to clear up. 

I got assigned to teach Grade 1 at the Kaiyin School.  The students in Grade 1 are between the ages of six and seven.  They are so cute!  Sometimes they are a handful, but them being cute makes it totally worth it.  The first couple days of teaching were a bit of a struggle because they don't really know us quite yet.  I think as time goes on, they will begin to open up to us.   All of the Chinese students have American names that they have been given when they first entered the ILP program.  Some of the names are hilarious.  We have a little girl in our class named Ham, another girl named Heebee, a boy named Marlin.  And trust me, there are even more strange names. 

The food is quite interesting.  We have rice every single day.  Rice has become my best friend.  Luckily, they the chef at our cafeteria puts out soy sauce for us.  It gives a little spice to the plain rice.  Then, we usually have some type of meat with green peppers, or carrots.  Yesterday, we had the option to have chicken feet or pig feet!! I couldn't do it.  Not yet at least...it just makes me want to throw up.  There is a fruit market near our apartment that we have gone to a lot.  We are trying to eat lots of fruit! I think the fruit here is delicious.  I had dragon fruit the other day!  Last night, we went to an Italian restaurant.  It tasted soo good!! I had pepperoni pizza, a salad and a nice cold sprite.  It cost 50 HK dollars, which is about 8 US dollars.  I thought it was totally worth it.  We will probably go there at least once a month, maybe even more.  You can only handle rice for so long.