Christmas in Chiner

O how great Christmas is in China. I want to say thank you to LM, Dad and Leigh, Mike and Mom, and Heather for all the great and wonderful presents that I was blessed with. I would like to say thank you to the rest, who sent me greetings for the holiday to show that I was not forgotten and I was missed!

Now I want to tell you some things that made my Christmas worthwhile in China.

This year I had Christmas lessons for two weeks with my students. It was exciting to tell them about the origins of Christmas and to see their opinions on the matter. Later, on the 23rd we had a Christmas party where we drank hot chocolate, played Dirty Santa, and watched the Grinch Who Stole Christmas (They were also impressed by the beautiful Christmas tree display). At the Christmas party they not only had fun but they were also able to donate toys to the orphans, which a group of friends and I will go visit this weekend.

On Christmas Eve, I went to eat with a friend, went shopping for presents to give others, and hung out with the group last night. Yesterday I was able to hang out with my friend, Mick, with similar interests. I then proceeded to go on a shopping adventure throughout the city of Wuhan (I guess China is the place to be if you are a last minute shopper because nothing closes, lucky me). Later on we played Dirty Santa and cooked a fabulous meal, Calzones (I'm not sure if you can call that a meal but it's me so I did). When we finished supper we had a guys' night where we just hungout and talked.

Christmas Day, today, was definately different than what I had expected. I had a great Christmas and I was not as homesick as I thought ( I know that He was helping me through this time). I got to wake up early and prepare for breakfast. My Dad called and I opened my presents on skype which was actually kind of cool. I was with my family when I opened my presents, who would have ever thought?! I then went upstairs and had a huge foreignor get together, as well as Jeremy's family, while we ate breakfast. We all had purchased each other gifts and gave them to each other. We opened them and it was very funny to see what we got (for example: I got a poster that teaches me the Dinosaurs in Pinyin, great gift). Later on this afternoon, we cooked again and had delicious barbecue chicken (not normal in China!) which made me drool all over myself. As soon as we had finished we had some of our Chinese friends come meet with us and sing Christmas Carols and other songs. We also shared the great gift of candy and pies which we received from back home. What a great Holiday!

For all of you at home, I want you to know that I miss you and love you. May you have as great of a Christmas as I have. Be thankful to the one above for what you have and I would like to say thank you for all your encouragement. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! As the Chinese would say have a "Happy Everyday!"

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was fabulous. I learned how trully to be thankful, maybe part of that was because i had to cook (that is not normal for me). I not only learned to be thankful for food but most importantly the gifts given to me everyday and how to see Him in each day. We all went around the table and said what we were thankful for. Even though I missed my family, it was a true family experience that helped me grow. I hope your Thanksgiving was as filled with blessings as mine was, if it was not then you may need to put on some new spects. May He fill you in everyway! The picture of us above is of me and the mashed potatoes that my great friend, Jeremy, helped me make.

Before Thanksgiving

Hey Guys, I hope that you are having great week! I hope that on Thursday you will give great Thanks to those whom you love and those who have impacted your life. I know that I will not be there but I want to say thanks to all those people who helped me get to China and you know who you are! Also I want to say to my family that I will miss you, but of course I will be with you in Spirit as well as on Skype (hopefully). I also want to say thank you to all of my friends who continue to encourage me, even if I am a million miles away. You have no clue what that means to me. I am also very thankful for those around me (Tara, Jeremy, Laurie, Carole, Danielle, and Dennis) who help me cope with China. I also want to say thanks most of all to God in heaven for giving us a shot to be with Him. I also want to say thanks to my students for making it worth coming to China! I love all of you and remember to be thankful this Thursday!

Ultimate Gift

I have just finished watching one of the best movies i have ever seen. It is called the Ultimate Gift. I recommend it for anyone and everyone. It is about a guy named Jason, who has grew up, given everything that he has desired. His Grandfather "Red" dies and leaves him an inheritance, but in order to receive it he must go through a series of gifts to get to the Ultimate Gift. It teaches him about many gifts that we each day may not think of. He teaches the following gifts to him: gift of work, gift of money, gift of friends, gift of learning, gift of problems, gift of family, gift of laughter, gift of dreams, gift of giving, gift of gratitude, gift of a day, and most importantly the gift of love. I will say this is a very moving movie. I do believe that it can help teach us many things, and I believe that it will challenge us to become a better person. Please check it out and i hope that this will move you to do more great things than you are already doing! check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE9csqB5tVg

Teaching

I love to teach my students! It is a little crazy trying to teach so much. I teach my students 6 different lessons a week. The reason I have my students so much is because they are going to the Phillipines next year, so this will be my only year to have them. I hope that I will be able to inspire them through teaching. I teach them many different things, especially things that deal with them traveling. We also do phrases of the week which may deal with moral topics, such as quotes from Mother Theresa, Confucius, JC, or Ghandi. We talk about the meanings; like what is love, how can we use our lives to help others, or what think might I do better to become a better person. We also have fun times where we will do group activities and spend time making English conversations (which can be really fun and quite hilarious, when you have some crazy students). We also have times where we talk about following directions in English, such as this picture at the top left. I taught them how to make pumpkins, which went up for our Halloween Party!

If you have any ideas for lessons please send them to me!

October Holiday

October Holiday is a Fall Break for the students in China. During this time period, the students may go home, so we had the option to either stay in Wuhan or travel. We decided to make a long distance trip to Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is at the top western part of China. It took us 36 hours by train to get there. We arrived in a place called Urumqi. Urumqi is a small, clean town with a much smaller population than you could imagine. We spent the first two nights their and went out to the park, behind our hostel, and rode crickets and ducks. We also traveled through the town, where the culture was mostly Arabic. Their was many street vendors with all sorts of crafts and goods alongside the road. We had the priviledge of tasting the spicy food and the Nan bread (I believe this is correct).

On Monday night we travelled to Turpan by a sleeper bus which arrived on Tuesday morning. Turpan is a lot of country with few people. We were able to go here and relax. While we were here we went bike riding to see ancient ruins (of what i can't remember, maybe later), which took about 3 or 4 hours, and we visited a fabolous restaurant where we received homemade grapejuice. We actually saw them pull it from the vine! In Turpan we also ate at a wonderful Texas restaurant, which we our stomachs regretted that night. We departed from Turpan on Thursday.

We took a sleeper bus to Kanas Lake. Kanas Lake has many mountains and beautiful crystal blue water. We were able to get a little glimpse of fall, which was wonderful. We also had the amazing priviledge of staying in a yirt that night (for all of you who do not know what a yirt is you should feel deprived, it is sorta like a tepee). This made me feel like a real mountain man, i know your jealous. That night was the first time in China i was able to see stars. I might also mention that this Kanas Lake borders Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. It was beautiful their but freezing! I think i wore about 4 layers of clothes, which seems normal in Alabama right. (The top picture if it has not changed by now is a picture of me at Kanas Lake). We proceeded to stay there until Thursday night, then headed back to Urumqi to catch our flight.

On Friday, we were all wore out, and were ready to get back to Wuhan. Well we thought that we were going back. Tara and I did not get our passports back from the police station so we learned a valuable lesson, you cannot travel on a plane without a passport. Laurie stayed with Tara and I in Urumqi while Tara and I waited for our passports were rush delivered! We were able to arrive back on Sunday night and had class the next morning.

Peeps of China

I live at the school and teach with other Americans as well. Tara, Jeremy, Laurie, and I live at Wuhan Polytechnic University. While we have those around us Danielle, Carole, Dennis, and Sarah. We always like to keep the place a lil' jumping we have many festivities like going to Tom's World (a Chuckie Cheese that I am actually allowed to play at)! If you look at the picture to the right you will see Tara (my next door neighbor) and I racing. You can tell that we have no idea what we are doing.

Living in Chiner

I live in Han Kou, Wuhan in the Hubei Province, China. I am a teacher at Wuhan Polythecnic University (to the left is a picture of the school). I teach one class six times a week. Five times a week i teach Oral English and one time a week I teach Writing. My class consist of 43 wonderful students, and i never know if i will have new students added to my class day to day.