Everyday Life

Now that we are almost done with our visit here in China we are in a rhythm with how things go. We understand our schedules and know what to expect from teaching and everything else. It’s amazing that you can get use to something that is so different from your regular life in such a short amount of time. We are both getting antsy and are ready to get home.  Well I have been antsy and ready to get home for about 4 months haha but now it seems more realistic I am extra antsy. I have been counting down days for about 2 months and now the number of days left finally seems to be decreasing.

As the time for being home comes closer and closer we are starting to dream up all the things we will eat when we get there which seems a little silly but when you have been eating the same meals repeatedly for 4 months you are excited for a change. And when you add a pregnancy on top of it you find that food becomes a major focus in life.

Speaking of… my pregnancy is going well. I can’t believe that I am now in my third trimester. Time is such a tricky thing. It goes by slow yet fast at the same time. It seems like we have been in China forever yet it doesn’t feel like it is time for us to be nearing the end of this pregnancy. Our little man is a big mover which I appreciate because I haven’t been to the doctor to see how things are going, but I can tell he is healthy by all the movement as well as the steady growth of my stomach haha.

28 Weeks!!!

So with pregnancy I knew to expect many uncomfortable symptoms. I mean, I have read the lists on what to expect. But the thing is reading about it and experiencing it is so different. Also, they say you could have heartburn, nausea, cramping, fatigue, back pain, and so on, but nothing ever says you will experience it all, constantly  throughout the entire pregnancy. I expected a few of the symptoms here and there but I’ve decided I have been experiencing more than my fair share. It is so unexpected too. One minute she is sitting on the couch watching a movie with a smile on her face, the next she is in the bathroom releasing her cookies. But at least the time is passing and soon enough we will have a cute little one that will make it all worth it. March 6^th couldn’t come soon enough J

Shanghai and Thanksgiving

Over the last few weeks Eric and I haven’t been doing too much. We did take a trip to Shanghai, but it was not just for fun.

Here's a couple pics in Shanghai, this is basically all we saw while we were there that was worth taking pictures of.

We went so that we could get our souvenirs and Christmas shopping done. It was a lot of shopping over a two day period. That’s all we really had time for while we were in Shanghai.

The thing about shopping here is that it takes a lot more time. You have to first do all the normal stuff like decide what to buy which of course takes time. Here it takes a little extra time because you can’t seem too interested in anything or they will attack and begin trying to convince you that you need to buy everything in their shop. After you have decided that you do in fact want something you have to decide what price you are willing to pay for it. After this you can approach the person selling the items and start haggling prices. Typically here in China they start way higher than the item is worth and drag out the process of haggling forever. The only way to cut the time you spend down a little is to walk away. At this point they will start to give you a better deal.

Overall I think we did really well. I don’t think we were really ripped off that much. Eric is pretty tough on them. This is because I’ m a cheapskate… I basically told him what I wanted and let him take over from there. Haggling isn’t one of my favorite things to do.  But it was worth it because we didn’t spend way too much and were able to get a lot of neat stuff.

The week after we went shopping Eric and I both got some pretty nasty colds. I got it first and was able to take off one day of work to get better, but that wasn’t enough so Eric decided he could teach my classes for me the next day. Unfortunately that led to a very long day for Eric and it just so happened that the cold decided to attack him too.  So he had a pretty miserable day teaching three classes while fighting off cold symptoms and a fever. One thing that makes this particularly tough is that on campus there is no heat. They do not even have heaters in any of the classrooms and the one in the teachers’ lounge is broken. So Eric was freezing to death all day. I would have made a horrible pioneer.

I felt so bad when he came home because he had taken my classes for me and I was getting better and he was way worse off than me. Luckily this was on Thursday which is our Friday so we got a weekend to get better after this.

That week was also Thanksgiving so we were a little miserable and didn’t eat yummy food the day of. But our branch here in Nanjing had a big Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. We got better in time to go and enjoy some food. This was way exciting because they actually cooked American style foods. We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing. We even had pumpkin cake and pies for dessert. We thoroughly enjoyed all of it because it had been so long since we have had such yummy food. 

After Thanksgiving we really haven’t done much at all. But we did have some exciting news. So the plan was to come home on December 31^st. We had reconciled ourselves to this. Me less so than Eric haha. The problem was they expected us to work on Christmas day. We weren’t too pleased about this so we asked if there was any way we could either get Christmas off or at least combine classes so that we only had to teach in the morning for two hours. They thought it through for a few days and then said that I could give my final the week before Christmas and be done teaching before Christmas. But Eric would need to give his exam the week of Christmas. However, they would be able to have a supervisor sit in with his students on Christmas day so that he did not have to come in on Christmas or the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas. We were happy about this of course but when you give a mouse a cookie….  We started to put together an idea. If he didn’t need to be in class those days why would we even need to be in China??? So we asked if there would be anyway for us to go home but they at first said no. Eric would need to come in after Christmas to pick up his exams and grade them.  We were pretty disappointed but at least we had Christmas off.

However, they were figuring out the schedule and decided that Eric’s class could take their finals the Friday before Christmas. With this change Eric could grade the exams and give them back by Saturday the 21^st and we could head home the next day. We were so excited. We immediately called China Horizons and asked if they could change our plane tickets for us for the 22^nd of December instead. They got back to us after an excruciatingly long two days later and let us know that they were able to find us seats coming home on December 22! We were really excited. Now we will be able to come home for Christmas and spend about two weeks at home with our families before we have to go back to Rexburg.

This may not seem like a huge deal but to me it was. I did not want to spend Christmas here in China and was so excited to find out I wouldn’t have to!