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!

Our Trip to Hong Kong

So part of coming to China and staying here for as long as we need to is that eventually our visas would need renewed. We are only allowed to be here for 90 days and unfortunately we are staying longer than that so we needed to renew our visas. In order to do this all we needed to do was cross the border leaving mainland China.

We decided to go to Hong Kong. It is surprising how very little we knew about Hong Kong. And it is surprising how much we still do not know. It is such a famous, well known city but neither Eric nor I knew why exactly. We had to do a lot of research to plan out our trip and by we I mean Eric haha.

One of the things that is tricky about planning trips in China is that you have to plan out every detail. You need copies of every address you need in Chinese and you have to hope that the taxi drivers will understand where you want to go.

Lucky for us Eric did very good with planning out the trip and we were able to travel without any major issues. We left Thursday right after class and went to the airport and flew to Shenzhen. It was pretty late at night so we stayed in a hotel there. Right after class our plan was to get a taxi to the airport. We failed to find a taxi and didn’t want to spend forever looking for one, so we decided to hitch a ride from a guy and his three wheeler-wannabe-makeshift-taxi cab that looks like it belongs nowhere else in the world but in China. Here is a picture of me and the driver! I think the Chinese are a little awkward around the camera.

In the morning we traveled to Hong Kong by way of subway. 29 stops and 1 hour later I was very excited to get out of the hard metal seats of that subway! Customs was a bit scary in Hong Kong, and took much longer than we expected but we were able to make it through them. One plus about Hong Kong is that most people there can speak English at least a little. This was a relief. It makes traveling much easier. One thing that was funny though is that we were so use to pointing and not speaking to people that we struggled to talk to people out loud. We kept forgetting that we could. Anyways so next we found our hotel in Hong Kong. After traveling by subway in Hong Kong  for another hour… At least this time there was cool things to look at as we traveled.

Hong Kong is pretty spendy and it was a bit shocking to find that our hotel room we spent so much money on was tiny, but at least it was clean. These beds are seriously like 2.5 ft wide.

After resting for a bit we headed out to Temple Street. Don’t let the name fool you. It had no temple and it was anything but religious. This is a famous shopping area in Hong Kong that sells cheap touristy goods. I say that this area lacked religion, and  that is not even a joke! They have neon signs everywhere, and I mean everywhere, that say “Foot Massage.” Now, for normal people a foot massage is a foot massage, but in Hong Kong and China it is code for “we sell women and sexual favors.” Yes, prostitution is very high and quite popular in this area.

It is just sad  that they have to taint such a good thing like a foot massage. Why couldn’t they call it something that I dislike such as “body odor” or “day old French fries.” Anyways… It was super fun. You get to barter the prices quite a bit. I like it but I hate it because I can never decide if I am being ripped off or not. But there were tons of neat souvenirs and Eric and I finally convinced ourselves to spend some money. I was even able to finally find some pants with strechy waistbands which by this point I am desperate for.

 

Had to include this one to show off the belly.

By the end of the night we were happy but tired and ready for bedtime in our tiny hotel room. 

In the morning we headed out for Victoria’s peak. On the way we spotted the St. John's Cathedral. It was very pretty. While we were walking by there was what we thought a mass going on so Eric and I decided to step inside to see what it was like. It was in Chinese so we didn't really understand what we were hearing but after we watched for a minute we realized we had stumbled into a wedding. Yes we are wedding crashers now. I personally liked it but Eric was embarrassed and after snapping a quick pic he decided we better leave haha.

Soon after crashing the wedding we found the place to buy tickets for Victoria's Peak. Unfortunately we had to wait in line for the peak tram which took like an hour in a half for a very short ride straight up. 

When we got up there we were starving to death and rushed to find food. There were some cool places to eat but at the top of Hong Kong it is a bit expensive so we ate at Burger King which was surprisingly delicious. Next we explored the main attraction. It was magnificent. We were able to see all of Hong Kong. It was beautiful. 

It was just a little bit windy at the top.

 

After we got down from the peak we were on our way back to the subway when I noticed a sign...

 

I love animals and was tempted by the sign. I convinced Eric to walk up the hill to check it out. We were very surprised to find that the beautiful gardens were free. Even more surprising was the monkeys. This place had lots of them as well as a huge python. It was so neat. And free. It was very cool worth the walk up the steep hill.

Yes this is a tiny baby monkey. And yes it was adorable!

Here's a nice shot of my ever growing belly haha.

After this we went to see the Hong Kong LDS Temple. We were excited to go visit a temple we had never seen. It was a very pretty temple. It was so unique and we enjoyed seeing it. It felt good to be in such a familiar place. Even if each temple is different they all leave the same feeling of peace. I was very happy to be able to go there. However, one interesting thing about this temple is that it is a fairly small one so it closes down when work is being done. So Eric and I were locked out. But we were able to see the outside of the building which was worth it. We waited outside for about a half hour. We waited partly because we were tired and couldn’t move, partly because we wanted to go in, and partly because we thought it would be cool if one of the prophets or apostles came out haha.

The temple is pretty unique because it is fairly casual looking, but it is still gorgeous!

After the temple we went to another shopping area. This one was neat as well, but it was too crowded. There were people everywhere and by this point we were exhausted. We walked around for a bit but eventually gave up because we were both too tired to enjoy it.

We went to bed just to wake up and travel home again. 

 Hong Kong was very impressive. It was so much prettier than we expected. It was a quick trip comprising mostly of traveling. But it was very fun and we were really glad we did it.

Moving

Overall our stay in the hotel was fine but it was getting pretty old.

No one really wants to spend a month in a hotel that doesn’t even have a fridge or a microwave so at the end of the month we were really bugging the school to get us into our apartment they had promised.

Slowly but surely they realized we were serious and finally found us an apartment. We actually really love our apartment. It is super nice. Much better than we expected. It is a three bedroom so it is pretty big.

This is our bedroom we stole the mattress from one of the other rooms because it was the comfiest but this bedroom was the nicest.

We are on the tenth floor so we have a pretty good view!

One of the things that was awful about living in the hotel is that we had to do all of our laundry by hand in the sink so we love our little washer! But oh how I miss having a dryer.

This is a small half bath that is located inside our closet in our bedroom. Eric and I got a kick out of it. The downfall is that it has a leak and is smelly haha so we ended up shutting off the water and not using it so our bedroom won't reek.

One of the things I love about having an apartment is that we finally have a microwave, fridge, and even a couple of stove burners. It is nice to finally be able to cook for ourselves once in a while. This is particularly important for me because I hate Chinese food and now I can make my own food. The downfall to this is that it is hard to find ingredients and figure out meals that I can make with the ingredients I can find just using the stovetop, but I am learning. 

First meal I made here in China. Thanks to my aunt for such an awesome recipe!

We thoroughly enjoyed it :)

 One of the things that is a little unfortunate about the apartment is that it is a whole 20 minute walk to the bus stop that we take to school, so that’s kind of a bummer. It is a little annoying to have to walk that far twice every day and a bit exhausting if you ask me. But the bus ride is only 30 minutes now so that helps with my car sickness.

Other than that the apartment is really nice and we like the location because of how close it is to a couple big supermarkets with a Subways restaurant even. 

Now we have been in China a little over a month and a half and we are settling in. We are in a routine of teaching and now find that it is easier than expected. But I still can't wait to get home!