just be.: i thought i liked traveling...

well friends i have some catching up to do. i haven't blogged for a while and i hate that i haven't. many of you know that i have been unable to blog because i am in china. blogger is still blocked here and it was a little tricky to find out how i could make it work. someone who knows their stuff helped me out and now i'm able to blog. i didn't just up and move to china. (although i've met a few people who have and i think they are absolutely crazy) i am here to teach little children the wonderful language of america-english. i am going to post a lot today to catch up and hopefully i can be fairly consistent from now on. enjoy!

Preparing to leave
i felt like i was ready to leave for china in june. i wanted to leave so bad but i wasn't leaving until the end of august and there was so much to do. of course i procrastinated it all and only started getting ready to go about a week before my date of departure. i was packing and repacking for three days. ashlee and my parents put up with me while i was going crazy and helped me so much while I was trying to situate my baggage. weighing my bags over and over again was a joke. my dad and i took turns weighing ourselves and then holding the bags and subtracting the difference to find out how much the bags weighed. we also tried to weigh them by themselves. eventually both bags were under 50 lbs at home. it was quite the process but we felt pretty good about it...until we got to the airport. they were still overweight when they weighed them and i about cried. oh well though. i rearranged, other girls took some of my stuff and we got them under the weight limit. it never really hit me that i was going to china for four months until i was on the plane from vegas to korea. it still felt like a dream and was so unreal. when it finally hit i went a little crazy but i was so excited that the craziness of it didn't affect me that much.

rach mich and i at the slc airport about

to start our four month adventure

the plane ride
it all began with two days of traveling. along with the traveling came two days of not showering, two days of stuffing my face with american food thinking it would be the last time i'd have it for four months, two days of not sleeping as well as i wanted while on the plane, and last but not least two days of swollen feet. the food on the plane was horrible (see picture one a and one b), the only good thing about the plane ride was the free eye mask and slippers (see picture two a and two b), and i really could have gone without the swollen feet. (see picture three).

picture one (a)

picture one (b)

picture two (a)

picture two (b)

picture three

that all was the negative side of my traveling experience...majority of it is negative but there were a few postive parts. one. two of my best friends were with me during it all and the other girls in our group were so cute and easy to get a long with. two. in the korean airport we were privileged to attend a little free show and paint a lotus flower on our own fan. it was such a neat experience and a great way to make a seven hour layover seem not so long. three. mary picked us up from the airport. i'll talk more about mary at a later time but basically she's my favorite asian. she is our native coordinator here which means she is from china but speaks english well enough to help us out. she works at the school where we teach. her whole job this semester is to take care of us and she puts her whole heart and soul into that. i love her. four. the traveling did eventually end. i like that even if getting to a certain place is miserable you always have the arrival to look forward to.