Thrilling Thursday

Guess what today was? It was volunteer day at Tzu Chi! That means that I wore that super stylin' outfit. Sorry, no pictures today. After teaching we have to run and hurry to change, and then we got back too late today. But, I don' t know how much I would really want to post that picture anyway. I mean I'm already not photogenic, and then to put me in that monstrosity would not make for a very flattering picture.



Any who, today I went running, and grabbed something new to eat for breakfast at the morning market. Have I said yet that the vegetables here are HUGE?! Seriously, I forget every time until I see them again, but today I saw a giant squash that was honestly over two feet long, but then it had the width to match, it's not like it was a super long and skinny bean or something, this was a gianormous squash. So, if I want to try to snack healthy, I don't really know what to do because I don't want to have to buy one of these huge vegetables and only eat one kind of vegetable for a month. Anyway, I didn't buy vegetables this morning, I only saw them. Nancy and I got biscuits stuffed (of course it was stuffed bread- what else would it be?) with bamboo. It was pretty good and of course cheap. Oh, speaking of cheap, I have to make a correction to my yesterday's entry. The roses weren't 3 cents each, it turns out that when you convert it, the roses were 30 cents each. Still, not too shabby for a long stem rose.



Classes today did not go so well. I got in trouble, well, I wasn't in trouble, they just explained to me that something I was doing in the class wasn't how things are usually done. But, I hate when I mess up and I especially hate when I'm called out on it, so I was in a grumpier mood today. Plus it didn't help that for my second class I was done super early and had no idea what I was going to do for like 10 extra minutes. So, for the second and third session of the second class I was able to stretch the lesson out, but I had 10 extra minutes with the first session, which is the 3 year olds. Yeah, I was stressing. Luckily 3 year olds like games and pretending that they're flowers (my lesson dealt with flowers, it's not like they're all fruity or something).



Yeah, so at lunch time we went to the college to volunteer. There were more Chinese students there today, but we did pretty much the same thing. We would ask questions about their school, all of them would be too scared to answer, one of them would be brave enough to ask us a question about America or BYU, and all of us would have an opinion so we could carry most of the conversation. Poor kids, I know that they're scared to speak English and it's pretty uncomfortable for us to be there, and I'm sure they don't understand most of what we say even though we try to simplify it. But, if they're planning to go to BYU in September (that's what we're prepping them for) then they're going to have to get used to hearing and speaking English I guess. They fed us at the university. There was a dish with small tomatoes, and even though I only eat tomatoes if they're on something, ever since Nancy told me they were super healthy, I told myself that I was going to have to just suck it up and eat some. I haven't gotten around to buying a bag, so it was good that they were there because now I know that I don't have to buy a bag of them. I ate the ones I was given, but I did not enjoy it. So, if I bought a bag of them, they were get moldy before I even attempted to eat them all.



The afternoon class was okay, but again, I didn't really have enough planned, so I tried to stretch things out. But, I did find out that they actually learned from me. Nancy and I both taught about planets today, and so she asked the group that went to her after coming to me all about the planets, and they knew a lot. Except they told Nancy that I didn't teach them about Neptune. Uh, yeah right. That's the planet that moves so slowly that 1 year on Neptune is equal to 165 years on Earth, and I made them get out of their chairs and walk around the room as slowly as Neptune. Go figure that the one where I get them physically involved is the one they don't remember.



After school I had tutoring. These girls are good at getting their work done, they just do it so slowly. But it was funny. One of the girls that's in one of the tutor groups on a different night came into the room and told me that she wanted to help give points out (if students get a right answer, I'll give them a point and Josh did it that if they got 10 points they could start a game, and anyone with three or more points could play the game). So, Jenny helped out with tutoring today for a little while, until her mom came to pick her up. I don't even understand why she was there, I don't know that she has any siblings at the preschool, but maybe she does.



Oh gosh, I have to share, because I keep on forgetting. On Saturday I counted and I have 52 bug bites. I'm sure that I have more by now. But the bad part is that aloe vera doesn't even soothe it anymore. And, I've given up on avoiding scratching them, now I just scratch the top of the bug bites of hoping that they won't itch, they'll just hurt. Oh no, now I most definitely have scabs all over my arms and legs, plus the bug bites itch AND hurt. I don't get it. I don't see that many bugs, and I never see any one me, but I have they're marks all over my!



Okay, so after tutoring Nancy and I went down town to grab the super good dough dumplings because they are super cheap and we've been spending a little more on dinners recently. We walked around for a little while but Nancy wanted to grab a juice at our night market so we headed back. I got a mango, pineapple, papaya juice and it tasted oh so good. Nancy is so friendly. The guy at the juice place knows us because at least one of the four of us white people gets a juice/smoothie each night, and so we're pretty memorable. But, Nancy wanted to know what some syrupy thing was that he put into the blender when he mixed it up. He told us it was sugar, and Nancy was confused because it was in liquid form so she showed him the bag of sugar she had just bought at the store so she could make brownies. He was so confused why we would have bought a bag of sugar. We tried to tell him the sugar was to make brownies, but I don't think he knows what brownies are.



We got back to the house and drank our juice while Nancy waited for her tutorie to come. Luke and Kaylene were watching a movie, so Nancy couldn't use the kitchen table to tutor like usual, and Nancy doesn't have a desk in her bedroom, so I told her that I would just go for an hour bike ride or so and she could tutor in my room. So, I headed out. I found a new way to get to the other night/afternoon market, and then headed to Tzu Chi college. I passed the college and went to a Taoist temple and turned down that road to see where it would take me. I was going by some houses and a dog started following me. I pedaled faster and it kept chasing me. I kept pedaling, but it started growling and barking at me. It finally just gave up. My heart was pounding so fast. I said a prayer of thanks that the dog hadn't gotten a hold of my ankles or anything and then prayed that I would be able to find a new road to connect back to or that at least by the time I turned around, that dog wouldn't be there any more. Before the prayer was over, the road started to look familiar to me. Some how I had connected up to the road that takes me to my morning running trail. I went all the way to the trail just to double check. Going up to the trail, I had to pass a pack of dogs that started to bark at me. They lost interest pretty fast, but as soon as they lost interest I had to turn around, so they started barking and following me. Luckily they didn't put up too much of a fight and I got away. I booked it home after that. I knew exactly where I was and I knew that there were plenty of stray dogs on the way back. Fortunately I wasn't even barked at on the way back and I met up with the regular types of dogs that don't care what so ever for people and they'll just do their own thing, and I met up with dogs that are so afraid of their own shadow that they flee from you.

Well, I've got clothes in the laundry that I've got to get out and hang up so that I can go to bed.