China and My First Week!

Behold everyone, I am half way around the world in China! Ya, it's still just hitting me in the weirdest way! ha ha, But oh my goodness I love it! China is beautiful! So different, but it's so amazing to see, learn, and love another way of life! Saying goodbye to my family was so hard!!! They probably went home and partied haha ;) But it was real hard, I hate goodbyes! On the right top corner is a pic from one of our three flights which was thee longest!! 12 hours to try and sleep on a plane riding turbulence over the seas ha ha. I slept on Ali the whole time! But we met our best friend Claude from Romania! He was going to Thailand! But he was just honestly the best and made us laugh so much! But through all the craziness of travel, passports, luggage, tickets, and language, we finally made it to Hong Kong for our two day trip there! But alas we arrived during a huge typhoon!
Yay for more craziness!! But I'm so happy to tell you I survived it :) A number 9 typhoon!!
But Hong Kong was a blast and so green! Our travel agent Matthew took us around on a tour. The buildings are so huge! It doesn't even make sense how they are standing up! Most the time in Hong Kong it rained! So I wish I woulda brought more rain wear but I survived it! I love the group that is all involved in ILP! There is about 30 of us total, with about 5 guys in the group. Everyone is
just so so so excited to go to their different parts of China! Jordan and I are laying on my bed in the YMCA hotel in Hong Kong dead tired because holy cow the
time difference is insane to get used to!
We were just laughing our heads off! I've made so many friends within these few days it'll be sad to leave them all for our different cities here in China! But we'll all meet up again! I am assigned to teach school in Guzhen, Zhongshan. It is thee light fixture capital of China! So every store around here is a shop or store for light fixtures! They call it a town, but I call it a huge huge city! And what they call cities are like HUGE HUGE HUGE cities for us ha ha! But after more crazy traveling, like taking a train we weren't suppose to and getting lost!!, we finally made it to our city and apartment! Our kindergarten is right next door from our apartment and it's called Happy ABC's Kindergarten! The most cutest school in the world! By far cuter than our kindergarten's in the US! Our apartment at first was insane! We were all like uhh... we have to live in this?! We had a squatter, hose with cold water for a shower, dirty couches, wooden boards put together to make it look like a bed, cockroaches everywhere! But after some cleaning and living in for a couple days, sleeping on a plank isn't too bad! And I've perfected squatting, cold showers at least wake me up, we have ac in our rooms, internet finally got put up, and everything is just so good! We are blessed and we all love our little place :)
This is my group of seven girls here in Guzhen! There is Lanaya (head teacher), Ali, Malena, Sue, Kelsey, Jordan and me! Gary, a chinese man who works with the school took us to a restaurant and helped us order! My heavens food is crazy hard to get use to here. I miss milk sooo much! Grease is on everything, rice is too, and they eat bread like there is no tomorrow!!! We found peanutbutter at the market the other day and all freaked out and bought some and snarfed down the whole bottle haha.