Teacha Brynn: April 2014

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Miscellaneous

SO I have forgotten what major things there are to fill you in on.
For the last few weeks I have stayed home on the weekends and done some cool things close to home.
I've really been able to enjoy teaching and have grown even closer to my kids.
We got to go to the lake with our students on one day instead of teach and that was awesome.
2 Saturdays were home visits and one Sunday was SuZhou for Easter church.
Home visits are awesome because you get to see what real Chinese homes are like
and you get to spend time with students. You learn lots of Chinese and practice lots of

English with them. But above all else you EAT. They feed us so much food, I have honestly

never in my life felt so full as I have on those home visits. Yesterday I went on one where

we ate dinner at the Sheraton buffet. It was UNREAL. Picture the Hunger Games buffet in

the capital. That is how it felt. Now a bunch of random pictures...

Here's me at the birthday party the Chinese teachers threw for those of us who have

birthdays during our stay here. SO much delicious food. And they gave me

that pink hair bow as a gift. So nice, I love it :)

Me eating some of the weird food on my first home visit.
These are whole shrimp and you snap the head off.
This day I also had a ton of snails but they are surprisingly good!

Making dumplings! I am now an expert.

Learning how to play this traditional Chinese instrument

Me with some of my 1st graders on the lake day

William posing for his close up

Lisa

Levi

Me and Steven on the swing

A lovely statue

Me and Kitty one of my very favorites

4th grade life

My crazy 1st graders

Willla, on the far right is one of my all time faves and I got to do

a home visit with her yesterday

Me and Jocelyn

My ladybug paper plate creation

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Zhangjiajie

SO I went to the AVATAR mountains! It was amazing!!! I honestly have no words to describe how awesome the trip was. I was having the time of my life! I brought just a backpack and a satchel. Courtney, Jocelyn, Carlee and I went to Shanghai Friday morning and then killed a few hours there walking around People's Square. Then we took our 22 hour train ride with all our friends and it was so much fun!!! I love sleeper trains! We had the best time just talking, laughing, sleeping, eating... Then we spent the next 1 1/2 days in Zhangjiajie National Park which was gorgeous. No pictures could ever do the place justice. We fed monkeys, rode on the tallest elevator in the world and saw the view from Hallelujah mountain, rode in cable cars and everything was beautiful, even though it was pretty foggy.

Here's us on the bus ready for a great trip!

Sitting on the bag racks on the train

Thought you all might want to see what the trains/stations are like

A terrible but necessary picture of me before one of our motorcycle rides!

At the entrance to the National Park

Feeding monkeys!

Tallest glass elevator

On Hallelujah Mountain with some statue

On the way down I made a new friend :)

Things got crazy in our taxi back to the hostel!

The last day we spent at Tianmen Mountain and that was my favorite. It is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. We took the longest cable car ride in the world and I'm not kidding that was UNREAL. It felt like a total dream, I've never seen anything so breathtaking before. We hiked at the very top and walked right over the top of Heaven's Gate. We walked on cool bridges, glass walkways, etc. Then we took the cable cars back down and a crazy bus up to the Stairway to Heaven. I walked up all 999 stairs to Heaven's Gate! It was AWESOME! I loved every minute of that day. Then we got delicious food, checked out of our hostel and took another 22 hour train ride! I love vacations. Coming back to teaching wasn't even hard because now it's so much fun! I actually get excited to teach now, which is a big improvement.