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Holy. It's been more than two weeks since I blogged! And it's been a busy two weeks! I think a couple of people thought I died since there were no new posts... I'm still kickin'. Well on Tuesday the 2nd Loretta and Jeanna met me in Hangzhou. That was an interesting day. A Chinese guy came up to me at the train station here in Jinhua and started practicing his English with me. I would say talking to, but most of the time people in public are just trying to practice. He ended up being one of the most racist people I had ever met in my life. This became very clear when another foreigner walked into the same area as us; I quickly ended that conversation.
This may be too much information, but the washroom at the train station in Jinhua is pretty interesting. It was not like the regular squat toilets that I'm used to... it was a trough. And everyone just squatted over this trough...EVERYONE, over the same trough. So whatever your neighbour added to the trough would then run past EVERY person's stall on it's way to the end...GROSS.
Now I know I'm going to forget stuff since this was already two weeks ago. When I got off the train in Hangzhou I was looking around for a cab and they have motorbike cabs. Now don't get too scared.... like I told my sister this motorbike was like the size of the first dirtbike my brothers ever had, I don't think this thing went more than 40 km/h. lol.
I wanted to go get Subway and to H&M while I was in Hangzhou, so that's what I did in the afternoon and then I went to meet them at the airport. The cab driver on the way to the airport sucked. I showed him the word for arrivals like half an hour before we got there (it was a really long cab ride). He nodded in understanding...it was written in Chinese characters so I figured he'd understand. But then when it came to the fork in the road at the airport he tried to take me to departures. I kept pointing toward arrivals and he started trying to argue with me until I finally just paid him and walked the rest of the way; like I don't know whether I'm taking a flight or not. Geez.
Then while I waited for Loretta and Jeanna another Chinese guy started trying to practice his English with me; I need to start wearing a disguise. Sometimes the people are really pleasant but the two that day were driving me CRAZY. Then finally, the doors from the baggage claim opened and I could see Loretta and Jeanna getting their stuff together; YAY! We took a cab immediately to the train station. I asked one of my kids to write down "we need 3 tickets to Jinhua for tonight" in Chinese and I showed the lady and she gave us tickets for 25 minutes from them. I have never seen a train station so crowded! All I could think was WOW great way to introduce them to China lol. Then our train was no less crowded! All the seats were full and people were standing everywhere! The people on the train were also pretty entertaining, mostly because of how entertained they were by us. Some of them watched everything we did for the entire 3 hour train ride. By the end it was pretty annoying, well mainly one of the people behind us was annoying... most of the other ones were pretty nice. They couldn't speak any English but Jeanna still managed to get them to help them with their big suitcases lol!
By the time we got back to Jinhua was after 11 and the cab drivers were being really annoying. It's an 8 RMB cab ride to their hotel and they were trying to charge us 30 and then the guy who said he'd take us using the meter got lost (I think maybe on purpose) and it was still 25. Regardless we got there! And didn't do anything too exciting because it was so late. The next day I showed them around my campus. It was pretty quiet because it was a holiday so the kids were all at home but it was at least a nice day! That night I showed them the Red House (the bar we go to most often). It was pretty fun and they got to meet some of my friends. On the Thursday we went to get our train tickets and the lady was awful. I have never had a problem getting train tickets before because people are usually so helpful! This lady sucked. One of my Chinese friends who works at the school ended up just ordering the tickets online for us.
That day we also went to the same mountain I took mom and dad too! I wasn't sure if we'd make it after the whole train fiasco but we did! And then we made it to Shanghai the next day! We went to the Pearl Tower in Shanghai but it was too foggy to even see anything at all! The next day we went and toured around Shanghai and then took in a Circus show at night; it was so cool!
I came back to Jinhua on Sunday the 7th and had every intention of blogging on Monday but then last week turned into a gigantic mess. Two of my sections, B and C, were to write my test on Monday and then section A was to write it on Tuesday. Normally I have them all write it at the same time but I didn't want to screw up people's schedules even more that week so I left it. Section B and C wrote it on Monday afternoon and all was well. I was in the office doing work when I was told by a student that some of the kids had cheated on the test. Then I was told by a different student that a photo had been taken of my test and sent to the section that hadn't written. I was so mad! I then had to spend the rest of the night making a new test for the other class to write in the morning AND I was mad that someone had taken a picture of it in the first place! I was then told the next day by one of my Chinese friends that a different kid had actually also called her to ask her to tell me that night at like 11 pm! She knew I knew already though and did not bother waking me up lol.
It was interesting to watch the kids during the test the next day. I gave them the multiple choice and true/false first which looked the same but I had tweaked in places to make the answers different. And once they were done that I gave them the rest of the test. The looks on some of their faces killed me. I didn't tell them before the test that I knew what had happened, I didn't even mention it immediately after. But it was clear from a few of the faces that they had seen the test from the day before.
I had to teach a class to a different section that afternoon and some of those kids mentioned that section A had found their test SO much harder than the test section B and C had written. I just faked being confused and said it was the same test, I did not have time to deal with it right then. After class one of the other teachers started to ask some of the kids about what had happened and eventually after we talked to every kid a bunch of them ended up actually telling us what had happened. We found the student who took the photo and the ones he had sent it too and by Wednesday it was mostly over; thank God. I was so mad that the kids had cheated. And I don't even understand why. I used to give my friends, even people who weren't really my friends answers and I never once felt bad about it. But as a teacher it really pissed me off lol!
It turned out that nearly the entire section had seen my test the night before they were to write it. Some of the kids said they only heard the types of questions and then studied those. Some kids tried to argue whether looking at the picture was cheating and some tried to argue that helping other people cheat was not cheating. I was so tired of listening to it. It was one of the most annoying weeks here yet! Then to top it all off once the whole cheating situation was resolved I had to mark the 70 tests as well as the 70 assignments they had to do while I was gone with Loretta and the posters they had made in groups! It was a pretty boring weekend! Luckily I think I finished my report cards today so I can relax tonight!

I took this at McDonalds in Hangzhou it`s a sausage burger....two sausages, two burgers; looks to gross!

Jeanna`s friend on the train!

Being the first to sign the guy's cast

At my school

Lor and Jeanna at my school

Jeanna and my friend Ana dancing at the Red House

Loretta and Jeanna at the food street

At the mountain

At the temple at the mountain

There were so many dogs!

In the cave

The really helpful signs in the cave

People were trying to catch fish or frogs or something in the water at the mountain

Taking a bicycle taxi

At the Pearl Tower in Shanghai

Oh and we went to the Shanghai Zoo!!!!! So cool

This reminded me of Anchorman....not sure if it will remind other people though

Jeanna and some Pandas

Before...relaxing and having a snack

Love giraffes!

CRAZY ZEBRA RUNS IN and they all go nuts

On Nanjing Road stopping for a beer and a long island iced tea; no, long island iced teas do NOT actually have iced tea in them.

There was a wine named after my friend Tara's mom!

We accidentally ordered two of everything...

Nom nom nom

How does that not all fall off?

Those are most of the photos I took while they were here! It's less than 11 weeks until I come home...which sounds misleadingly short....but still... a lot shorter than 42 weeks! YAHOO.