Another Adventure

Dear Blogger....

GONE FOR THE WEEK. Stop.
WENT TO GUILIN!! Stop.
IF YOU DON'T HEAR BACK FROM ME IN AWHILE ITS BECAUSE I AM HAVING A BLAST! Stop.
LOVE YOU ALL! Stop.
HAVE A GOOD WEEK! Stop.

Love always, Mandy

Dad's favorite recent picture

 

Cousins!

 

The China Tribe

 

China has much control over the universe

So as you have been able to notice that I haven't been able to blog in the last little while. Well that is because China decided to block blogger. First they take away our youtube then our blogger. This crazy country. So I'm sending this to my family who will in turn put it onto blogger.
Last weekend was a really fun weekend. We went to a Safari, no joke that was the name. It was in GuangZhou right next to the place that has the biggest rollercoaster in the world. I guess the whole place is this "Paradise Land" with an Amuesment park, Safari, and Water park. I think you can assume where we'll be headed next :) The Safari was awesome! I don't ever remember going to the zoo in my life so this was a different experience for me. We got to see some cool Asian animals. There were elephants, giraffes, monkeys, tigars, lions, zebras, flamingos, panda bears, and koalas. The cool thing about the koalas is that they had the only twin koalas at the park and one of the baby twin's name was Amanda. How special. My favorite was the giraffes, because I got to touch one, and the seals because they were so dang cute. The cool thing about the day is that I got to hold a baby white tigar!!! He was a little fiesty thing but it was so awesome. I'll have to include pictures later.
This week we taught and then last night we invited some of the teachers to the Ball Room we have to play games together. There was a pretty good turn out and we made them No-bake cookies, as American as we could get them. We played "Signs" and then the Chinese teachers really wanted us to teach them some American dances. American dance moves huh? Most of the time we just do whatever the heck we want. The Chinese people can't move at all like we can. They can't even bob their head up and down, its the weirdest thing. So we taught them the most basic classic we know.... the macarania! Then we taught them the Boot Scoot and Boogy and called it a night! It was really fun! Good times...

Chi Pao

So today we spent about three hours in a dress shop. Jadie's wedding dress was completed which was the most exciting news ever! I was a little apprehensive to see the dress since we have a hard time trying to communicate with people but it was absolutley stunning!! It was everything she wanted and she looked beautiful in it. She ended up getting it, made to fit her body, for around 120 American dollars. That makes all of us just want to get a wedding for no aparent reason! All of us went because we were getting our Chi Paos made. A Chi Pao is just a Chinese dress. We looked through the books they had there and found the Chinese dresses that we wanted and got measured for them. I'm really excited! I've never had a tailor-made dress before. While we were waiting for everyone to get their measurements Amy found this amazing frog costume! It was for little kids but we forced Emily to try it on anyway. Probably the greatest thing I've ever seen. I think we all about peed our pants. Our dresses are going to be done in the next two weeks! I can't wait!

Some more pictures

Pretty much the Coolest picture in the world I think. All of us jumping on the Great Wall of China!
After running through the Water Show
A whole army
The army men and me :)!
Em, Jadie, and I in front of the Temple of Heaven (looks like a fake backround huh? :))

Beijing and Xi'An

On top of the World

The Forbidden City

My Owey from falling in the Fobidden City

Em and I

We just got back from one of the coolest vacations of all times! I'll go briefly through the days:

Day 1: Arrived in Beijing. Went and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. If you've never been you totally should its the bomb. It made us a little homesick since it reminded us what America does best... Rock n' Roll
Day 2: Went to see lots of cool dead people's houses. First we went to Tiannemin Square. No, riots or anything just a really busy big place to walk around. There was a place where you could see the remains of Mao's body but it was closed so we'll just have to imagine what what it looked like. Next we went on to the Temple of Heaven where Emperor's use to give sacrifices. It had some of the neatest looking Temples. We were running a little late through that one so we ended up doing "running photography". Those pictures turned out great :). The next place we went to was the Forbidden City (all that studying last Semester on it really paid off Katie :)). It was HUGE!!! We walked through it for what seemed like forever. They have an amazing imperial graden where we got to make a wish on a coin and throw it into a pond. The only sad thing about this was that I took a fall of the Forbidden City stairs and banged up my elbow pretty good. I landed on my camera so it was a miracle that my elbow was the only thing that felt broken :). How can say they've fallen on the steps of the forbidden city? At night we went to an acrobat show and if you've never seen these Asian people bend then you're really missing out.
Day 3: Climbed the Biggest Wall in the World!!!! The day before Amy found a guy named Ben and he was offering to take us up to a part of the Great Wall that is not filled with tourist (not to worry it was safe). When he said that it was going to be a hike I really didn't think it was going to be... a hike. I thought we would walk up to the Wall, take a bunch of pictures, and then head back down. I for sure what wrong. First it took a straight up climb to the wall and then we had a 4 hour climb on the wall after that. Probably the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. I did my cartwheel (although it wasn't that pretty) and got lots of pictures. The pictures don't do that place justice. The Wall was probably one of the most incredible things I have ever seen in my life. We spent the whole day hiking out in one of the Wonders of the World.
Day 4: Becoming dirt poor. We spent most of the day before our train to Xi'An shopping in what is called The Silk Market. It is like the biggest shopping area with floors devoted to certain objects (ex. Pearls, jeans, silk, jewelry... pretty much a girl's Heaven). A good finale to Beijing.
Day 5: Saw an Army. We went to to see the Terracotta Warriors (labeled the 8th Wonder of the World). It was SO cool. They are over 2000 years old and they were just recently found around 40 years ago. They're still uncovering new stuff everday. There are over THOUSANDS of soldiers and horses in the pit and none of are replicas of each other. All of them are unique and completely amazing. A whole army just hidden underground. That night we went to a water show in the park. The water would shot out with the music playing and for some reason we got the brilliant idea to run THROUGH the show. So there is us five Americans running through the show with no shoes on screaming like little girls. We give America a good name :)
Day 6: Went to see a Drum tower and performance in Xi'An and went home. It was fantastic!!!!

I loved being there but I'm excited to be home. I miss the kids. They're my life here. I hope that all went well with you this week! Much love!