The Last Days

I have three days left. 3 days of a 13 month journey around the world. 3 days left as a volunteer. 3 days left in China. 3 days until it's back to America.

I am so stinking excited.

We just finished a goodbye with the third graders. Being a head teacher isn't really so great in that you don't teach. Not teaching is fun but you lose the connections you would have made with the kids. Luckily I sat in on classes every day and hung out in my friends rooms quite often which allowed me to get to know the children, who I will miss. 

I will miss them always being so happy and cheerful and full of excitement whenever I came in. I will miss yheir cute hugs and energetic "teacher Jessica!" Greetings. The kids are so loving and giving. It's adorable. 

Yesterday they had their performace and thus is so well! They did a travel theme and it was adorable!

Now I'm waiting for second and first to come for their goodbye parties. Hoping they don't wail for 20 minutes like the third graders did. That was just sad but I'm sure it will be equally bad. Is fitting that is pouring outside and has been all week. We arrived in the early morning yo pouring rain and blackness and we will leave in the early morning to pouring rain and blackness. Poetic, eh?

Look how cute this is. The second and first graders did a summer themed performace and had this cute raft. The kids looked adorable me in their costumes. 

This group did a Peter Pan theme and their costumes were on point. 

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Turning 29, China Style

When I came out of the shower to my besties singing and saw this I knew it was going to be a great day. 

Those are HPC donuts. China doesn't do cake. China doesn't do frosting. But China does to bakeries. 

My friends know that bakeries and me go together like salt and pepper. This was perfect. 

After devouring this cake it was time for a mega bed movie. 

Then we headed to lunch in the cafeteria. But let's have a back story. For three weeks I have been checking every day for them to have these dumpling things filled with scrambled egg and onion. Disappointment every day until today. On my birthday, they had them! 

Back to the dorm to finish our movie. 

Then it was time to get ready and head into school. Took some photos with the kids then had to teach a class for a girl who was sick. 

Then to mikelles class:

Then we headed to MEET for Indian food. It rained on the way.

Had to take a birthday selfie with the wonderful Mikelle since we take selfies everywhere.

Got amazing Indian food and turns out there is an international group that plays trivia here every week on Wednesday. So we then played trivia! My group one the first round on baby animals. 

There we are team MJ2. Then we lost the next rounds but we stayed for hours and it was so much fun. Then even sang to me. In English, then chinese, German, french, Japanese, Italian and Spanish. 

After we wanted manual tart but it was closed. So we went to our .30 ice cream place but it had the dirt down. I stuck my head in there and started calling for Sean the owner. He came! Opened shop and turned the ice cream on! What a day! So much fun! I love my girls here for making it the best! 

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Hannah Banana and Nanjing

Hannah.

The friend who I met in Lithuania then went to visit her in Changzhou. Last weekend she and two others came to hang out with us in Nanjing.

We walked around the night life at 1912 street. 

We ate donuts on national donut day.

 We waited three hours to try this "snow". While it looks appetizing, it was a huge disappointment. The top layer was delicious but under that is just a snow cone with no syrup. Basically we all that shaved ice and with no syrup you are paying for frozen water. It is popular with the Chinese though hence the wait. Nonetheless it was a good experience.

We went to the nanjing gate. It was hot, really hot. 91 and humid.

We rented a little electric boat and rode around the late. The boat went about 2 miles an hour but Xuanwu lake is incredible! 

We saw beautiful views of the city. Then they left and the rest of us went and found the Jimming temple. 

After that we headed to Hunan Road and   Got some dinner and explored the night life again. There are only two weeks until I go home! 

By the way we've been seeing the sky a lot lately which has been nice.

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The Time My School Flooded

Literally, this happened. 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

It started off as a normal Tuesdsy morning. The forecast was rain, which is not unusual for spring in China. As it came time to leave the dorm and walk to class the sky had opened and the rain came down with a vengeance. Pouring does not begin to describe the waterfall that was falling from the clouds. I was one of the lucky ones who had an umbrella. The others resorted to trash bags and anything else they could find to offer some sort of shelter. 

As we sat in the building watching the storm we joked about class getting canceled. I mean why not? We have fire days in Ca and snow days in the east why not a rain day? Sure enough the teacher called and said they couldn't bring the kids outside in this. I totally get it. When the sky has unleashed its vengeance and is throwing water horizontally at you there is no way to get 80 kids here especially when there was already 2 inches of water on the floor. We all headed back to the dorm taking videos and pictures of the rain and huge puddles.

After playing around in our room for about an hour I got up to relight the mosquito coil in the kitchen and was floored when I saw this:

SAY WHAT!? I started yelling for people in the hall to get out here and see this flood. What on Earth has happened!? We all stood shocked. Then in come 4 people who had been out swimming in it. They told us stories of the front of the school and the canal overflowing. They said it was past their knees on the road that went around the school. 

You only live once. And in that life you will probably never be in a flood in China, so, bathing suits on and out we went. 

This is right outside our dorm door. Not too high. A nice introduction to what we were about to experience.

Joe took us over to the amphitheater which was full and to our waist. We swam around, laughed and played. Meanwhile the chinese tried to go home:

But some would soon learn that they couldn't make it home because their cars were flooded.

My lifeproof case decided to break on my way down the stairs. Go figure I've had this case on my phone every day in China and not needed it until the day it breaks. Anyway my swimming was cut short so I could go back and rescue my phone. I took a long hot shower to make sure all the disease water was washed away. Then the media fun started. 

That first group that braved the flood took a ton of photos and apparently everyone else took a ton of photos of them. Within hours their pictures were all over chinese social media, the news, and even the newspaper. It quite literally spread all over China. Well outside out city. 

This was an experience I never thought I would have but is one for the books, that's for sure.

Three weeks left. See you soon America. 

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