LDG

Hey just letting you guys know i've made it to guanxi. me and a friend are at an internet cafe down the street. It's quite confusing with all the usual english in internet explorer in Chinese. Quite awkward indeed.

I felt something spark in me as we were descending into the airport. Seeing those limestone sentinels draped in green cloaks overlooking the vast farmland... I remember I wrote my college essay on going here. I remembered a lot of things on that descent. I remembered the students I last taught. I realized a lot of them probably couldn't go to college because of the demands a farm family has on their children. I remember them surrounding our bus and begging us not to go. And I felt something inside of me that I haven't felt for a long time- My heart felt like it was breaking again.

Today, we had orientation at the orphanage. I remember the lady saying two things- "You not only bring your love to us, but we bring our love to you". That felt so good to hear in the midst of my feelings of inadequacy in loving because I don't really have the ability to love like dad does.

The other thing they said was "The weather here in guanxi is the hottes during july and august, so it's right in time for you. They call them the months of fire. But don't worry. the weather is simply a reflection of our people's hearts." aaah if only dad would capture that fire for him.

The first evening we got there, the older college kids on the team went out to buy guitars for the guitar lessons. We haggled for a real long time and bought four mediocre guitars for 930 rmb. We must have been the best business they got in years. They were the best deal i've ever seen for guitars- 930 rmb is about 100 bucks. that means 25 bucks each, not including all the strings and stuff we got with them. Hope the kids like them. Anyways, that took a long while, and by the end we plopped down on our beds and slept.

we hung out with the kids today. It was pretty good. They had no idea josh, our half chinese half white guy could speak english. He was trying to pretend he couldn't speak chinese. Everyone could hear the uproar at his table when he spoke his first word of chinese. haha. He's an instant celebrity.

For me, I feel like things are just sailing along. I don't feel as stressed out as I should. There's things to be done, lessons unplanned, and uncertainty on how exactly we are going to teach english for 2.5 hours every day. However, i've realized after several years- that's just how auntie lilian works. Extremely specific, yet extraordinarily vague. hahaha. I've learned to just smile and trust her and dad that things will go alright.

for the food report-

don't tell anyone on the trip, but I snuck out this morning and bought some xiao long bao and some stuff that looked like sieu mai, but had rice instead of meat in it. It was pretty good. I saw a plethora of other possibilities too. I can't wait. I've started a secret society on my team called LDG, or La duzi gemen-er. If you understand mandarin, you might know what that means. At the school, they had chicken and noodles and spicy stuff for lunch, and dinner had deep fried fish and too many vegetables. What's ironic is the fish is giving me stomach problems, but the stuff i got off the street didn't do diddly-squat to me.

Well, earth-daddy- I hope you're proud of me. I'll continue as long as my stomach can hold.

Hm. I'm not sure if there's anything else to say for now. anyways, continue to talk to dad for me.

By the way, the internet is freaking exploding in china. we had to look for a few cafes before we found one with open seats. i hear they have almost as many users on the internet as the US, and it's still growing. anyways, they're all playing world of warcraft right now. nerds. hahahaha. okay bye.