Home Sweet Home!

We have arrived in our new home! Zhongshan is so nice! It has these beautiful palm trees all over. Our apartment is really nice. The bed is actually big enough for us to fit in. no more twin size beds! A lot has happened the last few days. Sometimes they don't allow blogspot in China and sometimes they do. Now is one of those times! We arrived here on Saturday night. Of course we didn't escape Hong Kong without problems. One of the other teachers packed her passport in her luggage that got checked on the ferry that we took to China. So, unfortunately for her, her passport made it to China but she didn't. But thanks to my handy dandy pocket dictionary (Shaw) we were able to get her passport back to her that night and she arrived safely in Zhongshan the following day. I guess that's how we like to make an entrance.
The school that were working at is directly across from our apartment. It's nice that we don't have to take a bus to school because that could be a pain. The school is really nice. We eat all of our meals there. Which is nice and convenient. We usually have noodles of some kind for breakfast but today we got this delicious sweet bread. OMG it was so good. I am so sick of rice. I miss mexican food so bad. MMMMMMMMMM A chicken chimichanga with peppers and onions with NO RICE but french fries and a side salad sounds sooooo good. Chinese food is very greasy. Every time I eat I have to go home and wash my face. GROSE! I mean most of the time the food is good but it gets old...fast. I could go for a nice spring roll (i haven't seen any of those yet).
We took the local Kaiyin bus to the marked yesterday. We had to buy new pillows because the ones in our room were a little scary. I had to sleep on my Jeffery George(a stuffed giraffe I brought with me) because I was so scared a bug was going to bite me. Have no fears, we have new pillows and new pillow cases and I slept like a little baby right next to Shaw. (Sorry dad! no more twin size beds; just big beds) Other than our scary pillows our little apartment is very nice. It has 3 beds in it and a little bathroom. OH GUESS WHAT? It's a normal bathroom so my anxiety of having to use a squatter has been relieved. We also have a little balcony and a washer. I was a little nervous about the washers but today I did our 1st load of laundry and we are sill in business. The washer works fine and all of our underwear aren't ripped to shreds. We also have a little kitchen but you have to walk outside, walk on to the balcony and then into the kitchen. It's so much better than I imagined. I guess I'm just not meant to really rough it because in Russia I lived in some of the best housing and now I live in the best housing...Thank goodness!
Tomorrow we start teaching. Wish us luck because the CHINESE ARE CRAZY! They are all over the place. They think I can magically make 2 more teachers reappear because we have a shortage of teachers. Cross your fingers and hope for the best because tomorrow is just the beginning. Oh yeah! Today we went to one of the other Bond Language Schools for some training. In their dance room there were 3 drum sets. You can imagine the excitement that came to Shaw's eyes. He had talked to Kemper this morning and after his conversation had mentioned how we wanted to play drums with him. Well, he didn't get to play with Kemper but he did get to play. I was so proud of him and everyone was listening and just thought he was so good. (Which he is) It was a nice little birthday present. Speaking of birthdays...Tomorrow is Shaw and Kempers birthday. Shaw's going to be the BIG 24! Were throwing him a surprise party with cake and ice cream and the whole sha-bang! I'm so proud to say I'm shaw's wife. Everyone is so impressed with his Chinese and his ability to love the Chinese people. I'm such a lucky girl. wish us luck on our 1st day. i'll post pictures later.