Performances, Dino Park, and Doctor Visits

These past two week have been busy and they are just going to get busier and busier as time goes by! As of today we only have 9 more days left in China, wow the time has flown. Before I started feeling ready but now I think that I really am ready. I love my kids and enjoy this country but I miss my home and my family. We have already had to say goodbye to some people from the Branch and ya know, saying goodbye is hard! I'm not looking forward to that part of the end. But enough of that talk, time for some fun updates!

Alyssa and I chose for our end-of-the-year-party performance to be the 10 little monkeys. When we ordered the costumes for it we expected some kind of monkey tail or big ear but no, as usual, China went all out! Our kiddos got full body costumes of 10 monkeys, 3 doctors, and one momma.

Alina, Sam, and Steven posing as the doctors. And you can probably tell from the picture, but yes, Alina has quite the crush on Sam ;D

Here is Alina, Jack, Michael, and Peter just being themselves in the darling monkey costumes. 

After the performance all the parents wanted pictures so here is one of all the morning ILP teachers and out 42 awesome students.

This is just random but I for sure wanted to get a picture of the mini bus taxi. We have ridden in these kinds of cars so often! The drivers will stand on the street and say "Taxi, taxi" over and over again especially because we travel in big groups so when we finally agree, the driver always walks us down dark alleys or behind sketch buildings to these vans. So sketchy! But this is how we roll ;D

I have no explanation for this because I don't think there is one. We just found these.... statue/mannequins in the middle of this massive underground mall dressed in these uniforms with crazy hair. They were roped off but Alyssa insisted that I go stand in the middle of them. She kept pressuring me and saying she wouldn't take the picture unless I hopped the rope but just as I was about to Amber (another teacher in our group) spotted a nearby guard and quick and stopped me, thank goodness!

Saturday morning we headed out bright and early to the Dinosaur Amusement Park in Changzhou, I had been back and forth on whether I should have gone or not but I finally decided last minute that it would be worth it to just play with the girls in my group since we have become so close. While we were waiting in the train station this guy just kept staring at us, which is totally normal, but then he pulled out his camera and tried pretty hard to be sneaky. I just laughed and pulled out my camera and blatantly took a picture of him. When he noticed he laughed so hard, he thought that was pretty funny. The expats that have lived in China for a long time now say that they go through phases of not loving then not minding then hating the paparazzi but ya know, I don't know if I would every get tired of it. It think it's quite the self-esteem booster that everyone wants a picture of me and I'm really going to miss that in America.

We made it to the Dinosaur Park! It ended up being a lot more expensive than we expected, a ridiculously hot day, and the longest line waits, but all in all it was a pretty fun day. On the way there in the train I thought of all the reasons that I shouldn't have gone including that my Relief Society lesson for the next day wasn't planned yet but after it all I'm glad I went. The scenery of the park and the architect was incredible, it really was like nothing you have ever seen. Holy cow they spent a ton of time and money making that place look just like a legit land of dinosaurs.

This is the biggest and by far coolest roller coaster that was at the park. Surprisingly, though, when we went to get in line it said that it didn't open until 2 pm. At 2:15 we went to get on and they said that the line wait would be approximately 2 hours and the park closes at 5 so it would probably be our last ride of the day. Bummer! So instead of riding it I just took a picture so you see how could it would have been ;D The rides we did go on, though, were still really fun! There was one inside that shot you into a dark room where the walls were covered with light dots to look like stars, that was really neat. There was one that spun you around like the Samurai at Lagoon which was SUPER fun. Unfortunately we had gotten slurpies right before to cool us down, but after downing the slurpie and riding the ride for the 3rd time I was pretty motion sick and had to sit out the next couple of rides. Dang it! At the end of the day all of us were feeling a bit queasy from the rides, lack of good food, and lack of water on a humid and scorching day. We had woken up at 5:30 to get there on time so we were all pretty tired when we got on the train home. We weren't done bonding yet, though, so we played a game like charades the whole 1 1/2 til home. Then on the Subway I literally zonked out. Walking back to the dorms I was basically a zombie. Alyssa and I took our showers then I was up for another 1 1/2 planning my Relief Society lesson. That will teach me a thing or two about procrastination!

Oh China. So many men do this to "cool off". I just shake my head (and take pictures of course!)

Right before we left the park I spotted this group of guys and thought it would be ironic for the American girl to ask the Chinese boys for a picture, so here ya go! They laughed but they were really good about it.

Oh, this is a good one. Ok story time: Once upon a time an American girl got sick. I got a head cold about a month ago and the symptoms of it still haven't gone away. My sinuses feel like they are constantly going to explode. I looked up my other smaller symptoms and come to find out my cold turned into a sinus infection. (Side note right here: my mother has always warned me of sinus infections because I would never blow my nose when I was sick. To this day I literally don't know how to blow my nose because it is psychologically soooo hard for me to do it. After getting the infection I had had enough and now I can officially say that I can blow my nose. Embarrassing but true.) Well I went to the doctor (they actually had me go to the emergency room in the hospital....  the Chinese treat every little wound or medical problem as an emergency) and he sat me down and my chinese speaking Head Teacher and went over all of the symptoms. Without checking me out at all he send me to get a blood test. I went to a nurse and she drew my blood then 15 minutes later gave me the diagnoses. The dr. said it looked like it was just a regualar cold and not to worrry about it too much so he just gave me some basic meds: this box of angry/happy pills and this bottle of black liquid to drink 3xs a day. I took the meds every day on schedule just like a good little patient should but instead of leaving my cold actually got worse because then on top of the pained sinus, stuffed nose, headaches, and coughing now I have lost hearing in my left ear and whenever I talk, breathe,  or eat the sound is amplified like when you plug your ears with your fingers. After 3 days of that I went back to the doctor.

Doctor visit part II: I went back and this time they sent me to an actual examination room. The lady doctor first listened to my head teacher tell her all about my symptoms. Then she got her little camera on the end of the long metal want and checked out my ears. Yay! A real checkup! Then she got another wand and put it up my nose. I assumed it was a camera as well. Surprise! No, she squirted some kind of liquid all up in my nose. Wow, didn't know that was coming! I don't mean to be gross but then it quickly dripped back out of my nose and onto my lips. My instant reaction was one I regretted; I licked my lips. It wasn't that big of a deal besides it being gross but then my lips and my tongue went numb. Oh great. But wait, it gets better: So then she takes a longer metal wand and puts it in my nose again. This time I thought she was just checking it out with the camera but she shoves that thing all the way down the back of my throat! I have experiences few things that are that painful. She pulled it back out and explained that she couldn't do anything about my hearing at that hospital besides getting a cat scan but she could take care of the sinuses. Yay! Then she came at me with the wand again and I just laughed and shook my head. There is no way I would let that thing enter my body again! She said, "No, it's ok (in broken English) so I made the wrong choice of assuming she would just stick it in part way. All the way back down it went. When I swallowed I could feel the end of the camera touching the back of my throat. Let me tell you right now that I straight metal object should NOT but pushed through a sensitive curved path. Oh China, oh China. My poor head teacher said he was going to have nightmares, haha poor guy. Luckily we did manage to say that we just needed some antibiotics to take care of the problem so we got loaded with meds again that I will have to take basically constantly. Let's cross our fingers these work! Oh China :D