We Hit the One Month Mark!

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We’ve been here ONE MONTH! It is such a crazy feeling – I have never been away from home for this long before. But it’s been such an eventful month! I love it more each day, my job the people the place! Everything is going so well here, I couldn’t be happier!



Last weekend, Courtney and I went and got bikes FINALLY. My life has been significantly better since! Not only am I saving so much money not having to get a motor taxi to and from work every day, but it’s amazing exercise and I am able to do so much more a day! Walking was great because everything is relatively close together in the city we’re in, but it took up most of our nights getting to and from places. Now that we have bikes, we can explore new restaurants and shops. It’s been awesome!



We’ve met a few people who have spoken English and we’ve exchanged numbers with them – yay! So we officially have new Chinese friends (which was what I’ve really been wanting, so that we can discover new things about the lifestyle and culture which Im super interested about). And hopefully we will go to dinner or do stuff with them soon! One of them, we met last night at a noodle place and her name is Venus. She’s soo cute, and her husband and her had dinner with us last night and they were awesome. She’s so fluent in English and said she wants to hang out and have dinner and go shopping with us, so I’m looking forward to it all My goal is to go to dinner at a traditional Chinese family gathering at one point. I’d love to experience that!!



School’s been going well, I love my kids so much – they all know my name now so when I walk down the hall it’s not “TEACHER TEACHER!” It’s TEACHER LAUREN!!!! They are awesome, and make me realize each day how much I love my job and how awesome teaching is. Some of them are so funny, one boy drew Chinese letters on the board for me the other day when I came into class, and when I asked him what it meant he said “ITS I LOVE YOU!” SOO CUTE!! Seriously, they are so precious haha



This weekend we’re going to Hong Kong to get our visas renewed and some sightseeing in. Super stoked about it, and we have an awesome list of to do things for our first time there. Hopefully it’s good weather to get up to Victoria Peak and for the Victoria Harbour light show So much to look forward to!



Last weekend we experienced our first Chinese Karaoke bar. Not only that, but we got VIP!! It was one of the boys’ friends who hooked us up. He’s awesome, and it was his friend’s birthday so they celebrated in an enclosed room with a karaoke set up and we were served free beer and food all night. Living the dream literally . We sang the night away with Celine Dion, Elton John, Westlife and a bunch of other goodies. Of course some Disney hits such as “Can you feel the love tonight” were played hahah I would definitely go back again!



We’ve started planning our rough plan for our Chinese New Year adventure. A group of us are going through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos over theholiday and I couldn’t be more excited for that. Not only do we get to experience all of these amazing places, but we’ve got an awesome group of people to do it with!



This weekend is the Chrysanthemum Festival which is Huge in China! The Chrysanthemum is the Chinese national flower and in a bunch of parks here in Xiaolan (which is famous for the festival) , they make huge flower arrangements and sculptures, I cant wait to see it! Pictures definitely to come soo<span style="font-family: Wingdings;">n</span>



The picture uploader thingy won't let me upload my recent photos so hopefully will try and upload the recent ones when we are back from HK!



Love 😊

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