Let the Games Begin!!!!

 Some of my new friends
The Boy holding the sign is my host brother
That would be us pretending to sing

Sports Day!! Yay!!  So first of all the hotness of yesterday was very much gone by this morning, although I did not realize it and was quite cold most of the day...Oh well at some point I may get this right.  So the Sports Day was I think sort of Olympic inspired.  Each class represented a country and they walked around in a sort of parade for the opening ceremony.  The parade was quite cute, and some of the classes would stop in front of us and do little dances.  I got plenty of pictures do not worry!

So after the parade we got the special pleasure of singing a song in front of the entire school with some of the other English teachers except we were the ones handed the microphone, not them.  So that was interesting, since we did not know the song.  We all held the words in front of us and sort of attempted to mumble along.  Good times!  After we sang, the games began!  We participated in a couple of games against other groups of teachers and I have to say we did pretty well, we wont 2 out of 4 games against about 7 other teams of teachers.  The first game we played was called "Hit the ball."?  Something like that.  Each team had a huge ball, and you had to move it without taking both of your hands off of it.  It sounds easier than it actually is.  We really sort of cheated along with all the other teams in this game.  After that, we played what my host mom called "Dragon walk" or something.  Look at the pictures for a better explanation.  It is sort of like a Chinese three legged race.  Only six of us got to participate in this, so I just watched and took pictures of course.  After this, we played tug of war against the other English teachers and beat them twice quite easily.  We are very strong, ARGHHH!!! The last game they called skipping but we like to call it jump roping.  It was an interesting type of jump roping.  What you did was jump into the rope turning, jump three times and then jump back out. As that person is jumping out the next person in the line jumps in.  The point is you see how many times your team can jump in a three minute time. We did ok in this since we had never even played the game before.  After the teachers competed, the students participated and played the same games that we did.  We stayed outside for most of the morning.  We are actually done teaching for the week, and tomorrow we just get to hang out.

Later in the afternoon, since none of us had any teaching to do, we took a cab ride into the city and went to starbucks!  Samantha, one of the English teachers and also a host family for one of us asked some friends of hers to drive us to the city.  So in three taxis off we went.  So have a mentioned that driving in China is pretty much a life or death experience?  Because it is.  After the cab ride to Pizza Hut yesterday I was not quite sure if I wanted to get in another one, but these people seemed a bit more sane.  So off we went.  Well about halfway there I am sitting in my can and we here a CRASH!  I look up and I see that two cars in front of us have hit each other.  Then I realize that one of the cars was a group of our girls!  Luckily, everyone was ok, and it just smashed a tail light.  So off we went to Starbucks.  So my favorite part of Starbucks?  The western toilet...aka no squatty potty!!  The vanilla frappichino was also quite good too.  After Starbucks we went back to the school and I walked back to my house.

When I got to my house I noticed these strange large men shoes outside of my door. (In China you don't wear your shoes inside the house, you wear cool little slippers!)  So I walk in and see this man and the little boy is like this is my Dad!  So I have a dad!!!  For the first couple of days I had no idea, and then on Sunday during the home videos they pointed him out and said that he was their dad and that he was in Tibet.  So today I suppose he came home.  I do not know what he was doing in Tibet, maybe some sort of military?? I did not ask, sort of a strange subject here in China right now as you can imagine. The dad from what I can tell thus far does not speak a lick of English.  He was asking me a lot of questions though which is fun when being asked through a person who does not speak a lot of English.  Dinner was quite happy though.  I think things have been sort of tense around here because he has been gone.  We had quite an enjoyable dinner though.  After dinner I showed them pictures of Sports Day today and some of the little boy I took there today.  I then just went through all my pictures and showed them random things from America and my house and family.  Mom and Dad, they said you looked very young. I also think they think I live in a mansion.  They were like whoaaa big house, and only your family and your grandparents live there?  I didn't want to say actually...just my parents and me live there.  But anyways...that was the highlights of the day.  I am quite tired tonight, I will probably go to bed quite early.  Adios!!!