2 Days

Nov. 22, 2016
11:00 pm
Beijing, China

I know I missed my post yesterday! Don’t kill me! I’m so sorry. I was exhausted and it had been a long day. I literally got home from work and fell straight into bed. I barely even had time to set my alarm before I was out. As such, I know that I owe you an extra day, so I’ll try to cover both yesterday and today in this blog. That being said, I’m actually extremely exhausted today, too. We’ll see how this goes.

So yesterday was a normal day at work. Like last Friday I didn’t have any classes and just planned all day. But the real fun actually happened before work. My co-worker, Gretchen, had this past week off because her mom and dad came to China for a visit. While they were here, Gretchen wanted them to see EF and meet the people she worked with. As a result, we were all invited to get hot pot with them at a nice restaurant in our mall, literally right around the corner from EF. It was such a fun lunch! Her parents are extremely nice and a pleasure to talk to. They are both ESL teachers who have traveled a lot, so they had many fun stories and were truly interested in hearing about our experiences. Additionally, it’s the first time I’ve really hung out with many of my coworkers outside of work. It was nice to get to know them a little bit better.

The food was excellent, albeit a little pricier than I’d usually spend. We had fun getting to experience hot pot together, many of us Americans failing at picking food out of the pot. Also, we had a great waitstaff who were all very patient with our lack of understanding, but we did have local teachers there who definitely helped. Our final treat during the meal was a visit from a noodle dancer. In China it is not uncommon for you to see your noodles get made. They usually take a flat piece of dough and swing it around until it starts to pull apart, creating noodles. Most often, they use their fingers to get strands to form. Well at this restaurant they have a guy who actually dances with the noodles. Unfortunately I did not get a video of his last dance, which was much better and much more entertaining than this one.

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Today was my day off, which makes sends because it’s a Tuesday. I slept in a bit today, which I really needed. Then around noon I headed for the subway. After a good hour and a half on a crowded subway, I finally reached my destination. The day was spent hanging out with the Faggs and it was so much fun! I’m teaching Jeannie tap lessons (something I hope I can do well) and today was our first lesson. We both ordered new tap shoes and got to try them on today. Man, I had forgotten how good a new pair of tap shoes smells. In addition to the lesson, I got to spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out with the boys. Although Darren and Jeannie had a lot of school work to finish, Trevor and Asher were happy to play with me. It was nice to get to hang out with kids and not have to teach them anything, haha.

Cathy was kind enough to let me stay for dinner and I could not be more grateful. It was nice to have a home cooked meal, something I haven’t had since coming here. Plus, it was white chili and amazingly delicious. It was nice to sit around a dinner table and listen to family discussions at the table. Although timing was always a bit of an issue back home and we didn’t have a lot of full-family-around-the-dinner-table dinners, those kinds of conversations are the ones I miss the most. Being there really did make me feel at home, because home is always full of crazy kids and great memories.

I will say that being at the Faggs has caused a little, I don’t want to call it homesickness, but I will. It made me miss being able to cook for myself and having conversations in the kitchen. It doesn’t help that Thanksgiving is this Thursday, either. Although there are plenty of ch—ches in the area having Thanksgiving meals, I work on Thursday, so there’s no way I’m going to make anything. That said, I’m going to try to talk to Taylor and Brian about doing something together for Thanksgiving, even if it’s just finding a rotisserie chicken to share or finding turkey deli meet and making sandwiches. I just think it’ll be nice to share the day with other people. That being said, I’m not having a super hard time with it. It’s a little disappointing that I’m not at home, but I know I’ll be there in spirit (and maybe over FaceTime). And I know that my family knows I love them and will be thinking about them Thursday (and Friday morning because that’s when you all will actually be eating Thanksgiving Dinner).

Goodnight and Bless,
Kristen