Hello! Bwahahahahhaahhaa!! Ever since the blog started Brodie and I have been unable to actually access it in China. So once we wrote a new blog entry we would email it to our parents, who in turn, would post it to the blog. Not any more HAHAHA!!! my co-workers and i have purchased a VPN which will allow Brodie and I to see blocked web sites!!

So what has happened in my blogging absence? Well, i had to dance Gangnam style to hundreds of people for a fun outdoor...thing? i'm not sure what to call it; Advertisement, Promotional activity, BS? No idea (just kidding about the BS, though most the the foreign staff was very unhappy to be there. I had fun).
Brodie a few friends and I decided to try and find the famed  'Statue of the Five Goats' that Guangzhou is so proud of. It's location is Yuexiu Park. That place is crazy. It was a jungle and super quiet. then you turn the corner and BAM! amusement park! There were old walls, fable statues (made of plastic but meant to look like stone) and a grave yard. We walked around until the sun went down but found so statue. We're planning to try again sometime, but we haven't yet.
We had a lovely Chinese Birthday (the day before the Canadian one :P). Brodie had people from the kindergarten give her  flowers and Chocolate. I fed the chocolate to kids and coworkers at Liede (not all of it but a good portion). Kelly and Danny bought us a cake and and we ended up playing that Pass the Pigs game and card games with them. The morning of our Canadian birthday, Friday, I discovered that the electricity was out in our building, kelly's building (he has his own now) and the other ACT building (with Allayna and Tomi). We were told to wait until after we were back from work (training centre people. those of us that actually noticed the power was out because we weren't at work yet), then tell Eve if the power was back on or not. Kelly had no problems at all because he hadn't lived in the new house long enough for the power company to rightfully bill him and cut the power. Allayna had no issues either and I'm told it's because she works in the same building as the ACT managers and nagged until they got the power back. I hope thats not true because that would mean they were able to get the power back and just didn't for Brodie and I. Brodie and I didn't get electricity until after the weekend. Being without electricity  for three days wasn't all that bad. The only issues I had was not being able to take a warm shower (theres a heater that you turn of before the water heats up) and the food in the fridge was going to go bad.
 Turns out that the reason our power went out was because our land lord forgot to give us the power bill and the electric company is vicious. Can't wait to move...



Any way! hmmm new things that have happened. OH! I am now teaching four classes of my own at Liede. I have my Golden class (the kids go straight from the school next door and take a class at the training centre), a VIP class (one of one lessons with a kid who is planning to move to Canada next year. Super cool!), a beginner class of little kids (I can honestly say this class scares me the most) and a second beginner class with older kids. The little kid class scares me because I am not good at keeping little kids entertain and I have to teach them for 90 minutes. So far I am semi good at it but I had one parent say she wanted to pull her kid out after the second class. That sucked to hear but Dog figures her expectations are too high if she thinks her kid (who is 2 or 3 by the way) is going to be great at speaking english after two classes. Though he gave me a mission. Do whatever I can to keep that kid in the class. I did my best but I don't know if it worked. There is a little girl in that class Yi Yi (EE EE like a monkey :D) who I know from make-up class. She's 2 years old and one of the cutest kids at the school. She is now in my class and i made her cry almost every time i saw her. I yelled to loud or  I looked scary or some other kid ran into her and knocked her over, but either way she would get upset and cry. She also doesn't say even two words to me. In the last class, though, i pulled out some colourful blocks and had the kids say "I want red" or "I want blue" then i'd give them the block. She was so excited that i think she shoved kids twice her size over in order to get to the blocks. She also said the whole sentence perfectly!!! such a cute kid.

Brodie's buddy from work (Nick) is a huge nerd like us and has gotten us into D&D. Thats right, Dungeons and Dragons. If we didn't sound nerdy before, Think again! We also have a few other friends here who want to play as well. We're gonna start a different version of D&D that is set in a zombie apocalypse reality and our characters are trying to survive it. sounds fun, right!! i think i am becoming zombie/monster obsessed. I watch The Walking Dead and read the comic, I read vampire books, I have an app on my ipod that is like Farm Town but with zombies and I Have another app that is for jogging. Its this whole story line with a few towns in a zombie apocalypse. But the way the app kind of works is if you don't run fast enough the zombies will catch you. Isn't that AWESOME! so any way, zombie, zombie, school, zombies.

The weather has been really foggy lately and its always smoggy so we usually have  hard time seeing the buildings in the distance. Yesterday It rained the entire day and it freaked us out when we could see the lights in the far off buildings and colour of everything was sharper... Can't wait to go back to clean air Canada (or at least the Edmonton area).

Thats all for now,
Love you all
Makenzie

One more pic & Makenzies dance

It's hard to see but those lights are hanging from the tree. They keep changing so it looks like rain. Very cool. They also come in rainbow.

Here is Makenzie's gangnan style dancing debut in China!  If you look REALLY close you can see her in the back row between the two guys who look like they actually know the dance. She has on a cowboy hat and white skirt. This is the end of the dance and shows the fireworks that the dancers weren't expecting.

Super late blog update!

Heres my super late blog update. my laziness is getting unbearable lol

I’m sooo sleeeeepppyyyy ZZzzzz….

Brodie and I had to leave our house for ACT all day, every day, so we would get stir-crazy on our days off so we ended up wandering around the city or going out to get food. Because of that neither of us have spent a whole 24 hours without leaving our house since we came to China. That doesn’t sound to bad because we get to see more of the city, but I’m tired and sore and our house is a wreck... was a wreck, I just cleaned it.

            TODAY on my day off I am determined to not take one foot outside, and relax (after I finished cleaning and steam cleaning my blankets again).

            I thought for a while that my training center job had the worst schedule because I only get one day off a week (Kelly had two days off, lucky), but I discovered recently that Allayna and Ollie only get one day off a week as well (I think) so I’m not alone!

            Tomi has a really good kindergarten to work at because it's such a small school, they're a lot more relaxed with meetings and paperwork and stuff; where as Brodie’s kindergarten is bigger and busier and likes to keep things in order. They're both good jobs but Tomi’s is easier to work at.

            Allayna and Ollie’s work seems to be similar to Brodies.

Nov 6, 2012.

Wow I have really let this blog go. Sorry about that. I have gotten very unorganized lately and, to be honest, my laziness level spiked as soon as we got the internet.. Again sorry. But I’m back now and will be blogging more! Hopefully!

So for some reason all of the training centers are having a festival/party/meet and greet.. thing. I actually have no idea what it is, or why we’re doing it. No one has really given me a clear answer besides all the training centers staff are going to be there (… I hear something that sound like someone dropping a lot of stuff for a long time, or a machine gun firing from far away. The sound is continuous rapid bangs, but it sounds like an echo or something. I think it has something to do with the garbage truck? I don’t know). We were also told that the foreign staff has to do a dance (no!). The dance is Gundam Style (NOO!!)  and I suck at that dance (NOOO!!!!). the good news is I’m not alone. My friend Karl is planning on walking through the dance (literally walking) instead of actually dancing.

On my way to the park it was scary. I’m used to riding the metro at 8am on the weekends... weekdays its crazy. The train was so full that you actually feel crushed and can’t move. I stood in a line of about twenty people and had to watch two trains stop, pack people in, and then drive off without me before I was close enough to jump on.

A little old lady and her daughter (I’m guessing) were right in front of me and the passengers boarding the train pushed me uncomfortably close to them. I had my arm twisted funny between two people when I first boarded so after that I was hugging my book and trying to be a small as possible. Everytime the train stopped more people crushed into the train. At one point the sweet old lady elbowed me back and started angrily yelling at me (because obviously I had run into her because I’m a jerk and not because I literally had no room to breath as people behind me pushed forward. * sigh * some people can be so mean… or dumb, I don’t know). I’m assuming she was telling me to back up, but trust me, if I had a choice I would not have been squashed near any old Chinese lady (they are mean when it comes to lines and trains! ).

When the train got to my stop I tried to get out of the crowd (and almost dropped my vampire book in the process). I was actually shaking when I got to the next train, but this one was way less crowded. So I have been avoiding being within two feet of everyone ever since then.

After I was off the metro I met up with the Chinese staff and we walked to the park. Most of them don't speak English, but a few can and they were chatting in Chinese and goofy off the whole time I saw them. Even though I could only understand every other word they said, it was still fun to watch because you can tell when they made a joke by the other person’s facial expression. I had fun :o).

            It was hilarious. All the staff from all the training centers (Chinese and foreign) have to do a dance (another one) where we’re lined up and marching while waving our hands or jumping around all at the same time (the music is an Aqua song but I forget what it's called. I think it was Cartoon heroes but I could be wrong). The principle of Tianhe walked up to everyone and started talking to us with a microphone. Her name is Sunny (I think ) and she’s really nice but her English is not perfect. She honestly said to everyone, “Okay, good job, but the song is happy so when you dance you have to smell (smile), okay. Make sure you smell.” Every single native English speaker burst out laughing and started joking around (she had finished talking so it was fine). I heard Karl joke that he hadn’t showered in three days, just for this dance lol.

            Also we need to play a carnival-like game as well as the dance. My school’s thing was they had three pumpkins and the kids threw a hoop and got it on the pumpkin. I don’t know where they got it but the pumpkins they found were actually gourds that looked like pumpkins. The funnier part of this fact is that none of the Chinese staff knew what a gourd was and had no clue for the longest time. So awesome!

            So I’m back home now. I had to bring in a book I got from the doctor’s office and see if the school would pay for my medical bill.. I don't know if I told you about that? Whoops. Well long story short. I woke up one morning and my eyes were red and swollen and oozing puss (it looked like I was crying green goo). Veeeerry gross. So when I went into work that day, my eyes scared the Chinese staff and a girl named Christy took me to a pharmacy to get meds (and I got out of doing some work. YAY lol ). The meds didn’t work and my eyes were almost closed because they were so swollen. So I called into work and Christine (the lady who organizes my schedule) took me to the hospital. They gave me a book and a credit card looking hospital card. Then I saw the doctor, she gave me Japanese medicine (ooooo) and it was eye drops, eye cream and a small bottle of something I was supposed to drink with a straw. There were no pills so I was very happy. The next day my eyes were waaay better and by the end of the week I looked normal :o) 

 I was supposed to bring that book in today and forgot it so I came back home. This morning I took a bus and the train (went one stop passed Liede) and that's where the park was. Then I went all the way back home (I could have went one stop and just stayed at work, if it was open … hmm) but yeah now I’m at home waiting till 4 when I have to go to work again. Such a fun day :P.  

           

Well that's all that's been happening lately. I’ll see if Brodie can get a video of my super embarrassing dance and put it on the blog. :P.

We had to go to Hong Kong to renew our visa and we took these pictures on the train.

Chinese farmland

The people sitting across from us laughed when we took this photo lol

Hidden house

Cool picture at the bus stop.

This is more of what we saw on the way to Hong Kong. It's a farm and there're mountains in the background!

In Guangzhou there's a whole place with comic stuff everywhere! It's like the animethon lol

It's the I pee zone!!

My office (Makenzie) - It's small but I like it :o) 

 

This is the foreign staff office- Can you see the Xbox in the background!

Spiderman's in China too!

There are statues like this everywhere. This place had the same statue doing different poses all the way down the hallway. There's been lions that are bigger that me and elephants and lots of things

See ya later.

Makenzie

love you :)