this little adventure: a million and one updates

So there's lots to talk about. Lots has happened and blogging, well, I've gotten behind.

Well, so, Madi and I rearranged our room several weeks ago and I was having trouble sleeping about every other night for a while because the bugs really think that my blood tastes good, every other night. Not Madi's, apparently. It's dumb. We took our nets off of our beds and pushed them together so we can snuggle all night every night and have pillow talk while we face each other and smell each other's retainer breath. It's the best. The nets being taken off had caused the swarm of bugs over me. But it's worth it because I get to put my retainer case smack dab in the middle of our pillows so I don't forget to wear it each and every night, like I am supposed to. Madi hates that I do that. A while a go I got bit by so many bugs. I had bug bites all over my back and shoulders. I was up itching for two hours and started having a major panic attack. It was 2 AM when I looked at the clock. I woke Madi up and told her to help me. She gave me moral support and checked my back only to see a gazillion bites. I changed my shirt and put bug spray on and somehow fell asleep eventually. Then, a couple nights later, I couldn't sleep again because I had bugs on my face. Again, I was up for a couple of hours after everyone had gone to bed, tossing and turning. Around 2:30 AM, Jennie comes in saying that she can't sleep, so I invited her into my bed of misery. We cried and laughed together for so long and I peed laughing so hard. I had like three bites on my face and Jennie was so itchy. We finally put peppermint oil on our faces and that burned our eyes so much that we went to sleep. About an hour and a half later, it was time to wake up for the islands. Soooo... basically, the no tent on my bed thing was not going so hot, but I guess it's worth it, Madi. It has gotten much better, probably because it's getting so cold and the bugs don't like it.

Halloween was a lot of fun. I don't teach on Fridays, so I dressed up as a zebra and helped everyone in their classes. The kids were so adorable as they played all of their halloween games. After teaching, we all slept for a while and then had our own little halloween party consisting of eating donuts off of a string, carving pumpkins, and making snickers salad. OH and of course we had to walk down the street for some muslim noodles, which we get several times every week.

We've also celebrated lots of birthdays this past month-ish. For the birthdays, we serve the princess with oatmeal and a fruit. Then we give them their favorite treats and we all write notes to them. We have gone to dinner for every birthday, so that has been fun to try some new places. For Brooke's birthday, we went roller blading and boy was that a sight! It was a tiny rink and the Chinese people really loved to stare. But we didn't have to pay, so that was a plus!

We went to Moon Lake one day. We got to ride on paddle boats and we danced with old people and the whole day was so fun. We hadn't done something as a whole group for a while, so that was nice. What a gorgeous lake, and it was in NINGBO.

We also took a day trip to some islands! They were so cool. Although it was an early start getting in the van at 5:30 AM, we had such a great day. We were able to walk around and see a bunch of cool Buddha statues and people praying to Buddha. It was a great experience. We even saw some monks praying to Buddha. Plus, we got to walk on the beach and that was the best part of the entire day. AH!

Funny story with these pictures - I thought since I had a striped shirt on it would be fun to play Where's Waldo. So I set out to hide from Madi and Dak. Little did I know that Dakota was watching to make sure I didn't get kidnapped, so when I turned around after hiding I thought she had already found me. Nope, Madi was the looker. So I just started coming back and as I got close, Madi asked where I was while I was standing right there. FAIL.

We've been eating lots of cafeteria food, getting gel nails, eating at "the chicken place" and muslim noodles, flirting with Chinese men, staying up way too late, waking up too early, receiving a surprise package from Tay, running around Wanda Plaza to get bags of rice, laughing too hard, peeing my pants, teaching the children, and just having such a wonderful time.