Adventure is out there!!

What's the point of living in a foreign country if you can't go out and find adventures? That was my thought process for this week. With our last vacation a couple weeks behind us and our next vacation a month away still, I was craving something exciting to fill my time, so I decided to go find adventures!

Monday was a good beginning to my week since it was my birthday and I turned 24. I feel old, although everyone and their dog reminds me that 24 is not that old and I have accomplished a lot in that time. I like being 24 as opposed to 23 though because 24 is a much prettier number: it's divisible by a lot, it's even, and it is just nicer to say. Random, I know. But, those are my thoughts on that. So for my birthday I did not want to go out and make everyone pay a lot for my dinner, but I definitely did not want Kaiyin school food. I have been craving my pasta concoctions for weeks now, so I decided to make dinner for everyone! I've never made dinner for so many people before (13 people ate) so I was a little nervous about proportions and having big enough pots to cook everything. Best thing about woks? They are huge. We cooked 4 bags of pasta and 4 bags of tomato sauce. I was in heaven in the kitchen, making sure everything was going according to plan and running smoothly. I planned just enough for everyone, but there were no leftovers. Maybe that's a judgement on how yummy it was...that's the story I'm going with. 

The next day there were some errands I wanted to get done, like get a smoothie I didn't have time to get the day before and buy some jeans since an old pair of mine ripped pretty bad. I was craving adventure so I decided to take the bus that passes right by our apartment complex, but that we never take because it's just a loop so it doesn't look like it goes anywhere fun. I got off at a random stop that had a shopping mall next to the bus stop and immediately found cheap, cute jeans. I bought a pair of lime green jeans that are blue on the inside so when I cuff them the blue peeps out. And a pair of dark jeans. I thereby checked two things off my to do list: get jeans and buy jeans in China. I've made a goal to buy a pair of skinny jeans from every country I've lived in. 

But then I had a lot of extra time after buying jeans so I thought I'd explore the area. I walked down a small street full of scooters driving and honking past me, stores dedicated to men's clothing, and the randomest junk throw together in a store ever. I enjoyed looking in and seeing what all the stores had to offer and how eclectic some of them got. I found shampoo next to pocket knives, next to pillows, next to tea pots. What?

Near the end of the street I finally looked up at what I was walking towards and saw a pagoda on the top of a hill. It was really close, so I decided to go find how to get up there. I found stairs, comparable in steepness to the avatar mountains, if not as long, and started the hike up. Seriously, the most beautiful view of Zhongshan I have ever seen. I will go back just for the view again. 

Thursday our school opened their "dream stage" so the students can practice their English outside of class. But since it was the first time the stage was open, they wanted us teachers to start it off with a bang, so we sang the Disney channel version of A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. We did a practice run on Wednesday, and it wasn't that great because we didn't have any plans for dancing or anything. But we made some dance moves for our Thursday performance and it went a lot better for the parents and all the students. Seriously we got more pictures and recordings of us than the students got!

Friday night we went with our coordinator to another part of the city to explore a market and eat some outdoor Chinese barbecue. The bus ride was an hour and half, so quite a ways away, but it was worth it. We found a mountain, but the pollution was so bad I didn't think it was going to be a good view, so I waited half way down whilst most of our group hiked all the way up. 

Then we went to an outdoor restaurant where you choose what you want boiled or grilled, then they cook it for you: outdoor BBQ! I got an eggplant, broccoli, green beans, and some green onion looking thing and got them grilled. My first bite of broccoli I about died. The Best broccoli I've had in a long time. It was crunchy and had seasoning on it. I melted in my chair with how good it was. We walked around the market neighborhood a little, but since it was an hour and half bus ride, and the buses stop running at 10, we couldn't stay out too late. It was a lot of fun though!

I wanted an adventure Saturday night as well. It was 10pm, but I didnt want my night to feel like it had gone to waste, so I decided to go on a walk in our neighborhood. We walked in another apartment complex neighborhood and found the biggest houses I've seen in a China city. They could be considered mansions in the United States! And as we walked we found some houses that were definitely abandoned. The yards were full of dead leaves and branches and the doors were left open. I was disappointed that I hadn't brought my flashlight and my phone was dieing, or I would have gone exploring more. The houses were so cool!!! But it was too dark to get a good picture; just know they all had a tower on the top of them and we could hear fountains in a lot of the backyards. 

So, I learned this week that adventure is out there! Sometimes you just have to look around for it a little bit.