Joutze...ok i have absolutely no idea how to say it...i'm doing inventive spelling:)

Hey you people living 12 hours behind me...as i write this, i think jess is getting married within the next hour or so-insanity! i just finished my first week of teaching today and as tired as i am, i absolutely loved it! thanks for all of you leaving messages for me! i get to check again tomorrow night so feel free to write more! i love the encouragement...do and jon i'm glad you got back safe! colby i know you come home soon, so i hope you get home ok too and can't wait to china chat with all of you! so let's see if i can recap this in the short amount of time i have here as my whole team waits to use the computer...I was asked on Wednesday in front of all of our kids along with the rest of the team if we all had boyfriends or girlfriends...that's basically the first question they ask after your name:) Thursday night was the most priceless night i can imagine! I was in charge of Wild West night where we acted out a cowboy and indian skit, followed by teaching the words yall and howdy, and explaining what jeans and bandanas were. Then here's the killer. We taught the electric slide to achey breakey heart, the texas two step to my personal fav of randy travis "i'm gonna love you forever", and me singing home on the range in front of all these people by myself...who am i? craziness... i am asked to sing constantly here because i am a never ending flow of disney songs, which they love, especially the sound of music...need i say more? i'm slightly addicted to that movie! I got pics of all that for sure! We have guards at our front door of the school we have become good friends with and my students are finally opening up, they're just a pretty quiet group...I made them write about their biggest obstacle in life and one of them told me at the age of 13, that she has cancer...i need to make sure b/c she wrote it (long story) but i'll keep you informed of that...it made me think of my friend callie who died from cancer and david gilbert as well...Last night we had an American birthday party! Since my birthday is wednesday, the party was for me! sooo funny! I got about 80 birthday cards in broken english calling me helly, telling me i hope you get more beautiful than before, and i hope you have a good boyfriend. we laughed for a long while. today i dressed up during class as a visitor, aka nelson mandela and made my skin black with a marker and a towel as a turban...hilarious! This afternoon we were invited to our translator alice's house to learn to make dumplings or joutze...so fun! i like using the rolling pin and chopsticks to make it...as i sit here my skirt is stained as usual from chopstick accidents:) but i love it...Lift up openness, appointments, team unity (i love my team), and allergies (too much snot. enough said)...ok i miss you kids but i am doing really well and enjoying this! more coming tomorrow! now i'm headed to bed! triple peace from the far east!