WOODn't you like to know?

Tea time and homemade dumplings! 

This week we were just busy busy busy teaching, and it actually flew by! Up until now teaching was a lot harder than I ever expected because the kids just see it as play time most of the time so it is hard to discipline, and they are always trying to tell me stuff in Chinese. Which is really sad when one of them is crying or sick and you can't really tell what they are saying, but the best part of this is just loving the heck out of them anyway and just hugging them and hoping they are learning English one arts and crafts lesson at a time haha. One of our girls had a birthday party and so we all got cake and watched Minions, I got attacked by loves from a couple of the little boys and it was so sweet!! I really think that I'm gonna miss these little stinkers when we're gone. 

In other news, we have almost been here for an entire month!! I can hardly believe it. Most of the hard part is over and now we are enjoying it and just laughing our way through everything. Sleeping on the floor still sucks, but we are so tired it doesn't really matter. 

This week was really low key but last night our principle/owner of the school invited us to her house to make dumplings! Her name is Joanne and she is a professional tea maker. We got to dinner and started making the dumplings. I didn't really like them before China, but now they are my favorite food!! It was so fun to learn how to make them from scratch. Then we went over to a table for tea time and it was so fun to watch her make it so gracefully. It was made from chrysanthemum flowers, dragon eye fruit and goji berries, it had a slight wood taste to it but we learned the proper etiquette and it was so intriguing to watch her do it. We came home full and happy and played endless rounds of Mafia which is our favorite! 

Today (Sunday) was such a great and relaxing day! We watched the women's session of general conference together and it was so refreshing to hear from our leaders again. It was amazing to all share what we learned and felt and cool to have such a strong spirit with us even though we are so far away from home and familiar things. Church here is hard to come by, but we are doing what we can to Skype in and go when we aren't on vacations. Then we hung out and played games together as a group, there are 11 of us and we just got a married couple and we love them! Today was the first time that we all felt connected to each other and just so so happy, it was great. We had a family dinner and made pasta and garlic bread, it was so delicious! Overall, it was a great week and we are excited and ready for this upcoming one.

Friday we head out for our 10 day vacation and we are going to Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou which is the little Italy of China so we are so so looking forward to that!