I ATE FROG!

yeah... thats right... A FROG!!! and the worst part, i thought i was eating chicken. But that story will be completed later...

this week was pretty uneventful towards the beginning. I am getting into a routine of doing the same things every day.. so besides crazy taxi drivers who try to kill me... my psycho 8 and 10 year old students who beat each other up... and the company taking us out to eat strange food and watch them all get drunk....nothing much happens.... but here are some good stories for the week.

I was in my first accident this week.... car accident that is!! but dont freak out mom... it was about as minimal as it could have been.. they only hit rear view mirrors... and of course the guy who hit my taxi drivers car b/c he was driving in our lane... on the wrong side of the road, drove off and that was the end of my eventful 1st accident involving the CRAZY taxi drivers here.

my teaching is going well... i am glad today is friday b/c i get paid on fridays.. and monday is a holiday here... Mid Autumn Festival (its actually on sunday, but everyone gets monday off) so Samuel and i have a 3 day weekend (and i am of course cancelling my english classes). Yesterday i had a fun experiance teaching though. I got to my first lesson, and before i went upstairs to their apartment i got a phone call from the mom, saying she wasn't home and was running very late (that is all i could understand... she's korean) so i waited for the boys to get home from school (they usually get there a couple minutes after me cause their bus doesn't show up till aout 4 and i teach at 4.) so they show up and we try to go upstairs to start the lesson. Well... we couldnt' get in the door.. and they had WAY too much energy. for 20 minutes we sat in a hallway while i tried to keep them from killing each other (with a major language barrier). one of them was trying to knock down the door with a mop, the other was hitting his brother and they were both driving me crazy! but i finally got them to calm down and we did some homework. There mom showed up 50 minutes later... and by then we had finished all their homework.. no one was dead, the door was intact and i had to go to my next class.... AHHHHHHH!!!

The past 2 days we have also been able to get free meals. Now in America i welcome free meals with open arms.. especially when its out to a restaraunt. You can usually find something on the menu you love, and best of all.... you can read the menu and you get to pick out what you eat. Sadly those things are not common here. Wednesday we went out with Samuel's department of the week (he is rotating for the first month between different departments) and all the bosses in the MAGNATRON building (makes me think of Transformers... haha... but they just build microwaves, they dont save the world). and it was actually surprisingly good. there are always a few things i don't enjoy, but they had REAL orance juice (which i have only been able to find at McDonalds) and they put the BIGGEST lobster i had ever seen on our table. Most of the food was amazing. Plus... they had gifts for all of us... a big bucket of bite size SNICKERS! that is when i began to like the company my husband works for! (Dad--- i am sure you would understand... our love for snickers!! but dont worry daddy... i am only eating 1 a day!) So overall that was a great experaince. Plus we got to watch them all get crazy drunk. Chinese people like to make toasts... it gives them an excuse to drink a lot of shots of vodka!
Yesterday was a different experiance though... they weren't as drunk this time, they were drinking budweiser instead of vodka, but the food was no where near as wonderful! it was all way too spicy for me... and i ate frog! so here we go.... i didn't know i was eating frog... i thought it was chicken! it came out in a bowl, with all the juices it was cooked in (as does most of the meat... makes the table get really messy as you are trying to transfer it to your plate) and it looked like everythign else to me. 1/2 of the time the meat is still on the bone, they are just in little more bite size boney pieces. so I picked at it (having to try almost everything b/c i was a special guest) and just assumed it was chicken... what other white meat is there right? WRONG!!! 30 minutes later samuel asked me what i thought about the little white meat (1/2 of which was still on my plate... i took like 2 bites) and i told him it wasn't bad... and he told me it was frog! immediately this picture of this big ugly fat green slimy wart covered animal comes to my head and i wanted to puke! He had assumed it was chicken until he overheard someone say it was frog, and when he turned to tell me i was eating it... so he decided to wait until i finished eating it... so as to not make a scene. from then on... i asked the chinese guy next to me what every dish was... i am not eating FROG! GROSS! and then they had a Moon Pie... to celebrate the upcoming mid autumn festival!! i'm thinking... YAY.. PIE!!! i've decided i am never getting excited over food again, unless i know exactly what it is from previous experiance of eating and enjoying it. Moon Pie is code word for gross hard nastiness hidden inside pie crust! and of course Samuel's boss was watching me eat it with much excitement asking me if i liked it. oh it has never been so hard to put a smile on my face, swallow my food and say "oh its great". no more moon pie for me!

so that is my week thus far.. today i am working on my 30-40 minute talk for church (they only have 1 speaker b/c we dont have many people in the branch yet... which will change probably next week so of course i am the lucky one who gets to give the last crazy long talk) but its going well so far... 4 pages, and only 1/2 way there... its on the 1st principles and ordinances of the gospel... so its like 4 talks all in one... one of faith, repetance, baptism, and recieveing the holy ghost. And maybe i will add a little enduring to the end if i need to take up more time!

oh.. and yesterday i got to watch little damon (pronounced like the famous actor Matt Damon) b/c Charrisse (the other wife here) has been sick. that was crazy and a handfull... but kept me busy!!!

Love you all....