Rachel Berry, Floods, Flowers, and the Oregon Trail

Last night Megan and I went back out to Hankou to another area that our assistant, Candy, likes to refer to as "Walking Street." It had a distinctly European feel to it (minus the white people) and housed a few familiar shops; such as Starbucks, Nike, Wal Mart, Haagen Daz, and more. We found a shopping mall and decided to scout out some dinner. We found a relatively inexpensive (but still pretty fancy by Wuhan standards) Thai restaurant and decided to try it out. I ordered pork neck (yes, on purpose) and pumpkin with yolk fries. My dinner was actually very yummy. We also got a delicious blue beverage. I am not positive what it was... but it was blue and it tasted like blue raspberry soda. After dinner we walked through walking street and stood amazed by all of the sights that we didn't know desolate Wuhan held. I am feeling a little less worried about the decision to be here for a few weeks.

We took a taxi home and here in-lied the best part of our evening. Our taxi driver asked if we spoke Chinese and Megan explained, "dian dian," (a little). He continued to talk a lot in Chinese while we squinted to understand a few words he spoke. We told him that we were English teachers and he asked if we were British. "Wǒmen shì měiguó," (we are American) we stated from the back seat. He went on to tell us how pretty we were and he even gave us some flowers that he kept on his dashboard. The conversation took a turn when I attempted to say, "I love China," but accidentally said, "I love you... China," in Chinese. It was really quite hilarious. "Wǒ ài nǐ zhōngguó!" I exclaimed several times... Our driver proceeded to speak his one phrase in English that he knew, "I love you!!" I feel like his emotional confession was somewhat spurred by my ignorance of the Chinese language. When he made it to our apartment he attempted to get a phone number from us. "Wǒ méiyǒu," said Megan (I don't have). Our flowers, however, add a homely touch to the very drab kitchen.

It rained all day today. Literally... all freaking day long. When most of our classes were canceled we really did not have much to do around the office. We decided to make some star stamps for our art class tomorrow. And I may have left this present for Megan:

It was a special note from Rachel Berry. Sometimes too much free time at work leads to fun times for sure.

Megan's rest time

Chelsie's rest time

Because of the rain, we had to walk home in this:

Megan has to forge the river... her ox was left behind.

Chelsie contracted Typhoid and received a proper burial in the Yangtze River

Apparently when you live so close to the third longest river in the world, it is not such a good thing when it rains for 18 hours straight.

Well, I need to go to sleep now. Hopefully I will actually teach a class or two tomorrow.

Mandarin lesson:
Yǒu yǔ 有雨 (rain) Hóngshuǐ 洪水 (flood) Xīng jí 星级 (star)