Moving around China!

Wow!  Where do we start? We have had quite the first week.  Nothing—and we do mean nothing has gone as expected.  As you may or may not know, we cannot post directly on our blog from China. (Due to political reasons with Facebook and Google in China)  We will type our trials and tribulations in Word and then e-mail them to Gina’s mom.  She will then post them on our blog.  (Thanks so much Sue!!)We are not in Linfen, China as we were originally planning.  Not enough students registered for English classes in Linfen—once again due to political reasons. (Which we will discuss when we get back.) Four teachers needed to volunteer to leave Linfen and go to Huo Zhou, China.  Huo Zhou is about one hour from Linfen.  We are happy with the decision that we made.  We are staying in a fantabulous hotel.  The name of the hotel in English means: Healthy, Happy Home. The energy in the hotel is very positive.  There are only about 15 total rooms in the hotel.The “Housewives of Huo Zhou” have been treating us like royalty. They arrange for a driver to pick us up every morning from the hotel—this is after a special breakfast was prepared just for us. We teach two English sessions daily.  The first session is from 9-12 and the second session is from 3-6.  After session one, “The Housewives” take us out for a huge lunch.  From lunch we usually are dropped off at the hotel to “rest” before our second session.  We are then picked up at the hotel and driven to school for session two.  After that, we go out to dinner with “The Housewives”.  They are terrific!!  They just finished doing our laundry and returning it for us.  We are very spoiled here!!  Two nights ago, we were special guests at a basketball tournament.  There were over 1,000 people there.  The mayor had us introduce ourselves and interviewed us.  There was an interpreter of course.  J Everyone wonders what four white people are doing in their town of no diversity.  We are celebrities here.  People ask to take their photos with us or even videos. We cannot walk down the street without everyone looking and staring, and staring, and staring! Well, we can’t believe it’s only been a week!  Thanks for checking in and email us anytime.  We have a computer with a webcam in our hotel room so we can email, chat or Skype!  Dsai-jian! Gary and Gina