Sent April 1, 2008

Hello everyone,
A lot is happening so I figured I would write and get you all updated...

The most exciting news first...I got an amazing internship with a PR firm in Los Angeles when I get back from China. I am so excited. I will be going with one of my friends from BYU and we are going to have a blast. I am not sure what exactly I will be doing but it will be some sort of lobbying. I will also get to go to the beach anytime I want and finally take trapeze lessons like I have been wanting to do for a million years. I will start work on June 23rd so I am going to leave China a little early, on June 15th as opposed to June 25th and go to Hong Kong and Macao for a couple days and then I will fly back to the states. This will be an awesome summer!

I have been having a really hard time with the food here. It was bad at first, and then good, and then really good... and then.....it happened... I was eating at this one restaurant that looked a little sketchy, but really, all the places to eat around here are really sketchy... anyway. I was eating this one dish that had potatoes and something that I knew was meat...but I don't know what kind of meat. I picked up a piece of meat with my chopsticks and went to put it in my mouth when I noticed that on one side of it, there was.....hair! I'm not talking about 'a' hair.... im talking about a full on section of animal fur! I wanted to puke ....and since then I have been unable to eat meat. even now, just thinking about it... yuuulck!

And also, we found out that they add MSG to everything. It is a very common ingredient in all their food. I remember seeing it in bags at the grocery store when I first arrived and visualizing in my mind the Chinese restaurants in America with neon signs that say "NO MSG". haha I have a suspicion that it is addictive. One of my students said that if her mom doesn't use it, she wont eat her mom's cooking. haha

The other night, Christy, my roommate and Doug, one of the other teachers, and I went to a street (Lian Jian Lu) that has a lot of places to eat. It is on campus and we go there a lot. We were walking down the street when we noticed that between the buildings, you could see a huge field of vegetables growing. This was where a lot of the food was grown that is sold on the campus. We walked down to see it when we came to a stomach churning realization. We realized that uphill from the crops was the university dump...literally like 30 feet away... Everytime there is a rain storm, our vegetables are watered with toxic waste water. YUMMY. Also, there was a stream of water that was watering the vegetables and it had a really funky film on the top of it. It looked like what the street looks like after it rains on a car oil drip. All marbled and cesspool-like. I pretty much stick to bananas and peanut butter ever since I saw that. Sick nasty.

Our trip last weekend was canceled because it was rainy. We were going to go to Zhangjiajie (zhong-ji-(like eye) -jay). If you want to see a Web site about it, go here > http://www.zhangjiajie.com.cn/english/

It is beautiful. We went to Changsha, the capital of the province again instead to stock up on peanut butter. The weather was horrible but it was still fun. We are going to Zhangjiajie this weekend for sure though. We already bought our bus tickets. The bus will take about 5 hours to get there. We are leaving on Friday and we will come back on Sunday. There is a huge elevator that goes up the side of one of the mountains. We are totally going to take it. I believe it will cost about 100 yuan (14.00 USD) to go up and come down. You can get out at the top and take pictures. It is the tallest elevator in the world.

It is really interesting to hear what the students think of America. There is a movie out in America called Juno. It is about a 16 year old girl that gets pregnant and she gives the baby up for adoption. It is actually a really funny movie. They showed the movie on campus here a few days ago and a lot of my students went to see it. This week they have all been asking me questions. The first thing they said about the movie was that it was unrealistic. To quote a student, she said "a 16-year-old girl would never get pregnant" Oh how naive they are. I told them some statistics about teen pregnancy in America and they were floored. They were so shocked that their squinty eyes became round. It is interesting to see what the different problems and issues different countries and cultures face.


Everything else is going well. It has been a while since I have seen the sun...I hope it comes out this weekend. Please keep me posted on what is going on in America. And PLEASE take a deep breath of fresh air for me and drink a big glass of water straight from the tap. Oh how I miss that.

Love and miss you all,
xoxo
Elizabeth