Christmas Time

Soooo I'm doing a horrible job keeping you updated on my life! Sorry about that. Yesterday was really crazy, moving into our new apartment, taking that twenty minute walk to our place with 5 bags, and after finally getting there finding out that my subway card had disappeared. But, we are moved in, almost unpacked, and I can't wait to be able to come back there every day and just relax. I took the bus today, which could have been worse. I got off at the wrong stop (it's 10 stops going home from work and 11 going to work from home) and was twenty minutes late for my class. I don't think they cared though, they have a singing competition tomorrow so they were all practicing for it when I got there. Sometimes I think the other teachers are happy when they have more time with the students so they can get more done with them, especially now when they also have to do Christmas stuff on top of the stuff their students are supposed to be learning.

Here's a picture of one of the student's letters to Santa. I think her Mom helped her with it or something, she gave it to me a couple days after we did it (most of the student's letters are pretty simple, but this one made me laugh).

OH! One night, it was really really windy. We had a glass ceiling in our other apartment, and the wind was blowing bricks onto it. I was sooo scared that it was going to come crashing down (thankfully the window wasn't over our bed), but it didn't. Here's a picture of it:

Ok, here's what you've been waiting for. Here are pictures of our new apartment! It's still messy (trying to figure out where to put stuff), and we're waiting to see if they want us to keep those boxes or not. It's a studio, so it's not really big, but it has amazing lighting and we have our first couch.

There is a kitchen, but I didn't really take a pic of it, and there's a washing machine in the kitchen area too. Ummmm, I think that's all. I want to find Christmas decorations, but I don't know if I'll have time before Christmas. We're going to a Christmas Eve service on Friday, and just relaxing on Saturday. Sadly, we both work on Sunday, so we don't get too much of a break, but it will be nice.

I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We're Moving!

Soooooo I haven't written in awhile, I'm sorry, I know my life is soooo important to you. Thanksgiving was fun. We were able to eat pie and turkey (they DO have turkey in China!), sweet potatoes, mac n cheese, and other things. It was really good. We hung out with people afterwards and got to know some people. I haven't made brownies yet, but I went to her place and made pumpkin pie with her. It was fun.

So, like my title says, we're moving in a week. We found a new place that's REALLY nice and closer to our jobs/school. I will take a 20 min bus ride instead of an 50 min subway ride and a 20 min walk and Dan will either walk or take a bus to campus. It's a studio apartment (pictures will come later) with a couch (our first since our marriage), and bathroom (that is NOT the same room as the kitchen, AND you can poop in it), and I don't think anyone has lived in it before. It's like brand brand new. Now I just have to figure out all the new shopping places and stuff.

Because we're moving up north, I will probably have to quit my tutoring job cause it'll be really far away...but it will make everyone sad, cause they like me a lot and they're fun to teach, so we'll see what happens. We're hoping to be completely moved in by Christmas, and we will spend our first Christmas in our new place.

I stole the idea from another teacher to have my 1st graders write letters to Santa (it's English month, so we get to do lots of fun activities with them), and I had already explained who Santa was in a previous class, so when the teacher translated that they were writing him letters asking for stuff they all cheered, like, really really cheered. I felt like a horrible person when the teacher said they actually thought I would be sending the letters. Oh well. They probably won't remember in a couple weeks anyway.

I hope everyone is enjoying the almost holidays and that you get a lot of snow for Christmas!

Brownies!

:Facebook Chat on Friday:
Melissa: Enjoy being in China!
Julie: Enjoy eating brownies because they don't exist here!

Later, we walk into the apartment for our first small group and there were homemade brownies on the table. When I told Noel (one of the small group leaders) that they were my first brownies in 3 months she made Dan and I take them home (sadly for Dan they had nuts in them but he ate them anyway cause they were soooo good). Our small group went really well, it was really nice to fellowship with other Christians from around the world. We're in a young adult small group, but the people leading it are a married couple from CA so we're not the only married people there. Since we were Americans, Noel also invited us to Thanksgiving dinner on Friday so our Thanksgiving is going to be a lot more fun than we thought.

I have a 6 week break starting at the beginning of Jan. so I need to find some work to do so I can make money before school starts up again. The leader of the foreign teachers thing said they wanted me back, so I should have a job starting in the middle of Feb (until July?) which will be nice. I'm not sure if any of my friends are staying though.

Oh! Noel also has an oven in her apartment so she said I can go over there sometime and bake stuff which would be sooo much fun since I haven't been able to do that at all. You never realize how much you miss pies and cakes and cupcakes and brownies and cookies and cheesecakes (especially around the holidays) until you can't make them at all. I might try to make chocolate chip cookies or something somtime next week. She also likes to bake bread, so we might do that together sometime.

Christmas will be a little sad since we won't be around people. I'm hoping Christmas decorations will appear here sometime. The stuffed animal store on our street now has a giant stuffed santa clause, so hopefully other more practical things will start showing up.

Not too much else is going on. Don't know what else to say. It's getting cold here, but, thankfully, snow is really rare in China.

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Sickness

Sickness is upon us!

Dan's been sick since last Saturday, and I think my amazing immune system might be wearing down because I'm starting to have more than just a cold. Besides that, we're doing fine. We might start going to a Bible study next week (depending on how we're feeling), since Saturday services don't exist here and we both work on Sundays.

We went to the DVD store yesterday and spent maybe about $12 on season 5 of Criminal Minds. We've been trying to watch it online but it's so annoying, so we bought it. It should amuse us for a little while, then maybe by the time we're finished we'll be able to buy Harry Potter bootlegged. People here think it will take a week at the most after it comes out in theaters before it's available.

There's a new teacher here from England and he's taking some getting used to. It's getting better, but at first I was really annoyed with him because he was either talking about the differences in words that we use (at first it seemed like he was asking in a way that implied that British English was the correct way to say it and American English is wrong and doesn't make sense) or how American's are stupid. He and the Canadian both said they would have elected Sarah Palin into office before Bush.


Here's a picture. We went to the store to buy snacks and Dan got these cookies. Look at the nice pretty packaging that shows huge cookies with tons of big chocolate chips. Now look at the actual cookie. Do you see something wrong with this picture? The cookie was hard, and had almost no chocolate chips in it.

About two weeks ago we went to the Lama and Confucian Temple. Here's some pictures, sorry I'm not in any of them, I had the camera. One day, I might take a picture of my haircut so you can see how they messed it up. I showed one of the chinese teachers and she said I should get compensation for it, but I don't think I could since I got it cut so long ago.

Happy November!

Last Monday I got a text message from the person who fired me saying he had a part time job for me. I was going to say no, but the student was someone I taught in afterschool class and he really wanted me to teach him. So now, on Sundays I'm teaching two 8 year olds from 10-12, and I make about $50 for doing that, which might not seem like a lot but when we eat out we usually spend around $6, so $50 pays for a lot here. I went there for the first time on Sunday and it went pretty well. I found out that the boy is from Australia and the girl is from Nigeria (they're both Chinese) so they learned English but now they're forgetting a lot of what they learned so their parents want them to have a tutor to help them improve their English.

Our roommate moved out last week. We actually already have a new one, but I haven't met him yet. It's definitely a small world because the last place he lived was in Howard County. I bet we have some mutual friends on facebook. Hopefully we will all get along.

Dan has a two week break. That means he's cooking dinner tonight, I'm excited. :)

We got a package from each of our families on Friday, within a couple hours of eachother. Now we have a ton of candy, which we're rationing, even though I would rather eat it all at one time and be sad later. Eating one fun size candy bar just makes me sad, but it's a whole lot better than no candy bar. We got some fall decorations too, which I hung up in our apartment, I would put a picture up but I'm at work and don't have it here and our VPN isn't working at our apartment so I can't get on facebook or my blog at home. We're both doing well, enjoying the nice weather this week, compared to the horrible coldness last week. We're also having a Lord of the Rings extended edition marathon, fun stuff.

Oh! And I got my passport back! The visa is good until the beginning of April, so that helps, and we are going to try to go to a church service on Saturday for the first time.

 I love hearing updates from people, so if you want to update me on your life you can email me or send me a facebook message (my email is on my facebook page).

Chinese Firedrill

So last Friday I was in my office and decided that I had to go to the bathroom. So I walked out the door, not realizing that the fire alarm had gone off. My office is on the same wall as the stairs, and right next to it. So I walk out the door to find students (3rd graders, not little people) running out of their classrooms, completely filling the hallway and running right at me. After I realized I had a shocked look on my face (I was in my own little world walking out of the office) I did what any normal person would do, I quickly went back into my office and closed the door. I found out later that the students are "running orderly" outside, they're supposed to be running with their class or something, but it doesn't look like they were.

Chinese fire drills are a lot different than ones in America, besides the reason above. They had fire trucks come, and they had a demonstration of firemen putting out a pretend fire in one of the students dorms. There was red smoke coming out in spurts from the building and they had a hose on it and everything. It was pretty neat, AND it was during class so I ended up not teaching one of my classes because of it.

I found out yesterday that some of the students in one of my classes has started calling me piglet, because the Ju part of my name sounds like pig (zhu). I'm not completely sure about the end of my name; I'm trying to figure that out. It's not meant as an insult, and it could be worse. Apparently the name Ben sounds a lot like the Chinese word for stupid.

I also got my hair cut last Saturday. It  wasn't very interesting. I didn't say anything in Chinese. I wanted to get it layered, but didn't want to take the chance with it so I got it cut around my shoulders and got my nice swoopy bangs back. He did a pretty good job (had fun curling the ends of my hair when he was finished). I noticed two days later, though, that there is a random chunk of hair missing off the top of my head. Sooooo random. He wasn't supposed to be cutting anything up that high. Oh well.

Not too much is happening over here. The students have a field trip today (Friday) which means that we don't have to go in for class, so I'm getting much needed rest, and stopping myself from losing my voice. It's been really cold here lately. Weather.com is stupid and doesn't understand Beijing weather. It said it was in the 60's this week, but it was definitely in the 40's. Maybe I should start wearing my coat.

Oh! And the food I was talking about is called mooshoo (moo shu?) pork. They definitely have it in the States but I'm not sure if it tastes the same because I've never tried it there. I tried googleing it but the pictures don't look the same.

I hate thinking of blog titles

I'm sorry I haven't written in awhile. First, our wireless internet stopped working, and now we can't get on the VPN at home so we can't use facebook or blogs while we're there. I can get on at work though, during my crazy long breaks.
Sooooooooo I got a job!!! It was crazy. I answered this add in the newspaper, but I didn't think I would get it because it was for the Beijing International Language School (BFSU) which is linked to Beiwai University, so I didn't think I was good enough to get in, but they called me up for an interview last Thursday. I went to the office (of the person who wrote the ad, not anyone who works at the school) and she said that they need someone right away and can I start tomorrow? Long story short, I observed on Friday and had training, taught for the first time on Saturday (Chinese holiday messed up the weekends again), and I've been here for about a week so far and I like it a lot. I'm teaching 1st and 3rd graders oral English, which means that they have other Chinese teachers who teach them English, but I come in and make sure that they understand things and are pronouncing them correctly. Since I am not the only English teacher, I don't give out homework (which is good considering how many classes I teach) and I don't give out tests, I just make sure they understand the material and pronounce things correctly.
I teach 27 classes a week, 9 classes 3 different times. So, I don't have too many lesson plans to make, but since I have two grades I have to make twice as many as everyone else, but it's not bad at all. The teacher emails me the material for each day and I just put it together.
The principal went into my class yesterday (she was visiting all the classes) and said she really liked it and I asked my teaching assistant how it went and she said it went very well and she thinks I'm a better teacher than the person I replaced (which is probably a good thing). They said the teaching assistant, who is in charge of the foreign teachers and is close to the principal didn't like the other person because he wasn't prepared, but she seems to like me a lot, so that's really good and it's relieving a lot of stress.
The only thing about it is the traveling, which is a good and bad thing. I work two stops north of where Dan goes to school. So it takes me almost an hour on the subway then I have a 20 min walk, so I have to get up at 6, BUT Dan and I get to ride the subway to work/school together now, which is nice, except for days like today when we're going down the escalator and we see people getting off our train so we're going down really fast and Dan runs into the train and the doors start to close and I'm trying to get in but slip and fall right outside the train (I wasn't going to make it anyway). So we didn't ride together today, and I think I got laughed at by a lot of Chinese people, but at least I wasn't late for work.
My schedule is a little crazy. The latest I'm going to get back is a little after 6 2 days a week, but it could easily be a lot worse (working 3-8pm) and I like it here a lot. Today I have a 4 hour break, so I'm updating my blog, I finished my lesson plans, and I might read, or take a nap or something.
I'm also getting a 6th month tourist visa, so that should relieve lots of stress too.
Our lives are going well, we're eating pretty healthy food...maybe...Dan has a two week break coming up which is soooooo not fair, but he's been working hard so he deserves it.
I have a new favorite food. It's this thin strips of pork in sauce stuff and onions and you put it on these thin tofu "pancakes" and fold it up and eat it. I can't remember what it's called, I don't think I ever knew. Sooooo good but I think Dan got tired of ordering it.
One day, when we both actually have our passports, we're going to go to a Bible study or something. I will write about that too if there's anything interesting to say.
OH! And Dan and I both get paid this weekend!!! For the firs time since we've been here. We're excited!
I hope everyone is doing well. We miss you guys. I like getting updates from people too.

No, We Aren't Tourists

Ok...well I guess the title isn't true, since I still have a tourist visa...

We went out to eat a couple days ago at a restaurant that we'd never been to before, about a 30 second walk from out apartment. We decided they probably get a lot of tourists. When we got in they gave us these two dishes of ginger stuff and sun flower seeds. We started eating the sun flower seeds, shell and all cause we didn't want to make a mess on the table. They started laughing at us and came over and asked if we had ever seen sun flower seeds before and showed us how you can open them and eat the seed, so we just started doing that. I think by that point they had already asked us if we knew how to use chopsticks.  So, we started to order our food and I guess they either decided that the stuff we ordered was too cheap or they wanted us to eat some of the dishes they specialize in because they started showing Dan the more expensive things on the menu, the whole fishes or the chicken, and we didn't want either so Dan just ordered another random vegetable dish and they took our menus and went away. Once we got our food one of the people said she was going to give us a chopstick lesson (I hold my chopsticks the wrong way, which amuses Chinese people but I can use them fine), but we told her we didn't need any and she went away. Later, one of the waitresses walked up and tried to give each of us a fork and knife. We were at least halfway done with our meal at that point, so I don't know why they thought we couldn't use chopsticks, but oh well. The whole thing amused me and made me laugh on the inside. Maybe I should figure out how to hold chopsticks the right way...and also how to hold a pencil the right way while I'm at it.


We're doing pretty well. I found out on Monday (by text message) that the school I've been teaching at is not going to hire me, so I've been looking for a job. I'm waiting til the end of the holiday (Thursday) to hear back from one place and I'm hopefully going to be meeting up with a guy who is in charge of the Asia part of a international advertising company. We went to The Temple of Heaven yesterday, which was the most perfect and gorgeous day ever, and here are some pictures:

The first two are pictures of us standing next to the 70-Year-Old Door. It's a door that was made for an emperor because he was 70 and it was easier for him to get to his garden and take shorter walks and he made it a law that emperors could only use that door after they turned 70...but no other emperor lived to be that old so he's the only one who's ever used it.

Stressful Week

So I'm sorry that I haven't updated in awhile, I really thought that I updated last week.
It's been a really frustrating/stressful past couple of days. Last weekend I told Tony that my visa expires next week and him giving me my passport back would be great. I was hoping he would get me a work visa, but on Sunday he gave me my passport, saying I need to get my visa renewed. In order to do that, among other things, I need to have a Chinese bank account in my name with 20,000 yuan ($3,000) in it to prove that I can live in China without working (since I'm not supposed to be working with a tourist visa), and the latest I can get that done is Tuesday, since the couple days after that are holidays (another story for farther down in the post) and after that my visa will be expired. Getting $3,000 into a bank account in 2 days is not fun, nor easy. We had to go to multiple ATMS, since we didn't want to risk trying it with a 3rd party and having it take longer, and on the day I went to get it renewed the ATMs wouldn't work with our bank cards until after 12pm (midnight your time, which makes sense since we can only withdraw a certain amount each day), but I didn't think about that at first and I was freaking out. I did turn it in on time, so with $130 I'm buying another 30 days here, hopefully I'll have a work visa soon, I think we're still waiting on the school (who should've said last week) to decide if they want to keep me. It's been really frustrating. The other thing is I had to prove I have 20,000 Yuan, it also has to be frozen in the account for two weeks, so now we have all this money, but we can't use it for two weeks and neither of us get our first paycheck until October 15th.

I have two random things that I don't like about China.

1. The subway. I know it's crowded and people love to travel on it, but I don't see why China rigs it so both trains come at practically the same time, especially at transfer stations when everyone is trying to run up the stairs to the next train. It would be a lot better if they came about a minute apart, so there will be less people running at one time. I think the reason is that there are soooo many trains, they come very frequently, so that they all just happen to come at the same time, but it still makes me sad.

2. Holidays. China is so weird. Today (Wednesday) is the moon cake festival. Since it's not close to a weekend the government decided that it should change what days the weekends are, which means we have Wednesday-Friday off. Normally that would be a good thing, except now I have to go to work Saturday - Thursday. I went into work last Sunday and it was soooo confusing, threw off my whole week. But, China likes to change weekends, they do it multiple times.

Other than my ranting above (which is pretty significant, since I want to stay in China and not go back to the U.S.), we're doing pretty well. We had our first first-try successful dinner last week, pork and mushrooms, red pepper, onions, and rice, which was really good. A guy moved in upstairs today and he seems pretty cool, it'll be interesting. I took pictures of dinner, so you can see.

Please keep praying for us, we really want this job to work out and I need a work visa. Dan's studies are going well, but you can continue to pray for that too. :) We miss you all!

Teacher's Day!

So yesterday was teacher's day, which means that you get cards from students, flowers from the school (not really big flowers) and Lindt's chocolate from parents, which happens to be the most amazing chocolate I have ever had in my entire life.

Classes were ok this week. Apparently I'm having trouble controlling my classes and teachers have complained to the principal who has told the person who placed me in the school who then told me and if it continues to be a problem they're going to find someone else to teach instead of me. I think yesterday was a lot better though. We finally got this reward system set up so that when kids do things or are good they get fake money and can buy things with them once a week, they really liked that idea and were pretty good yesterday.

Sooooo since Kristina wants to know, the title of my last blog was referring to when Dan and I were at a super market and we were looking for dried fruit and I was in dried fruit mode trying to find something cheap and I saw dried grapes (that's what the package said:
Julie: Look! Dried grapes!
Dan: Those are raisins.
Julie: No, they're dried...oh...

Yes, so that's the story.

I'm really enjoying the other teacher's at my school. Two of them are from England and one is from the States, so not only do we have to get used to the Chinese culture, but we have to get used to each other and how we have completely different names for things, like this for example:

Julie: Do you guys have any band-aids?
Claire: No
Dave: A what?
Claire: She means a plaster (same word as what you call wall plaster)

It just makes me laugh. Tomorrow (Sunday) I'm going to do some editing work or something, I'm not completely sure. They said something about reading a book. Hopefully it won't be too boring.

There was more I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was. I feel like I'm learning a lot about things, life in general. It's been fun, very tiring, but fun.

A Dried Grape = A Raisin

I had my first day of classes today. It went ok, the first class didn't go too well cause the kids didn't know how to be quiet and listen, and my boss was in there watching me and he wasn't too happy. The second class was the best one, and the other two (I had the same class twice) went pretty well. Hopefully it will get better.

I have this theory that when non-Chinese people walk into stores, some will start playing American music. Dan and I walked into a supermarket in Beijing and noticed pretty soon after we walked in that we heard the words "all I wanna do is find a way back into love" which is lyrics to a song in music and lyrics, so it was completely random, and the next song was Chinese. We also heard Love Story one time, but we were just walking down the street.

Another thing I wanted to say is that you would think, with all the people and stuff, China would make people want to have more children, but it just makes me want to get a puppy (which won't happen, not for at least a year or two) because they have dogs everywhere, and their dogs are soooooo much more behaved than dogs in America. Half of them walk around behind their owners without leashes, and I was going to say that the only time I have heard a dog bark was when they were in the pet store, but that changed today cause there was this dog the size of a kitten that was barking or yapping or something, but it was soooooo cute.

Dan also has a blog, just so you know. It's twolimbs.blogspot.com. It'll have similar things to mine, but he's a guy so it won't have as much detail, so some people might prefer that. Dan's birthday is tomorrow, we're going to Mcdonalds.

I am now doing two after school classes twice a week. I'm starting that tomorrow (and found out about it today) so it should be interesting. I think it pays pretty well, and Dan is teaching little kindergartners on Sundays, so we're staying pretty busy.

We're Moved In!

Sooooo, we're not dead, we just got internet yesterday and since blogs and facebook are illegal in China, I couldn't get onto one from an internet cafe'. We're finally moved in and settling down. We moved into this "cozy" duplex (no one lives up top yet) on Sunday, and we got internet yesterday. We didn't care how small it was, we just wanted something cheap. There IS an interesting problem with it, which you will see if you watch the video. We're living in a Beijing Hutong, which is something like...I don't know...we live off an alley, it almost looks like a sketchy place, but China is apparently a lot safer than Baltimore, so it's fine. There's this little boy who lives next to us who says hi every time he sees us then is so happy and proud of himself when we say hi back.

I don't have too many funny stories, I haven't been speaking a lot of Chinese because I just don't remember too much. I have frustrating stories about people telling me to check out my stuff on the first floor of the 3 story "hypermarket" even though all my stuff came from the third floor, but there were funny things like Dan trying to order a kilometer of meat instead of a kilogram, and me finding "bowl-loosening tea" in a store. There were other things I wanted to take pictures of, like a sign in an elevator saying "frolicking, jump not allowed" or signs on an escalator saying to watch your hair instead of your head, but Dan said people would be upset with me for taking pictures in a supermarket and the one in the elevator just didn't work out.

I "started" my job last Friday. I haven't actually signed a contract yet, nor have I taught a class. They're waiting to see everyone teach before they're signing contracts with people to make sure the students and the school don't have problems with them, so I'm just waiting for an opportunity to teach a class, sitting in on some while I'm waiting to get an idea of what I should be doing, so keeping that in your prayers would be awesome. The school I got set up with is actually an International School, one where people who work at embassies send their children and stuff. It's one of the best in China and people say that once you teach English there you could at least teach anywhere else in China if not other places. Too bad I don't want to teach English after this, but it should make a good reference.
Half of the teachers are from England, which is cool and we all get along really well. My new goal while I'm here is not to learn Chinese, but to come back with a British accent.
There were other funny stories with that, like a teacher from the UK learning that you should always capitalize the letter I when it stands alone in the middle of a sentence (after a student told him that he was wrong) and I can't remember other ones, but they will be there later.

Sorry I write so much, but yeah, I like blogs. I'm going to put another video of the Old Summer Palace, which I meant to post earlier, except I never posted anything.





We went to the Old Summer Palace on Saturday which was lots of fun. It's kind of like a park with lots of lakes that also has the remains of buildings, which helps you imagine what the place used to look like. We also went to Beida University, and they have a lake and an island on their campus, which is totally not fair. There were also little kids getting their picture taken there, which made me a little sad cause it's probably a lot of parents dream that their kids go there and it probably puts lots of pressure on their kids.

First Day of Beijing

Soooooo we made it! Traveling wasn't too bad. Our plane took off two hours late because it took them awhile to get the water working in the plane (which is a pretty good excuse for not leaving) so we got there at 3am EST instead of 1am. We had fun convincing the taxi driver (unsuccessfully) to take both of us and our 4 huge suitcases in one taxi so we had to take two. I tried to answer the taxi drivers questions, but I was so tired some of the words that I wanted to say to him ended up being Spanish...and then I almost fell asleep. We were sleeping by 8:45 which means that we woke up a little after 5 am. We met the person who I signed a contract with - amazing person. Since we hadn't bought cell phones yet she took us and another guy from "Arizona" (neither of us thought he was from the U.S. and he has a really heavy accent from somewhere) to buy them since there was some deal going on and her mom showed us a duplex that they own which we're going to move into on Sunday. It's right in the center of the city, kinda in between where Dan will be going to school and where I'll be working, so it works out really well. It's a really small place, but it's cheap and it'll work, there will be pictures up later, probably in my next post. There's no one else living in the duplex right now so if anyone wants to move to China and live up there...that would be fun.
I have an interview with a primary school tomorrow which the lady also set up. She said it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll get hired and I'll be able to start on Monday. She remembered that Dan was studying Monday through Friday (like I said, she's amazing), so she found some schools for me that have classes then and not on the weekends.
My Chinese is horrible, so I don't talk much since Dan and I have gone everywhere together, but that will change. I've found that I can understand people fairly well, but I don't know how to answer them.
We walked a lot today. I was going to say how great it was and how much exercise I'm getting, but I think I pulled a muscle in my foot...so nevermind.
We figured out how to hack into facebook, and my blog, since it was also blocked. I'm also trying to write a lot because I'm trying to stay awake. Our goal is to stay up til 10, sigh, I want to go to bed now.

What we're doing

First off, I wanted to explain my name. Dan chose it, said I should think of my favorite Chinese dish, which is scrambled eggs and tomatoes and get a name from there. Also, after I thought about it, I realized that at Towson, when I told one of my Chinese friends my name in Chinese, she said I had called myself a tomato. So, the blog name makes sense.
Here's a picture I stole off Google:

Dan and I are leaving for Beijing on August 24th, flying from Vermont to Newark to Beijing, so we should get there sometime on the 25th (I know nothing of flight times). We will take a cab to our hotel and the next day I'm going to meet with the agency I signed a contract with, and hopefully, with their help, we will find an apartment pretty soon after getting there. I will then have interviews with schools, and hopefully get a job within a day or two (things move pretty fast in China with teaching). There was a man I was in contact with who had an interview, got hired a couple hours later, and started the next day.

I'm not completely sure what will be in this blog. I'm hoping there will be lots of funny stories about my interactions with Chinese people, some things to pray for, and just general information that we're still alive. I'm going to try to be on facebook consistently, I'd love messages or emails from people (my email address is on facebook) just to know how everyone's doing. So yeah, I guess there's more to come in a couple weeks.