What day is it!?

Lets take it back to Palmyra when I was sitting in the sacred grove just a little over 3 years ago. I was pouring my heart out to the Lord about my desire to serve a mission but Jordan and I had also been talking about marriage. 

I knew a mission was something I was bound to do but why didn't it feel right?

I remember feeling the Lord's approval to marry Jordan. I specifically remember,

 "If you want missionary experiences, I'll make sure you get them".

The #1 thing on my bucket list is a humanitarian trip in Africa. However, time for that hasn't come yet. Since Jordan and I got married I've been throwing the idea of going abroad to teach English or do service somewhere. He always thought I was just joking.

In January I convinced him to go with me to the ILP office and just SEE what this was all about. 

I remember we were in the car making a list of places we wanted to go. The options were Russia, Ukraine, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. 

We both labeled our top 3 choices and showed them to each other. 

China was not it. 

We went in to that meeting knowing no matter what we were NOT going to China. 

......

We are currently living in Weihai China! haha 

We arrived here...um yesterday?

The traveling was extremely  loooong. Over 30 hours of traveling and we still haven't fully caught up on sleep. I still don't even know what day it is. 

We will be teaching English as volunteers for 4 months! (: 

So how are we doing? 

Well I must be me and say my updates will be honest. We are in an entire new continent, far away from anything we've ever known as "comfortable" so there are obvious things we're already struggling with hah. 

The food. 

Where is Panda at?! 

I have never struggled eating anything so much. Breakfast was so icky. We keep being fed the weirdest things. 

So far our favorite food we've had are "poo poo balls" haha 

Jordan is a champ and eats everything. 

So far I've only been able to eat the rice, the bread and veggies. 

As part of the program we are assigned a native who shows us around. Our native is Kelly, she is AWESOME! I love her and her humor totally fits mine. Today she took us to a place called "The Hot Pot". Its basically a really nice restaurant where you have a boiling pot in the middle and they bring you all sorts of meat, veggies, noodles, and you just throw whatever you want in and it gets cooked. Then you fish it out with chopsticks! 

She made us taste everything and she kept calling mushrooms fungus, so I ate fungus! haha 

"Poo poo balls" are a dessert. Kind of like a donut hole, with yam in the middle. Its yummy. 

The Room/Apartment/Dorm

Someone mentioned to Jordan and I before we came that we would probably be living like royalty. Well, the only throne I see around here is A TOILET!!! I got a toilet friends! haha 

That was probably my biggest blessing. Here in China they use squatters and I heard we would most likely get a squatter but the Lord was merciful to me and we got a toilet! 

We sleep on a board, no joke! We've managed to make it a little soft with some sheets and our comforter but we sleep on a board, its awesome. Good thing we've been exhausted because its my favorite board. 

The best part is we only get hot water at certain times so I have to rush and finish this if I want to shower tonight. 
We have everything we need though and I like our little dorm.

The Group

We love our group. There are 5 married couples including us and a lot of singles too. We are 20 in total and all sleep in the same hallway because the native teachers think we are "too loud". 

There's a lot of variety, some RM's, some pre-missionaries, a tattoo artist, Latinas. Everyone is so nice. We are the oldest couple here haha. We beat the next couple by 6 months.

The Service

We were dropped off at our apartments yesterday at 2 am. We had to get settled in so we didn't fall asleep until 4 am but Kelly has no mercy and  had us up and going at 7:15. 

We won't start teaching until next week so for now we've just been getting ready and  acquainted with the campus. We have a gym, pool, basketball courts, and a bunch of other fun things we can use on our down time. I am excited to teach!! Today we cleaned the classrooms we will be using. We all get our own classroom. Jordan and I won't teach together but we hope to have a classroom next to each other. 

So this post will hopefully be my longest one. I just had so much to catch up on. So far though, I LOVE CHINA!!!! Everyone stares at us but they seem to like us. 
Apparently here it's tradition that every night people are dancing in corners at night. Think Zumba but more chill...after dinner we all just joined and they were so nice!
China is beautiful and we live so close to the ocean. 
Next week our kids get here and I can't wait to meet them !! 

The room we live in is humble but we are so grateful to be here. It's nice to be able to take a little break from the "comfortable" life we have in America and focus on what's truly important. I know I won't be able to survive these next 4 months without the Lord's help and  his tender mercies. We are so excited to improve and rely on him.

Once again, I've seen the Lord keep his promise to me. Jordan keeps telling me how much like the mission it is, except of course we make the best companionship haha. 

Well, I better hurry before I get stuck with cold water. 

Goodnight!