Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful and to remember all of the things that you are grateful for. Well instead of boring you with a long list of the million things I am thankful for, I will talk about one single thing.
There are not enough words in the English language for me to express how grateful I am for International Language Programs. I am so so so ridiculously grateful. ILP has changed my life.
Because of this program I have had the amazing opportunity to not only travel but to meet so many different people who have touched my life in so many different ways.
Obviously, the first people I need to talk about are the kids that I have taught. I have taught over 150 kids English with this program. Even though I have been the teacher I feel as though the kids have taught me so much more than I have taught them. I love all of the kids so much. There have been so many times that even when they have been driving me completly insane they have managed to pull at my little heart strings. I have been so proud of the growth I have been able to witness and these kids have such a special place in my heart. If it wasn't for this program then I never would have met any of them. Crazy.
Ukraine:
Weihai, China:
Xiaolan, China:
Other amazing people that I may not have ever met if it wasn't for this program are the wonderful people that have been in my groups.
My friends from Ukriane. I love all these girls so so SOOOO much. I am so glad that I met them. Every single one of these girls is incredible. Each of them has taught me something, made me feel special, and have influenced me and helped me out in ways they may not even realize.
My friends from Weihai. When I went to Weihai, I was really nervous that the group wouldn't accept me because I was coming in mid-semester. Boy was I wrong. The group took me right in and I made so many great friends. When I left Utah and came to Weihai, I was escaping a lot of crap that what happening in my life. Even though my time in Weihai was too short, I am still so grateful for the friends that I met there. They have helped me through so much and I had tons of fun with them. And will continue to have lots of fun and make memories with them. :)
My group here in Xiaolan. I love them. We have made so many memories this semester and I am so glad and such a lucky head teacher to have had the honor of working with these girls. I love these girls so much and I am so grateful that I was put as their head teacher. This semester has meant so much to me and I have learned an incredible amount from these beautiful girls.
Other important people who have affected my life in such a positive way have been my coordinators.
My coordinators from Ukraine, Oksana and Gayla. I am so grateful that I met them and that I was able to get to know them. We shared so many laughs and I have very fond memories of the time I spent with them. I love and miss them both so much.
And also, Andre the security guard to central school. I miss him a lot as well. I'm so grateful for all the funny stories I have to tell about him!
My coordinators and Chinese Teachers here at Ming De (the school I teach at here in Xiaolan). Kelly, Nicole and Carmen. These three women have seriously helped me out so much this semester. I love them each so so so much. They brighten every single day and have helped me out so much this semester. I am so happy that I can call them my friends. I will be so sad to say goodbye to them too soon.
It's crazy for me to think that if I would never would have done ILP in the first place, I never would have met these amazing people. My groups, my coordinators and my kids will forever have a special place in my heart. I feel very overwhelmed with gratitude and I will always be so grateful that I was given SO many incredible opportunities through this truly amazing program. я тебя люблю, Wo ai ni,I love you.
So seriously, if you are interested in seeing the world, changing lives, changing yourself and teaching the cutest little kids. Apply and do ILP, you will never regret it. <3
http://www.ilp.org/
Happy Thanksgiving,
With LOVE from China.
Death. Destruction. Sadness.
That is what Typhoon Haiyan brought the Phillipeans, Taiwan, Southern China, and Vietnam.
I have contemplated over this past week what to write and what exactly I should say in this post. I know that the horror that I felt was nothing close to the despair that was felt elsewhere in the world because of this horrible storm, but the horror and terrified feelings that I did feel will always be with me and I will never be able to forget the night the storm hit China.
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Sanya was a vacation that had been looking forward to for weeks. Finally, a weekend to get away, hit up the beach, enjoy the sunlight and to relax. Other vacation times that I have had with ILP have mostly been trips to explore new places and are generally go, go, go so I can see everything that I want to see in the limited time that I have in those places. Sanya was different. I was still going to explore the island some but for the most part, relaxing on the beach would be where you could find me.
Only 4 out of the 6 people in my group decided to go on vacation, the other 2 stayed in Zhongshan for the few days off. Brecia, Shelbie, Autumn and I left Xiaolan (Zhongshan), on Thursday night and arrived in Sanya on Friday.
We traveled to Sanya, which is located in the Hainan Province of China, by train. Since it is on an island, our first 15 hour train got put on a ferry and crossed the water to get there. That was pretty cool and kinda freaked me out when I had no idea what was going on, but after I figured out our train got put on a boat, I was pretty Amazed! Lets let that sink in... my train was on a boat... and crossed the water for about two hours.... pretty cool right?!? Then we arrived in Haikou, the capital of the province and from there got on the final train 2 hour train ride to Sanya.
Sanya is beautiful. Our Hostel was right on the beach, that was really nice especially because we only spent $5 a night to stay there. Our hostel was in a tiny little village that was about 20 minutes away from the super touristy downtown section of Sanya. The beach we were on was so beautiful and my group and I enjoyed going swimming and enjoyed the water. I went swimming at a beach in November. <3
Our first full day of vacation, Friday, was spent getting there and then enjoying the beach and water and also exploring the little village a little bit to find somewhere good to eat. Potatoes and rice is always a safe meal to find, not to mention I know how to ask for it in Chinese so I don't have to point at some random Chinese and pray that I get something edible.
Our second day in Sanya, Saturday, we went to the main touristy section and feasted upon AMAZING WESTERN FOOD. We went to Dolphin Bar, which another ILP group that we had run into said was amazing. The menu had everything you could imagine, from all types of sandwiches to Mexican food, to pasta. I got the Chicken Parmesan, with mashed potatoes and potato wedges. After eating a lot rice and chicken on the bone (where it is mostly just bone), chicken feet, all sorts of weird and not very tasty veggies, you would be as excited as me to eat this food. A few tears of happiness may have escaped my eyes. It was a very delicious and a very expensive meal (for China). It was about 60 Yuan or $10 for my meal... I justified the purchase because if I was at Olive Garden I would have spent about $13 on the Chicken Parmesan.. and also, I was hungry and waiting another month and a half until I get back to the states to eat this was just tooo long.
I don't regret the purchase.
We then enjoyed a beautiful day on the beautiful and crowded beach. Sanya is a hot tourist spot for Russians and I enjoyed using the few sentences of Russian that I know... aka "ya ne ponimayu (I don't understand), menya zovoot Cherish (my name is Cherish), ya ne govoryu po Russi (I don't speak Russian), privet (Hello), nyet (no), da (yes), spasibo (thank you) and dasvidanya (goodbye)" <<Those probably aren't spelled right, but you get the idea ;)>>
This is a Russian guy who I guess thought I was Russian so he started to talk to to me.
Once I informed him I didn't understand what he was saying, and that I didn't know any Russian besides those few phrases and words he told me "I am Russia" and that his name is "Pasha" of course. haha and he laughed at me when I stuttered to remember how to say "my name is Cherish" in Russian. When I told him I was from America he said "wait a moment" and he ran over to his stuff and pulled out a USA #10 Jersey. It kinda looked like an Olympic Jersey to me, why he had it, I have no idea, but it was nice to meet Pasha and to talk to him for a bit.
I'm glad we had at least one (and a half) day(s) to enjoy the beach and Sanya, because the days that followed would turn the tropical paradise into a tropical disaster.
Before we left to go on vacation I had heard about the Typhoon and knew that it was going to hit the Philippines. I checked the projected path and it was suppose to go pretty south of where I was going to be, so I was only expecting that we would get hit with a little bit of rain on Sunday. That was not the case. When I checked the path of the typhoon on Sunday morning, it was heading right towards us. The eye wasn't projected to hit us but it was suppose to go in between the island we were on and Vietnam. AKA... even though the eye wasn't suppose to smack into us, we were still going to get hammered with wind and rain. I knew things could quickly go bad so we left our hostel right on the ocean and headed to the train station. Keeping calm even though it was pouring rain and it was progressively getting windier and windier. I was hopeful that we would be able to get on our train that night and get out of there before it got too bad. Wishful thinking...
We arrived at the train station, ran through the pouring rain just to discover that all trains for Sunday and Monday were cancelled because of the storm. We decided to just stay at the train station for the night and pray that the storm wouldn't get to bad so that way we could leave on the first train back to Guangzhou the next day. Again, wishful thinking.
The storm got worse. A lot worse.
Soon, the electricity went out and the storm was hammering the train station. I kept pretty calm, until the roof of the train station started to blow off. As soon as the roof started to blow off, I got really freaked out and I seriously had no idea what to do. I didn't want to stay there because of the obvious reason of the roof starting to come off and I was worried it would get worse and then the whole building would collapse. But it got to the point of even when we decided to leave and grab a taxi and go to a near by hotel for the night. We didn't want to run into the terrifying storm. The rain was so heavy and the wind was so strong. We decided to stay and just pray that we would survive the night in the train station.
I have never in my life wanted to be somewhere else in my life. In those lon hours I spent in the falling apart Train Station, I was terrified for every second that the worst would happen and that none of us would make it or that the other 3 girls in my group would die but I would make and have to live with that. I hated that I was head teacher and responsible for all of the lives of my group and I hated everything. I hated China. I hated that I was confused and had no idea what the right thing to do was. I hated that my family and friends probably didn't even know that I was in danger and could possible die. I hated that my Chinese phone wouldn't hold a charge. I'm usually pretty positive so I hope ya'll can realize the magnitude of this situation and truly how awful it was. Although the doors were chained closed and had stuff in front of them to keep them closed and to keep the water from flowing in under the door, the wind was so strong that the doors busted open. The hole in the roof kept getting worse. It was loud. very loud.
I was scared out of my mind and bored. I ate all my snacks. I also wrote in my journal A LOT. Most of what I wrote was about how scared I was. When I started writing about the situation, it began with "When we get out of here.." and quickly became "If I get out here...". No lie, my sister Autumn, who is one of the bravest people I know, was so scared as well and even started writing her goodbyes in her Journal. I started thinking about the last conversation I had with my family and loved ones. I don't really have any regrets in my life but one thing that I did wish was that I had kept in better touch with such and such person and that I wish that I talked to my parents and siblings more often.
Although I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep. I tried and dozed in and out for hours. It was too loud with the rain and wind and crashing sounds that I couldn't manage to actually sleep. Around 4 am. My whole group and I were in some sort of terrified delirium that suddenly everything was hilarious. It was hilarious that we saw a rat looking for food, hilarious that the roof was coming off, hilarious that we were crammed on these itty bitty couches trying to sleep even though we were really uncomfortable and freezing, hilarious that we were writing our goodbyes in our journals. That lasted for about 20 minutes before we got silent again and went back to be scared.
At around 6am on Monday morning the rain started to let up and we were so glad that we were alive and that we had made it. But, we were left with the dilemma on how to get back to Guangzhou. Finally when the power came back on, I was able to call Kelly (my coordinator) and she talked to some people at the train station for me and they said that trains wouldn't be up and going until maybe Wednesday. To be honest, we wanted to get the H--- out of there ASAP. But we settled for finding a hotel and then figuring out everything from there.
Finding a hotel wasn't hard. We had our other coordinator, Nicole, find one for us and she texted us the
address in Chinese so all we had to do was find a taxi and we were set. Well, at 7am.ish there were no taxis to be found. We ran into a random guy from Michigan who said their were no taxis because a lot of the roads were closed from awful flooding. He told us the water was up to his chest and that he had to take 3 different taxis' and walk/swim through a lot of different roads to get from his hotel to the train station. The aftermath of the typhoon was bad. Besides the horrible flooding, there were tons and tons of trees and signs blown down, houses destroyed and lives were taken.
Thankfully, I did not walk out into the streets and see dead bodies everywhere like in the Philippines.
Hopelessly, we stayed in the train station for another couple of hours. Around 11ish we noticed some taxi's pulling up to the train station. We packed up our stuff, eventually found someone to take us to the hotel and made it.
We show up at the Hotel and this is what we see:
"Oh, Dear Lord." were my exact thoughts. The inside was fine, but they had someone moping up some water so I assume that there had been a little bit of flooding inside. We got our room and we all crashed. Hard. We took like a 4 hour nap. There was no running water or WiFi. So, not only could I not text my family and let them know that I was alright, but I couldn't shower or brush my teeth either. I got a little desperate later on and used my water bottle's water to brush my teeth though.
Later that night after talking with Kelly, we all got plane tickets to leave the following morning (Tuesday) at 9am. Praise the Lord. We were so happy that we would finally be able to get home and out of there. Especially because we had run out of food and our water supply was almost gone and a majority of the restaurants around us were closed because of flooding and other damages. I am glad that we were able the very next day.
When we we finally made it back to our apartments on Tuesday. We were all relieved but so exhausted so we crashed. After surviving 2 terrifying days, where you seriously thought you were going to die. You would be tired too. It took a few days for me to recover the sleep loss and getting over the shock of the events that took place. Today, I am just very very grateful. Grateful that I survived, grateful that the train station didn't fall down, grateful that a sign didn't spin into the glass windows/wall of the train station, grateful I got a full refund on all the train tickets. Grateful that it wasn't any worse. Grateful. Grateful. Grateful. Never in my life have I ever been so scared and legitimately thought I was going to die. But, here I am alive and doing well. Even though this experience was terrifying and I never want to be in a similar situation I know that things happen unexpectedly. Things change, life takes an unexpected turn and life can even be taken away from you before you know it. Live life to the fullest. Do the things that make you happy, be around people that make you happy and ultimately, have fun. Life is too short to be grumpy and upset about life and all the negative all the time. That's what I am doing and even more so after this near death experience.
Xoxo
