Buddha Belly

I totally love this picture!

Saturday the 25th I went with the Fowlers to see the Biggest Buddha in the world! Whoa Dang, I know! We drove about 2 ½ Hours away and it was very humid and hot. We had to wait in line to see the Buddha; I want to say it lasted forever, but only about 2 ½ hours. It was intense let me tell you. About 1/4th of the way into the line the baby had had enough. The line was like an amusement park line back and forth, back and forth, and with Chinese people on all sides of us they wanted to take pictures of us, touch the kids and just stair. Finally we got to the bottom of the Buddha it was such a relief to finally get out of the line. The Buddha was huge and so cute!

I also went through a few different temples, and different people were praying to them, that just seemed so weird to me that they would pray to a statue, I guess its just different!! Once I got home I felt so grimy from just being around so many people, I feel that a lot when I come home and get out of the city. Yesterday right after work I walked up and down the streets for about two hours just checking things out, going in and out of different shops. It was pretty cool, even though I did not understand anything that the sales clerks where trying to tell me, I just smile at them ☺. I wish I had smaller feet; it would be so much easier to buy shoes. It’s so amazing, they have so many different and fun high hill shoes, I just need smaller feet now! Curse my FEET!
Work defenently goes by so much faster now that we are getting in the groove of things, I like work once I get there, I just hate waking up at 6:00 to get ready. Its not like getting ready for school, I actually have to look presentable and look like nice. TGIF Today!! Wha Hoo!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!

Story Time w/ Heidi

A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper. "Hello?" "Is your daddy home?" he asked. "Yes," whispered the small voice. "May I talk with him?" The child whispered, "No." Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the bossasked, "Is your Mummy there?" "Yes." "May I talk with her?" Again the small voice whispered, "No." Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, "Is anybody else there?" "Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman." Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?" "No, he's busy", whispered the child. "Busy doing what?" "Talking to Mummy and Daddy and the Fireman," came the whispered answer. Growing more worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, "What is that noise?". "A hello-copper" answered the whispering voice. "What is going on there?" demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive. Again, whispering, the child answered, "The search team just landed the hello-copper." Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?" Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle: "ME."

Being a local

This is me and Zoe on the bus today going to school. I feel like I'm going back in time.
Yesterday was the first day of school for the kids, I was nervous. It was only a half-day and so after the kids went home it was kind of boring but me and Colin (the teacher I assist) were talking about culture and everything but it’s so cool to hear about his point of view and stuff. He told me I need to at lest try being an English teacher, just for the experience, I don’t think I’m up to teaching English especially when I don’t feel confident in knowing all the grammar stuff myself. He is cool! Today was the first full day of school with the kids, it went by so much faster and after the kids left at 2:00ish I basically can do whatever tell 4. I’m getting paid very low but its so worth the experience and all the different kinds of people I am meeting! I’m planning on going to KT tonight with some people from work. KT is Karaoke, a group can rent out a room and have a private karaoke party its what all the locals do on weekends so I’m going to try it out, I hope they aren’t drinking to much or ill be coming home early. I don’t think they have a drinking age here because so many people ask me to go out and get a drink with them, the first time I heard it, it threw me off guard “your got the wrong girl for that buddy”!!
Love from CHINA to the US always!!

$3.00 Manacure

This is my $3 Manicure, I’m such a girl I just could not resist it! 23RMB is such a deal!! The background looks black but really its green, DUH!!! Then there are flower things on it with a light green color on top. The nail place is right across the street from my house and I went by myself. Thank goodness this nice lady next to me that was getting her nails done knew a little bit of English, she translated for me kinda, it was cool to talk to her. She is an editor of a magazine here! At home this would have cost at lest $30.

How long is a china turtle?

This is my chinese turtle, He will be a pro at english by the time i leave! I LOVE MY NEW CHIESE FRIEND!
I wonder if they eat turtle here? YUCK I hope not

The Animal Street

This is the street i talked about with all the animals, it was way fun!

Flying to China

The top picture is of Siberia when we were flying over. I did see a little village but i did not get a picture of is fast enough.

These other pictures are of the tv screen on the plane showing us where we were at in the world!
p.s. i was only 400 miles away from the North Pole, have you ever been that close the North Pole. I thought i heard some jingle bells!!

ABC ONE TWO THREE

abc-123
Plus 5 more days equals a week. I have officially been in Chengdu, China 7 Days now. Tuesday 14th, I did not go to bed tell at lest 12:00 midnight, and I woke up at around 5:30am, I thought that since I had a long day of traveling the day before I would sleep the whole next day, THINK AGAIN HEIDI. Wednesday morning I just chilled, getting a feel for my new surroundings. That afternoon Michelle took me for a walk around the area. So we walked down the street and since we are both blond hair blue eyes all the Chinese just stare at you. I can’t wait tell one day, one of them get so distracted that they fall off there bike or scooter. Lol that would be funny! Anyhow, we walked to the store and that was a weird adventure. So you go into this store and people are just everywhere, its nuts, Oh and everything in China smells, so you just have to get use to it. I was looking to buy some shampoo and conditioner, there were probably 5 clerks standing around looking at me, it was weird. IM A SUPER STAR HERE, I should put a show on for them next time!! I also bought house sandals, since the city is so dirty when you get to your house you slip your shoes off and where your house sandals. This is so you’re not tracking dirt in the house. Another thing I noticed is that the Chinese don’t have personal space; there are just so many people that you are always running into someone. It’s not rude to just push your way through a crowd and cut in front of someone or things like that with out saying excuse you. Wednesday night I went out and played soccer with Michelle and James and a few Marines, we also picked up more players at the field. We played at the college field with 3 other games going on at the same time. So one group took up half the field and us and the other 2 groups shared other half of the field. It was fun, tell I was totally exhausted and sweaty, so then I sat out and watched. The airport did find my luggage and I was so thankful when it arrived at my house all accounted for. God answers prayers! Thursday I was able to sleep in tell 9:30am so that was kind of nice then I decided to actually get beautified so maybe I would not feel so depressed and homesick, it also gave me something to do. After that I ate breakfast and went to Metro. Metro is a store kind of like Costco, it was cool. When I came home I had to finally unpack so that the baby would not get into all my stuff. Its been so weird having to baby proof things since I have not had to do that in, what, 3 yrs. That night after dinner me and the Fowlers went over to the Marine house to have a party. There are 6 marines located here that work at the consulate but one was leaving so they threw a going away party for him. It surprised me Joe the marine leaving was LDS, I thought that was cool. I played foosball with a 10yr old name Diego and some older guys that were there. I also meet a lady named Veronica, she is also working at QSI International School of Chengdu, so meeting her made my first day of work that much less scary. After walking home I decided to go set my alarm and get to bed, and that’s just what I did. Friday the 17th I got ready and walked to Zoe’s restaurant, which is just down the street from where I live, for a work breakfast. That was my first time out on the streets all by myself, it scared me a little bit, but it was also even more scary going to meet people I don’t even know at a restaurant. I found the other staff members very easy, half were Chinese and the other half were from all over the world, some USA, Belgium, Africa, Canada, England ect After breakfast the School’s bus came and picked us all up and took us over to the school for the first day of work, and meetings. After that extremely long meeting I was sure I was in over my head working here. I meet the teacher I’m working with, Mr. Colin Powell, he is a young guy and really nice. His wife also works in the school just a few classes down from ours. There is only about 20 staff working at the school, it’s so much smaller then I had ever thought. Maybe because my whole life I’ve only gone to large public schools and never a school with only 66 students in it like this one. Well my first day went by fast, it was nice to go home and rest. Friday night I just chilled you know at home, since I don’t have any friends. You can say it “OH HOW DEPRESSING”! And it was depressing, but as you can see I’m still living. Like my mom tells me, “take one day at a time”, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Saturday I was out on the town all day, it started out by walking down to the huge computer mall or store, it was 7 stories high. It was kind of like a flea market in side but just with electronic stuff, each little area or table was a different person saleing something. The store was nuts, crazy and especially since it was Saturday, the ails in the store were very cramped. The top floor had secret little shops were people were saleing burned DVD’s and CD’s, so we went up and looked through them all and the price was equivalent to about $0.75 a DVD and $0.65 a CD so I bought 5 or 6 of each. Later when I got home to check them out, all my CD’s worked but some had extra added random songs to it to fill the CD up. Ex: they put “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room song on the Maroon Five CD. The newer release DVD’s were crappy but the other ones were great! After the computer store we meet up with a guy that’s also a member of the church, Josh and his girlfriend and went to Chinese lunch. It was very interesting, I had this nasty jelly cube stuff in a bowl with brown sugar and tiny bits of watermelon on top of it, it was the worse thing I ever tasted, very sweet and it had a horrible after taste. Then I ate some other Chinese food, it was gross too, I don’t think I like Chinese food very much. After that, not filling lunch we walked through the animal market. It was so neat, they had tons of different kinds of fish, baby bunnies, hamsters, salamanders, a pig, squirrels, chipmunks, big turtles, little turtles, love birds, all kinds of birds, dogs, sickly looking cats, mice, snakes ect It was really cool, I ended up buying a little turtle for $1.00 its the size of my palm. He does not have a name yet so I just call him Mr. Turtle for now, but he will get one soon, ill let you know later!! After that Michelle and the kids took a taxi cab home and me James and Josh headed to get me a cell phone. As we were heading there we walked through the stinky fish market to see what it was like, It was so crazy, the thing that I was most interested in was the lady skinning live frogs, she would grab one out of a bag and push its head into a nail and rip the skin off its body and then cut the head off of it and threw the bodys in a pile. What was most disgusting is that the legs are still kicking with out skin and with out a head, NASTY, but I liked it!! I got a Bright yellow cell phone, now I can PRETEND like I have a social life. JOY! That night I watched the movie Disturbia, all by myself it scared the living heck out of me and it also made me miss home because Aaron saw it and I really wanted to see it with him so it was another one of those emotional nights. Its so hard being so far away from home and then, not wanting to let that life go, I just don’t want to miss anything fun happening while I’m here. It doesn’t seem fair sometimes, but as my mom also says “LIFE ISN’T FAIR OR WE WOULD ALL ME STARVING IN ETHIOPIA”, “WHATEVER MOM”! Sunday was I little different then most of my other Sundays, we had church at the Fowlers house and it started at 10:00. There were only 7 adults, and 7 kids. Zoe (the 4yr old) forgot she had the talk for this Sunday, so it was about a 10 min sacrament meeting, shortest one I have been to yet. After that it was singing time with the kids and everyone did it, even the adults. Then the kids when to the house upstairs for sharing time and the rest of us stayed for class, then about 30mins later the two people teaching upstairs came down and another person gave another lesson. Let me tell you it was the most boring church meeting I have ever been to, it might have only been 2 hr church but it felt longer then the normal 3hr. Monday I started waking up at 6:00am yuck, no fun let me tell you. I decided I’m to young to have to wake up that early and work all day, I’m just a kid and want to have fun with my friends all day. Lol, I Wish!! Work was fine I stayed busy and the day went by really quickly which was good for me. That night I had Family Home Evening with the fowlers. Today, TUESDAY the 22, I got up went to work yadda yadda yadda but at 7:30pm my boss Karin was throwing a party, a wine and cheese party. I did not really want to go cause I had a major headache and I don’t drink wine, but since im such a trooper I went anyways. I rode on the back of James’s electric bike it was pretty scary, but fun! The party started out kind of slow and I was just dying to leave but as I started to talk to some of the Chinese staff there it was not so bad, I came to find out that most of the Chinese staff had not grown up in the Chengdu area like I thought, and that when they first came here they did not really understand the dialect spoken here either. So even Chinese people have a hard time with the language too. I admit it, I had fun!

Monday The 13Th

It was all just wonderful tell my dad came in really early to say good-bye and interrupts my nice calm dream. I said goodbye to my dad and after I could not go back to sleep. I had that sick nervous feeling, like what the heck am I doing today. So I finally got up and showered and got dressed. I finished my last bit of packing and took my suitcases down stairs. I called Aaron and told him to come over so we could say our good-byes, now that was hard. He came over and I started to cry, I could see that coming from a mile away. It was so hard to see Aaron drive away from my house for the last time. I went in and had breakfast and we were off to the airport. We got my boarding pass and had my two bags checked. We got some family pictures then cried as we hugged and kissed good-bye. The line through security was nuts so I was waiting in line for a while then once I got through I waved good-bye to my family and I was on my own. It was hard as I was putting my shoes and belt back on holding back tears trying to be brave. I so badly wanted to run back to my mom but NO, I’m a big girl now I can do this!! That’s what I told myself at lest. So if anyone has flown internationally out of the Dulles airport the gates are a ways away. I found my gate and after waiting 20mins or so I boarded the plane, I though I was going to die waiting for the plane to take off, I knew I still could back out of this well I still had a chance. So we took off about 12:50pm on a 13hour flight to Beijing. The first part of the flight was not so bad. I listened to my ipod and then watched a movie on my laptop tell it ran out of battery. The meals on the plane totally sucked, I’m so glad I took some of my own food to eat. I was in a isle seat so I could not really look out the window much but I did get up and look out once when we were going over Siberia, it was cool I saw a little village. By the third meal I felt sick from the food, and I started to feel dehydrated. NOT A GOOD THING. The last 2hrs I kind sleep, I could not get comfortable, but who can on a plane. It was the weirdest feeling when I landed in Beijing; I was in china and couldn’t believe it. I got in at about 2:00 pm Tuesday. The airport was kind of confusing and I had to fill out different forms to get out of customs. So finally I got through everything and I got to ticketing. I waited there for about an hour just sitting up against to wall. Then I asked someone where my gate would be and she said gate 25. So I went through security and saw a sign for gate 25A-25-F, that through me off since I was looking for just gate 25, so I walked past it. Then realized that’s were I wanted to go so I turned around and headed down to gate 25. I walk in and it as a huge room with seats everywhere and doors that have big signs above them that have 25A through 25F. I looked on the screens and my gate was 25A so I walked over in the region my gate was since the gates were not separated like they are in the states and surprisingly I found a seat next to a nice old couple, and they were not Chinese. It was nice to see normal people, I started talking to the lady next to me, her and her husband have been touring the different places in china for the past 6 weeks and they were originally from New Zealand. That was pretty cool; she gave me some pointers for being in china.
1. Don’t scratch you eyes with your fingers use the back of your hand since your fingers have tons of germs on them.
2. Never drink the water out of the tap or faucet. The water in china has heavy metals in it so you don’t want to drink it.
3. Drivers are crazy and don’t follow the rules at all.

They left and got on their plane, so I was sitting alone very thirsty with no yuan (Chinese money) to buy water. Yeah at this point I just want this all to be over with, I was tired, feeling kind of sick from the plane food and feeling a little out of place being one of the only Americans or not Chinese person around and waiting in the airport for the past 4hrs. It started to get really crowed after awhile and I guess Chinese people don’t mind being really close to each other, but I did not like it, so I got up and checked the screen to make sure my gate was still the same. To my surprise it was changed to 25C just a little ways away, I was glad I checked. At 5:45pm a person yelling through a megaphone called my plane number to board the bus, then the bus took us out to the plane. OK SO THIS two hour plane right from Beijing to Chungdu was the worse plane ride in the history of Heidi Corbett’s life. I was next to a window, which was kind of nice but it was so hot and I was fatigued and the worse part is I dosed off right as they were bring the drinks around. I don’t know why I was so scared to ask for water but I finally did and they brought me some water, with no ice. This is the part were I broke down and got very emotional and just wished that plane would take me home to VA. I wont go on about that plane ride it was not much fun ill leave it at that. Once I got off the plane I walked down to baggage claim like everyone does, but my luggage did not ever come out like everyone else did. I was about to bust down in tears as I was trying to communicate my problem with some workers down my baggage claim. Finally I went to get Michelle and she translated, I came to find out I was suppose to pick up my luggage in Beijing and recheck it, but nobody told me that. I finally go to the Fowlers house and I took a shower and ended up crying myself to sleep.
The longest and hardest day of my life so far is now behind me!!