Its SO Hot!

This is my boy Michael. Favorite!

I have never been this hot in my whole entire life. I am from Arizona where we find ourselves continually grateful for the "dry" heat. Well, here in Guzhen it is ANYTHING but dry! When we wake up in the mornings the walls and floor are slick with humidity, our papers are wrinkled, and our clothes are plastered to our bodies. I have NEVER been this hot in my whole entire life. I'll be honest, its been hard. I am the person that normally sleeps with the fan constantly running. But now I wake up drenched in sweat with mosquitos buzzing in my ear. We do have a fan here and even a small cooling unit. (Which I have been incredibly grateful for) But unlike America, we can't just run the thing whenever we want. We only use it for a few minutes when absolutely necessarily and even then we run of money on our electricity bill. I can survive freezing cold winters with no jackets. But I am definitely not made for summers like this. I die. But the humidity has had its perks. The kids at our school are so cute and sweaty. We have a little playground area thats visible from where I teach. Every day, while my teachers are teaching, I walk outside to take a look at the kids. They usually have weird chinese toys they play with or are doing some kind of dance with the music playing on the loud speaker. On one particularly hot day I went to look at my ELE kids and found them all in their underwear! Haha. Mickey motioned for me to come down and join them. Then tons of  little 3 and 4 year old kids were swarming around me with no clothes on. I just thought it was so cute. It makes our school feel... like family. I love caring not only for the mental needs of our kids but even for the physical ones. I love cleaning up a cut or helping them blow their nose. The chinese teachers are always surprised when I help clean up messes or wipe a child's face. Their impression of Americans is sometimes that we don't like "dirty" things. The other day Sandy, (one of our chinese teachers), told me, "You always do the job of an auntie, but you do it for free." ("Auntie" is what they call a "Maid" here) Haha. It makes me sad that they would ever think we would consider ourselves "above" any type of menial work. I don't care if I was a freaking billionaire with golden inlaid nails... I still would help a kid blow his nose, or mop the floor or eat the slobber covered cookie that Michael offers me. Psh! I'd do ANYTHING for these kids! I especially love staying after school with the Aunties and the chinese teachers and eating dinner with them in the classroom. Some of the students stay extra long (until 7 or 8 at night) because their parents are too busy to get them. I love sitting with Auntie Tracy as they argue about how many bites Tommy has left or tease him about a girl he likes. I live for those cute little moments where I really feel like our little Kindergarten is a family. My chinese is coming along great and I feel like I really understand so much. I can sit down with these people and really communicate. I love Guzhen! Lets just cross our fingers it doesn't get hotter or they might be sending me back to the states as road kill...