Hey friends and family-
So I apologize that I haven't written in so long, I wish I could think of a better excuse...but I really have been busy. Everyone keeps asking about my birthday, so I will tell you. My 22nd birthday was one I will never forget. First off, I turned 22 in CHINA...that's cool in itself. In my last email I wrote about how me and 3 other girls got left in Hefei, while the others went on a free vacation. So there were only 4 of us on my birthday in china, but then they came home the next day (on my birthday in america..if that makes sense). I woke up on my birthday and the girls had decorated the door to my room with balloons, signs and streamers. Which was a nice surprise. We went and had breakfast and came back and slept in pretty late. After relaxing we decided to go get head massages. They wash, massage and style your hair for 10 yuan ($1.25). Aleksi and I are the only girls that wanted to do that. So these 2 guys washed and massaged our heads. It was WONDERFUL. Aleksi's guy just blow dried her hair and called it good. My guy on the other hand wanted to go all out. I am almost positive it was the first time he had ever worked with blonde hair. So he decided to curl all of my hair. This was taking forever. THEN half way through my head the curling iron broke. He then attempted to use a straightener to curl it. This did not work as well. It kinda curled, but by the time I got home that half was completely flat. Are you all imagining how cute I looked at this point?? Anyway, so later that night we got dressed up and the 4 of us went dancing. It was so much fun. The next day was my actual birthday in america and the rest of our group came home. Before we headed over to our Taekwondo class the school surprised me with a HUGE cake. I mean HUGE...it looked like a wedding cake. they sang happy birthday and we dug in. My group then informed me that they had a surprise for me. They took me to our taekwondo class and as we were walking up there I was joking around and said " ohh...do I get private lessons from Mr. Taekwondo???" They all laughed and said..." kinda." Mr. Taekwondo gave us a private show. He performed a bunch of cool taekwondo moves and tricks. Which doesn't sound all that exciting, but we all have a crush on him...so it was for us. I took pictures with him and it was really fun/hilarious. I had a great birthday. Also, thank you all for the TONS of emails I got on my birthday I loved hearing from all of you. It helped make my 22nd birthday truly great.
Alright, so later that week on friday we were invited to go with the kindergarteners to a museum. It was sooo much fun. I got to go with all the cute little kids that I teach. I held their hands and walked around and played with them. I have decided that I for sure want to adopt a little asian baby. I will have to post the pictures from that day a little later. My favorite little girl is grace. She is absolutely adorable and was attached to my hip the entire time. On the bus ride back to the school she sat on my lap and fell asleep. So precious. I was tempted to just take her back with me, but I am pretty sure that would be kidnapping and I could get sent home for that.
So a couple of days ago, while we were eating lunch and we were confronted by one of the teachers here at the school telling us to meet him in the auditorium around 7 that evening. We asked him "what for?" but we couldn't understand his english very well. We went anyway, and found out that he wanted us to perform in their school's talent show. We would perform on Sunday evening infront of all of the older kids 16-18. We laughed because we thought he was kidding, but then soon realized that he wasn't. Now here is the part where you guys will laugh...we decided on Britney Spears- Oops I did it again! yes...I know. lame, but a lot of the kids know who britney spears is. So we thought they might enjoy it. So we threw together a "dance" in like an hour the night before and called it good. We tried to make the dance not so skanky, because we knew it would be infront of our students and other teachers. We performed it and they all LOVED it. They went crazy for us. They were taking tons of pictures and screaming for us. We asked a couple people to record it for us, and after watching it later that night we realized it was kinda skanky. oh well. I will try to send the video to you guys soon. You will get a kick out of it.
Well, I have to go get ready for my day. I love you all and can't wait to hear from you! Thanks again for all the birthday emails. love you-Cort
