What were you grateful for this week?My host parents wrote out the new schedule for me on a big whiteboard. Hopefully that will make it a lot easier to know what’s going on. 

What was the most challenging part of this week?Now that the little girl has started school I have a whole new schedule to learn. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.Even though I was sick most of the week I still continued to do my job the best I could.

Tell us about your week! After coming home from that adventure-filled weekend we had, my body definitely needed to rest. I ended up being sick for most of last week, which was definitely not fun. Luckily my host family was very understanding and offered to help in any way they could. So last Monday was my little girl’s first day of kindergarten. I thought that it was going to be her first year of school ever because she’s only 4 but when I asked the host mom she told me she had actually already been going to kindergarten for a couple of years. For some kids, kindergarten is 3 or 4 years long. I was very surprised to find that out. 

So since she has started school every morning me and her grandmother drop her off at school. And then I have all day until 4:30 free. It’s really nice having that long of a break during the day. On mondays and fridays I have my mandarin classes. The classes are pretty hard but it’s exciting getting to learn the language. Most of the week was spent learning the new schedule and trying to get into a routine. During the weekend, while the little girl was at an English class, my host mom and I went to a spa that was in the same building. I got to try this one treatment where they put a cloth that has Chinese medicines in it on your body. Then they heat this object up until it’s smoking and they put it close to your body next to the cloth. Im still not entirely sure what was happening or what the purpose was but it was definitely an interesting experience.