All journeys have secret destinations of which even the traveller is unaware.: Hanging out with students

This has been a really good week. Wednesday-Curtis, Katie, and I went to Beijing for the day. Katie's mom is here visiting and they went to the airport to pick her up, we went early so we could go out to eat at TGI Fridays and go to Jenny Lous. It was a fun day and I was super happy to go to Jenny Lous-they had everything I wanted (except powdered sugar), but that's ok. TGI Friday's was delicious and I made it back to Baoding by myself, so I figure that's a small accomplishment.

To celebrate two of my student's September birthdays, I made a chocolate cake (from scratch) and invited my IELTS class over Thursday after class. They all loved the cake-the boys kept coming back for more.

Today, most of my IELTS students took me to the former Baoding governor's home. It's not like a governor in the States and no one has lived in the buildings for over 200 years. All of my IELTS students are pretty fluent in English-they are all taking the Internat'l English Language Testing System test this semester. They have to pass it in order to study in England for their Master's degree. Their majors vary-some are communication majors, electrical engineer majors, etc. Sunny is taking her test next month-I think she's ready. Peter is the only one that can understand me when I talk too fast (which is too often-I'm working on it). It's funny-when I talk too fast-he'll translate to everyone else what I want them to do.

We had a lot of fun today and they are all super knowledgeable about their country's history, so I learned a lot from them while they acted as tour guides. I'm pretty close with my IELTS students because I have them 4 days a week. They're all super sweet! Poor Peter had a fever today, but came anyway. We did a little shopping afterward and went to McDonald's. McDonald's was interesting-they were excited to have a foreigner visiting and had us sit down first and came to the table to take our order and brought us our food. It was really nice and they gave me a McDonald's/Olympics fan. Sunny said is was because I am an American and since McDonald's is American food, we got special treatment.

Tomorrow, I'm going to play badmitton with them-I haven't played badmitton since high school, so that should be interesting.

I'm headed to Beijing next Wedesday until Saturday. We don't have class next week for National Day, so I'm staying at a spa hotel. I'm looking forward to it. One of my students, Sabrina, is from Beijing, so she is picking me up at the train station and showing me around. I'm definitely taking her out to TGI Fridays and Starbucks!

Here are some pictures of my apartment and random pictures from today!

Living room