On Saturday the church branch I am apart of in China invited us to their Christmas party in Shenzhen. We all meet up in the afternoon and took a 2 hour bus ride to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a city populated with many people from all over the world. So when we arrived and saw white people playing soccer and a group of people speaking English and kids running by us yelling in English we were a little taken back. I can imagine going back to the States where people are the same race and speak the same language as me will be a little overwhelming. It's weird, but in just 4 months I'm so used to being surrounded by people of a different race and different language as me. Once we arrived in Shenzhen we watched the soccer game and helped decorate for the event. I enjoyed the decorations because  "Christmas Internationally" was the theme. There were signs in many different languages with the message "Merry Christmas" on them, there were country flags hung up and placed on the tables, and the program was a passport. It was adorable! We first ate dinner which was amazing! They served us green beans, ham, salad, rolls and potatoes. Afterwards they had people in the ward share how they celebrate Christmas from the country they are from. There were people from Netherlands, Columbia, South Africa, Siberia, Mexico, and Chile. That was by far my favorite part. It was very interesting to learn about the small and big differences countries have when celebrating Christmas. Afterwards we sang Christmas carols and then watched the children act out the nativity. Because our bus was schedule to leave before the party was over we were not able to light lanterns like they had scheduled! I was really bummed, but decided I will just have to light off lanterns at my wedding. I am so grateful I went to that party because it really got me in the Christmas spirit which I had been lacking. It was yet another enjoyable experience in China!

Our main coordinator has a friend named Alan who drives some of the teachers to school everyday to practice his English. On Tuesday he wanted to take us out for lunch as a thank you! He took us to a Buddhist temple he works at in Zhongshan! After school on Tuesday we all meet him at this Buddhist temple. Walking up to the temple there were a lot of homeless people begging us white girls for money. Homeless people here are significantly more homeless looking than in the States. Majority of them have some sort of a severe physical disability and make me feel bad I can't give them a million bucks each. When we walked in the temple a ceremony had just ended. Inside the temple there were three massive golden Buddha's with several different God's all along the walls.  Monks were walking around and people were worshiping the God's on their stoles everywhere. Once we explored the temple we were taken to another temple where we were seated for lunch. We ate lunch INSIDE the temple! We had people worshiping around us and had Buddhist God's staring at us while we "ate". We were served 10 different dishes and we knew nothing that was on each of those dishes. Alan informed us later we were eating mushrooms, seaweed, tofu, peanuts, kelp and a few other things I can't remember. Alan told us that because Buddhists are vegetarians some of the dishes are made to look like meat. The lunch we ate had two dishes that looked like chicken and steak but tasted far from it. I did try everything but only ate about a bite of it. Thank goodness for rice! I only had rice to cover up the bad taste of the food, because of course they did not provide water. Only a bad tasting tea. This was one of those meals where girls were pretending to eat and shoving food in their purses haha! After lunch Alan chatted with me about his religion. His English is mediocre so I couldn't understand everything he said, but I was able to learn some interesting things about Buddhism. Alan would get so excited when I asked him questions about his religion and I understood what he was saying. It was a really cool experience!

Thanksgiving day we still had to teach at school! I mean obviously, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in China. I find it odd how my school went crazy about Halloween and barely recognized it was Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving I taught the kids a sweet milk experiment. You pour milk in a bowl and drop different colors of food coloring into the milk. Then you add a drop of dish soap and the food coloring goes crazy and mixes together. It was a pretty fun lesson but it was hard to control the kids because they were so excited. I was exhausted after school and was not a very good at all... so I took a nap after school and hung out with my cool roommates to cheer up. Later that night we got together for a Thanksgiving dinner. We invited our Chinese coordinators from school, our friends from our favorite smoothie store and our British friends that also teach near us. My head teacher, Karina made the everything! She made church potatoes, chowder, stuffing, mac and cheese, jello, pumpkin pie and few other random things. Sadly chicken/turkey is super expensive here and they have been diseased lately. After we ate dinner Brittany and Anna acted out the Thanksgiving story. Then Karina put together a slideshow of pictures and stories she had gotten from our parents. We had to guess people's baby pictures, family members, houses and stories. We were laughing a lot at people's pictures. It was a lot of fun :)

Wednesday we had parent day! It was slightly having our classroom filled with parents watching my every move. For my lesson I made paper plate turkeys which turned out pretty well. The kids were a little crazy because their parents were sitting right next to them though. At the end of the day all our kids ran up to me and Teacher Sarina and gave us little cards. Most of them said "Happy Thanksgiving" or "Thank you!". My two favorites were from Karmen and Aaron. Aaron's card said "This gift to my favorite teacher. I <3 teacher." Karmen's card said "I live you!" :) My kids are so awesome!

Sunday we headed back to Shenzhen for a Branch Conference! We left at 8:00 am and during the whole bus ride I had water dripping on me because there was a leak right above my head. Once we arrived at the church building the main sacrament room was full so we had to sit upstairs and watch it on the TV. We were a little upset we drove for two hours to watch church on a TV though. The main theme of conference was Obedience leads to happiness and blessings.  After conference we split up and us girls went to Relief Society. It has been so long since I've been to Relief Society... I'm going to have to get back into the the normal schedule of 3 hour church when I get back to the States. During class though we sang Away In A Manger for a practice hymn. It was during then that I realized that I really miss the Christmas spirit that China lacks. I'm going to go back to the USA on the 19th of December and will only get to experience a few days of it. I don't know how the Chinese people survive without the Christmas spirit. I feel like it's such a joyful time of the year for everyone to get rejuvenated for the following year. After Relief Society class was over we took the annual Branch Conference picture. Then we were feed very delicious Hawaiian haystacks and a pumpkin crisp with ice cream. After dinner we had a young single adult fireside with the branch president. The fireside was my favorite part. We were able to ask the president questions and he would answer them and then show us a Mormon video that correlated to our questions. He talked about qualities to look for in our future spouses, the increasing problem pornography is nowadays, and enduring to the end. Afterwards we headed back to Zhongshan!

We had to make the last day of being in Zhangjiajie count! We woke up at 6 am and headed back to the National Park we went to yesterday with the monkeys. However we were determined to get to the top of the Avatar so we went through a different entrance to get take a bus up the mountain. The bus ride up the mountain was definitely one of the most terrifying moments I've had while being in China. Driving in China is insanely dangerous because no one follows the traffic laws and there are no police to enforce the laws. I've gotten used to the bus rides in my home city where it constantly looks like were going to run people over. However, driving up the mountain in Zhangjiajie was a a lot different because of a few reasons... We were crammed inside a tour bus and I was nearest the front of the bus. If anything happened I would go flying through the front window! Also the rode we were driving on was a one way rode but they decided to make it a two way rode with huge tour buses passing each other. Also on every turn our bus driver thought it was a good idea to speed up instead of slow down. On every turn it seemed as though our bus was going to tip off the side of the mountain. Thankfully I made it up the mountain with no injuries. Once we got part way up the mountain we took two elevators up to the very top of the mountain. The last elevator we went on is known as the world's fastest elevator that can hold the most amount of people. When we finally got to the top it said we were on floor 362... It was incredibly beautiful when we got to the top! I was practically speechless, the only thing I could blurt out was AHHHHH OH MY GOSH AHHHH OH MY GOSH! Then we walked around for awhile taking pictures of the gorgeous mountains. It was way cool to see how similar the mountains in Avatar are to the actual mountains in Zhanjiajie. While hiking around we decided that we needed to watch the movie Avatar so we could all yell "I've been there before!" during the movie. Afterwards we headed out of the National Park and back to our hostel to catch our train.

The following day we headed to the other National Park in Zhangjiajie to see the Avatar mountains. When we first entered into the park we saw a few monkeys and we all started freaking out! Next thing we knew we were constantly surrounded by monkeys. The monkeys were everywhere! We took pictures with them and tried feeding. They were very entertaining but some of them mean so we had to be careful. After playing with the monkeys we began to make our way to the hike that was supposed to take us to the top of the Avatar mountains. However it took us hours just to make it to the bottom of the hike. It was SO beautiful just walking around in the park though. Many parts of China look like a jungle and I love it! As we began this "Hike to Heaven" it was torturous! It took us about an hour and half to get to the "top" and the whole time we were climbing stairs. Once we got to the "top" we were confused because we weren't actually on top of the Avatar mountains and it wasn't the cool outlook we were expecting. We figured we had taken the wrong pathway and headed back down. Unfortunately it was getting late in the day and we didn't have time to find the other hike. Although, we didn't make it to the top it was an enjoyable day anyway. Afterwards we ate dinner at McDonald's because it is one of the few places we found to eat at. Immediately as I got home I went to bed because I was worn out from the hard day of hiking.