Guzhen

Guzhen is the school i was temporarily assigned to be head teacher at. After our rest the lovely coordinator, Ann, took us around the city. We went to the bank, the store, and we even got to see the school a little! The full school tour came later, but it is such a cute school. I stayed there for a few days and trained the teachers and helped them get everything organized, before their head teacher got there. They started teaching while i was there too. It was drastically different from my first day of teaching in the Dominican Republic. The teachers were all laughing and smiling at the end of the day, even though some of the time it was chaos, they made the most of it and had a good day. I was amazed at how well they did. After teaching we had a meeting with the principal and some of the staff. They pretty much just wanted to let us know they were here for us if we needed anything and that the school was like a big family. They are so happy to have us there.
            The next day we were on our own to find food and do what we wanted. We went on an adventure around town and found some amazing little restaurants.  The girls all wanted to try and find a place to get a foot bath with the fish that nibble on your feet. We found a place that said foot bath so we went in. Google translate in hand, we tried our best to communicate with the people at the desk. After a few minutes of charades and poorly translated sentences they took us back to these rooms. The rooms were very luxurious looking and the chairs were large comfortable reclining type chairs. We all had a seat not knowing what was really going on. The only information we knew for sure was one hour foot bath and it would cost about $15. Next thing we know there are two women in the room with us. They tried to talk to us but we couldn't understand anything. They then took a bucket from under our foot rests and filled it with scalding hot water and insisted we put our feet in it. Then they leaned our chair back and got behind us and gave us an almost full body massage. I'm not gonna lie, it was well worth the $15 even though most of the girls were sore the next day.
          The next day we went out around town again after spending the morning inside relaxing. We debated where to go to eat when this guy told us we need to come to his restaurant. Turns out he spoke English and when we decided to eat there he called his boss to come down and talk to us. We spent the next two hours eating while the boss gave us advice on life and interrogated our being there. Since we were paying to come teach kids English he felt indebted to us and as if he needed to give back. He said free food wasn't enough. He then gave us his WeChat and phone number and said that anytime we needed anything to let him know and he would help us. It was really sweet of him. They also told us to come back right before they closed and they would have some more food made for us to take. We did indeed go back, but it happened to be pouring rain when we went. They thought we were crazy when we got there, half of us soaking wet and the other half with a drenched umbrella. They immediately gave us little towels and cups of hot water. It was wonderful. He then insisted on giving us a ride home so we didn't have to walk in the rain. It was an adventure trying to direct him while he drove in the rain toward our house. We were happy to be home!