The day from two perspectives:

DANI
       Ok so the day started off pretty good, I woke up and went to breakfast, I couldn't really tell you what it was but it really felt like I was eating just all cakes and sugar so it was kind of odd.  I wish I could explain it better to you, but I can say that I really miss breakfast at home, even if it is just cereal.  Anyway... the rest of the day I was on a "field trip" so to speak, it was a sports day for the students here and they went to the park to have competitions against each other in their own teams, Matt and I were assigned to team 3 (which is the best team ever) and we were basically supposed to be their cheerleaders and just help encourage them when the were competing.  Turns out I ended up participating in 4 of the 6 events because there ended up being only one girl on our team so she couldn't do them all and she was hurt someway too.  I can't say that I was bummed because I love sports and competing and it was even more fun because I got to do it with the students.  All of the students here are really amazing and so easy to get along with they are just like us but living in a different part of the world, so it is really cool to get the chance to hang out with them and find out things that they like to do.  So my first event that I took part in was the long distance run which was a 400m run and I got last place, but let me explain why...  the people from our contact who were running the event asked if I would step in for my team and were telling me that most of these girls don't even know how to run properly let alone fast so they told me to take it easy on them and just don't win so I figured shoot this is all about them and I want them to have a great experience so I just ran really slow behind the last girl and helped her finish the race.  And doing that is a lot harder than you think, just fyi :)   Next came the long jump, which was really interesting because I am so short but surprisingly I did good against there girls, but they were much taller and pretty good at it.  I think my farthest jump was like 134in or so.  After that I did the sprint which was a 100m dash, and for those of you who don't know me that is kind of my specialty in running, but as before it was best if I didn't win so it was really funny watching me run this with them cause I would speed up and then slow down and so forth just having fun and I think I took 3rd in it, but could have totally blown them out of the water but how much fun would that have been.  Last was the team tug of war and I had to do that also once and we lost but it was really fun. Our team ended up getting 5th in the event!  But the best part of this was just getting to interact with the students during the times that I wasn't competing and just getting to know them better.  My favorite part of the day though was going out out to lunch with our team; we went to KFC, which is way better here than in the US in my opinion,  and we were all just talking to each other the girls sitting with the girls and the guys at the table right next to us talking among themselves, eventually we were all talking to each other and they decided to give Matt and me Chinese names.  I don't remember what Matt's was but Kevin a guy on the team gave me the name Xiao Qiao (ask me later to pronounce it for you) which means beautiful girl and it was kind of weird for me but really sweet of him.  Then he told me a story from Chinese history that was really cool, and I just want to remind you that a lot of this is in broken english so sometimes it is really hard to understand them but they usually do a good job, it was a story that kind of went along with the name he gave me.  And last but least the second best part of the day was finding Mountain Dew!  You have no idea how hard that stuff is to come by here, they have pretty much every pop here but Mt. Dew and Dr. Pepper so it was really exciting to know that there is some here, a lot of us were really excited about it.  So today has been really eventful and very fun and I can't wait to keep working with the students (which range anywhere from 16-28) and building a good relationship with them. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Dani




PAIGE
Nihao!
So we've made it through our first full day of "work." Most of our team was involved in sports day with the English students. The students were split into teams in order to participate in a tournament of activities including long distance run, 100M dash, long jump, and a variety of other competitions. They kept score of these different events and at the end of the competition, someone was declared the winner/gold medalist. Our teams' role in this competition was to be cheerleaders for the students. I was not one of the team members to participate in the field day. I stayed here along with Missy, Tillie, Kaleb, Andy and Austin. After breakfast, we were assigned to our work load for the day. Kaleb, Missy, and Tillie stayed behind at the headquarters to help out in the foster home. Andy, Austin, and I went down the road to the factory. We had no idea what we would be doing. Turns out, we were helping make a new product, book ends. They were made out of the same material as most of the other products. It almost feels like metal or wood, but it's a hard plastic. Our job was to sand down the book ends after they had been taken out of their molds. The Chinese lady was explaining the process of sanding to Chad, an employee there, I think he does the graphic design of products. Watching the lady sand the book ends didn't seem very complex. She was very thorough and adamant about the sanding. She completed a set of book ends in about 10 minutes. So, we sat down at the tables in the room full of clutter and boxes, and begin our sanding of book ends. We were given a crate of these and maybe we were expected to finish the crate, maybe we weren't... haha. We found out that sanding these book ends to the standards of the Chinese lady was not an easy task. It had to be exact and perfectly smooth. This was so funny to us. Something that seemed so simple was really fairly difficult. We continued to sand from 8:30 til 11:30 ish and I guess we all discovered how severe our OCD is. This is only one step to complete at the factory of making these book ends, after we sand them by hand, they finish sanding them some more and then they buff the product, then it is painted. So our job was really important to make sure there were no dips or flaws on the book ends. We had to make sure we didn't round off the corners or edges. Luckily we have Austin to communicate with the supervisor of our work. If you don't already know, Austin is a student from OU whose major is Chinese and French. He has studied Chinese for 2 and a half years and is such an asset for our team. It's amazing to me what all he knows and how the Chinese are so surprised when he just starts spouting off in their language. So after it was all said and done, we only completed a total of 14 book ends which was actually quite the accomplishment, but it was no where near as good as the factory workers could have done. Andy was the funniest during the factory work. He tried to keep a good attitude, but I don't think he talked the whole time were were working. Finally, we got to leave and we headed back to New Day. It was such a relief to go relax at lunch. The biggest lesson that I took away from working at the factory was appreciation for all my blessings. Working here at the factory is a great job for these Chinese. They would love to be employed at the factory. They are paid a fair wage, more than other companies would pay them and their work days at 8 hour days. They also have benefits and the opportunity for promotion. Our host place is a wonderful place to work with people who love and care about them. But, that doesn't make their job any easier. They still work hard and the jobs they do are repetitive and tedious. As Americans, working in the factory would be a last resort job. We would only do this if we absolutely had to. It just really put our lives in perspective for me. We are very fortunate and actually, spoiled. So, it's just a little reminder not to take our lives for granted when we're back at home, working. I can relate this back to ropes course from a couple weeks ago. Matt read us a passage about not complaining during our work. We did some mundane activities during ropes and it was a revelation to see this evident on our trip.
After lunch, we worked on our planning for VBS. If you don't know, the six of us are creating a VBS for the kids of the employees here at our contact. We had to go to the village market to get supplies for different things they will be doing...more on that in later days :) That was most of my day, I hope this gives you a good idea of what we're doing and hopefully you can appreciate your work days more as you relate to the factory work we did today.
If there is awful grammar, misspelled words, and other typos...ignore, jet lag is still in effect. haha
Please continue to pray for us!
love y'all!

-Paige