Hello all! Just a quick post to update. I have been a little under the weather, but I am quickly recovering because you can get antibiotics OTC here! But the thing is, they are not as strong as the ones in America, so it recommends you take a double dose "if it is really serious." So I am taking a double dose. Things are looking good. It looks like we are going to be leaving for Vietnam on Thursday. It is going to take a couple of days to actually get there because of visa delays. But we are all really excited!! After that, we are going to travel around South East Asia. I know we'll have many more pictures to show and experiences to share. Hopefully we will be able to update you all along the way. We will be gone for 6 weeks and then we will be going to Beijing to enjoy some time with "Family". We are all finishing up our grades for the semester! After that, we are headed out!! Not much of an exciting blog, but I just wanted to give a little update. :) I love you all, and thanks for reading! Don't forget to think about me in China!

Chinglish at It's Best...

This blog is made especially for Lee, my brother-in-law. When I first got to China, I was amazed with all the horribly spelled words and the way sentences are worded. For the first couple of weeks, I took pictures of them, but after being here for a while, you kinda get used to seeing them and stop taking pictures. Lee told me he wanted to see more of them, so I thought I would devote an entire blog to them. I have started taking pictures again, just because Lee wants to see them! So It's fun to take pictures again of all the Chinglish! There will most likely be more blogs like this in the future. You will have to read some of them carefully...Please Anjoy! ;)

You are allowed to smoke inside, but don't you dare smoke in the snow "field."




Notice the year...




The bottom one is what I want you to see on this next one.

This next picture was taken on January 2, 2010.

Well, I hope you enjoyed those! Thanks for reading! I love you all, and don't forget to think about me in China!

Living with Purpose

I have been thinking, recently about life here in China and how it is so different from life in America. It is quite different for so many reasons...they just do things differently here. It's hard to get used to the way they do things. If you want to do something the most efficient and effective way, don't come here! But, it is the way they are used to doing things and it works for them...I just have to get used to it. And I think I am doing okay with culture shock right now...only adjusting.

The main thing that is different is what we do when all 7 of us who are here are together just hanging out. He is brought up in conversation so easily. And because when we are around our Family, talking to our Father with these same people, that is what makes it so easy. I hope that made sense. Here, we are not so free to talk about things we want to talk about. But I want to talk about those things more now to everyone than I ever did in America. It has made me realize how lucky people are in countries where they can speak freely about such things. I am literally envious of those who can talk to the check-out lady at Wal-Mart, or the bank teller about Good things. This is a reality check to me, because I cannot and want to so badly! I am in this country and can't do what I want to do. But when I was in America, I was more shy about it. Things will be different. My mind set has changed and I am not as shy about such things. I want to continue to have conversations with my close friends and family about our Father and how wonderful he is. In so doing, I will let my light shine to those around me, not just in living by example, but by living with purpose. For those of you back home, I challenge you to take advantage of your freedoms. :) Thanks for reading, I love you all! And don't forget to think about me in China!

Christmas Time!

I have not been blogging in a while because of all the Christmas Festivities! We had some fun at our friend's house, Kyle and Rebecca! Kris, Michael, and Kevin came over and we all had a sleep over. When we woke up the next morning, we all opened our stockings that Santa brought us!! It was so fun!

As you can see in the picture below... Stan and I completed our Christmas decorations in our house. We did this a while back, and I meant to do this blog before Christmas, but ran out of time...so here goes. This picture is simply beautiful, I think! We have seen a couple of fake Christmas Tree's when we go to the store, but we thought it was even more appropriate to MAKE our own fake tree! It was a fun filled night! We began the night with some sandwiches while Stan cut out the tree from green construction paper. I made all the decorations! We watched 3 and a half Christmas movies and it took us around 7 hours to complete it! It didn't even seen that long, cuz it was fun! And it helped us with our Christmas spirit here in China! Here are some more pictures from the memorable night! :)

Thanks for reading! I love you all and don't forget to think about me in China!
P.S. Danny and Layna are leaving today to come see us!!! Yay!

A Trip to Anji

Stan and I were invited to attend a foreign teacher's trip to Anji, a small town in the mountains outside of Hangzhou. Our school was sponsoring the trip and it was an all expense paid trip. We went to the Bamboo Museum. I thought there was a lot of bamboo everywhere in China, but this place had A LOT of bamboo! Everything in the museum was made of bamboo...I'll share a couple of pictures.

Turkey bamboo!

This was a playground made of bamboo. Stan was giving it a try!

And then we got to see some cute Panda's! For some reason the one on the left was touching the other one's head. I found it funny. :)

A bamboo house!!!

Curvy bamboo!! Look on Facebook and you'll see more soon!

Then we got to the hotel and ate dinner. Then we had the rest of the night to do what we wanted to do. The hotel had an activity area on the 2nd floor. Chinese people love Ping Pong and they are awesome at it. Well, we gave it a go. We played with some officials of the school who came with us on the trip. I am sorry I don't have any pictures of them, but we had great fun playing Ping Pong with them! We decided to all play together in a group Ping Pong game where you run around the table and take turns hitting! It was so fun! The next morning, we went skiing. If you would like to call it that. Myself, I do not like to ski. Been there-done that-don't love it. Therefore, I don't do it. Everyone else did though, so I watched their things while they were skiing. I took a couple of pictures of the ski resort. I didn't get any good ones of the slopes, well, because I didn't ski. So if you want to see a video of it, go to Stan's page. It is much different than in America. If you've been skiing, you would know...:)

Here's the lodge. Not very big and you can pick up your gear right inside this room. The section to the left is where you get it.

There were many Chinglish signs I captured on this trip, and those will come in a later post! Looking forward to that one! Thanks for reading and I love you all! Don't forget to think about me in China!

High's and Low's

As you all may or may not know, Danny and Layna are coming here for Christmas! We were supposed to go get them at the airport tomorrow, but there were some complications with their flight and it wasn't looking good that they were going to get to come. So, needless to say we were feeling so many things yesterday when the unknown was lurking above our heads. I was nervous, sad, angry at the weather, overwhelmed and hopeful. All of those things just made my stomach hurt, and I'm sure Danny and Layna were having many of those same feelings. They stayed up all night getting together some things for us in China and then they made it to the airport in time to change their flight to come the 28th. I know they were just exhausted! We were so excited! For a little bit, it looked unlikely they wouldn't get to come and that was a crushing idea. Stan and I were so thoughtful about this and asked for it to be possible for them to come because we knew we needed to see family and we knew they did. We knew it would be good for both of us. I think I have been experiencing a tiny bit of culture shock, because even though China had nothing to do with the flight problems in the USA, I was mad at China. We knew their coming would be so helpful. So we were absolutely delighted and ecstatic when we heard they actually were going to get to come! And because of the flight change, they are going to stay 2 days longer! So, that's good news! Well, that's all...I just needed to regurgitate my feelings about today. Thank you so much for reading, and I love you all! Don't forget to think about me in China!