More Stories for you

Camille and I spent the day over at the Randall's home! We don't teach on Mondays, so beside from our hip hop class that night and lesson planning, we don't have anything to do! This past Monday, we went over to the Randall's for lunch, cotton candy, donuts, and a movie! It was a lot of fun! I really enjoy being with this family!

The girls have a cotton candy machine! I didn't even know these existed! Grace and Mercee making the first one!

Camille's turn!

My turn!

I actually don't like cotton candy, so I gave mine to Ms. Cheri. I just wanted to make one for the fun of it!

Mercee also has a donut machine, that makes tiny donuts. She really enjoys cooking and usually helps her mom make us delicious treats for Ch.u.rch every week.

Preparing the batter for us!

Camille and I helped by putting on the frosting. And yes, she is using chopsticks to dip the donuts! We have discovered many wonderful uses for chopsticks since moving here!

The finished product! YUM!

This past weekend was quite busy for me! On Saturday morning, I met with some of my Grade 2 students to teach them American English phonetic symbols. Normally, the students are in school on Saturday mornings and all day Sunday, but Grade 2 had a huge exam that Thursday and were given the weekend off to rest. The few students I met with were trying to persuade me to go to Ktv with them that afternoon. I had told them maybe, because I wasn't sure if I would have time. Just so you know, maybe is not an option here in China. It is either yes or no, and if you say maybe, everyone assumes that means YES! They cleverly guilt-tripped me by saying they already told all of their classmates about it over QQ (similar to instant messenger and facebook) and the students were so excited! Naturally, I forced Camille to come with me and we spent the afternoon singing Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift songs with my students! Only in China!

On Sunday morning, I very happily took one of my students, Lily, to a Chinese Catholic Ch.u.rch for service. This was her first time to go to ch.u.rch and my first time at a Chinese one! I don't want to write too much about this, but just wanted to share with y'all how much Father is working here! Please continue to pry for His work here and to pry for Lily! She has so many questions for me about my faith and Father! Please pry that she continues to ask questions and seeks Him out! She is such a blessing and I am so grateful to be a part of all that He is doing here!

Ok, one more random story for you....since it has been gloomy here in Huangshi for the past couple of weeks, Camille and I have basically become hermits held up in our rooms, because it is the only warm place for us to stay! We have spent a lot of free time watching TV. Camille's student was trying to convince her to watch a Korean TV show, City Hunter, for days. Cam finally gave in and to please her student, decided to watch one episode to be able to tell her student that she watched it! Well, one episode was all it took and Camille was hooked! The next day, she was going on and on about this show and how interesting it was and that I should watch it. I was busy trying to plan my lessons, so I was just politely nodding and smiling, thinking to myself "I really don't care about this show, I'm just trying to finish working!" Well, Cam started watching the show while I was sitting next to her working, and somehow I became so intrigued that I eventually gave up on my lesson and joined her. Keep in mind, that the show is in Korean with English subtitles, so I became intrigued just by hearing the music and way they were talking! We are full fledged addicts now! There are 20 episodes and we only have one more to watch! We just started watching it 10 days ago! We are really hoping we have time today to finish watching! Anyway, I highly recommend the show to everyone, it is so good! You can even watch in on Hulu but sometimes their English subtitles weren't as good as other websites we've watched it on...they don't always make sense! 

We are leaving in just a few hours to go to Beijing to meet my mom and Mr. Bud, who are on their way right now to visit us! Camille and I are so excited to see some familiar faces from back home! We are all spending a few days in Beijing to do the touristy thing and then we are taking my mom and Bud back to Huangshi for the week! I am excited for them to see where I live and how I live now in China! I won't be able to post for the next couple of weeks, but I'll be sure to update you about their trip to China!

Happenings of the past month....

I just wanted to share a few random stories about whats been going on the past month here in Huangshi! First, I taught my students about Valentine's Day. They celebrate V-day here in China, but people are not very open about talking about love and relationships, so it was a lot of fun for me to get my students talking on this topic. I had them interview each other on love and marriage....questions like "what would their ideal partner be like?" and "how old they want to be when they get married?" I tried to explain that Valentine's Day is a day for love and to celebrate all of your relationships, not just for boyfriends and girlfriends. It was very funny, because all of my students get so embarrassed when I try to talk to them about dating and love! They are much more shy about this topic than most American students!

Valentine's Day is also Camille's birthday! She turned the big 24! We celebrated by going to a Korean BBQ restaurant with our fellow Zhong teachers and the Randalls. 

Paul, Erin, Hope, and Aaron at the bday dinner.

Mercee and Grace. They brought us all Valentine cards!

Kevin and Chelsie!

Camille and I.

I was very proud of myself for this...I made Cam a two-layer chocolate cake from scratch in our toaster oven! And it was pretty darn good too! I wish I could take credit for the icing, but that was generously mailed to us by Cam's mom!

Aaron made these elephant cookies for Cam since her favorite animal is an elephant. We were all quite impressed by his skills in the kitchen!

About to sing Happy Birthday...

Making her wish...

I actually had to cut the cake with a chopstick since we didn't have any knives! But, hey, whatever works!

Camille and I decided to get our nails done again, only this time we wanted to try something a little more "Chinese" if you will! Many Chinese women like to get extra things on their nails like glitter or 3D objects like jewels and rhinestones. They really don't like to get just a plain color. 

These are Camille's bejeweled fingers. She just had one gold diamond.

This is my hand and yep, that is a rhinestone bow! Oh yeah! It was fun to try this but I'm thinking this was probably a one time experience. It was quite annoying and would catch on a lot things like my clothes. It only lasted a few days because we kept picking at them!

MARDI GRAS!

Being from Louisiana, Camille and I thought it would be fun to teach our students all about Mardi Gras. We wanted to share a little bit of our culture with them. We used a projector to show them pictures and videos of parades, Mardi Gras balls, and king cake. We brought in Mardi Gras beads as prizes for the games we played. We could only get one projector from our school, which wasn't a problem most of the time, because our class schedules are different. However, we both teach a Grade 2 class at the same time on Wednesdays. We decided that the best solution would be to shove all of our students into one room and teach the lesson together! Sounds like fun, right? 

Well heres what it looks like to have over 100 Chinese students in one classroom! Poor kids, they were packed in there so tight! But, they fit! Side one of the classroom....

Side two of the classroom....I'm pretty sure we were breaking some kind of fire code violation...if they even have that in China!

Every Thursday, Camille, Chelsie, Erin and I get together for a girls' b.ible study and to catch up! Since it was Mardi Gras, Camille made a king cake from scratch! It was delicious!

This might be the only time we ever make a king cake....we had no idea it was such a long process!

Almost done....

I really wasn't that much help...all I did was make the icing! Interestingly, I never knew that you put lemon juice into king cake icing! Learned something new about Louisiana in China!

We didn't have purple sprinkles, but if you squint your eyes enough the red and blue sprinkles blend together enough that it kind of looks purple! Almost! Are you squinting right now?!?! haha

Chelsie enjoying her king cake!

Erin eating her very first piece of king cake...EVER! Shes from the North! We sent the piece with the baby inside for Erin to bring home to her husband Paul. They actually followed tradition and made another king cake for us that weekend! Only Erin would do that!

Mmmm, so happy!

The next day, we celebrated Ms. Cheri Randall's birthday by all going out for pizza together. This new place called New York Pizza opened up just across the street from our apartment and it is pretty legit! They always give you a fork and knife to eat pizza with instead of your hands. Or if you're really lucky, they bring out gloves for you to wear so you're hands don't get dirty! Grace and Mercee were sporting the gloved look!

Camille made so much dough that we were able to make another king cake! Yummy!

Kevin's first time! I'm not sure, but I think they enjoyed it! :)

These are the workers at New York Pizza. He thought the cake was so beautiful, he asked to take a picture of it! We offered them some and they really liked it! Its unusual because most Chinese people don't like desserts that are really sweet the way we do in America.

Our Huangshi family!

Ms. Cheri was kind enough to put in an order for us on taobao, basically a Chinese ebay! We were so excited to get some Western food like salt and vinegar chips and cream cheese! We don't have this kind of stuff in Huangshi.

Another post coming really soon! Thanks for reading and pr@ying for all that the Good Lrd is doing here!

Spring Festival Travels Part 5: Shenzhen

Well the last stop of our journey was Shenzhen, China. We came to this city in southern China just to visit our great friend, Dawn. Dawn moved to Shenzhen from Huangshi over a month ago for work and to visit her sister and we missed her too much! The three of us got to go and spend a few days with her. Basically every single day we were there we went to Dawn's place of work, Illy Coffee, to hang out, grab a cup of joe, talk to Dawn, and getting some good reading time in! We were so exhausted by this point from all of the traveling that we weren't really motivated to be tourists around this city. Not to mention we came from 90 degree weather in Thailand jumping straight into 30 degree weather in Shenzhen. It was a rough transition for us and left us wanting to stay warm and cozy inside her coffee shop. 

One day, however, we were tourists and went to the Window of the World. It is a huge park filled with miniatures and models of all of the world's most famous sights. Here are Camille and Aaron just before going inside the park.

We got to see the miniatures of the famous sites in Bangkok, Thailand that we had just seen days before!

Aaron finally got to see the Grand Palace...the small version anyway! (I told you in the Bangkok post that Aaron couldn't go in because he was wearing shorts and there was a dress code)

Look! I'm in Japan now!

Its Camille! She looks so tiny in Asia!

We are in Asia! It looks pretty!

Camille is at the Taj Mahal!

It was my first trip to Australia :)

Camille's first trip to Italy!

Its the leaning tower of Pisa! With the Eiffel Tower in the background! Typical...Camille is destroying everything and I am the one trying to save it! Ha just kidding, I only said that because I know Camille will read this! You're welcome Cam! By the way...I'm writing this while sitting right next to her!

Stonehenge.

Eiffel Tower picture. We are such typical tourists.

Camille enjoying Paris!

They also had an indoor ski ramp and snow area, but we only went to look at it and take a picture, we didn't actually ski.

Tiny Colosseum. I guess I should have put a disclaimer that pretty much all of my pictures are of Camille! Its just how it worked out from the trip... I take a picture with my camera so I make Cam stand by whatever I'm taking a picture of and then she does the same to me. So in the end I have a ton of pictures of her and she has a ton of pictures of me...whoops! Guess Cam is the lucky one? Just kidding...again I know Cam will read this!

I got to see the Pyramids of Egypt...one of my goals in life!

Unfortunately, once it got dark we couldn't really see anything and none of the pictures came out. Foolishly we started out in Asia, the place we currently live and see all the time and didn't get to see Africa or the Americas. They also had rides and events you could partake in, but since it was cold and dark we didn't get to do any of it! Since I am a cheesy tourist, I still enjoyed the visit!

Remember how I told you I can double dog dare Camille to do lots of fun things?!?! Well this was one of those times. Camille was complaining that she was tired so I dared her to sit on the floor of the subway. No one in China ever does this because usually the ground is dirty, but this one looked pretty clean, so we figured it was ok. She got some pretty interesting stares from fellow passengers. To make it more fun for the foreigners and Dawn, I dared to her to welcome all of the people who came on the train in Chinese and say goodbye to all of the people leaving the train. Theres a good chance I am the only person who found this highly amusing, maybe Dawn did too, but thats probably it. Something to know is that the later at night it gets, the more delirious and tired I get it, so the more I find Camille funny. Seriously, she can say and do just about anything and I will laugh. This stunt brought on fits of laughter and as I recall, a few tears of joy! Ms. Teri, aren't you so proud of your daughter right now?

These faces pretty much sum up what they thought about Cam sitting on the ground! This was our last night in Shenzhen with Dawn! I miss her already! 

We had to end the trip early because we found out from our boss that we had to start school a week earlier than we thought! I'd just like to point out that Camille and I were the ONLY ones on our team that had to start! It was ok though, because we were tired and freezing. We were staying with Dawn's kind friend who didn't mind having three foreigners camp out at her apartment for a few days. But, Chinese people don't use heaters during the winter, they just stay constantly bundled up, take hot showers, and drink hot water. We are not used to living like this at all, and as I mentioned earlier it was in the 30s and 40s while we were there. Rough! Dawn was so funny though. She was worried Camille and I were too cold and would use the blow dryer to warm up the bed for us! HA it actually worked quite well! Thanks Dawn! We were sad to say goodbye to Dawn, but were looking forward to being back home in a warm bed and catching up on some much needed sleep.

THE END OF SPRING FESTIVAL TRAVELS.