Christmas in America!

My family and a few friends walked around the hospital singing carols on Christmas Eve. My mind drifted off to the last time I went caroling... In the back of a little truck in small town China singing in English to Chinese people who had no idea what we were singing and most likely did not even celebrate Christmas. ;) It was a good memory.

The best gift this year was hearing from a Chinese friend I made in Hong Kong on New Years Eve. An American Friend and I talked together and were able to share with her. We exchanged e-mails. I only talked to her a few times since then, I have been thinking of her and helping her learn more as much as I can in simple english. I was so blessed to hear from her this Christmas that she is now a sister! PTL! Even though we are no longer there, things are still happening. :)

I was really excited all the way back in the beginning of December about spending Christmas with my family this year. Right after Thanksgiving, we took our snowmobiles up into the snow to search for the non-existent "perfect tree" and after much deliberation we cut one and secured it to the sleds. At the top of this mountian I paused a moment to look in wonder at the awesome beauty of God's creation.

For Christmas, my entire family came together at my house, all 20 of us. :) On Christmas Eve, we all had mom's special "sleeping potion" made from the secret recipe (passed down from her dad). It is a tradition that everyone gives everyone a little gift, nothing expensive but we all enjoy finding something special for each person. The next morning we opened presents until we could no longer see the small children under the paper. ;)

In our family there is usually some sort of shooting involved at most holidays, this year we played Cival War style Paintball. :)

We all sat down together to eat cioppino (made mostly from our last catch of ocean fish).

The night ended late in it's usual fashion, a long game of Risk, each trying their hand at "taking over the world."

A special tradition, Daddy/Papa reads the Christmas story from the Bible by flashlight as the manger scene is put out. :) Then we all sang Silent Night and everyone goes to bed thinking about the meaning of Christmas; our savior Jesus coming to our earth to save the world from sin.

I hope you Christmas was wonderful! Happy New Year!

I'm Back!

I am back in the USA! After being home for a little over a month, I feel I can look back and recognize the reverse culture shock that I have experienced after returning from China.
Because I was trying so hard to learn Chinese, understand, and hear it, I was constantly trying to understand just little things the Chinese people all around me were saying. Back in America, I had no trouble understanding what people are saying in English. It was a little overwhelming at first to be able to hear and understand everything people were saying because I had trained myself to listen so much while in China. Seeing so many white, none Asian people all over, took just a little getting used to. The stores having so many choices for each product and the prices being so high are crazy! Although I had a full schedule nearly everyday while in China, it was a walk in the park in comparison to my everyday life at home. I hit the ground running. I am starting into college full time, continuing with 4-H, teaching afterschool clubs, etc. I have had a couple opportunity's to speak about what my time in China was like, how the agriculture is different, about what an amazing opportunity it was. I miss China alot; Speaking Chinese, friends, the people...
I hope to go back sometime.

Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

We took a retreat to Lijiang this past weekend. We stayed in a really nice five room villa. We visited old town Lijiang, with its pretty little Chinese lanterns, smooth traffic worn streets, and quaint little shops. We enjoyed the western food available, because we can't get it in our town. We also enjoyed the humorous signs that had poorly translated into very silly sayings. Imagine putting signs that said this up in America... :) This Ice cream has a very interesting name that I will not comment on... just read it.

I found a very interesting hat that made me look like Raggedy Ann. (left it for someone else to buy) Some of our friend road little ponies around the town.

We also took a bus ride to Tiger Leaping Gorge. If you look carefully in the picture of the river you can see a tiger on the side of the gorge. The legend says that a mighty tiger jumped across this gorge only touching the tip of the cube shaped rock in the middle of the river. One sign proudly boasted that this is MUCH bigger then the USA's Grand Canyon. ;) Many signs warned that rocks often fall, people die every year hiking it. It was pretty cool. We flew home. Now we are looking forward to a week filled with parties, up until we leave. I don't think I will have time to post again, Merry Christmas!!!!! I look forward to seeing you soon.

Mount Suribachi???

I recently received an email about why women live longer then men. It involves many pictures of guys trying to do normal everyday tasks, only using extremely dangerous and hazardous methods. I have to say, it really reminded me of many sights I have seen while in China... ;) Like the time I saw these guys sledgehammering all the walls out from under them on the forth story of this building. And obviously there is no OSHA here, this guy is working without any safety protection at all... Or the time I saw two guys carrying a bunch of twenty foot long re-bar on their motorcycle. Or a huge concrete culvert propped in the back of a truck by only a few bricks. Or like the time I climbed on an unstable roof to get a Frisbee and... :P
In fact the other day....

Right here on the farm, they are installing a new basketball court. Who needs ropes or cranes or any of that? If you have enough hands... right? Apparently not. As we watched in dismay from the side-line, moving away small children, you can only guess what happened... As the raised the hoop with no one to stop it on the other side, of course it fell and badly bent the hoop.
Always do it right the first time! :)

Zoooie!

Last week was Manon's Birthday. We went to the local park and then to the zoo. For such a small rural city, we were surprised at how exotic some of the animals were. It only cost us 1 yuen each! (about a 7th of a dollar) One thing was for sure we didn't have to worry about the animals hiding in their "Habitat" all were in small pens within easy view. Close enough that you could easily feed the animals, some of the kids almost lost a finger... First we saw a little monkey showing off by doing flips in his 1x2 ft. cage. ( I think I would be flipping out as well) Then we saw three black Moon Bears... pretty boring. We saw some more monkeys.The snakes were in a cage we decided was not really secure (just thin screen between us and them) In another cage there were about twenty snakes all together...in a big slithery lump. We saw a big camel (similar to the one I sat on at the bazaar) which this particular type is on the endangered spicies list. If we had wanted to, we could have touched it. It looked mad, we were not planning on a camel spit shower that day...
We saw a big tiger next. It didn't like the cage eather, it paced the whole time. Next to it was a lion AND a genuine Germaine Shepherd! Yes , these to guys were in the same pen. We weren't able to tell if the lions food had gotten a little big or if they were play mates...
















The lion sat glaring at us with its yellow eyes. Then sweet little three year olds Judah walked over. It looked as if he was prepareing to pounce on his prey. Then as we were commenting, Manon (6) walks over AND ! !!!!!!!
Commercial break* just kidding.
As quick as a flash, the lion jumped against the cage and reached his sharp claws through the bars! Manon screamed! ...I hope that is the closest she ever gets to being eaten by a tiger.
Chelsea was actually video typing, it looks pretty scary.
There were wolves, beavers, an arctic fox, exotic birds, and... turkeys! Imagine seeing turkeys in a Zoo...wow.
We saw a cool little red panda, who seemed to really like us. The little girls kept saying, " this is the saddest animal in the whole zoo!" I think all those animals were pretty "sad" but we did enjoy looking at them.

Awesome pot head!

Just a little video I forgot about.
I think this guys spent to much time working at the happy frog nursury.... ;)

Cutting our prickly Christmas tree!

Thanksgiving has passed and there are less then 30 days till Christmas. That means its time for Christmas trees! Yesterday morning at the crack of dawn (well a little later, but that was the plan), all clad in boots and Santa hats, Chelsea, Amanda, Spencer, Hope, and I began our treck up the mountian. (or large hill behind our house)When finally at the top, looking below we saw an ocean of fog, except for the light touching the very tops of all the nearby hills. It was lovely! After several trips around the forest of some sort of spruce, we decided on a tree. Everyone got a chance to saw on it a little, until

we decided to karate-kick it down. Everyone got a kick.

Then when I finally cut a little more, it could actually be kicked down. ;)



Today I am making ornaments so we can make it pretty tonight. We don't have any lights though.

The kids here just got two Golden Retriever Pups. They are really sweet.
The farm also just got their two new cows. This one's name is "Lottie Moo" ;)