33 weeks

Wow...my belly has really popped out in the past few weeks. It's so fun looking back over the past months and see how my belly has grown. At each stage I feel like my belly is big...but then I look back and laugh at how small it seems. I feel pretty big now, but I still have 6-7 weeks left.
We are going to Beijing next week for a school conference. I go to the doctor tomorrow to get a doctor's note saying it's ok to fly. I'm hoping the airport doesn't give me problems. I'll just wear a baggy shirt and carry a large purse, so hopefully they won't even bother to ask.
I'm watching Emperor's New Groove in Chinese right now. They did a great job dubbing over in Chinese...the voices sound the same, just in Chinese. :)

Staff Retreat at Green Moon Lake

piggy moon cakes and more

These first few pictures are from Spirit Week this week. Today was Pirate vs. Gangsta. Nate was a pirate and I was a gangsta...ha ha

so much happening...so little time

Wow..have we done a ton the last few weeks...i don't even know where to start.

First of all...we attended a FIFA Women's World Cup Soccer game last week. So much fun!!! We saw two games: America vs. Sweden and North Korea vs. Nigeria. America won in their game against Sweden. It was so fun cheering on our American team. For the second game, the whole stadium was cheering for North Korea- both N. Koreans and Chinese. We were sitting right behind a HUGE cheering North Korean fan club. They were all dressed the same, carrying huge N. Korean flags, banging on drums, etc. It was crazy. In fact, the security was worried for our safety as Americans. ha ha...they asked us to move, but we told them that we felt like we would be okay, and wouldn't antagonize them. I posted a bunch of pictures on my facebook. here is the link http://cedarville.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032311&l=17398&id=141303528

This week is Spirit Week at school. We've had fun dressing up each day. I'll post pictures in a moment of today's fun.

We are heading out of town tomorrow for a staff retreat. Praying that the weather stays sunny and not rainy. :) I just finished making apple muffins to supplement the Chinese breakfast that will be served each day. Chinese breakfasts tend to be a little bland.

Last weekend's trip to the mountains

A great camping trip.

I got back today from camping in the mountains with the middle schoolers. We had a great time. Being that we were in the mountains, the weather was much cooler than Chengdu's.
We left Friday morning from school in three different buses. The drive up was beautiful. When we got into the mountains, we were along a river the whole way up. I really enjoyed driving through all the tiny little villages along the way. It seemed that growing corn for feed was how most of the people up there made their living. There were little patches of corn stalks growing anywhere they could manage to grow the corn. It was amazing seeing the corn growing up along the side of the mountain, with the villagers walking up and down the mountain with these big baskets on their backs tending the corn. They would hang the corn cobs all along the rafters and roof of their houses to dry. After the corn had dried, they would shuck the corn and leave the kernels scattered on the ground to continue drying. It was really amazing seeing tiny little village after another making it's living off of the corn. No factories, tractors or machines- everything done totally by hand.

As we got higher into the mountains, the road got very narrow- just wide enough for one vehicle at a time. On one side of the road was the rocky mountain side, and the other side was a cliff overlooking the river. There was rock slide residue everywhere. Often there was barely enough room for our bus to squeeze past the boulders and rocks that had slid into the middle of the road. I was a little nervous of having a boulder come through my window.

The camping place we were staying at was part of a hotel. We unloaded our gear and took a little train farther back into the valley where the cabins were at. It was a beautiful valley with a river running right past our cabins. There were cows and chickens roaming freely. Also there were goats right in the middle of the site, but they were tied up. Each night, a huge bonfire was built inside of a circus-looking tent where they roasted a whole goat, chickens, and rabbits. I will try to get a picture of the goat being roasted from a friend and post it later.

We were there from Friday to Monday. Friday was drizzly, but cleared up in the evening. Saturday was beautiful- I even got a little sun burnt. Sunday it rained the whole day, but the kids did great and still had lots of fun. Monday was clear, but we left at 11 to head back to school.

China is a beautiful country. I wish I could have stopped at each little village to take pictures of the people and their way of living. The old men out in the country still wear the dark blue coats and the dark blue hats. (This is how all men dressed during the cultural revolution in the 1960s). The old women were all wearing a turban like hat, although I'm not sure why they wear these hats. It's like going back in history driving through the countrysides of China. America really has nothing in comparison.

Trip to SanJiang

I wish there was an easy way to caption each picture on blogspot. If there is, I haven't figured it out yet.
I got back today from a great trip to SanJiang with the middle school kids from our school. The place we went to was about 2.5 hours away in the mountains. It was a beautiful place, even though it was a bit rainy. I tried to get some good pictures so you could experience a little bit of China.
I will do the best I can to caption each picture











Public toilets at the camping spot we were at. Notice the open stalls. Quite common in China.



Some of the kids playing in the river.















A Tibetan horn















A rest stop...quite different from rest stops in America. You can pay to have your vehicle washed at the rest stop, which is nice. People generally keep their cars very clean in China.















The toilets at the rest stop- no kidding. Toilet paper is not provided at public toilets, so everyone carries tissue packets with them to use when they go to the toilet.














The bathroom in our cabin at the campsite. This is a very normal Chinese bathroom. A squatty potty, shower hose, and sink. When you shower, the water just runs into the squatty. Easy to keep the bathroom clean...you just spray everything down with the hose. Our bathrooms in our house looked like this when we moved in, but we had them remodeled with Western toilets and showers.
























A worker carrying a basket full of stuff on his back.






















Our campsite facility. Notice the tall pole in the middle. This is a Tibetan prayer pole. The flags have prayers written on them and are left flapping in the wind until the threads unravel and carry the messages written up to heaven. You can also see white scarfs on the stone structure underneath the pole. These scarfs are like a blessing and prayer, and people leave them on the stones or hanging in different places as a prayer.

















Katie and I.
















Some goats hanging out waiting to be dinner.
















Our logcabin campfire.
















The dining room we had breakfast and dinner in.

























Some sites from the trip.


















The little trains that took us back to the camping spot.