fun times

Some of my band students enjoying an icecream party.
















We had a staff banquet Monday night. You can see Nate in the background.



















My growing belly. :)


One of the families in the community is moving, so they gave us this wardrobe. Someone else had given us a bunch of baby boy clothes, so I put those all in the wardrobe. If we have a boy, then we have a good start. :)



















This is a picture of us leading music at our fellowship. We had the little kids come up and help lead a few songs.


















Nate all dressed up in his "I want to be at the beach" superhero costume.

it's peach season

Peach season is here. There are fresh peaches everywhere. You can only buy certain fruits during certain times of the year here. One of these seasonal fruits is peaches. Right now the fruit markets have baskets and baskets of peaches for sale, but in a few months, there won't be any peaches and some other fruit will be in season. We are at the end of strawberry season (so sad), so we won't see strawberries again until next winter. We can buy apples and oranges year round, although there is definitely an orange season when there are oranges everywhere.
Last night I made freshly squeezed lemonade with a couple frozen strawberries mixed in. It was a nice refreshing drink for the end of a busy hot day.

Our visit with Eric, the Starbucks guy, went great. He seems really nice. He is 32 and has done a lot of travelling in and out of China. He had some fun stories to tell. His parents are originally from Hong Kong, but it sounded like Eric was raised in America. Nate took him to the dog market after lunch to look at dogs. Jenny and I went shopping. :)

Yesterday morning, we left really early for fellowship so that we could attend one of our student's baptism. He got baptized in his apartment complex's swimming pool. It was a nice, small ceremony. After that, Jenny and I went to breakfast and then to fellowship. Nate had a meeting so he couldn't go to the baptism or breakfast. After fellowship, we attended a graduation party for one of our seniors.

Nate leaves for Beijing on June 6 for master's classes. He will be gone the whole month. :( I think Jenny has to go back to America for a family emergency, so I will be all by myself for about 3 weeks. At least my Chinese tutor will be housesitting out in my neighborhood, so I can spend time with her. I will have three dogs also, we are dogsitting for a friend over the summer, so I'm sure I'll stay busy with all those dogs running about. Our poor Bennett dog still has skin problems. Some days his skin is more irritated than other days. It's been worse recently. We don't know what causes it, so we don't know how to treat it.

it's the weekend

Only one more week of teaching. Mon.-Wed. are finals, Thursday is field day, and Friday is just clean out lockers, etc. day.
Last night we had the High school Awards Ceremony. This was our first year doing it at the school instead of going to a restaurant. We served the students and parents dinner outside on the commons, but the flies were horrible, so I don't know how much everyone enjoyed their dinner. After dinner, everyone retired to the auditorium where the awards were presented. Nate and Jenny had thought up a super-hero award with a description that matched each student's personality. They also put together a slide show with the student's head photo shopped onto their "superhero". It was really funny. For instance, one kid was "Spiderman", so there was a picture of his head on Spiderman's body. The kids loved it.
Another award that was recognized was the National Merit Scholarship program. Out of our thirty-some student high school, we had THREE students who were named National Merit Semifinalist. Here is a description of the National Merit Scholarship Program........

The National Merit Scholarship Program benefits students scoring extremely well on the PSAT taken during the junior year of high school.
The first step of the program is based entirely on PSAT scores - juniors with the highest PSAT scores (ranked by state) are named National Merit Semifinalists. A national total of 16,000 Semifinalists are chosen in this way, although the state-by-state rankings means that there are state PSAT cutoffs but no definitive national cutoff.
The next step of the National Merit Scholarship Program is to name about 15,0000 National Merit Finalists. While this phase of the process involves school records, SAT scores, and an application, most Semifinalists are also named Finalists. Exceptions are those with weak grades, poor records, or other issues.
National Merit Scholars (who receive aid and awards) are picked from the pool of National Merit Finalists.

We really do have an incredible student body. Most of them are extremely smart and work really hard. It's so interesting to have such a small student body with so many brilliant minds. Most of us teachers feel quite dumb in comparison to some of our students.

We are getting ready to go into town to meet up with one of Nate's new friends. A few weeks ago, Nate was at Starbucks and met the Starbucks' Distract Manager. He had just moved here from Boston. Nate has met up with him a few times for lunch in the past weeks. Today, we are meeting him at Pizza Hut. (quick note: Pizza Hut in China is a very nice, sit-down restaurant :).

Okay, I am starving, so I am going to go eat some breakfast.

I really didn't mean for this to be the first picture...sorry if you hate spiders. This little critter was in our school auditorium. Pretty gross huh!!!

















This is the band that I have been teaching. Aren't they cute. We had a performance on Tuesday. They did a great job.


















I had another ultrasound on Tuesday. Everything looks great. It was so neat being able to see our little baby. He/she was moving all around. We could see the baby's face, hands and fingers so clearly. It was amazing. These pictures are blurry and not very detailed, but during the ultrasound, the picture was so clear. The bottom pictures are pictures of the prenatal part of the hospital. This hospital is pretty old. I am going there for my prenatal care because there is an excellent doctor there who speaks English very well. I will go to a different hospital in town for my delivery.

I don't feel like my life is that interesting, so that would be why I don't blog more regularly. :) My baby shower was a lot of fun last week. I almost have enough money to buy a crib from IKEA. There is a matching changing table/drawers that we also want to get.

My maternity clothes arrived that I had ordered (thanks "Grandma" Leman for sending them). It is nice to have comfy clothes to wear now. I can still fit into almost everything I own, just sometimes it is uncomfortable, so I'm glad for my "stretchy" clothes now.

We are now in our hot season. It has been in the high 90s for the past week, with high humidity. Pretty much too hot to do anything out side. We love our first floor apartment because it stays much cooler in the summer. When I go to my friends' homes who live on a higher floor, I am always surprised how hot their houses are.

I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. Maybe I'll get another ultrasound. We would really appreciate your pr*yers as we decide where to have this baby. We really want to have the baby here in Chengdu, and are getting support from many people to do it here. But, there are also people in the community encouraging us to go to Beijing or Thailand. We really don't want to travel around the time of the delivery. So far, we have felt a real peace about delivering here, but we just want to be sure that we are making the right decision; so your pr*yers would be appreciated.

headaches...arghh

So, my current pregnancy complaint would be putting up with constant headaches. I hope this phase passes soon. On top of pregnancy headaches, we are in the season in Chengdu where the farmers burn their fields, so there is a very thick smoke/haze in the air. If you think L.A or New York are polluted, you haven't seen anything. The air is so bad here during this season, that you can actually see the smoke and haze in rooms inside. Chengdu's air is bad all the time, but this is the worst season. The humidity normally hovers around 90%, so all the dirt and dust just hangs in the air.

Tomorrow I begin my second trimester, and Saturday is our 4 year anniversary. Jenny is throwing me a baby shower on Saturday. It feels a little early to have a baby shower, but it is so that all of my friends who are moving this summer can attend. That is the sad thing about living in a community like this, people are always coming and going. Off the top of my head, I can think of 6 different families who are moving back to the states, and another 2 or 3 families who will be gone on furlough for either 6 months to a year. Over the course of this past school year, there were probably at least 15-20 students who moved away. That is a huge percentage considering our student body is only about 150 people.

So, my dogs really enjoy getting into the laundry. They love dirty towels and washcloths, and sock and underwear. Such silly dogs. Here is a picture of Bennett walking around the house with my drawers hanging out of his mouth. :)

The other picture is me at 12 1/2 weeks. I know that I don't really have that much of a belly yet, but I'm just having so much fun taking pictures of my growing stomach. :)

pregnancy and stuff

My little niece Emma is such a cutie. She could be a magazine baby. :)

We had a wonderful week off from work. Almost the whole week was sunny and in the high 80s and 90s. The sun shown on our patio from 11-1pm every day, so we made the point to sit out and sun bathe during those hours. :)

Friday night we stayed at the Kempinski Hotel. One of our students' parents gave us a night away in the hotel. It was wonderful and so relaxing. The hotel had a great pool area and a delicious buffet breakfast. We had a suite room with all the perks. What a great way to end the week.

We rode our scooters into town yesterday. It was very hot and sunny. My arms and shoulders were quite red last night, but had turned a nice brown by this morning. :)

My tummy is starting to pooch a little. Friday marks the first day of my second trimester. I can't believe 3 months have already gone by. The time is flying. I had a great first trimester. I didn't throw up once, and only felt nauseous every once in a while. I figured out pretty early on, that if I snacked all day and ate potato chips when I felt sick, that I could curb any morning sickness pretty quick. For a few weeks, I was tired and sick in the evenings. I probably felt the worse from about 5pm -bed. The hardest part was fearing a miscarriage again. Every ache and pain would cause me to worry. It has just been in the past few weeks that I have been able to relax a little and not worry as much. So far, I love being pregnant. I have 6 different pregnancy books that I read all the time, and have weekly e-mail updates sent to me the follow the progress of my growing baby. I read this week that my baby is about the size of a lime, so we are calling it "lime" right now. We were joking about naming our kids Lime Leman and Lemon Leman. Ha ha..just kidding.

yeah for Chinese holidays

first...two funny pictures. This one of Jenny and Sophie reminds me of the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This picture will be one that I use someday to embarrass my teenager.
We have this week off from school. YEAH!!! So thankful for holidays. The sun has been out and the temperature has been in the 80s. We have been sitting on our porch everyday from 11am-1pm (that is when the sun shines on our porch :) We have grilled out the past few nights. We don't have lighter fluid or good charcoal, so it makes grilling quite the challenge. The first night it took us about 2 hours to get the coals hot enough. Last night went a little quicker with just an hour. We bought bai jiu, a cheap, nasty Chinese liquor to use as lighter fluid. :)

yeah for gap.com

So, I had fun ordering some maternity clothes yesterday. China hasn't really figured out that you can be pregnant and still cute. :) Pretty much the only maternity clothes you can find here are corderoy overalls and mumus. Nate's parents are coming to visit in June, so they will bring these clothes with them when they come. Hopefully, I will be able to get some more maternity clothes made once I have some patterns to show them. Here are some pictures of a few things I found on the "sale rack".

an interesting day

We had an interesting time trying to get to fellowship yesterday. We live way on the north west side of town and our fellowship is on the South side of town. On the map we live out where the arrow is pointing toward "Qingcheng Mountain". Fellowship is down south past the Provincial Museum. Normally, we ride our scooters to fellowship, which takes about 50 minutes. Nate's scooter has been broken, so we took a taxi to fellowship yesterday, or at least we tried.

We live outside of Chengdu city proper, so the taxi's are different out where we live, and they don't know there way around Chengdu very well. So, we got in a Xipu taxi (Xipu is where we live) and had the driver take us to Metro, a large store that the Xipu taxi drivers know how to get to, where we would then switch over to a Chengdu taxi which would take us the rest of the way. The metre was at 27 RMB when we got to Metro, but all we had was 100 RMB bill. Unfortunately, the taxi driver didn't have enough change for our Y100. She got out of the taxi and was asking people on the street if anyone had change for Y100. She even stopped another taxi and asked that driver. But no one had any change. So I told the lady to drive us to McDonalds which was down the road a bit where we would buy something with our Y100 and then be able to pay her. So we get to the McDonalds, and guess what....it was closed. She finally found a taxi driver who would break her Y100, so we finally worked it all out. So now we are standing at the closed McDonalds trying to get another taxi to take us the rest of the way to fellowship. We waited and waited and waited. Normally you can get a taxi within a few minutes, but we waited about 15-20 minutes, and not one empty taxi had come by. We were standing pretty near a bus stop, so we finally decided to take a bus the rest of the way...We had to run to catch the bus though by the time we made the decision. So we got on the bus, and I realized that I didn't have two Y1. I only had a Y10, so I asked the bus driver if he had change, but he didn't so I went around the bus asking if any one could break my Y10. One lady gave me two Y5, but I still didn't have two Y1. Finally a really nice guy just gave us Y1 so we could pay for the bus ride. ha ha. The bus ride took about 20 minutes. It took us over 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to fellowship, a trip that should have taken at the most 30 min. Fortunately, we had left really early because we were trying to get to fellowship early because we were teaching Sunday School, so we were only 15 min. late. Oh..the excitement of living in a different country.

The ride home wasn't quite as eventful, but still interesting. Once we hailed a taxi, I had to sit for about 5 minutes and convince the driver to take us all the way back to Xipu. When you tell a taxi driver that you want to go to Xipu there response is "Xipu!!!!" "Xipu?" Xipu?!!!" And then they normally say they won't take you, so then we beg. :) This driver was fairly new and hadn't been that far out before, so once I had convinced him to at least take us most of the way, he got on his cell and started calling all his friends trying to figure out how far out this place was. I finally convinced him to take us just to our school, which is a little closer to in-town Chengdu. By the time we got to school, I asked really nicely if he would take us the rest of the way to our house. I told him that we lived very close to the school. He laughed and said yes and then told me that my Chinese was very good. ha ha.

We would buy a car if we had the money...we are thinking of saving up and trying to buy one, especially since once we have the baby, we won't be riding our scooters all over town. We will probably have to save for a long, long time though. Until then, we just keep up the adventure. :)

first baby pictures

The baby is right in the middle of the ultrasound in a black bubble. The head is on the right.

Nate took this picture of my growing belly on Sunday. :)

I went in for my first appointment/ultrasound yesterday. I am seeing this English speaking Chinese doctor. He is very nice and his English is excellent. Prenatal care in China is so different than in America. This was my first appointment, and the only thing he did was an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy. No blood tests, no urine tests, didn't weigh me, etc. etc. He said everything looked good though. I am about 10 weeks pregnant, and the baby is 3 cm. long. I have a Canadian friend here who is a registered nurse and will be helping me throughout the whole pregnancy and delivery. I am so thankful for her. She was pleased with this doctor. Nate wasn't able to come in with me for the ultrasound, because there were other ladies in the same room getting exams and they weren't completely decent. :) The doctor walked me into the ultrasound room, and I waited for the lady in front of me to finish. As soon as she was done and stood up, I laid right down on the table and the technician started my ultrasound, which lasted only about 3 min. As soon as I stood up, the next person was there ready to have hers. There are so many people in China, that everything is done one person right after the other. Most ladies at the hospital wanting to see the doctor, get a number when they get to the hospital, and just have to wait in line until their number is called (think of a deli sandwich line in America). The hospital reminded me of an old school. The rooms were just cement blocks with curtains hanging on the windows, and dividers between rooms. I will try to remember to get a picture next time I go. I am looking into going to a private hospital, I just don't have any information about that yet. There are three public women and children hospitals in town and a few private ones. We would appreciate your pr*yers as we decide which hospital to deliver at.

so cute!!!

Last night one of our friends brought over a ton of baby stuff. Most of the clothes are for a baby boy, but she said that if we didn't have a boy, that we could just pass them on to the next person who has a baby. I was so excited. As you can see, there are quite a lot of adorable little things. I was just reminded again how much our Father provides for us. Most of the things she brought over we can't buy in China (like onesies and button between the legs shirts). It has been a little dauting trying to go think through things that we will have to order in America and have sent to us.









My face is a little funny in this picture. :)















On Easter Sunday we went to IKEA after fellowship and had our Easter meal in the IKEA cafeteria. :) We had fun buying a few more things for our house. We bought a new picture for our dining room and some fun place mats. I love IKEA.



This is my adorable niece. So cute!!!!

:)

So, if you didn't know already, the ticker at the side of the page announces something special. :)

beautiful pictures

I posted pictures of our trip to a beautiful park outside of Chengdu. Go here to see the pics.

ahhh

Saturday was beautiful!!! What a blessing. Nate and I rode our scooters into town and did some shopping. After our errands, we stopped at a coffee shop and ordered some refreshing drinks to celebrate the beautiful weather. I had a raspberry italian soda, and Nate had a coconut chocolate chiller. Yum Yum.

I often read a lot of children's books, so that I can recommend books to students. I have really enjoyed Robin McKinley's books. She wrote "The Blue Sword" and the "Hero and the Crown". I recommend her books to girls of all ages, even adults. :)

reading time

I'm getting ready to have reading time with the Kindergarten kids. Most of our kindergarten students don't speak English as a first language, so I have to carefully pick books I want to read to them. A few weeks ago, I was going to read to them "Strega Nona" by Tomie DePaola, but I realized that the book was full of Italian words, and the kids would be clueless to what was happening; since some of them at this point can hardly grasp English words.

The upper school play is this weekend. The kids are all nervous and excited. Nate and I are going tomorrow to see it.

goofy girls

I helped Jenny last week take student pictures for the year book. We had a fun time taking goofy pictures of ourselves during the downtimes. Here's just an example. :)

fog

this morning was cold and foggy. i really hate when it is foggy in the morning. fortunately, my scooter has a headlight on it, but the fog is so thick, it really doesn't do any good. there are three large intersections we cross on the way to school. this is how you cross in the thick fog- honk your horn and go as fast as you can and hope that no one is coming. :)
when we got to school, we were quite wet and cold. nate's fleece looked like it had snow on it, but it was only from the fog.
it is starting to clear up now.

ready for spring

It has been cold again for the past few weeks. I'm very ready for warm weather. Maybe this week it will warm up.
Xanga is still being blocked. Too bad :(
This weekend is the school play. The kids are doing "You Can't Take it With You". It should be a fun experience, although the kids are all a little stressed out. The following weekend is a highschool dance that Nate and I will be chaperoning. The students are all excited about it. It has been quite the drama at school with who is going with who. So cute.

school fun

Today is Science Olympiad at school. Hopefully it goes well, as this is our school's first year running a Science Olympiad. In the past, every spring we held a Science Fair; but we decided to switch it around this year.
Tonight is a student government led Talent Show. Some of us teachers are doing a skit, with each of us acting like one of our students. It will be pretty funny I think. I will try to get some good pictures.
Our puppy Bennett is doing a little better. He has been on the antibiotic Cephalexin for a few weeks now. He seems to be scratching less and his bald spots are growing back.
My sister just bought a really cute puppy. You should check out the pictures of him on either my mom's site www.xanga.com/fossflock or my sister's site www.xanga.com/trumpetcouple