wonderful Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a wonderful day! Orange made us a huge meal and our Yangzhong family came over for dinner. The school bought us a chicken because they couldn’t find us a turkey which was really nice. We had a wonderful dinner and as we went around the table saying what we were thankful for Orange expressed her thanks for God for bringing us together. I think we all felt the same. It was a wonderful dinner and a wonderful time to recognize all of the blessings we have.

After dinner Orange and Starling left because it was bed time and my Yangzhong sisters and I watched White Christmas (my all time favorite movie) to welcome Christmas. We even had popcorn which doesn’t really taste like much here but it was delicious! We also ate lots of cookies and giggled and had fun. Then at the end of the movie we sang along to White Christmas and squealed Merry Christmas again and again, because guess what? It really is officially Christmas time. J It was overall a very wonderful night and a very happy Thanksgiving. We then spent all weekend decorating our apartment for Christmas, and we still aren’t done yet! J

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving in my first grade classes! I told a very watered down version of the Thanksgiving story and explained that Thanksgiving is all about saying “Thank you” and “I love you.” J I showed them pictures of our house on Thanksgiving and everyone sitting down to eat, and they went crazy over them! It was adorable. Then we practiced being a turkey and going gobble gobble all over the place. Then we made hand turkeys which they loved. They are so adorable! I love my little first graders so much. They had a little bit of a hard time saying Happy Thanksgiving rather than Happy Halloween, but that is understandable since they do sound a lot alike! J

Yesterday Mekena and I got really soft blankets which are fabulous. It is getting so so so cold these days and they keep us nice and warm. Mine is pretty and purple. After dinner we were listening to Christmas music and the song “Last Christmas” came on, so we danced all around the kitchen and living room with our blankets.

“Let us relish life as we live it and find joy in the journey- now.” ~President Monson

Congratulations to my beautiful friend Kristalyn for getting engaged!! J It all sounds so exciting around there and I am so happy for her and love her so much!!! I love all of my wonderful friends. J

 They are all so creative!!!! :)

Happy Thanksgiving with Class 1!!

 Cute kids working hard!

Happy Thanksgiving with Class 2!

Look at that cute smile :)

Another cute cute cute smile! :)

Daniel and Ally with their cute turkeys!!!

 Adorable girl with adorable artwork :)

 Daniel being a gobbling turkey and it's hilarious!

 Creative little turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving with Class 3!

Christmas

Today I woke up and it felt like Christmas. I don’t know why, or what made the difference, but it did. I didn’t realize how much I loved Thanksgiving and how many traditions we actually have in our family until this year, being away from them. Every year Thanksgiving is different, but every year we make Oreo turkeys, and Sara always says to make sure there are red hots to go on them, and we always have our boys vs. girls football game (and the boys are always way outnumbered), and ever since Dallin came into the family he and I always see who can have more plate fulls of food, and we always watch Home Alone that night, and it is just a day that my whole family is always together. I like that feeling more than anything in the world, when all of my sisters are home. And now Dallin and Jared are always there too and they make it even better… And everyone is home. I love that feeling so much. I am so thankful for my family. So since that is my absolute favorite part of Thanksgiving I am not super excited of celebrating it without them. I have been waiting for Christmas to come for forever, so Merry Christmas everyone! J Whenever Christmas rolls around I still always think of our house in San Antonio all decorated beautifully. It was the best time of year when we would have our huge tree set up in the living room and the garland running up the stairs and nativities everywhere you looked and the stockings hanging and candles in the fireplace and so many beautifully wrapped presents under the tree you couldn’t even count them. Daddy would set up tons of Christmas lights outside and let us very carefully get on the roof with him which was always the best thing ever. Everything was decorated and it was beautiful. Always so so beautiful. Our house in Provo is beautiful too, with the tree in our huge window and the snowy outside behind it. Christmas is just a beautiful beautiful time. So I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams. JHappy Holiday Season everybody!

little moments

Right now I am eating a deliciously juicy apple. One thing that I have learned while being here in China is that it is all of the little moments, the small and blessed tender mercies from the Lord, that make life so worth it. I feel so blessed to have what I have and know what I know and be learning what I am learning. I feel so blessed to be in China and just so blessed to be alive.

This morning I woke up and had a wonderful email from Mommy. She really is the best Mommy ever. Then I took a long shower and used all of my hot water. When I got out Meagan, one of my best friends ever, was on Skype. I talked to her and Jess for a while and it was so good to see them and know that they are doing so well. They are lovely lovely people. Skype is such a wonderful thing. I am on the opposite side of the world and I still get to talk to everyone face to face! I talk to Jay and Thomas practically everyday and I love that Sara gets on so much now and I got to talk to my beautiful newly married Stephie last week and I just love talking to everyone so much. There are just so many lovely people in my life.

Sara is one of those lovely people I have been blessed with, she is my companion here. She is so kind and beautiful. Yesterday she took my fifth grade class very last minute because I got really sick and she didn’t complain about it one bit. She is always willing to help. She just makes life even more fun here in China and I am so happy Heavenly Father answered those many many many prayers of pleading to be put with a wonderful person here in China. She will be my friend forever. Last night we started decorating for Thanksgiving and then our friends Kelly and Daisy came over to make dinner with us. We made Hot Pot which is one of my favorite foods ever. We had such a fun dinner with them and it is so much fun when they come over!

After lunch today Sara and I decided to go explore the island a little bit more. So we started riding our bikes the opposite way we normally do and we found a really cute park. It had a little white bridge and everything! We walked around the park for a long time and took lots of pictures.

On the way home we stopped at a fruit stand by our school and one of the teachers who we don’t even know very well bought us each an apple. J

“Each of us can have eyes to see clearly and ears to hear distinctly the tender mercies of the Lord as they strengthen and assist us in these latter days. May our hearts always be filled with gratitude for His abundant and tender mercies.” ~Elder David A. Bednar

Fishing on the Yangtze River

Today all of the teachers in our school went fishing on the Yangtze River. It was so much fun! I caught 4 fish which I was really proud of. :)

Orange, me and Sara on the bus on the way to the river!

Catching my first fish!

Me with the first fish I caught!

Here's number 3! Orange and I caught one at the same time. :)

The second fish I caught!

 And here is number 4 :)

pictures of the Huangshan Mountains

Line dancing on the street after getting our hair done!

Huangshan Mountains

Last weekend 15 of us went backpacking in the Huangshan Mountains. It was so incredible! The Huangshan Mountains are what inspired the movie Avatar. They are famous because there is a sea of clouds surrounding them that make it look like they are floating! We got on a train at midnight on Friday and got to Huangshan at around 8 in the morning. We headed straight to the mountains then when we got there we ate lunch and headed out to start hiking. We hiked to some waterfalls which were beautiful. My favorite part though was the sky. We could actually see the sky crystal clear for the first time since I came to China! The sky is always hazy and cloudy and even though our city is a lot less polluted than the bigger cities, we still can’t see the sky clearly. The sky in the Huangshan mountains though was like America sky. It was so blue and beautiful and I just wanted to keep looking at it because it was so beautiful. That only lasted during the day though. At night it got so foggy that we could hardly see anything we were doing.

The trail we had to take to get to where we were going to camp for the night could take anywhere from 6 to 10 hours. Since we got to that trail at around 4:30 after hiking some others we decided it would be better to take the cable cars up to the top of the mountain. I am SO glad we did this. It was so so so beautiful. We could look down on the mountain and we could see waterfalls and the trees were beautiful and it really did look like Avatar, When we got to the top of the mountain we were in a cloud until we hiked down the mountain a bit the next day. All that night though everything was wet wet wet and cold and really really foggy.

The next day we started early in the morning to hike down the mountain which involved going up up up for a long time. The trail is all stairs. So the whole day we were climbing stairs up and down up and down. My legs are still so sore from it. We were hiking in fog for a couple hours until we came to this lookout where a billion people were. We were out of the clouds and there it was, the sea of clouds that made it look like the mountains were floating! It was so beautiful and I am so glad it cleared out enough for us to see it.

The rest of the day we hiked down down down this incredible mountain. It was so beautiful and a huge highlight to my trip to China so far. We got on a train at 7 and got back to Zhenjiang at 4 in the morning where Sara and I went to Jordan and Morgan’s house to sleep for 2 hours until the busses started running to Yangzhong. We got back to our school at around 8:30 and were greeted by Rosie blowing us kisses and Orange waving from the third floor balcony. They are so sweet.

On Tuesday night Rosie invited Sara and I to go out to eat with her. It was Sara, me, Orange, Rosie, and Rosie’s adorable daughter. We went and got hot pot which is one of my very favorite things I have had here in China.  First they fry a ton of meat and vegetables and put it in a bowl in the middle of the table and you eat from that. There is a stove thing in the middle of the table that everyone sits around. So after you eat the fried stuff they take it out and they put soup in it and you put more stuff in and watch it cook. They brought in live crab and put it in the hot pot and we got to watch them cook. Poor crabs. They were really yummy though. Rosie’s daughter is in kindergarten and she is the prettiest little girl. She is so adorable. Rosie is the one who shares an office with us and she is so beautiful too. I love our friends here!

Last week Sara got her hair permed here and Kara, Julia and I went with her and got our hair washed and styled. They massaged our heads as they washed our hair and it felt so so so good. Then they curled my hair and it was beautiful! The guy that did my hair was shaking a ton. I thought he was going to burn himself he was shaking so much! Haha It was so funny. I think it was maybe the first time he had done blonde hair. Everyone’s hair turned out beautifully and Sara’s perm turned out perfect! She looks so beautiful!!!!

Yesterday I walked out to go to my class and my kids were waiting at the opposite end of the walkway from where the door is to the building my apartment is in and when they saw me they ran down the entire walkway and hugged me and walked me all the way to class. They were all trying to hold my hands and it was the cutest thing. I love my kids so much.

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

This was such a good weekend! Sara and I had a Halloween party at our apartment on Friday night. We invited a ton of our foreign friends in nearby cities and a ton of our Chinese friends. We planned the party to start at 6:00 so we would have about an hour and a half after our classes ended to do some finishing touches on getting ready for it. We had so much left to do when the Chinese people started showing up an hour early. So we had to wing it on a lot of stuff towards the beginning and it was slightly stressful. But as soon as we started the bobbing for apples everything was smooth sailing after that. We invited a lot of the teachers and administrators in our school and almost everyone came (including the principle) and brought their kid. They all LOVED it. The kids and a lot of the adults were wearing masks as their costumes. Sara and I dressed up as Batgirl and Spidergirl. We felt like we were Disneyland characters because everyone was lined up to take pictures with us.

The bobbing for apples was hilarious. All of the little kids went for it all at the same time so there were like 15 kids all trying to get an apple from the same little bucket. Haha Everyone was cheering and it took a while for someone to finally get one, but eventually a little boy did! Then a lot of the kids got one after that. It was so funny and really fun.

When the bobbing for apples ended I was taking more pictures with people while Sara was putting cat whiskers on some of the girl teachers who translate our classes so that they would be dressed up. Everyone thought it was really exciting and were thoroughly entertained by it.

After that we did the cake walk for a really long time. They were hilarious with this game. They didn’t understand that it was simply a continuous walk from one number to the next as the music was playing. I would say go and start the music and seriously everyone would just hop from one number to the next and stop. We would have to yell, “Keep walking!” and push the circle around. This whole time it was only Sara and me with all of the foreigners, and so I called Julia and she came over and was able to help us with this game. One of us had to be in the middle of the circle directing them to keep walking and then the other two of us would be stopping the music and drawing numbers. It was so fun! After this game our other foreign friends here in Yangzhong showed up and we sent Kara and Mekena to get more stuff because so many people had showed up that we were running out of food and plates and stuff, and our foreign friends from other cities hadn’t even come yet! Haha This was around 6:30 when the party was actually supposed to be starting. J

The next game was pin the nose on the pumpkin. None of the Chinese people really knew what any of these games were and loved them all! It was so fun. Everyone was chanting and really into it. I also got to try Peking Duck for the first time! Everyone told me I had to try that before I came but it is just so expensive that I hadn’t yet. My Jhung brought it for us though, he is the best!!! It was so so so delicious.

The next activity was my favorite of all. We had all of the Chinese people go trick or treating down our hallway. Marie, Mekena, Kara, Julia, Sara and I (all of the foreigners at the party so far) each went in a separate room down our hall. We gave all of the Chinese people a bag, including the adults, and had them all go down the hall and knock on each door and say, “Trick or treat!” This was the best activity of the night. They all LOVED it! Including the adults. Our Principle was even really into it, it was so cute! All of the adults were just as into it as the kids were. It was seriously the best thing ever. None of them had ever been trick or treating before and they had the funnest time with it. I felt like we were giving all of them their childhood. Haha It was seriously so much fun.

The party died down with eating cake that the school bought for us and with a lot of the men and little boys carving pumpkins and lighting the candles inside of them. It was so much fun.

After this most of them went home and the FIRST party died down…

Then the second party showed up! J

We had planned all of this being just one party but the Chinese people showed up so early that they had already left by the time our foreign friends from other cities got into town! It actually worked out perfectly because there ended up being so many kids and people that it was so much easier to just have two separate parties. Our friends got in and got dressed into their costumes and ate fried rice that Sara and I made for them (knowing they would get in late and be hungry) while Sara and I ran around and set up a scavenger hunt that we had prepared. We were in our sparkly capes and masks running all around campus hiding the scavenger hunt pictures and we felt like real super heroes. Haha When we got back from hiding the stuff we all ate and mingled a while we bobbed for apples some. The we did the scavenger hunt. We split everyone into three teams and gave them the first clue. The pictures were set up down the hall, down the stairs, then led outside and on a path through campus. We thought it might be too easy but it was actually pretty hard and took them a good amount of time to do, but not too long. It was just hard enough to be really intense and fun. Haha The last clue was Sara and me, so we waited for the winning team on the track. We stood like super heroes with our fists on our hips and our capes and masks sparkling in the moonlight as the winning team came running down the track to get to us first. Haha It was so funny. The winning team all got snicker bars, which was worth fighting for. J

When we came back upstairs we took some more pictures and had a dance party. Then we did the superlatives for the most creative costume, the funniest costume, the best look-a-like, and the best costume. We had everyone put their votes in a box and then we counted them. I stood on a stool and very dramatically announced each winner. Heather, who was grapes, won the most creative costume award. Ben, who was a Chinese farmer, won the funniest costume. Justin Bieber swept two awards, being not only the best look-a-like, but the overall best costume. Haha It was no surprise. Everyone loves Justin Bieber.

After that we stayed up until 4:00 in the morning playing games like murder in the dark and ghost in the graveyard and sardines. It was so much fun! It was the latest all of us had stayed up in such a long time. Almost everyone stayed at our place, but some people went to the other girls apartments. Sara and I stayed up to clean a little bit and make sure everyone got home safely and had everything they needed. We also talked about how well we work together. J We really did plan so well and threw such a good party together. All of the preparation and work that went into it was SO worth it. We finally got to bed at 5:00.

The next morning we all slept in until around noon. I was the first to get up at noon and went in to the kitchen to skype Jay. Orange came over and we made dumplings for everyone. Orange is the best. She helped us so much with everything. All we did on Saturday really was eat dumplings then went to the silk market in our city. Then we came home and watched The Ghost and Mr. Chicken which was hilarious. We got into bed at 9:00 but it felt so so so much later than that. When we all climbed into bed someone said, “It’s only 9:00 guys.” Haha We were so exhausted. The next day we woke up really early to get to Nanjing on time for church.

After church on Sunday we went to this sandwich place near the hotel that church is at. There are always SO many foreigners there because it is really close to the university. I got to talk to this guy about the church which was SO fun because I hadn’t gotten to do that in such a long time. He is from Washington and asked me if we were a tour group. I told him that we all live in China but came to Nanjing for church that day. He asked me what church and I said The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that anyone holding a foreign passport was welcome to come. When I told him that he was always welcome if he ever wanted to come he said, “I know that” and went on to tell me how he knew some people that went to BYU. I told him that I had a brother in law that lived in Washington for two years and he said that there are lots of Mormon boys that go live there for two years. And he told me how he had seen a temple there and stuff. Basically it was all just so weird that I could talk to someone from America again and at the same time talk to someone that knows about the church.

Today I taught my kids a Halloween lesson and they were so so so adorable. I had them color masks and then come to the front of the class and go “trick-or-treating” to me. They are SO CUTE I can’t stand it sometimes. I just want to hug them and hug them they are so cute.

This Halloween was SO much fun. I was thinking about why I loved Halloween so much this year and how it was so much fun and I realized it was because nobody knows anything about Halloween except for us. So we were totally setting the mood of Halloween all by ourselves this year. So of course we left out all of the gross and perverted stuff that Halloween is becoming and made it a super fun and exciting holiday. It was the best Halloween I have ever had.

Sara and I throw really good parties. J

 My carved pumpkin!

Me and StarLing :)

 Lighting the pumpkins

My friend Rosy and her beautiful daughter

Me and some grapes :)



Heather bobbing for apples

Tash bobbing for apples

Jack and his friend won! :)

The cake the school gave us for our party :)

Our fun fun group! :)

 StarLing loving Halloween!

 Lily, my translator for my classes and good friend, and her daughter :)