Making Jiaozi with our Landlords

What a blessing it is to not only have landlords that provide a home for us, but also: wash our screens every winter, call to check up on us, invite us out for 5 course meals, teach us how to make jiaozi in their own home, and call us their children ("nimen shi womende haizi"). Listening to stories of how other people have a lot of stress and stubborn ignorance from their landlords, really helped us to feel grateful for the blessing we have. When the four of us get together, there is an atmosphere of mixed laughter and stumbling through words to communicate further than the smiles and hand motions. What makes it so comical is the fact that they know about as much English as we know Chinese...so the converstion is present....just.....a.....hmmm......uuhhhh.......little........what's that word again......staggered. Below you will see pictures of the most recent time with them. They invited us over to their house to teach us how to make jiaozi (Chinese dumplings). This is a very common meal here in China, and you can have it all sorts of ways with a variety of stuffing inside. This allows much creativity for the Americans...Dave and I were brainstorming after we left..."What if we could stuff the jiaozi with pizza?" "What about turning them into little ravioli's?" The possibilities are endless!

The four of us ;)

She was insistent that I wear the apron. I felt silly wearing it, but privileged to be ALL aboard with her jiaozi lesson!

First rolling out the dough....

Getting ready to start rolling them flat with the rolling pin. Dave did such a great job documenting this night! Thanks hon!

Rollin, rollin, rollin. All I kept hearing was "hen hao!!" (very good!)

Setting them to steam.

Enjoying the final product. We felt so proud of our jiaozi...and we even had enough to take home. Wait, I take that back. We had more to take home then we had on our plate!

Dave and I did actually go out and buy the fixings to make our own jiaozi at home. Looking forward to what we will create!