Biking through a Shenyang Winter Wonderland

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! That's at least what I was singing until I started biking in it. It is one thing to look out the window at the falling snow and notice it's pure, simplistic beauty, and entirely another to actually be outside in it. For the first 5 minutes, I was tempted to just stand there and stick my tongue out like a child. Yet on the busy city streets where the snow on the ground has already frozen, the snow coming down is sticking to my eyelashes, and people are randomly walking in front of us as we try to gain some sort of momentum is an entirely different thing.

The reason why we were even on this little biking outing was actually a pretty sad one. My USB (which by the way, holds my life on - foolish I know), broke the other night. Devastated, I was immediately in search for another one, hoping to transfer my files before they were completely gone. Our trip was a successful one - we were able to spend some quality time together, transfer my files (yay!), and then plant ourselves at our favorite coffee shop for a few hours. NOW I get to actually enjoy the falling snow as it masquerades the city streets below (at least for today).

Attempting to take a picture while riding my bike...risky, I know....

Their infamous Caramel Macchiato...isn't it pretty?

Hopefully more fresh snow falls tonight so the kids can have fun playing tomorrow!

Silicon bread pans are not my friend.

As I glanced at our fruit basket and saw the brown and mushy bananas, I couldn't help but think "OOOhhhh! Let's make banana bread!" I thought it would be such an effective way to make them worth more than in the trashcan, yet didn't even realize that I didn't have all the ingredients. Let's hope that honey can substitute for sugar.....

The real crash and burn was when I went to put the banana bread into the oven and the silicon bread pan gave out on me!

A day of blessing...food, friends, love and laughter.

It is around this time of year when I feel the most homesick. Especially when I skype call with my loving, cuddly, affectionate family to find them all in a ball of laughter on the floor tickling each other! I could not contain my emotions as I welled up with tears just watching and/or hearing the joy....without me. That is just what I love about my family though....we are all either in college or out, yet we still love to be with (let alone cuddle!) each other. Yes, even my 20 year old brother Ethan with his sisters. Yet while I sit here briefly reminiscing on the blessing of my tight knit family, I can't leave out the blessing of what He has given me right now....in THIS season of my life.

There is nothing better than to have a husband who not only loves me and helps around the house, but actually knows more than I do about cooking/baking! Thank you Becky Evans for all of your many years with your son....he definitely benefits from it (and so do I). Below I have documented a bit of our Thanksgiving preparations before we headed off to join our side dishes with many others!

Remember my post about making jaozi at our landlords house? Well we were finally able to use that idea! We had left over apple filling and pie crust from the apple pie, so we decided to turn them into little jaozi's (dumplings)! We simply whipped out our little jaozi-making tool and began!

Does this table setting not look amazing?!? Thanks Amber and Rachael for all of your hard work in preparing & hosting for us. This was such a fun time of fellowship, laughter, and constantly doing the whole "'excuse me pardon me" when we were slipping by for 2nd and 3rd helpings. Good thing I was thinking ahead and wore a baggy sweater....saving room for dessert.

After we finished eating, we all sat around to watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and then Home Alone! Such a relaxing night.

Seeing this little guy at our Thanksgiving meal made me want to just burst out into tears. Two weeks ago this Monday he had heart surgery. Praise Him that he recovered quickly and is back to his normal giggly self. And he is even saying "Mama" now! So adorable!

Now it's time to start putting away the fall decorations and getting the garland, tree, and lights all around. Crank up that Christmas music!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

A few "snips" too short

So I went to go get my hair "trimmed" the other night...

This being my third time in China to get my hair cut, I should not have been so naive to the predictable pattern that would play out (as it does for every haircut). In my butchered vocabulary of hair salon terms, I hand gestured my way through saying "I want it cut.....but not too short.....longer in the front, and a little bit shorter in the back." Then I just sat there crossing my fingers trying to focus on other things until he tapped on my shoulder and asked me a question. There is one thing though, that I noticed about this "inverted bob" kind of hair style. The back is always going to be altered by how short you cut the front piece....pretty common right? But then that means your whole hair cut is based off of just ONE snip! And that one snip was what made this whole haircut the way it is....

(SNIP) "Oh.....uhh.....actually.....I didn't want it.....that.......short........nevermind...."

It's in those moments that you take a big swallow and start envisioning what you can do to "make this work". I guess for this winter season I will be in scarf heaven since my neck is now completely bare. Oh well...it will grow.

Nervously ready for him to start and make the first cut...little do I know...

So far so good....he hasn't taken that neck thing off yet, so I can't really see how far my hair is from my shoulders.

Oh dear!!!!! All I could think of was ("My neck!!!")

I guess I can work with this.....maybe.

Good thing is that hair always will grow back.....phew!

Wolverine man

So apparently just hours after I last posted, my dad's foot swelled up to the point where his own cast was cutting off his circulation. He was in horribly excruciating pain! My poor dad...good thing he now has a bigger cast that is not pressing against his broken foot.

Here is another picture of his "Wolverine foot"...at least that is what he calls it. Creepy, huh?

Weekend shopping!

As the weekdays are filled with work done at school or planning for the next day, that leaves the weekends for all of our market shopping. A good friend of mine, Hannah, and I hit the ground running as went made a successful trip this morning! From the stationary market to a street food pit stop, then to a candy lady on the go, and then off to another market, we were exhausted by noon. Luckily we were focused enough before our shopping stamina left us.

A typical street food scene.

My favorite fried chicken!

Yum!

2nd best part....sweetened popcorn!

I thought I would capture this....Chinese people never cease to amaze me with how much they can carry on their bikes.

A new room design!

There's nothing like being asked by your husband to help change his classroom around. What an exciting request! All he "technically" wanted was his desk moved to the front of the room, but I did some gentle nudging in the direction of creating a new and improved library area. Surpisingly, he let me have at it! Here was our big project this Saturday:

The room before we got started. Notice where his teacher desk and the books are.

Hard at work

My good friend Julie (3rd grade teacher), came up with this space-saving design for bookshelves. Thank you Julie!

Getting there...

Posters are up, carpet put in and pillows set! Tomorrow we are going to get those pillows re-covered...maybe shades of blue (we don't want it to look too "girly").

Ta-da! Here is Dave's new 4th grade classroom :)

Enjoying his new reading area.

Update on Dad's surgery...don't eat before looking at this.

My dad had his surgery and is now in full recovery mode! Talking with him this morning just had me laughing...how he looks at life is so positive. When he went "under" they discovered that it was actually worse than they thought, and had to stick pins down through the tops of his toes (gross, I know). To help with some of the missing tissue, they had to add some for him......from a cadaver! With all of this happening, he still had energy for sarcasm by calling himself "dead man walking"...haha. Love you dad.

Keep lifting him up as he will be recovering for at least the next six weeks. Hopefully he can get back to work after Thanksgiving. Good thing his job is pretty flexible since most of it is with the computer.

Here he is one hour after his surgery :)

Yes....those are pins sticking out from his toes. Hopefully he can build some sort of contraption so that he doesn't accidentally stub his toes!

Puttin' on a show...

Last weekend, we (a group of foreign teachers) were able to go to a Chinese Music school. It was a very interesting experience as we were able to see a taste of what Chinese education was like....how different! While this was a music school, it was still characterized by the more formal design for student-teacher relationships (standing up to answer, rows and rows of desks, no pictures or color on the walls). Not wrong, just......different. Several things that I saw, really got me thinking. When I glanced into the 1st grade classroom lined with rows of desks and white walls, I just thought "What would their thought be coming into MY classroom?" Probably, "How is a child going to learn with that much distraction on the walls!" Not sure....but it definitely had my mind spinning for a while. Then as we saw the room showing the camera footage for every (and I mean every) classroom in the school, I thought "Would I want my classroom to be on display for anyone to watch and inspect?" Privacy....one of those things as an American we all feel entitled to...haha.

Impromptu singing for the high school English class (see below for story)

As we made our way into the high school English class, we were instantly taken in and prodded to "let the students hear real English". The only problem was that everyone did not necessarily feel the same way as their teacher and just sat there...not even looking at us. AWKWARD! As she looked around sensing the apparent lull in communication, the teacher decided to have all of the Americans get up and "sing a song...any song!" We willingly agreed upon "Amazing Grace" and began...only to finally watch the students light up with their cell phones to document the whole thing. Oh, those paparazzi moments. Without doing much of anything, you can be a real star here in China.

A bad break...

I just called my dad this morning to find out that he recently broke his foot in three places! As he was working in the crawl space underneath our cabin, his foot slipped into a 3 ft hole (all the pressure on his one foot!). Please lift him up as he will have to undergo surgery some time this week to get pins put in. For being such an active guy with work and racquetball, this is going to be tough.

We're lifting you up dad <3

A note in Chinese characters!

It is so nice when all of the hard work of studying and learning Chinese characters actually comes in handy. We just realized that we had no oil, and really needed some by tomorrow. Remembering that our Ayi (helper) comes on Mondays, I just whipped out a pen and paper and wrote her a note.....in characters! I didn't even have to think twice about it! Thank you Linda (my Chinese teacher) for challenging me....it is well worth it :)

Can you guess what it says? "Qing mai zhei ge. Xia Xia!" (Please buy this. Thank you)

Oh how I love Sundays...

The one thing I love the most about Sunday, is that it is just so wonderfully routine. Keeping things so predictable helps me to actually get work done while relaxing at the same time - what a nice balance for a weekend! Since Dave and I wake up at the normal time even on the weekend, that leaves about 4 hours for us to spend just relaxing and chillin before we actually have to be anywhere. 4 hours......there is so much to do with that much time!

The events once fellowship begins go a little like this (every Sunday): order Chinese and eat lunch together as a big group, pack up the school work and bike/walk down to the local coffee shop to sip steamed milk while being productive at the same time. After staying for a few hours, coming home to relax some more....what a beautiful day.

Dave practicing his guitar before playing at Fellowship

Look at all the food! With all of the people that stay and eat, most of it is completely devoured by the time we are done :)

It is always a fun time with all of the babies on the team now. Last year it was a room full of pregnant bellies, and now we have both Enoch and Maddy (and Jachin too) to play with!


A quick $2.00 fix up on Liz's bike....she can finally ride again! FREEDOM!

Sipping at the infamous "IS cafe" right down the street. This is my good friend Hannah sitting across from me as we are trying to be productive ;)

Now that I actually wrote about my "being productive" on Sundays, I better get to work.