In the USA

I have been told that I need to update this blog. I have been trying. I wrote a whole page of stuff, but for some reason I cannot cut and paste here. So I gave up and just typed a bunch of stuff, but I typed it to the team blog and not my family blog. So if you really want to read it, you can just go and read it there.

We are in the US. We got in Saturday afternoon, but did not get into Henderson until close to 10 PM.

The trip was long, but really not too bad. The kids are doing great. Most of the jet lag and sleeping issues are behind us now.

Sometimes we feel a little strange being back. There are just small things we notice...

Eryn is excited every time she walks into a public restroom because it is "Western". Jon and I think water fountains are pretty cool. I keep forgetting how simple it is to brush my teeth, when I can just use tap water for wetting my toothbrush and rinsing! It was nice to get my hair trimmed and know that the hairdresser understood me!

I am also happier with what my hair has been doing here. I am not sure if it is the water, shampoo, or that I am just not as hot and sweaty here.

I am glad to be in the States for a while. We need a break, but I am also very excited about next semester and do look forward to going back in August.

I will try to update these blogs and post some pictures in the next few days.

Dates!

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that blogger was blocked. I was pretty sad because it meant that I could not post and I could not read my friend's blogs. Today someone gave the name of a proxy server and volia! I am back!!

We will move into our new apartment on Friday. We are excitedc, but I am also a little anxious. We will probably not have the internet at the new apartment until we come back, so I won't be online quite as much.

It doesn't look like I will be able to post pictures right now, but I will try to add some when we are no longer blocked. It is possible that we will not be blocked once a certain date has passed. We will see.


Get out your calanders and mark some of these dates.

We will travel to the US on June 20! We will arrive in the US just two hours after we left! (not really).
We plan to be in Henderson on Sunday June 21! We also hope to attend VBS that night. However we will be very jetlagged so who knows.
We will also be in Henderson June 28

Jenn and the kids will be in Milan June 29-July 4.
Henderson July 5
July 12 ?
Then we will travel to Hixson for a few weeks
we should be at Clear Creek on Sunday July 19, and 26,and August 2.
We will be back in Henderson on Aug. 9 and we leave for China on Aug 11.

If you have any questions about any specific dates, feel free to ask. We will try to see as many people as we can, but remember we ar human and can only do so much...ha ha.
We are super excited about seeing everyone in person very soon.
Please pray for safe travels and smooth transitions!

General Hardin update

Turtles: We are down to 2 turtles but we feel good about that decision. Yesterday I saw one of the turtles biting at the other turtle. Then later in the day, I noticed that part of the turtle’s tail was gone! Gross! Just like the other one. All this time, I thought that something was wrong with the turtle and it looks like it just got bit off! I went to the Internet and did some looking and it seems that it is fairly normal behavior for our kind of turtle. However it is not so good for the bitten turtle. There is a great risk for infection, which is what happened to the free turtle…( his name was Thomas the Tank turtle). The Internet said to get your turtle to a vet. That is not going to happen here. For now the turtles are separated. The injured turtle will probably be set free fairly soon.
I was telling Jon the saga of the turtles and mentioned that I was a little sad, because on of the turtles actually seems to know us. He will eat out of our hands! Jon said that perhaps we could keep him but set the other one free. We will see if our friend Alex will turtle sit for us over the summer.

In other news… we have an apartment for next year. We have signed a lease and paid for 6 months rent. We even have keys and everything. We are pretty excited about it. It is in a very nice apartment complex with lots of areas for the kids to play and lots of kids for the kids to play with. There is even a nice pond just feet from our building ( where we will set the turtle free). The apartment has enough rooms for Liam to have a separate room and the girls to have a girl bedroom and we will even have a school room. There is a couch too ( we only have chairs here). The only drawback to the apartment is that it is on the 4th floor and there is no elevator. We feel that it is not much of a problem for us, but visitors might have some problems. We will try to get some pictures up soon.
We are not sure exactly when we will move but probably in the next few weeks. We still are not 100% sure where Jon will teach next year. We should know something pretty soon though.

Jon and I have stopped our Chinese lessons for this year. Things have been very busy and it was getting harder and harder for us and our teacher to keep our lesson schedule. We still plan on studying on our own over the next few months. We will find a different teacher for next semester because Max is graduating.

The last several days have been HOT! I think yesterday the high was 97! It may have been a little cooler here because of the mountains. Thankfully it is going to cool off some over the next few days. Teaching in that kind of heat is not fun at all.

We are in the home stretch for our classes. We are talking about final exams and wrapping things up. It is going to get very busy soon. I am thankful that even though we are nearing the end of a school year, we will be returning to this city in August! There is much to be done!

Turtle update

If you remember, our student and friend Alex brought the kids 3 turtles at the beginning of the semester. Not very long later we noticed that one of the turtles' tail looked a little different. We thought that maybe he was a boy. Then it looked as if one of the turtles had been biting his tail. We thought that it would heal, but it never really did. Not that long ago, I thought his tail looked worse. It was pale and actually looked a little hollow, like it was dying or rotting. We decided that we should isolate him from the rest of the turtles in case it was contagious.

We kept him away for a bout a week and a half. Then when I was cleaning the turtle homes, I decided to check out his tail more. I flipped him over and looked at the bottom of is tail. There was a pretty angry looking bump. I figure it is either infection or a tumor. That was why his tail was dying.

So we had a decision to make.
We were not going to take him to a vet. I am sure that vets here don't really treat turtles.
We decided that the best thing to do would be to let him go. He won't get better, and I don't like the idea of watching him slowly die. We talked to the kids and said that we would take him to the pond and let him go, so that as long as he lives he will be very happy. So Monday we put him in the little glass bowl he came in and walked to the pond. There is a small pond that is really pretty, but when we looked at it, we thought that he would have trouble climbing out of that water ( it is a man-made pond). So we took him over to the bigger lake. Hallie placed him on a rock very near the water. He just sat there for a minute.
Then he looked around and jumped into the water and swam away. He settled on the bottom under a small plant. We watched until the kids got distracted (about 2 seconds). He looked as happy as turtles look when he swam away.

We left feeling peaceful and like we did the right thing. The kids are not sad at all! We have also talked about setting the other two free before we come home this summer.
But for now we have two turtles!

tooth fairy comes to China

Last Friday, some friends of ours offered to keep the kids for us, overnight! We took the kids to their house and then left them. We did not have any major plans but we spent a nice evening shopping and walking down the streets. It is harder to just walk with the kids, because they get tired an whiny and worry that we are lost. It does not bother Jon and I to be a little lost. That is how we find new places here in China. We made it home and had a quiet night. After lunch on Saturday, we went back to pick up the kids. Liam had a suprise for us...his first loose tooth!
We came home and ate dinner and then colored Easter eggs. In this picture you can see that Liam is wiggling his tooth.



Easter morning, the kids got up a little early to see what the Easter bunny brought. Jon and I were too sleepy to get out of bed, so we just listened to the kids. It was amusing. I did not get pictures of their baskets. We went to eat lunch around 11, and while we were eating, Liam started crying. He either bit down on the spoon or just hit his teeth with it. It hurt, it bled some and then was VERY loose. After lunch we picked up a package from the post office. We were opening the package and Liam was wiggling his tooth. All of a sudden, he yelled," I pulled it out!"
He only had a loose tooth for one day!
Hallie lost her first tooth the next day after discovering it was loose too.

The tooth fairy came that night and brought his favorite watermellon gum, a 5 yuan bill, a 1 yuan coin, 5 jiao coin, and a 1 jiao coin. Only because it is his first tooth, the other teeth don't get that big a price.

Finger lickin' good!

One of the best things about living in China is the food. Chinese food in America is nothing like the real stuff. The food here can be so delicious. It is usually very fresh. The green vegetables we ate at lunch could have still been in the field the day before. The roasted chicken might still have been clucking this morning.
Real Chinese food is also very diverse. There is a huge variety. Since actually living here, American Chinese food tends to taste all the same and be somewhat bland.
I like the fact that the kids are being exposed to new and interesting things. I try not to let my food prejudices rub off on them. Usually if they want to try something, we let them and even encourage it.
The Chinese people will eat things that we wouldn’t dream of eating. They eat all kinds of creatures and all parts of those creatures.
Last Sunday after our meeting, we went to a place that serves food from the North west part of china. The specialty of this restaurant is barbequed lamb and Chicken. It is delicious. This time the chicken came with not only the head (it is typical), but its feet too!. Chicken feet are a much enjoyed snack here in China. I have heard that Tyson sends all the chicken feet from its birds to China.
I was really just joking when I asked Liam if he wanted to eat a chicken foot, but when he readily agreed, who was I to discourage it? I got Jon to take pictures!

I helped hin a little


Then he did it himeself!

Not to be out done, Hallie tried one too.

If she doesn't eat it, she could talk it to death!

The chicken only had two feet, so Eryn did not get to try one.

A foot note to this story:

Hallie showed these pictures to our housekeeper and she fixed Chicken feet for the kids while Jon and Jen went shopping today.

After we had tea we went for a walk and found this area that was set up with some interesting traditional Chinese things.

This is a very traditional tea setting.

Jon's new friend. Jon is wearing the guy's hat.

Liam and Eryn found a game. The game is called guo (pronounced go). I do not know how to play, but there are lots and lots of little pieces. The other little boy is the son of a co-worker.

. Evidently this is a place where people come to take wedding pictures. This couple was decked out in their wedding outfits.

We were going to get the kids to move, but the couple wanted to take pictures with the foreign kids!

Tea house

A few weeks ago, it was Women’s Day. That is not a holiday we celebrate in the U.S. but it was on my calendar. The school invited all the women out for tea and the guys and kids got to come along. We went to a nice tea house over looking the canal. We drank tea and ate lots and lots of snacks.

This is our family eating the snacks.

I drank this kind of tea. It is called eight treasures. There are eight things in this tea. I don't remember everything that is in it, but it has orange peal, a couple types of flowers, wolf berries, dates, sugar, and some other things. It is not bad. I think it is very pretty.

This is what we could see from the window of the tea house.

Turtle Turtle!

Alex was a student of both of us last semester. I think he may be attending one of Josh’s classes this semester. He really wants to improve his English. He is also our friend. We have been having him over about once a week. Recently he has expressed interest in learning more about our favorite Book. We are trying to get him together with Frank or someone who speaks better Chinese.

Anyway, the first time he came over this semester, he brought the kids a present. Pets! Three turtles! Jon was pretty grossed out.

We had thought about getting a small pet, but we were thinking about something furry. Alex said that he thought about getting a mouse but he said it has a smell. We think that the turtles smell!

Alex also said that once the turtles get bigger, we can eat them. Yes they do eat turtle in China. I have seen them in the grocery store. They are not cheap at all. We have tasted turtle soup (when we were in China before) We do not like it. We will not eat these turtles!
I spent some time on the Internet trying to find out what kind of turtle we had and how to take care of them. The kind of turtle we have is commonly known as Reeve’s turtle. The good news is that they do not grow to be very large. They are some of the smaller turtles.

The turtles came in three small glass bowls.

We bought a tank and gathered some rocks and also bought a heater and lamp for the turtles. They seem as happy as turtles can seem.
I have taken responsibility for cleaning the turtle home and feeding them. So far they have not been too smelly, but that may change once the weather gets warmer.
The kids think that the turtles are great and they do enjoy watching them and feeding them. But they do not seem too attached to them.

This is what the turtle home looks like now!

Here are two of them "sunning" on the rocks.

This is the other one in the water.

I do not know what we will do with the turtles when we are in the US for a few weeks this summer. Maybe Alex can take them for us.

What to do?

Well, it is that time of year. It is the time of year that foreign teachers (that's us) decide if they will come back next year. Of course we do know that we will come back to China next year. We just don't know if we will be at this school. We have started hearing some questions from the school. The problem is we have decided that I (Jenn) will not teach for the school next year. So the question is, will this school let us stay in this apartment if only one of us teach? To be perfectly honest, I don't know what we want to do. I wonder what would really be best. We like the convince of living on campus, but frankly some of the "opportunities" we thought would be here, have not panned out. We wonder if living further in town would not open more doors and be better for the kids. I guess, we are asking for prayers for guidance and wisdom as we make these decisions.

Last night at English corner I had a really good discussion with some students about some GOOD things. One showed a lot of interest and will be in my class this afternoon. Please ask Dad to help us say the right things as we pursue that relationship.

It seems we are starting to finally see some fruit and interest from some of our students which makes the decision to leave even harder. We will keep you posted!