Updates: Our first trip to Hong Kong.

Our trip to Hong Kong was great, other than of coarse, you could guess it was too hot and too humid. We went to these beautiful gardens and then to the temple. We ended our day with pizza in the mall and a few American treats. These are the Nan Lian Gardens. There was a Nunnery connected to them as well. What a gorgeous place.

This is Kenya at customs on the Chinese side. We have to go through customs to leave China and then through Hong Kong customs to enter Hong Kong. Then vise versa on the way home.













A hot pink dragon fly!





There is a gift shop and restaurant behind that waterfall. Would have been cool to eat at if we had enough time.





They had an exhibit with rocks and raked pebbles. Really neat looking!


These next few picture are of a Nunnery right next to the Gardens. It was awesome. There was a monk chanting the entire time we were there. Not many other visitors were there and that is always nice. The shrines there was beautiful, but there were signs saying that we could not take pictures of them. We really enjoyed seeing something that looked Asian. We feel like we just live in a really big city here. There is not much ancient Chinese culture here in Shenzhen because it is such a new city.




Our first and definately not our last view of the Hong Kong Temple. What a wonderful place. The experience here has been so much more personal than at any other temple. Both times we have been there we saw and spoke directly to the temple president and his wife.

Updates: Our First week!

Here is a picture of our apartment building and complex.
This is our apartment from the ground. It is the second balcony down from the top.
This is just one of the amazing views we have from the balcony of our apartment.
This is a view of Yaohua, the school we are working at, from our 23rd floor apartment.
So before we left, Kenya was obsessed with sweeping and cleaning...She didn't waste any time once she found a broom!
Kenya and the kids hit it off immediately!
This is our first meal at the school cafeteria. We are sitting with Karl and Susie and their kids Jared and Ella.

Wal-mart is about a 10 minute walk away from our house.

Kenya is holding a freak of nature! She holds in her arms popsicles made of beans! We didn't buy them, but had get a pic and what better model to convince someone to try them!
Lois and Kenya went to Ikea with our two African friends that we met at church. I had to teach that day. These pics are of the group on the subway and the Ikea bus for the first time.
Here's Kenya in our office. She's got an apple for the teacher.
Here is a video of our second trip to Wal-mart. The kids were having a dance party to the music and of course it was instigated by Kenya!

Updates: Our trip and arrival to the Far East Coast

The first day was a really busy day! We arrived an hour early so we had to wait a long time in the Hong Kong airport for our ride. We got in at 4:30 am! (Hong Kong time) For those who struggle with time zone differences we are 16 hours ahead if you are in Pacific Time and 15 hours ahead if you are in Mountain Time.

We were on the go ever since we got in the taxi.

Here is our first glimpse of Shenzhen as we drove from Hong Kong.

Once we arrived at our place in Shenzhen we got our luggage upstairs, looked over the place and then we went to breakfast. Here's Kenya attempting to get used to using chopsticks for her first Chinese meal! She caught on rather well. Breakfast was ok. There were some items that were really good and some that had absolutely no flavor at all. So I guess they could have been worse. They have this rice porridge that actually made Lois gag a few times. They serve everything HOT which does not help when you are all ready sweating because it is 85+ degrees outside with ridiculous humidity. Kenya always thinks it’s raining because it is so humid some days. However, this is part of the rainy season for this region so she is not always incorrect.

It has only been 3 days and it appears that we have all adjusted to the time difference pretty well. Kenya had a hard first few days! Lots of fits! We think it was from being tired and hot! But even yesterday she did about a 1000x better. She’s getting closer to being back to wonderful Kenya who is cheerful and makes everyone’s day! She totally makes everyone’s day anyway! Even when she is sad, complete strangers want to do whatever they can to help her stop crying!

As far as food goes there are so many restaurants around it is ridiculous. A really helpful gesture from the Yaohua School is that we get 3-free meals a day at the school cafeteria should we choose to eat there. We have eaten out only a few times since we’ve been here and they have been pretty good experiences. The school paid for our breakfast and lunch the first day we were here! They are so amazing here! Of course there are some American food icons here. The staple, McDonald’s, is here, but we have not gone…yet. (We say “yet” because when we went McDonald’s in Japan in was soooo much better than any we had been to in the U.S. There is a Pizza Hut not far from us (and they deliver) but we have not gone yet. However, there is an unexpected, American fast food place that is here in Shenzhen and that is the home of the Colonel. That’s right…Kentucky Fried Chicken! We decided to go try it out one night because we couldn’t get back in time for our free dinner and we were close by. When we got there, Kenya was sleep, but after we got some KFC in her she was a dancing machine. They even played some American music, which of course led to Kenya showing off her dance skills to the Chinese. Of course they all loved her and loved watching her. She even got a free toy from the place! On a more ironic side we had our experience at KFC was not what we expected. Don’t get me wrong the food was pretty good and the prices were decent, but somehow the custom for screwed up orders and strange policies has transferred from the homeland. We ordered some French fries and got a spicy barbecue chicken sandwich. (It wasn’t that good either.) We eventually got our fries, but had to pay for them anyway. Apparently our translator made the mistake. That’s understandable, but the worst part was that we had ordered a family bucket meal deal and it came with 3 drinks, Pepsi to be more specific. The drinks HAD to be Pepsi in order to get the deal. If you ordered anything else you could have gotten a different flavored drink, but not with the meal deal! So we drank Pepsi. GRRR! On top of that they don’t do free refills in China!

How Kenya has reacted to people popping her bubble. In China, there is not really much of a personal bubble that people have. When walking by people nobody really says, “excuse me” or tries to move to one side. With Kenya there is a negative bubble. Complete strangers walk up to her and touch her hair, rub her cheeks, touch her hands, feet, etc. She’s a celebrity here! It was bad in the U.S. but is amplified here in China!

Here are couple videos of Kenya. One is on the plane ride over and the other is when we got to our apartment. Within the first five minutes of being here she found some slippers and began to parade around the place. Now keep in mind that it is very customary for people to wear slippers inside the house in Asia.

Updates! Who's in the Pig Pen?: A travel back through time

Opening night of Pig Fest 4

Well this is what you missed at Pig Fest 4! There was rain, sun and all kinds of fun! there was also one the best lightning storms ever! It was a wonderful event Friday at the Evans’ house. The pig went in the ground a little later than planned, but all was well. Most people even went swimming in the creek despite the rain. We had a campfire with sausages, weenies and s’mores and then many guests camped out by the creek. A big thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed it! We all had a lot of fun as seen below.

Activities of Pig Fest 4
Saturday was fun! We had a wonderful Dad’s breakfast and for those of you who don’t know it entails homemade hash browns, eggs cooked any way you want, and bacon, sausage and/or ham. How wonderful that is!


Then we had a leisure day waiting for the time to pull the pig up. After the unveiling of the pig we ate and ate and ate. Wonderful! There was fishing, rock skipping, people had target practice shooting cans and what not. We swam again and then camped again… an all round great day.
For those who stayed a couple of extra days we took a rafting trip on Monday down the Kootenai River. How peaceful and serene it was! This was Kenya’s and Carla’s first rafting trip. Both of them seemed to enjoy it. Thanks again to all who came it was great and we all made many memories. We hope to see all of you again next year and for those of you who did not come we hope this will make you want to be sure and come next year!

A fun project to vote for

So I recently did this sound design project, just for fun, with Karl who is another American English teacher here in China. He has his own sound recording equipment and everything. Anyway, we entered this project into a contest and have been getting some good votes, but would like some more. The project is in the final five. However, even if you don't vote for us we think it is pretty funny and should be seen and heard by our friends, loved ones, and acquaintances. So please feel free to visit the following website and vote or just watch and listen at your leisure.

http://www.dynamicinterference.com/2010/09/29/sdc002-septembers-finalists/#more-195

You may have to copy and paste the link in order to get there. Otherwise you can just go to dynamicinterference.com, then click on the "Read more" link at the bottom of the post that is titled SDC002:September's Finalists. If you like ours enough to vote it is titled "Modeling Interview by ksrmedia. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see an area to place your votes.

Thanks either way. Hope you enjoy!

Blessed to be alive!

Q. Can you be taxi driver if you have narcolepsy? Most, including us, would answer "No way! That is totally not safe!"
However, we'd all be mistaken because we are pretty sure we had a narcoleptic driver! In our 20-25 minute, taxi ride home from church we confidently got into the car and began our trip home. We noticed that the driver had decided to take the scenic route, (most likely because of our American Nationality and to run up the meter). We were okay with it for a number of reasons. It really is a way more beautiful drive, it does skip some of the heavier traffic and it doesn't cost a whole lot more. Boy will he regret trying to take advantage of us! Read on.
So he was doing great with his extremely offensive and sharp driving techniques until we got to a stoplight. Now I should have noticed something was off with this guy at this point, but it wasn't so obvious. At the light he was doing his nails or something and didn't notice that the light was green. So the car behind us politely reminded him with their horn. Once in motion he proceeded to drive through the intersection, but on a collision course with another extremely offensive, sharp driving individual who was about to turn across traffic. I thought our driver was aware of this path of potential panic and was maybe reading a sign or checkin' out a sweet ride (car), but to his chagrin (embarrassment) was not aware until a few feet from impact. He skillfully swerved to avoid the vehicle. Crisis averted, right? Well...yes...for the time being. So as we continued the ride Lois and I had noticed that he was leaning on the steering wheel and slowing down. He appeared to be "squinting" as if to read a sign. So we thought nothing of it. Well to our chagrin we realized that he wasn't "squinting"...he was sleeping! How did we know? Well in areas where there was no reason to squint he was still "squinting". Lois had made the discover by noticing the correlation between his "squinting" and letting off the gas peddle at very awkward times.
Once this was established we did our best to make sure that we would not be in any immediate danger. In one of his narcoleptic spells I said, in English: "Are you okay?" He woke abruptly to begin laughing, as did we, with hopes to humiliate him into staying awake as he drove. He responded in broken English, "I'm okay! Ha ha ha!" (He laughed in Chinese though) The embarrassment was a good effort and probably would have worked for someone just dozing from a long day or a late night, but not with a narcoleptic! Ohhh no. Not him. Not for Dong YeHong. He was awake for a few more seconds and proceeded to do some fancy, controlled, narcoleptic driving. I say fancy because he made a few turns and took a few curves while mostly if not completely asleep! He stayed in the lane (which was better than when he was awake) whenever he began the trance and, THANKFULLY, his foot would let off the gas instead of the opposite. He never even woke so abruptly that he'd over correct or forget where he was. He was pretty smooth...almost as if he had done some narcoleptic driving before.
So during his continued unconsciousness, I decided to do whatever I could to ensure our safe arrival to our home and I began to use what little Chinese I knew to keep him awake. I asked him if his name was what was clearly stated, in English as well as Chinese on the dash. That bought us a few seconds...well long enough for him to process what I was talking about and to say yes. After that, once again it was lights out for our struggling friend. Now I let him go to see if he would wake. I tried laughing, because I did think it was quite funny. Lois was getting a little worried for our safety at this time, but still saw the humor in the situation. (Yet another reason why I married that woman) I also did not want to use all the Chinese that I knew before getting to a point where we could walk if necessary. So he slowly came to. We were getting much closer to home, but still not quite close enough. As he was in and out of consciousness I proceeded to ask him in Chinese how old he was. He didn't answer the first time I asked (imagine that). I repeated myself in a louder voice two more times to finally arouse an answer. He finally broke the grasp of narcolepsy and in Chinese began to laugh and say, "I won't tell you." He was saying it was bad to ask. We finally approached the turn for our place and I proceeded to tell him where to turn. The turn is about 100 or so feet from the front of our building and he still had to squeeze in one more snooze. Even though Lois doesn't think so the guy gave us a little break in the fare due to his condition. There were never any close calls. But we honestly think that we were blessed by Heavenly Father to have made it home considering the situation.

Mid Autumn Festival.

So today is the Mid Autumn Festival in China, or the Moon Cake Festival. They celebrate by spending time with family and eating moon cakes while looking at the moon. As I mentioned before it has been raining and rained again this evening so our chances of seeing the moon were slim. Our school invited us to dinner to celebrate and be part of their family. Dinner was nice and there was plenty of food to try. It is much better than the cafeteria food that we eat almost ever day! As we were coming out of the restaurant after dinner we looked up in the sky and we were able to see the moon . It was covered with clouds, but we could see it. We hurried and took a picture of the full moon. Then the moon was gone in less than 1 minute. We thought that was pretty amazing!
I wish there was more to our day and celebration, but there wasn't. I was hoping that for national holidays they would have some big parades or traditional celebration going on, but they didn't. I guess we celebrated the Chinese traditional way. Went to dinner ate moon cakes and looked at the moon. We are crossing our finger to see something more exciting with other holidays.

Sorry so long of a wait.

Still no pictures, sorry about that. I have plenty to update on Kenya though.
She is cruising along here in China. She has learned her body parts, some animals, some fruits and some basic commands in Chinese. Others things that Kenya has done since we have been here in China. She is taking to potty training really well and is dry at least half of the day (most days). She has woken up dry 2 nights in the last week. We cannot get her to poop in the toilet though. I am not sure why, she just doesn't tell us. Also just this last week Kenya has started to say her own prayers. They usually go something like this, ...Thanks for mommy, and daddy, and papa, and mama and Icsis... Amen. Such a cutie! Man do I love her!! We went to Hong Kong last Saturday and were able to make it to the temple again! Yeah, that is 2 months in a row. We found the distribution center too and got some pictures of Christ to put in our home. It makes home feel a lot more like home with pictures of Jesus up. As Kenya was falling asleep tonight she said "night night Jesus."
Work has been going well for us. Robert was teaching 1-5 grade (not including 2nd grade) and I was teaching every grade 1-8. He was teaching just English and I was teaching spelling and science. I am much better at science as you can tell from our blog. But we were told today that our schedules will change starting this Saturday.
The weather is still too humid and when we talk to people they say that it will stay that way until the end of October. So, we are praying that it comes earlier this year. We are still in the rainy season too. It down poured yesterday and has been raining ALL day today and there is still more rain the forecast for the rest of the week. At least the rain yesterday got cool and so it wasn't warm rain. Yesterday when I was walking to go get Kenya the water on the street was like a running river and up to my ankle at parts.
I guess that is all for now. We will fill you in on other things later maybe. We have a 3 day holiday starting tomorrow maybe we will do something interesting.

Best 30 Minute Firework Show Ever!

So, tonight as Robert and I were cleaning house after Kenya had gone to bed I heard a few fireworks. Robert and I went to our balcony to see if we could see them. Yep, sure enough, there were some great fireworks going off. We had the perfect view from our 23 floor apartment. We are pretty certain that the celebration was for the 30th anniversary our Shenzhen, the city we live in. We had a day off of school two Fridays ago for the same purpose. Whatever the reason, it was wonderful! They had fireworks that would explode into the shape of a star, ones that were smiley faces (2 eyes and a mouth with a full circle around them), and ones that looked like a planet with rings. My favorite were these ones that I had never seen in the States, they twinkled all the way down and it looked like the nights sky. When I was telling Robert that is what it reminded me of, I realized that is one thing that I have not seen since I have been here. I have a feeling it will be a while until I see it again. SAD! The show was great and was non stop for a full 30 minutes. Thanks, Shenzhen, it was amazing!
Kenya slept all the way through it even though we were close enough that our windows were rattling from time to time. Then after the show was over we went back to cleaning. Sure enough, I turned on the water in the bathroom and Kenya woke up.




PS We do not have a way to post pictures to our blog yet, so more updates will come sometime next week. Until then all you can do is read about our happenings. Sorry!

Details, details! The deal of a life time!

So, here is the deal. Back in July we accepted an offer to work in CHINA as teachers. We will be here for at least 1 year, but more likely it will be 2 years (at least!) Robert and I are both working! (MAJOR BUMMER, I did not want to ever work because it was our goal for me to stay at home with Kenya, but this was definitely an answer to our prayers and the Lord told us to go and for both of us to teach. It took Robert 4 months to find a job after her graduated last year and then it was just a job that just paid the bills and it was a dead end job. He was working full time at a customer service call center. Yeah, for all those who ever did and/or still work at Melaleuca! Yeah, it was that kind of job. He worked there for 8 months and he had just had enough. He hit is breaking point.
So, we had been praying for a long time for something different that would allow us to save and help us out in the long run with finances. We heard about this job from a friend of a friend of a friend whose dad was recruiting for the school. Yeah, that is how freakish it was. I got nothing but the contact information and from there on we were interested and got a job. The whole processes took less than 2 months (from the time I heard about the job till we were here in China).
Here are the details of the job. We have a one year contract, but like I mentioned we will most likely be here at least 2 years. We are in Shenzhen, China. We are just a crossed the bay from Hong Kong, where we can find anything American we could dream of. The salary is great! The benefits are great! We get to experience a different culture and Kenya gets to learn Chinese! We live right next to the school and police station in a very nice apartment! We are both teaching subjects in English rather than just teaching English and I will be teaching AP Biology in the winter. We are teaching at an actual private school grades 1-12. So far, so good.
We do have a Magic Jack phone # (which is a land line that anyone in the states can call and it ring through on our computer, its a lot like Skype) and if you want it please let me know and I will get it to you and we will talk on the phone. There is no charge to you, other than long distance if you pay or that, but who pays for that in the world of cell phones.
PS if you want our jobs let me know, I think they are wanting to hire 2-4 more teachers who would start right way if possible.

We have moved!

So, at the beginning of August we moved. We simply moved back to my parents house to get ready for another move. In the middle of August we moved again. We enjoyed our time at my parents house. Kenya was able to see some of her family while we prepared to move. We had a ton of fun there! Kenya even got to see grandma and grandpa Draper! We were all so excited about that. More about that in a later post!
So where we are living now, is different in every way. The weather is different, the people are different, the food is different, the culture is different and our day and night are different. I guess it is not different in every way. People still drive on the same side of the street and our seasons are still the same. It took us 20 hours of traveling to get here.
We really have had a nice welcome and our new employer has been very kind. We got quite the bonus when we got here to help us settle in and our rent is free!! We also get 3 meals a day free for 5 days a week. Really, we got the deal of a life time with this job!
Oh, you may be saying... "Well, where did you move to?" I guess I left that detail out. Please, please if you don't already know leave a comments and make a guess.

Update overload is just around the Corner!

I know that it has been a while for updates, but we have found a way to finally access our blog. However, it still may be a few days because we have so much to update! So stay tuned and thanks for following.