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!