Luo Fushan

A wonderful friend of ours and his awesome uncle offered to take our family for a little site seeing. We told them that we wanted to see the country, the no-modernized China. And they delivered! It was great! We went to a mountain which has a military base at the bottom of one side and on the other side is a touristy place which use to be an infirmary for the military. It was about a 2 hours drive and we went in their car. It was really beautiful! VERY green! I miss the green living in the city. We walked around the first place, which also is a famous temple for Taoism. The shrines were wonderful and very colorful. The only bad thing about it was there was so much incense burning that it kind of hurt the throat. This first picture is of some of the shrines at the temple. Really, we had a great time and it was a day trip!! Our friend, Pascal's uncle grew up right there on that mountain, so it was wonderful to hear what he had to say. He told us how things had changed and what the meaning of something were. We could not have asked for a better Monday!
This is a picture of the mountain was we were approaching it. A real mountain. They have a tendency here to call anything raise a little higher than surrounding areas a mountain. At least here in the city that is true. It looks snow capped, but it was not, that is just a cloud. In fact, it was a little hot there. This was not even a week ago and we are still getting too hot during the days. Anyone complaining about snow, I will trade you in a heart beat! I would rather be too cold than too hot!

This is a wishing tree. People would buy the fabric, make a wish and then it would get placed on the tree. It looked so awesome. The closest thing to fall here.
This is the opening of the temple.

The details were so amazing! Jack, the guy who grew up here said that the way the roof was built it never gets dirty.







This is a well that is very deep. It was a well to eternity! Pretty cool.
This shows how much smoke there was around.

Again, the details! This was on the roof.

We were told that is tree is 5000 years old! WOW!
That is Jack, our tour guide, on the left.
Here we are eating so silky tofu! It was quite good. It is something unique from this area.
This looked like it was a dragon waterside. Pascal insured us it wasn't. If we stated at this place I am sure we would try to see for sure it was!














This is pickled pork meat hanging to dry. We actually had some at lunch. It was yummy!
This is the place we had lunch. It was an organic place and very delicious!
Here is a spider Robert found. It was big!

These picture are cute. I was just trying to get a good picture to send out for Christmas of Kenya. I thought right next to some bamboo would be great. I didn't get one that I loved.



Robert eating a whole fish. Yes, we do this often here. Eyes, head, bones and all!
A different temple on the other side of the mountain. The road to get to the top and down the other side reminded us a lot of the the "Going to the Sun Road" in Glacier Park.

This is a very small village on the side of the mountain. They had electricity, but it seemed they were a self sufficient village. The way this village looked, reminded me a lot of Native American villages back home. It was run down and dirty. We were told that the government has taken hold of the property of this village and uses it as a tourist place.



This is some bamboo that was right near the village.








The river we crossed over to get to the mountain.
Again, we had a great time! We hope to have many more day trips to see the great places around us! We are excited to travel and see more of China!

Thanksgiving FHE

So, for family home evening last week we began a "Things that we are thankful for" chat. We drew hand turkeys and began to write things we are thankful for. Ever night before we go to bed we write at least one thing per person that we are thankful for. Right now we have these things:
family
music
baba's (blankets)
Amy (our nanny)
food
Daddy
coloring
colors
kitties
western toilets
prayer
unselfish people
Jesus
Jesus name (this one is quite funny because EVER night I ask Kenya and the first thing she say is "Jesus name" I do not think this is by accident either. I think that she just really knows more and has more faith in the gospel than I do sometimes. Really, we would have nothing if it were not for Jesus's name. What a smart girl!)
There are other, but I don't remember them at this time. There are so many things we are grateful for and it is good to express it on paper. I think I will take a picture at the end to show what we made.

School trip.

I guess about every two months of the 2 days of testing the school takes all of the children on what they call a picnic. They take a day trip for fun. In November we went to a history museum and then to a smaller amusement park. The museum was awesome, even though we only have like 25 minutes there. It was a museum about the opium wars with the British. It was I am sure the edited Chinese version, but was still cool to see. We only made it through about 1/3 of it. It was cool to have the students walk around with us and tell us the story and see the pride of the country as they told us. We were quite disappointed in the park though, it was small and very dirty. We had lunch with all of the teachers at a restaurant and that took up most of our time at the park. We had passes to ride the rides, but we did not get to do anything. We were able to bring Kenya with us and she behaved really well! Especially when when we had more than 3 hours on the bus that day. We enjoyed ourselves that day.







This was our guide from the bus. He loved Kenya!
Eating lunch. The lunch was quite good!

I will say again. Most of my time was saying "Thank you" to all the people gathered around us and saying how cute Kenya was! She draws quite the crowd!

UPDATES: I hope this is the last of the updates,

Here are some pictures and videos of Kenya that you cannot miss.

What a cutie!

Here is the cake Robert got for me for my birthday. It looked great and was huge! Thanks!
Robert and I hired a guy to dig to America. Here he is hard at work. We figure it would be faster and maybe Grandma and Papa will come visit through the whole rather than flying. At the rate he was going it should be done by Christmas. Who is coming to visit?

Kenya still loves to help clean in anyway. She mops, sweeps, does the laundry, dishes, and putting things away. She is such a big helper and I am learning to let her help and not worry about having to clean up after her help.
Just playing one day in cubes.

This video is of Kenya talking to mama (Grandma) on the phone. She was telling her about our trip to the zoo and talking about a book with a Lion that goes to sleep. (Shi zi if Chinese for lion, you can hear her say "shi zi roar.") Really, we need to do more video of her speaking Chinese, her vocabulary is getting bigger all the time!

Here is Kenya singing. One day she just started sing along with me. This is one of her favorite songs! I was so impressed to hear that she knows so many words to the song. She has been singing more and more.

Yaohua School Halloween Party

We had a great party planned for the school. They adapted it and here is their take on a Halloween carnival.
Here is the party from the 2nd floor of the school. Lots and lots of people. When Robert and I proposed the party it was just for the International section of the school. The school took that idea and invited over 1200 people. I must say, the school pulled it off very well. I think everyone had a lot of fun. The only part that was not fun was the trick0-or-treating. There are 7 teachers here and we thought that everyone was going to share handing out candy, however it was just Robert, Laura (who had only been in China 1 day) and myself. That's right folks we handled ALL of the trick-or-treaters. I went home with a sore back from bending over and getting the candy. It had to have been well over 1000 students that got candy. We really have a great nanny, because she looked after Kenya the hour that I was handing out candy.
This is the administration of the school and some people visiting form America. Thanks for the American goodies.
Here is a picture of the ground level of the party. They had these giant party poppers. Really, they were like 3 feet long and full confetti. You can see a little of it in the air. I got to pop one. It was great!
Here is a look at Robert's costume and one of the 9th grade students, Jackie.
Robert loved scaring the students. Of coarse! It was fun to watch too.
Me and Amy at the party. Really, should a zombie be smiling? Lois, what were you thinking.

Robert and I were Yaohua student zombies. Our make-up was done quite well. Amy our nanny came with us to the party and Pascal is a senior who we did his make-up to be a vampire. He had a trash bag cape.
Kenya playing in Amy's hat.
I was putting make-up on myself and Robert. Kenya was watching and grabbed a brush and started to get Isis ready. She has really grown found of her dog. She takes it to the potty, tells it what it can and cannot do, feeds it, wants to shower it and so many more things. I think a baby doll my be on her Christmas list.

Here is a video of the chaos at the beginning of the party. Those white things standing up are what we used for trick-or-treating. We stood inside and had to bend down cut out window to give the candy. That was not fun at all! But the kids loved it.

Happy Halloween!

China does not celebrate Halloween, but we have many friends that live in a very large villa. There community is almost all foreigners and so it is the place to go to traditional American holidays. Some of our friends here organized trick-or-treating on Saturday night and then we had a party afterward. (Because Halloween in on Sunday) It was fun! Kenya was this gorgeous ladybug! She had fun and even said "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" to most of the people. We brought our friend Pascal with us too! It was his first Halloween. We made him bob for apples. Really, what is Halloween without bobbing for apples? Enjoy the pictures and videos
We have our school Halloween party tonight. I will post picture of those sometime later.


There were at least 3 lady bugs at this party! I think there were actually 2 more.


This is the golf cart at the villa where the party was. AWESOME!

Sorry about the video quality, it is the low light that made it so bad! My girl is so cute!

UPDATES: Yaohua School "You've Got Talent"

This was a talent show that the international section put on. They invited Robert to dance just 2 days before the show. Here are some of the performances that we think were a little more traditional that we would like to share.