Busy month

One of these days I will tell you all about how crazy and busy the last month has been, but it will take a lot more than a blog post to fill you all in on that. For now, I will just fill you in on mei hong, which I have been meaning to do. She says she has been praying lately, since the divorce, and more since moving out here, and that she feels as if someone is listening. She is well-read and has travelled widely, though, so we find within her some typical post-modern concerns about the Bible and Christianity. Pray we can be given the words to say. We plan to visit her soon with a loaf of pumpkin bread. Pray we can all find time for a meaningful conversation, and that the Spirit will move.

Focusing in

We have been blessed lately with the opportunity to focus in on those who are really serious about learning more about Him. We have six, three guys, three girls, from among the students we have been working with, who seem to be curious and dedicated. That is a blessing. Please join us in prayer for these six people. We are amazed at their hunger for learning and their persistence in searching Him out. He is truly not far from each one of them. Pray that circumstances in their lives will encourage their spiritual growth. Pray for their courage and conviction. I won't name them now, but remember the special six in your quiet time before the Father.

Mei Hong

I have been meaning to blog about a friend of ours, mei hong. I want you to be reminded of her and pray for her. We have talked about her before, when we first met her she was with her husband and some friends of theirs in a restaurant, and one of the friends was a smart little girl who was singing in English and caught our attention. We got to know them better in the weeks following that meeting, and found out we had some things in common: love of language, music, travel, yoga,etc. Sometimes the friendship between us would feel comfortable and warm for a while, but sometimes we would sense a lot of tension coming from mei hong or her husband when we would meet up with them outside. Then one day, mei hong came over to help us negotiate with our landlady, and she told us: she and he were divorced now, it had already gone through, and she was looking to purchase a new place. Shocked we were, to say the least. But we noticed that night, a new openness that had not been there before. She had always changed the subject when spiritual topics came up in the past, but now she was ready to talk. We talked for a long time that night, about how God has always been the anchor for our marriage and for each of us individually. She was receptive. We were amazed.

Then later, when she told us she had purchased a house, we told her that we were planning a move as well, and then it was time for all of us to be shocked when she said that the place she had purchased was in Xiao He Shan, and we said, that is where we were moving also!!!

This will be installment one, as phoebe is crying. More to come about mei hong soon.

Happy Halloween

The Chinese do not really celebrate Halloween. But we do! This year we went to the international school to a Halloween party/ Fall festival. It was fun. It was strange to hear so much English in one place. Hallie hung out with her friend Bliss and met another friend. Liam played guns with a couple of boys. Eryn ran after them some.

Hallie dressed as Hannah Montana.




Eryn was a cow girl. She would tell me that she was not wearing a cowboy hat, it was a cowgirl hat!


Liam was batman.



Jon dressed up too!

I did not really mean to be a party pooper, but I did not know that Jon was going to dress up and I did not have a chance to get a costume together. Maybe next year.

On Halloween night we ate at Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut usually decorates for Halloween and the servers wear "costumes". It has become our tradition to eat there. When we got home and the kids were getting into their pj's, there was a knock at the door. We actually had Trick or treaters! Most were wearing costumes. Margaret's daughter, Elaine's son and some of their friends came. They invited Hallie to go out with them. She threw on most of her costume and Jon went out with them. She actually got some candy! I think I will be better prepared next year. I gave out little spider and bat rings that we had left-over. The kids really, really liked them. Maybe next year, I can prepare goodie bags. Everyone had a good time, and that is what counts!

Pumpkin

Pumpkin or nan gua is easy to find. But what the Chinese call pumpkin we might call squash. The big one in this picture is a nan gua. It is not really carvable. We did find a small regular pumpkin. A lady was selling them for decorations. Most of the ones she had had Chinese characters on them. Unfortunately this one grew too many gross black moldy spots before we could carve it for a jack-o-lantern.

We did however cut up the big "pumpkin" and made a bunch of pumpkin puree.

We baked the pieces in the oven for about an hour (until soft) then we took the peel off and ran it through the blender. This pumpkin yielded at least 6 cups of puree. I have already made 3 batches of pumpkin muffins and one batch of pumpkin cookies. I will need to get another one before Thanksgiving. We love pumpkin!



Since we could not carve a pumpkin this Halloween, what did we do?

We carved orange candles that I brought this year! We "carved" them with tooth picks and then colored the carved spots with black marker (Jon did not color his).



These won't rot!

They really ate it!

Jake and Shelly came to Hangzhou! Rob and Amber Jill came too. While we were out we found a street food stall that was selling some fried scorpions on a stick. What luck, there were three bugs on the stick. One for each of them! Yep, they really ate them. I have pictures as proof. How did it taste? Ask them!

See it's little legs!

trip to Xi'an

At the beginning of the month, Jon had a whole week off from classes for National Day. We thought we would take a short trip to Xi'an. The kids have been studying ancient China in school, so this would be a great field trip. The trip was not a bad trip, it just did not exactly turn out how we had originally planned.

The main problem is that most of the Chinese people also have 8 days of vacation at the same time. The train system is over loaded and it is very hard to get tickets. We did manage to get tickets to go to Xi'an and only one day later than we had originally planned. We could not buy return tickets while we were in Hangzhou. We packed up and went any way. We knew there was a chance that we would get stuck in Xi'an.

We took a hard sleeper train. This was our car. We had 4 top bunks. All in all it was not bad. Our car was not too noisy or smokey. The train trip was 23 hours long.

The country side on the way to Xi'an was beautiful!

Jon and I spent a lot of time just gazing out the window. We also read books on our Kindles. The kids played cards and video games.

We saw several sites while we were in Xi'an. But the most notable one was the famous Terracotta Warriors.

They really are amazing. These Terracotta Warriors were unearthed in the late 70's when a farmer accidentally found them while drilling a well. They had been buried for nearly 2000 years and no one knew they were there.

Xi'an and the Terracotta warriors are some of the "must sees" in China. I could go see them again! The kids really liked them too. (You can't tell from the picture, though).

Once we got to Xi'an we did get tickets to return home to Hangzhou. The only problem was that the tickets were not until Oct. 11. That was about 4 days longer than we had wanted to stay. We had plenty of time to poke around the city. We walked along the city wall, rang the bell at the bell tower, climbed the drum tower, saw a shadow puppet show, ate some great food at the Muslim quarter, bought some souvenirs. We didn't have to rush at all. When Oct. 11th finally came we were very glad to be on the train and headed for Hangzhou!

We had soft sleeper tickets. This meant that we were all in one room and we could close the door. The train ride home was about 22 hours.

We arrived at our apartment in time for Jon to change clothes, grab his books and take a taxi out to school. He arrived just on time for his class!

We spent the next few days recovering from our vacation!

While we were in Xi'an, Hallie helped us order food at a restaurant. She wrote the dishes we wanted in Chinese characters! The waitress could read them too! She is really improving.

What did we learn? We probably won't try to travel during National Day Holiday next year.