Dinner with Friends

Here's a post draft I found sitting on my blogger dashboard. Weird that I didn't post it but here it is now!



Our neighbor, Catherina, really wanted to hang out with us again but we had had a crazy week so we didn't want to go anywhere but we invited her over for dinner and she was ecstatic. She brought her friend over and we made breaded pork steaks, cucumber salad, and sauteed green beans...

Oh, and noodles and bread. Delish!

(Sorry I couldn't turn the pic)

Getting ready to cook with all our goodies from the produce market!

Cookin!

Teaching our new Chinese friend how to bread chicken like my momma does!

And then they looked through my DVD...which they loved!!!

It was such a fun night. We watched Date Night and had an awesome dinner, they loved both. Just the fact that we were able to make friends with Chinese people outside of our school is great and they're great at that!

Hong Kong here we come and go...

This is my first post today (I will have at least two more). Every time I thought about posting something for you wonderful people I remembered that I had to do it on my phone and I was tired and had homework and blah. Now here we are, more than two weeks after my last post and I have so much info and pictures for you.
To begin our journey of March we headed to Hong Kong on the 5th to refresh our visas. I say refresh because we literally just had to cross the border and return but we went with our friend Erin because we didn't know what to do. She had to actually renew her visa which takes at least 6 hours. So we palled around with her and went shopping. Not Annaliisa's idea of a good time but she was a trooper.

(On the train to Hong Kong)

(Hong Kong)

Although we didn't see much in Hong Kong, we did see some adorable doggies. There were some people outside of Forever 21 (sort of like ARF or FBR in Fresno) and they had the pups out there and one was a huge St. Bernard. He was handsome.

Erin found out there was a Forever 21 in Hong Kong and was giddy as a schoolgirl. She freaked and we had fun just seeing her reaction.

Happy day!

Besides going to Hong Kong, we have been having fun exploring the many things our neighborhood can offer. About two weeks ago there was a guy selling pineapples.

 He peeled them for you too! Coolest thing ever so naturally we got one.

 

Oh, and outside of our metro station there are these guys who sit on their scooters asking people if they want rides but if a po-po comes they all disappear. LOL. It was so funny to watch them scatter and then resume their positions immediately after the threat was gone. Luckily I was able to snap some pictures.

There they are...

And there they...

 Scatter!

Hey!

Since I can get on Blogger at work I actually updated my Itinerary Page!! And maybe now I can add other pages too! Ooh exciting!

I will post after our exciting Sunday/Monday adventures!!

60 days have come and gone!

It's so crazy! I can believe we've already been here for 60 days and no I'm not counting down, it's just time for us to refresh our visa. We realized yesterday that time was upon us and we had a mini freak out cuz we hadn't planned anything but luckily one of the other foreign teachers is going to Hong Kong the exact day we need to! So we're gonna have a girl's trip to Hong Kong! Yay!

Tonight we went to dinner with our neighbor, Catherina! Yeah that's right, a real Chinese friend outside of work and family. We met her all on our own. After dinner we walked through the underground mall to escape the rain and found a Dairy Queen! Yep awesomeness!! So we had lots of fun!

I also started my own class on Sat. I was a hit! Three kids signed up because of me and I get a second class this coming Saturday! I'm enjoying it more now that I have my own class. I feel more comfortable but I still hope I just make enough money with my book when I release it ;).

Pictures are of us with Catharina, and the medication is what they gave me at the hospital for my chest cold!

What is it about Garry Marshall that makes you feel better on a sick day?

So I am home sick today :(. Last night I got a terrible fever while shopping at IKEA (I know, a travesty!!) and now I am at home watching movies which isn't so bad but I'd rather not be sick.

Yesterday, as previously mentioned we went to IKEA which was pretty cool. I wish I hadn't been sick so that I could've fully enjoyed it. It's just like the IKEA's in the states except everything is cheaper. :D. We will definitely be going back!

Since the last time I posted we also had a gathering for Annaliisa's birthday with my bro and sis-in-law. That was fun but for some reason everyone eats dinner really late so even though they left at 1 they had only been here for a few hours. But we had a great time. Annaliisa made pork (cuz we couldn't find beef) burgers an we wrapped that in lettuce. She also made some potatoes (you know the kind you get for breakfast) and I made a cucumber salad. Delish!

We also found a foreign supermarket and while it was expensive we bought a few things and it was nice just to see familiar things :). Fun times! Now I gotta wrap this up and do some writing!

I know, I know!

I haven't posted in a while. Well, since we got back to work after new year break things have been busy. We spend our mornings doing school work and catching up on American tv then we go to work from 3 or 5-8ish and by the time we get home it's almost time for bed. So we've just been living life in china. Today marks the warmest day since we've been here. It's 77 with some humidity but from what I hear the humidity will get much worse. To day I (yes alone!) went to Carrefour (basically our target greatland) and got a few things including a hanging rack for clothes cuz we needed it! We've been doin a lot of cooking at home. Annaliisa's having fun coming up with new recipes and I tried my hand at fried rice which turned out pretty tasty. It's been fun just living in our very own place in a far away country. So grown up!

Annaliisa's birthday was last week and we celebrated with the staff at work. They got her a cake and everyone gave a little mini speech and wished her a happy birthday (I think that's a tradition I'm bringing home with me to the states :).

Included are pics of Annaliisa's birthday dinner (we went to a western restaurant), her bday cupcake (lol), our laundry, bday celebration, and our sweating walls!

Are you supposed to see your breath in your own apartment?

It's been so cold here and yes we can see our breath in our apartment...not cool. But we're dealing. We've been on vacation for over a week so we've just been hanging out and watching tv. We started by trying to go to ABC.com so we could watch Once Upon A Time but it only works in USA! Grr! Then I thought maybe we could use Hulu. Nope, that doesn't work in China either. Bummer. Now, if you know us then you know how much tv we watch and how big of a bummer this is. So we had to go through and hand pick six shows that we could not live without. Those of you who watch a lot of tv, which shows would you pick? It's hard to do! The rest is on a wait list that we'll get to when we can. Oh and we got a new tv to watch these shows on!

Yesterday we decided to get out of the apartment. We went to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial and Yuexiu Park. The memorial was amazing and the park was humongous. Mom, remind me to never take you to this park. There are so many stairs I thought I might die! But it was beautiful. We saw the five goats statue, and yes it's exactly as it sounds. We also saw a wall from the Ming dynasty. It was a cool park.