Avery

Today we got the incredible opportunity to take care of a foster child for an evening!

 

As some of you know, Jenny has been volunteering her time at a local foster home. Well Jenny has grown attached to a cute little girl named Avery. She’s around Liam’s age and was found incredibly malnourished at an orphanage. This foster home took her in, and is taking wonderful care of her now. She’s still very skinny, but she’s getting better and better!

 

This foster home allows you to help out by taking the kids from the foster home to go out and play, etc. This helps the people at the foster home because they work there 24/7 with the children and this helps the children so they don’t get cooped up in a house all day and they also get more familiar with foreigners.

 

We got to take care of little Avery from 2:30-6:30. Jenny brought her home as I was waking up the kids from their naps. When she got home, Levi immediately fell in love with her. He went up and cuddled with her and said, “She’s so cute. I love her so much!”

 

It was great taking care of her. We hope to continue to take care of her as time goes on. Maybe once a week? We’ll have to see. :)

 

We took some pictures, but we are not clear as to whether or not we are allowed to post them here on a public website. If we get permission, we’ll put up pictures as soon as we can!

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Jenny at the village

There is a famous restaurant in the area called “The Village”. It’s famous because it serves decent western food; our dining there is not rare. :)

However, this is not the village Jenny went to. She went to an actual village. This was a little while back while I was out of town working at a camp for two weeks. She was crazy/incredible enough to take our two small boys there! It’s an hour-long bus ride each way.

You can see a video of it here! If you are not on our site, you can come watch the video by clicking here.

Hope you got a good idea of what a village looks like here in the Xi’An, China region!

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

At the market today…

Guess what this is…



In case you are all out of guesses, it’s pig’s nose. Yum! (I haven’t tried it, just for your information.)

Until next time,
Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Sunshine International Camp

Hello! I’m sorry it’s been a while to blog about this, but I got back and then just as I was about to blog about the camp I was at for two weeks, our power went out for a full day. Ick!

 

Throughout the camp, we enjoyed some awesome experiences. I had a group of 10 students which I co-coached with a Chinese girl. The students were 30% American, 70% Chinese. We played several games and then discussed the deeper meanings and challenges of those games. We had lectures which focused on several different topics including: leadership, relationships, Chinese & American culture, finding our purpose in life, and several others. I’m sure the students learned a ton.

 

I know that some of their lives will never be the same. Many shared about how they’ve changed for the better throughout those twelve days; I’m very grateful they did. I myself got to have a great opportunity facilitating those life changing moments.

 

My wife was home the whole time with the kids; she’s such a champ! Our kids have a wonderful mommy. :) She was very great at taking some pictures and videos while I was gone. We’ll post some of those soon!

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

But only if it comes with a knife…

So we were out at Ren Ren Le (a local store), I needed to snag some AAA batteries for our air conditioner remote. I saw some pretty cool deals out there, but none like this:

 

“Obviously, if I get AAA batteries, I will also need a Swiss Army knife, so this is perfect!”

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam

Today, the weather will be…

A couple weeks ago, I was teaching at a local kindergarten, when all of a sudden some random guy just just walked in and asked me if I wanted to read the weather for a local news station. I agreed, so after class we went outside. He hands me this sheet full of Chinese Characters which I had to quickly translate into pinyin so I could read it more fluidly. I was very thankful that I could read almost all of it (thank you, Skritter!).

 

Another Chinese teacher was going to read the more difficult stuff and then I was going to read the more simple part (which was still around two or three paragraphs of weather information). I watch her read the weather first and she… just… dominates. I mean, she’s doing hand motions and exaggerating her voice and sounding so excited about the upcoming (extremely hot) weather. Dumbfounded, I was just staring at her, jaw dropped, thinking to myself, “Oh… Em… Gee… They want ME to read like HER!”

 

They turn the camera to me and I read the weather, stumbling through a few parts, and probably seeming incredibly boring. I felt pretty happy with how well I did, but as soon as I finished, the cameraman kinda slowly lowered the camera and said that I had to do more actions. I was thinking to myself, “This is going to be rough.”

 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do all they needed me to do. I had to go home to meet up with the family, and ran out of time. We don’t have cable so I never saw if I actually made it to the big time, but now every time I go down the street, everyone is like, “There’s the weatherman!” (I’m totally lying, they don’t say that.) I don’t think I actually made it on TV but I know that I read a report to a self-satisfactory degree and I was proud of that. I was being recorded by microphone and camera with around 10 Chinese people around me watching me do it. I was happy with myself hanging in there. (I don’t usually put myself out there like that, believe it or not!)

 

That was super stressful though!

 

Things in Xi’an are going really well! The weather is currently standing strong at around 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit). The humidity is around 55% and we have a nice breeze coming in from the southwest at around 14km per hour. We have some scattered clouds which I expect to hang around until sometime 3 years from now. Tonight we might see some scattered showers and the wind will die down a bit, bringing us a nice, sunny day tomorrow. ;)

 

Until next time,

Jeremy, Jenny, Levi, & Liam