To the market

In an attempt to 1) Get a Christmas gift for Dave and 2) Get lunch and a little exercise, Kim and I went to the market to have a look around.

As I said before, it's a snowy one out there.

In a quaint way, it can look like this:

Or like this (have fun sloshing through that stuff!)And we managed to find a little Ma La Tang joint in the market where we enjoyed lunch. Malatang is probably the simplest and yummy concept. Just pick out your veggies, and then boil them, and add spices and sauce. And yum yum, it's good! and then we tackled the market for our Christmas gifts. This is a brand new market that just went up between the 2 subway construction sites. It's almost like old days were we got all of our good at the market. Kim found some nice clothes for Moyer, and I did manage to find something for Dave... finally!

Check out the snow! This is what it's like when there are no snow plows, only shovels and brooms to clear the roads!

Christmas again, snow included

We had our annual Christmas banquet this past Saturday with our students, complete with Korean pop songs and great food. When we stepped outside into the very frigid air, I noticed a couple of snow flakes coming down. Well, when we woke the next morning it was a winter wonderland around here. (compare Korean camera poses to American ones, both very beautiful girls though! :)


Snow hasn't happened for a couple of years, so it was actually very fun... Fun until we had to round of 14 kids and take a bus to another town 1.5 hours away to be commissioned by the Korean Church sending their youth with us to our Habitat project. Brrr... COLD!!

Driving in Tianjin with 3-6 inches of slush on the road is a harrowing experience! I gripped the car with white knuckles on the way home last night in the taxi telling the driver to slow down or be careful. I even offered to drive once, feeling a lot more certain I could manuver snowy roads better than the average Chinese taxi driver:) Dave got out and pushed our cab at one spinning tire point...

So, today is Monday, and we have enjoyed sleeping in, watching the blizzard around us, also sun coming in the windows and huddling under our down comforter and by the space heater.

4 months

And the ever-expanding waistline:)
Dave's excited to be a dad, can't you tell?

Ahwww...

Mommy the jungle gym...


Ok Kim, I think you're ready to pop! I'm just going to post a little note to little Keturah,
Dear Keturah, if you were able to listen to my request on the phone, then you'll understand that I'd love it if you'll be ready to come out tomorrow morning when Dave and I go to the doctor for our next appointment. It would be so convenient for us, though we know your Father above knows and numbers your days. But, if you come to see us in this world tomorrow, then we can just pop upstairs and see you! We'd love to be here for your birth, and not in a Miao village somewhere in Yunnan! And I'm sure all of your family is just so incredibly excited to see your precious little face! So, if you can hear this, it's time to MOVE!
Love,
Aunt Katie

Nativity

Since we will be leaving December 24th for our Habitat trip with our 20 kids, we realized we won't be around for much of the Christmas holiday, and also don't have any time really to go looking for a tree (a huge undertaking here, especially if you refuse to get a fake one!) But still, the house NEEDS some cozy Christmas decorations. Well, for the past 7 or so years I've been aware of a man who is a local brother who carves lots of beautiful things out of wood, and more recently, I've been eyeing his nativity scenes. This past Saturday we had a Christmas Bazaar at our school and his wares were being sold. Dave and I agreed that a hand-made, camphor wood, Nativity set would be a wonderful and timeless Christmas gift for one another (even with a pricey tag), and agreed upon purchasing it. Luckily, most of my ornaments are angels, and so I found a way to hang them, along with a star, above the nativity scene and am very pleased with the Christmas decor in our little home this year. I hope our children will enjoy it for years to come (like I did when I was a child!)

Veggie Delight

Finding a quick meal isn't always that convenient when everything is made from scratch around here at home (oily street food is another story entirely). So, yesterday I endeavored to make the vegetarian frozen pizzas that are not to be found anywhere in Tianjin.
(we cheated, that is TRADER JOE'S fake sausage we brought back this summer:)
With Ayi's help, and some chinese tortilla's, I assembled as many small pizza pies as would fit in one of our minute freezer drawers. I must admit, they're pretty good, and I don't know how much longer they will last! (we've already successfully eaten 4 in the last 2 days!)

Visiting with Janet

My "aunt" Janet came for a visit to Tianjin bearing gifts and lots of great conversation and fellowship this week. Like I explained to my taxi driver friend "wo de mama de jie jie de zhang fu de jie jie lai le" (my mother's older sister's husband's older sister is coming). Though not an immediate aunt, we have mutually adopted each other and are "family". Janet has spent many years coming to china to provide counseling for ELIC teachers and training for counselors. I've always appreciated her visits myself as well.

Well, I was doubly blessed this time, receiving gifts of love from home too!! Thank you Grandma T for a beautiful hand-knit baby blanket, and mom for timely maternity clothes... I'm definitely needing them now!

Though our visit was so short, it was so well worth it, we so enjoyed Janet's time with us here.

Hong Kong in December

I figured out exactly 2 years ago we were in Hong Kong, for school purposes, at exactly the same time. This time we had a teachers' conference for all Christian schools in Asia. Most made, except for Thailand of course, as they were unable to fly out of the Bangkok airport.

Being with all the other schools was neat, as was the chance to talk to many of the speakers, a few who were professors and friends of mine from Wheaton. I EVEN ran into my old swim team captain now living in Indonesia... that was really cool.

Dave and I enjoyed Hong Kong as well, this time had much more time to explore. It's really a beautiful city, complete with ocean and mountains and amazing lights at night. It was so interesting to be in a place decorated for Christmas with carols playing in every shop.Between starbucks out on the harbor, thai, indian and middle eastern food, trains up to the victoria peak, ferrys across the harbor and miles and miles of walking, we had fun. And of course, we couldn't miss out on visiting our friends at Crossroads again-- had a WONDERFUL time there being blessed and encouraged by our friends and the vision of the team there.