April in China

My first hair cut in China....7 yuan or $1!

Lovely cherry blossoms. Come on Spring! I loved it and Lucky cried the whole time. When she got of she said, "I'M SO GLAD TO BE ALIVE" and she wasn't kidding or faking.....heehee.......

Not a great photo, but mama isn't happy baby is wandering.....

Not many zoo regulations. I could have touched the grizz. He looks so sad. Needs to be out of the cage!

Tourism Competition. Rita is in the middle--black jacket & white scarf.

Post-graduates having fun at the beach.

Unbelievable.....we are already hitting the first week of May. So much to do, see.....so little time. April was an eventful month filled with my first haircut in China, classes, students, classes, students and so on. We were able to have a BBQ with Terry's students at Old Man Stone Beach. They had prepared so many skewers of meat, vegetables and Tofu we thought we would pop, but they kept feeding us.....I think some chicken hearts....fortunately we didn't get sick. They are so happy to work together and have their foreign teacher join them. They treated us like a king and queen--always polite, respectful and giving.

Later in the month we joined in a competition with my students. My students have a "tourism" major and there was a "tour guide" competition. One of my students (Rita) made it to the finals and asked that Terry and I be her "tourists." She had to lead us on a tour of the Olympic Sailing Center. Each finalist had to lead a tour, answer test questions and then perform a talent. Rita was the only finalist to do her tour in English. Five of the nine finalists were my Freshman students. They were awesome. It was a fun evening as all of my students were there to see the competition. Rita took second place--unheard of for an undergraduate.

The cherry blossoms were out at Zhouzhong Park and all over town. They were spectacular. We had a nice afternoon at the park (which is huge) and ended up riding a carnival ride (well, I did) and going to the small zoo. The zoo was hilarious--one side was small animals--rabbits, monkeys, goats and DOGS. Yes, there were pet dogs in the zoo. The other side housed a couple tigers, lions, grizzly bears, wolves and a beautiful spotted leopard. The leopard had new cubs (3) and she was nervous. The babies would wander out by the fence and she would pick them up by the head and take them back in the cave. The little ones were darling and couldn't have been more than a week old--they could barely walk. I could have watched them all day.

We had to say goodbye to two beautiful girls in our Branch. Young Mei and Stella are both headed back to Korea. Stella is one of my young women and was just baptized in December. It will be wonderful for her to be back with her family in Korea, but we will miss her so much. She is such a light and so sweet. We took her and Christina to lunch after they finished their intensive Chinese language testing. They had lasagna for the first time and loved it. They are so talented and we adore them. We also had two eight year old children baptized at the Branch. What a spirit there. We have a new family from Brazil so our little branch has Chinese, Korean, English and now Portuguese to deal with.