Take time to laugh

There are two more!

2012-01-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

So for some reason I couldn't get these pictures to add on the last post, so this is a continuation of my China reflection!

This is my dear friend Solonge. She is from France and also attended CNU. Solonge was also introduced to the church in China and started coming to the branch with us. She also began taking the missioanry discussions from two of the guys in our group who served there missions in France. I know that was not a coincidence. It was great because she was able to recieve the discussions in her native language, even though her English is amazing!

And lastly, this is a beautiful picture of Joseph's baptism. There is a pool up on like the seventh floor of the bulding we met in for church. This was such a sweet moment. I will always chersh my time that I had in China.

Reflections of China

2012-01-29T23:13:00.004-07:00

So, I kind of haven't posted a blog in...well a really long time. I guess that's what happens when you're in love, and there are just more important and exciting things happening in life. But life is wonderful, and I'm now almost a month into my semester at school and am really loving my classes. I'm doing three dance classes: clogging, ballet and the collegiate world team. My ballet teacher is the most awesome ever! She's a classically trained ballerina, like in her 70's and tiny, in the best shape, and can still drop into the splits! Totally an inspiration! I'm taking organ lessons, doing a sound engineering class and a hymn class, which I love. This last week one of our assignments was to memorize all the verses to "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief." It was hard work, and I feel so good to say that I did it! My last class is my Chinese class. Of course I love it, because I love Chinese, but can I say difficult? Yes. It's actually the highest level of Chinese they offer here, and I am in a class with a bunch of mandarin speaking returned missionaries. So it's a great push, and sometimes I really struggle, but it is good.

But I wanted to use the rest of this post to reflect on my time in China. You will have to excuse the disorganized pictures. I posted them in a random order, and I can't seem to switch them around.

It's so interesting to me to think back at what I was doing three years ago and never would have imagined the things Heavenly Father has allowed me to experience, and the "old friends" he has blessed me to see and meet. I found myself in China teaching English and then a year and half later, I found myself back in China (but up north in Beijing, instead of southern) studying Chinese!!! Sometimes I wondered, "What has led me here?" While I was in China this last time, the spirit taught me something very important, and that is...

One of the most important reasons while I was in China was to be a missionary. Because China is not open to missionaries and the preaching of the gospel at this time, the MEMBERS of the church in China ARE the Lord's missionaries!! I felt so blessed to be a part of the members there and that the Savior trusted us to do a "work without words," sharing our light through examples, and letting the natives see how LDS members live.

Along with "a work without words" among the natives of China, I never thought of all of the people from all around the world I would get to be friends with! Being at an international school, I was able to share the gospel and become friends with people from Italy, Korea, Ghana, Dubai, Iraq and many other places!! I learned SO much from all of these people! I also got offered many alcoholic drinks and through the many kindly declines, that is how many of these people started asking us Mormons questions about our faith. They started to see that we lived "differently" and they were curious about our beliefs. They saw the light and the happiness that naturally comes from the way we live.

This is one of my Chinese friends, Catherine. I met her out running on the track one day. She is a sweetheart.

This is my Chinese friend, Sofie. She is a doll! I met her on the bus one day on my way to church and then met her for lunch the next week. The first thing she said to me when we met for lunch was, "I want to go to church with you!" I was heart broken, as I had to explain that Chinese law doesn't allow us to do that, and I couldn't even tell her when and where the Chinese branch met. She was so sad, but we are still great friends.

I got to teach the sunbeams at the international branch while in China. This was one of the handsome little boys in my class.

This was my Chinese class. We had Italians, Koreans, Dubains, and us Americans all learning Chinese in the same class.

My dear friend Veronica from Italy.

My awesome friends Hamada and Abdu who are from Dubai who were in our class. They took us American girls out for Arabic food one day.

So, cool story about this guy! This is my friend Joseph from Ghana who was introduced to the gospel by my friends Brett and Adam at the beginning of the semester. Joseph was baptized the week before we left! The Lord really does place people in each other's paths for a reason. I bet Joseph wasn't thinking that when he came to China he would be introduced to and join the LDS church by members from America who are studying Chinese in Beijing and he would be baptized, but the Lord had a plan, and he is involved in every detail. It was the sweetest baptism in the world. I don't think there was a dry eye when Joseph stood up to bear his testimony after his baptism. This humble guy is full of so much love and had the biggest smile accross his face that entire baptism day.

Bartering at the silk market. These are two of my Chinese friends who I would always talk to at the silk market.

My friend Natalie from Korea! Natalie lived in Ireland so she speaks fluent English. Funny story, I met her in the grocery store. She had been in China for a few days, and didn't speak very much Chinese, so when she saw an English speaking American in the store she was delighted. The first thing she asked me was, "Do you know where the pots and pans are?" Instant friends right there in the produce section! I had this feeling to ask for her number so that we could get together, even though we had only known each other for a couple minutes. We ended up going shopping and hanging out. I invited Natalie to church one sunday and she came!

My great friend Sam from Iraq. This is a picture of us at a Muslim Mosque in Beijing. He invited a small group of us to go with him. We invited him to church and he came a couple times. Sam has a huge heart and I am so glad I was able to become friends with him.

I love and miss my friend Delal! She is from Iraq as well. She wasn't a student at CNU (the university I studied at) but her husband was. This is a picture of us in her apartment. She invited my friend and I over for Iraqi food one night.

This is another one of my adorable kids in my primary class. The branch was one of my favorite parts about Beijing. It really was a family who supported each other, you really are living in a foreign country. The members all keep each other strong.

These are some of the street vendors who I would buy food from. The sweet potato guy! I love my sweet potatoes...hehe.

And the banana lady!!

This tree has amazing significance! This is the tree where China was dedicated for missionary work. One of the guys in our group, his old mission President had mapped out the exact spot of where it was dedicated, so he told us how to find it and we found it in a beautiful park next to the forbidden city in Beijing. On January 9, 1921, David O Mackay was traveling with Brother Cannon and they stopped off in Beijing and felt inspired to dedicate this land for missionary work.

Brother Cannon recorded, "Elder David O. McKay, in the authority of the holy apostleship, dedicated and set apart the Chinese realm for the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, whenever the Church Authorities shall deem it advisable to send out missionaries for that purpose. Never was the power of his calling more apparent in his utterances. He blessed the land and its benighted people and supplicated the Almighty to acknowledge this blessing. He prayed that famine and pestilence might be stayed, that the government might become stable, either through its own initiative, or by the intervention of other powers, and that superstition and error, which for ages have enveloped the people, might be discarded, and truth take their place. He supplicated the Lord to send to this land broad-minded and intelligent men and women, that upon them might rest the spirit of discernment and the power to comprehend the Chinese nature, so that in the souls of this people an appreciation of the glorious gospel might be awakened.

"It was such a prayer and blessing as must be recognized in heaven, and though the effects may not be suddenly apparent, they will be nonetheless real."

This is David O. Mckay standing next to that same tree the day of the dedicatory prayer. Since then, the branch coming out to the left has been cut down, but it was cool because we saw where the branch had been cut from the tree. There was an amazing spirit in that park! I think all of the Chinese people around were wondering what the heck five Americans were doing taking pictures next to a random tree, but we loved it. Missionary work is happening in China! I testify of it. Heavenly Father is involved in the details. If we keep our promises to Him, He will keep His promises to us. I am so grateful for my time that I have had in China and will never forget the abundance of blessings the Lord blesses us with always.

Primary

2011-11-27T08:09:00.003-07:00

This semester I have had the wonderful opportunity of working in the primary as the sunbeam teacher. Funny story…

(during sharing time)

Sister Hoskin: How can we keep in touch with family that we may have back in America or other places?

(so she is looking for the answer “sending letters” for an object lesson)

Little girl: The internet!

Little boy: I like to skype my grandma.

Little boy: We can send them an email.

Sister Hoskin: But what else can we do?

Little girl: We can call them on the phone.

Sister Hoskin: But what can we send them?

…

Sister Hoskin: Letters! We can send them letters.

Kids: Oh.

Haha, it was so funny. Sending letters is like a foreign concept to kids now days.

One cool thing about being in primary in China is how instead of welcoming new kids with the song that goes, “hello, hello, hello, hello, we welcome you today, hello.” You know that one? We sing, “Ni hao, ni hao, ni hao, ni hao, we welcome you today, ni hao.” It’s great.

Today was the primary program and it was so beautiful and tender, and of course you have the kids that talk really loudly into the mic like they are going to eat it, and then you have the ones that stand there smiling for 1 minute before saying anything, and then you have the ones that stand there and don’t say anything. But the program was so sincere as the it was all centered around the scriptures and the kids bore a powerful testimony that they know the scriptures are true. After the program we went back to the primary room and each person in the primary got to stand up and bear their testimony and/or their favorite thing about the program. This little 4 year old boy with red hair in my class stands up at the front and says boldly,

“One day I’m going to be sealed in the temple with my future wife!”

In a City of 20 million People

2011-11-27T07:43:00.005-07:00

It’s been so interesting living in a city of 20 million people. I guess, with three weeks left, I’ve just been doing some reflection on funny things that happen frequently but seem so normal. For instance, there’s this outdoor noodle shop down the street on the corner that we like to go to, we call it, “the boa zi place on the corner by wu mei.” Bao zi = dumpling type thing. Wu mei = wu mart/the closest market. So this bao zi place on the corner by wu mei is owned by this husband and wife, and there’s four tiny little tables set up under this tent. The grounds dirty (what’s new in China), they have this dog that’s constantly running around down by your feet, the owner always has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and you never know if your going to get a piece of ash that’s fallen into your soup. Any place like this in America (there is no place like this in America), you would think was like the sketchiest thing ever. Here in China, places like this is what make noodle shops unique, the food is great and convenient, and it’s completely normal.

Other interesting things…

-Going to a little restaurant and ordering rice. The lady’s all out, so she just runs to the little restaurant next door and borrows a bowl of rice from them and brings it to you.

-Sitting in class, and hearing the Italian and Arabic speakers use Chinglish (Chinese and English) to talk to each other.

-A guy from Dubai walking into Chinese class late, wearing sunglasses, holding a sandwich and some expensive energy drink that no one has ever even heard of.

-Talking to my Taxi driver about Thanksgiving and eating turkey, and come to find out that he randomly owns a turkey farm. When asking him about eating dog, he responds that he prepares his own dog and fries the leg, and smothers it in garlic.

-There’s so much pollution sometimes that blocks the sun rays that you look in the sky and see the sun, you wonder if it’s actually the moon.

-Finding out that the Chinese government doesn’t tell their people what the pollution level is, but the US embassy keeps track of it. The other day the pollution level was hazardous.

-Realizing how used to city life you’ve become. I was on the subway the other day, and did something totally Chinese and didn’t even realize it till I thought about it after. I needed to get off and there were people standing in front of the door, so I just pushed my way through them without even saying excuse me. It’s totally normal, not rude, and no one thinks anything of it. I’ve also realized how much more aggressive I am at things like getting taxi’s. You have to be. There are also no such things as lines in China. You kind of just push your way to things. No one draws any huge attention to themselves when doing anything. That’s just the Beijing city life for ya.

-Buying food from street vendors. Technically they are actually illegal, but no one really does anything about it and they are all over the city.

-One thing that is cool about being in a huge city is just how convenient public transportation is. I love how much more familiar I have gotten with the subway lines and all of the different bus routes.

The Story of Room 420

2011-11-27T05:57:00.002-07:00

SDkhfasujhf,sZgvilysGZDfuiwlg!! :) :) tear of happiness. Ok so I actually wrote that almost two weeks ago, because “sadfkjablwerkuhyvdilbjaw!!” was the only way to write the happiness I was feeling. Let’s back up a few months and I will tell you a little story, the story of room 420.

So, we arrived in China one late evening. After checking in and some struggles with getting our luggage into the elevator, my roommate and I got into our dorm room at about 1 AM. The fourth floor.

Room 420.

Life was good,

Things were swell

The only thing that wasn’t

Was the smell

The smell of smoke

That makes you want to choke

Coming from our bathroom

Almost everyday…

Ok. So basically the fourth floor seems to be where a bunch of smokers live. Our room happened to be in the middle of where all the intense Korean smokers lived. I find it ironic, because I guess that 4.20 is national get high day (at least that’s what some of my friends told me) and we lived in 420. Our next-door neighbors especially loved to smoke in their room all the time, and once every so often, they held drinking parties where they would invite over the entire Korean population and they would smoke. They were really nice people, but because our bathrooms were connected by a false ceiling, the result was our room smelling of smoke. Most of the time I would keep the bathroom door closed, to lock in the thick fog, but after a while we had to open it up to air it out, so we would open up our room door and windows as well. This somewhat worked until it started to freeze outside, and opening the windows for long periods of time wasn’t an option.

I tried everything I could. Several times, I went down to the front desk and explained the problem to see if we could switch to another room. They always said that they never had any open rooms and their solution was to just talk to my next door neighbors about it and tell them to smoke outside. I did. In fact, I talked to them about it quite often. We became great friends, but the smoke and me didn’t. I tried everything I could: taping the vent closed in our bathroom, putting the ash tray that came with our room over the drain of the shower, stuffing cut up towels up the holes under the sink that connected our bathrooms. Taping around the holes of the ceiling – that’s when I realized that the panels on the bathroom ceiling lifted up and our bathrooms were completely connected. So I would just have to convince them to stop. I even tried bribing them with American pizza, and when they were good about not smoking in the room, they would be rewarded with some. Then every time they or any of their friends would see me, they would either say like 10 times in a row, “Duibuqi (sorry) and kind of do like a Korean bow to me. Or they would say with a really excited smile, “Pizzaaaaa!” Oh great. And then, I would firmly tell them that they weren’t going to get pizza if they smoked in the room.

AND THEN, out of no where, an entire week went by without the bathroom smelling of smoke. I thought for sure they had gotten rid of their habit. I saw my Korean next door neighbor by the classrooms one day and he asked me if my room had smelled like smoke lately. I said, “No you guys have been great!” “I changed rooms,” he replied. What the?! Really!? He then told me that it was just him that switched with one of his friends, and that the other roommate was still their but had a new roommate. So I skipped back to my room, completely content with life, thinking all was well….

AND THEN!!! A few days later, the smoke was back, this time, the most intense it had ever been! I opened up the bathroom door and the thick fog went swarming out with an alarming stench that followed. I wasn’t even going to try to talk to my next door neighbors about this one. I was done. I was going straight down to the front desk and was going to face them like a Chinese person.

I called up my good friend Sam, from Iraq, who is in his fifth year studying here. He’s working on his masters in Chinese, so he is pretty fluent, and he accompanied me down to the front desk. I knew if I was going to do some serious persuading, I was going to need a translator to help get my point across! My basic conversational Chinese skills were not going to cut it. Basically it went down like this. “Listen, I need to change rooms, today! No matter what.” And after some 30 minutes of us arguing, I wasn’t going to give up, because I knew that they have rooms open, they just don’t usually let one person switch to another room, in fear that word might get around and they may have a lot of people coming to the front desk and wanting to switch rooms for this and that reason and causing huge fiascos.

AND THEN, I finally heard these glorious words come out of one of the worker’s mouths, “Ming tian zao shang ni ke yi huan fang jian.” (Tomorrow morning you can change rooms!!) Sam and I had convinced them that they did have a room open. The next morning, Kayli and I were able to change to another floor and another room and it has been such a huge blessing!! Now you can see why the only thing I was able to type a couple weeks ago was, “SDkhfasujhf,sZgvilysGZDfuiwlg!! :) :) tear of happiness. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Sometimes, I used to dread coming home to my dorm because I hated the smell and I just never knew when the thick fog of smoke was going to attack. Now, I love coming home, and feeling safe and happy. These last two weeks have been a breath of fresh air, literally. (well, kind of, just because living in one of the most polluted cities in the world isn’t a really a breath of fresh air haha but that’s another story) But, this experience definitely has made me more grateful for home and it’s taken on a whole new meaning.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

I’m grateful to be living in China. Living in a foreign country sure makes you appreciate everything you’ve been given. Although there have been hard times, I have seen so many tender mercies, met incredible people, and have experienced things I never would have thought I would experience. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to learn such a beautiful language, and to also share my native language with so many people.

I’m grateful for America and for the freedoms that we are able to enjoy there. Being in another country on a holiday especially makes me realize all the little blessings that I take for granted. I’m grateful for my family, friends, and loved ones. I’m grateful to have been born of goodly parents. My whole life I have been surrounded by the most amazing, talented, giving people in the world. I’m so grateful for all the people in my life. Heavenly Father loves each of us, and his hand is in each of our lives, every day. If there is a day that I am feeling ungrateful, all I have to do is pray to God and ask him to show me His hand in my life, and he does. I realize that every person, every experience, every gift, every feeling, and everything is evidence of His endless, selfless, perfect love. And for that, I have so much need to give back.

I am grateful for this Thanksgiving day. Although it hasn’t felt like it does normally back in the states, because we’ve still had school and haven’t had our Thanksgiving dinner, (we will be having our Thanksgiving dinner with the branch on Saturday!) I am still happy that today is Thanksgiving.

2011-11-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

Life is about the journey, not the destination.

A little laugh for today

2011-11-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't posted in a while, and I have some good stories to tell, but in the mean time, I thought I would give you readers a little laugh for today. The following is actually a post from my friend Adam's blog, but I happened to be there when it happened. He tells it great and his post is entitled, "I Thought it was a Good Idea at the Time."

"The subways here in Beijing are almost always packed. In the short moments that the doors are open, hundreds of passengers push their way on and off the subway. Today though, it was even more crowded than usual. As we stopped at more and more stations on our way to the silk market, we found ourselves blocked in on all sides by what must have been over a hundred people jammed into our little subway car alone. There was no room to move in any direction. Our arms were pinned to our sides, and there was little room for our legs to move. Having lived here in Beijing these past couple of months, I’ve began to realize that I no longer have a personal bubble. Personal space is a luxury you can’t afford here.

Arriving at our stop, we realized that we were locked towards the center of the subway car, far from the exit doors on either end. Leading the way, I tried to push through the throngs of people blocking our way, but no one was getting out of the way. The bells began ringing, signifying that the doors would soon be closing. Realizing that unless something changed, none of us would be getting off this subway before the doors slammed shut, I did what any mature, sensible twenty two year old young man would have done; I began frantically shouting “laduzi, laduzi” (diarrhea). It caused quite the commotion as everyone was trying to scramble out of our way, but the sea of people parted allowing the four of us to escape through the door just in time. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I was even amazed at how well it worked. When I regained my composure, I realized that I probably shouldn’t attempt to create any more mass panics on public transportation."

May I add to this that after we got off the subway, I could not stop laughing for like 5 minutes.

Dog

2011-11-01T06:39:00.000-06:00

If you would like to read about our eating dog experience, Tina wrote a great blog about it on her blog: neonjoggingsocks.blogspot.com She also says some great perspectives on China on there.

No, I did not feed the dog to the dog.

Universal Language

2011-11-01T06:06:00.001-06:00

Friday night, one of the coolest things happened. So, we were walking around downtown Beijing…It’s a hoppin place. There are big squares and sidewalks where people are having dance parties/competitions, roller blading, using huge paintbrushes and water writing characters on the sidewalk, and of course there are some musicians. There was this one guy playing the guitar and singing with his mic and amp. I approached him and asked if I might be able to play and sing a song, and he let me! After the first one, “Olly Olly Oxen Free,” he asked me to play another one, “Happy to Be Here.” Boy was I happy to be there, to be singing to a crowd of Chinese people on a Friday night in downtown Beijing! Although there were a lot of people standing around and stopping by to see what was happening, I felt as if I had connected with each individual person whose eyes I made contact with. And although, many may not have understood the words I was using, I know the language barrier did not keep them from feeling the spirit. Music is the universal language. It carries the vibration of love. It’s the frequency of love. One day, those Chinese people who heard the music that night are going to be blessed to hear the gospel message, and the feeling that they felt that night is going to be familiar. They are going to remember. It was such a great experience and it also was my first time introducing myself in Chinese in front of a crowd of mandarin speakers. That night was definitely a highlight.

Eating Dog

2011-11-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

So here’s the updates as of late. I’ve got a few cool stories…

-The other night, I decided that I really needed to do something about our smoky bathroom. Our Korean next door neighbors smoke all the time in their room, and since our bathroom vents are connected, the result is the bathroom randomly smelling of smoke. So, I went to the supermarket in search of duck tape. I looked up how to say duck tape using Pleco, on Tina’s I touch, but it wasn’t in there, so I tried explaining it to the workers. Basically it went like this, “um…really strong tape…black…big.” Yeah, in short, let’s just say they didn’t have it, so I came home with clear scotch tape. I spent part of the evening standing on top of the toilet, taping the bathroom fan vent shut with layers of scotch tape. I realized that the white panels along the ceiling lifted up, making our bathroom and our next door neighbors completely connected. No wonder!…the smoke had just been coming through the cracks. So I decided to tape around the molding and some of the cracks as well. It was better for a few days, but since then, the stench has progressively come back. I’m still looking for a solution to this problem.

I try to stay on the good side of my neighbors in hopes that I can convince them to smoke outside or even stop smoking and just the fact that I want to be friends with them. The other day I went by their apartment to say hi, and I happened to show up during one of their drinking parties. Who would have thought? (I’m pretty sure they have drinking parties every night) They invited me in to have some pi jiu (beer) but I kindly declined. But we talked for a bit and we are becoming great friends. I especially love to hear there laugh attacks every night through the wall. Seriously one of the guys has the funniest loudest laugh I have ever heard in my life! All of my Korean friends seem to have loud interesting laughs. I've come to the conclusion that Koreans just really like to laugh.

Update on the smoky bathroom situation. (I wrote the previous two paragraphs a couple days ago) I think I have finally found the solution!! I tried putting a bowl (actually it’s the ash tray that our apartment came with) on top of the drain and our bathroom hasn’t smelled for a little while. We will just have to move it every time we shower. It totally makes sense though, because I think our drains are connected as well, and humidity would totally soak up a smoke stench. Yay!

-We had the opportunity to go to the annual branch party at the great wall! Every year they take buses up there on a Saturday, spend the night and have church on the great wall Sunday morning. Definitely a highlight and I love the branch.

-I ate dog… A Chinese delicacy. For more information about this experience, ask me personally.

-Silk market (bartering market) experience. So you always know you’ve gotten a good deal on something if the people you are bartering with are slightly mad at you when you agree on a price and buy something from them. At the silk market (bartering market) last week, this is about how my conversation with a lady went down…(we will call the lady: Pam)

Me: How much is this?

Pam: 200 kuai

Me: What?! That’s way to expensive.

Pam: You want. How much?

Me: 20 kuai

Pam: ?! YOU look like 20 kuai!

The funny part is that Mandarin was used for all that, except for the last line she used Chinglish: YOU look like er shi kuai! Good one Pam.

-Sunday, I was riding the subway home and I started talking to a Chinese couple. They saw that I was dressed up and asked me if I was coming from Church. They were nice and gave me their email/phone number and invited me to their Protestant church, which is actually kind of funny because actually they are not really supposed to do that because of Chinese law. I wish I could have invited them to church as well, but I decided to abide by the law. Darn.

-Tonight, I was sitting in my room working on some homework and I heard beautiful singing coming from down the hall. So I went and found where it was coming from. I knocked on the door and some Koreans welcomed me in. They were practicing an awesome 5 part harmony gospel song that they are singing in their church in a couple weeks. We immediately became friends and they let me sing it with them once. I’ve never heard the song before but it had some tight harmony.

Love

2011-10-21T18:06:00.010-06:00

Service and playing with beautiful little kids! What could be better? Last weekend was one of my favorite weekends yet in China. I had the opportunity to help out with an eagle project and spend an entire Saturday at a migrant school, painting and making the concrete walls look pretty. And better yet, I got to play with these little kids and watch as they started helping us during their recess. (Which was like all day by the way, so it was awesome haha) Adam wrote a perfect explanation of a migrant school on his blog…

“Every year in China about one percent of the population moves from the countryside to the cities in search of work. In China, that one percent is 13 million people. In most cases, village men head off to cities to find work, leaving their wives behind to raise the children and take care of their land. The men often get menial jobs and send the money back. After a man establishes himself in the city he is joined by his wife and children. The long-term migrants often settle into ethnic ghettos or cramped dormitories that in some cases have two or three men sleeping together on bunks in 10-meter-long rooms crammed with 40 men. Often they move about town lugging unwieldy bundles of bedding and belongings wrapped in plaid-patterned woven-plastic fabric that somehow has become the standard for such purposes. The migrating laborers work for low pay, often under horrendous conditions, in factories, at construction sites, in mines and on railroads and roads. They work in restaurants, die in coal mines, make bricks, peddle bicycle to deliver coal and pick up trash. It's not uncommon for them to follow jobs from city to city.

The schools that are provided for the children of these migrant workers are often unlicensed and substandard, but public schools are too expensive for migrant families to afford. Even if they could afford to attend these schools, most don't have the residence and work permits that the public schools require. As a result, many children are denied access to primary education in their host communities. In the community, migrant children are also frequent targets of prejudice, as many of them speak with regional accents and dress differently than city children (cmc-china.org).”

The elementary school was far on the outside of Beijing. It was tucked away down an alley, old and rundown with nothing welcoming. There was no grass anywhere and everything was cement and brick. What was welcoming, was the children. They were happy and excited to have us there. They were eager to help us paint and help with whatever else we needed. One time that day, I was painting, and all of the sudden, there were four kids grabbing my arms and they pulled me into one of their classrooms. I presumed to give this loud bunch an “English lesson” and they were laughing and jumping all over me. They called me “Li lao shi,” (teacher Li – Li is my last name in Chinese). On our breaks from painting, we played jump rope with them, red rover, and laughed and talked with them.

I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with love for these kids. They loved the attention that they lacked at home, when they were home that is. It was the best way I could have spent my Saturday. I barely even knew these kids, but it’s amazing how when we are serving someone, our capacity to love them grows immensely.

Friday, was also an awesome day! Zhongguo mama (our Chinese mama who helped us buy the bikes – read back a few blog posts), http://abbypaulsen.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-zhongguo-mama.html

                                                                        The new fold up bike!




                                                                   My Zhonggou Mamma
Our new bikes!

Zhongguo mamma had Tina, Josh and Anthony and I over for dinner. My friend Anthony is doing an internship in China right now, and we were so glad he ended up coming to Zhongguo mama’s that night, because he speaks Chinese fluently. So it was nice for him to help us explain to them for the 5^th time that we really couldn’t drink the tea that they were serving us. Haha.

They lived down the longest hutong (alleyway) in Beijing in a little place that’s like 150 years old! Zhongguo mama and her husband also have a feisty little dog, that barks and growls, and you think he’s going to eat you. I stayed far away from him that night.

So funny story, we were sitting around the table eating, they fed us soooo much. There was this one meat though, that had a lot of fat on it. And I looked over at Anthony and noticed that all the fat from his meat was gone, and I’m like, “Are you really eating the fatty part?” And he’s like, “Nope, I’m feeding it to the dog under the table.” Haha, no way, so that was fun secretly dropping pieces of meat onto the ground under the table, and the dog would come by and eat it.

They were so nice to us, oh yeah, and there was one time when I was sitting at the table and it was really could cause the windows were open and I didn’t have a jacket, so Zhongguo mama lent me one. (And later I tried to give it back and she insisted that I keep it) Sweet mama.

Overbearing and Awkward?

2011-10-20T10:33:00.003-06:00

So tonight, Tina, Emily and I were on our way home from a lovely Relief Society General Conference Rebroadcast at a sister’s house in our ward. It was late, we were tired and we were on the completely opposite side of Beijing from where we live, so we opted to take a taxi home, rather then endure a long subway ride. We flagged down a taxi, I hopped in the front and told the guy where we wanted to go. He was a nice guy and had a really strong Beijing accent. We drove through an area where there are a lot of embassies. Earlier that day, a friend had told me that the Russian embassy looks like some sort of mansion/castle. We passed a gated palace looking place that matched my friend’s description, so I asked our taxi driver if it was the Russian embassy. He said yes and then in turn asked if we were Russian. When we told him that we were American…that’s when the conversation got interesting…

He responded kind of differently to the fact that we were American’s. I asked him what he thought of America, and he replied, “America is WAY too “ba dao!” We had no idea what “ba dao” was. I told him I didn’t know the meaning of that word and so I was trying to get him to explain. Meanwhile, Tina’s in the back seat, looking it up on her I touch, and starts laughing. Unable to tell me through her laughter, she hands it to me so I can read it’s meaning,

“Rule by force, overbearing, high handed, unreasonable”

So, I asked this guy if he had met many American’s through his taxi driving years and if he thought that American’s were overbearing. Then I asked him why he thinks they are overbearing? (At this point, based on my questions, Tina’s in the back and can see why he thinks American’s are overbearing)

He told us that it was because we go into Iraq, get into other people’s business, and he went on about other stuff. He asked us why we were even studying Chinese, and why Americans and foreigners even come to China. I think he is just against foreigners in general coming into his country, and trying to learn the language.

Anyway, even though we didn’t understand everything he was slamming American’s for, it was an interesting political chat, and we had a good laugh over his bluntness. So Chinese.

Oh yeah, then the last 5 minutes of the taxi ride were the most awkward. So, lately in China, we have been looking for a place to eat dog. Adam and Josh are especially dying to try it. So, I asked our taxi driver,

Me: Have you ever eaten dog before?

Taxi Driver: Dog?

Me: Yeah. Dog.

Taxi Driver: Yes. I have.

Emily: Who’s dog was it?

Taxi Driver: Huh?

……..

Haha, yep. We couldn’t believe that had just come from Emily. The American’s laughed a bit and the last couple minutes upon arriving back at the school, were really quiet.

很尴尬.对不对? 美国人很霸道吗?

I love America.

2011-10-20T01:28:00.000-06:00

Today, I found myself in Chinese class, standing up in front of the class singing "The Star Spangled Banner." My teacher was recording it as well as several of my Korean friends in the class. I tried to think back about what things that preceded that moment. I guess a little bit before, Josh and I were singing, "I'm a Little Tea Pot" for everyone, along with the actions of course. (how embarrasing, but not really, because that song is legit) But I'm not quite sure how that came about either. Oh well, I love America and our National Anthem. :)

Life out of the “er hua” – 可以

2011-10-11T12:24:00.001-06:00

Life out of the “er hua” – 可以

Last week was China’s National holiday so we were off from classes for the entire week. Thanks to some miracles of getting train tickets, we were able to travel to Shanghai and Nanjing for the week and broaden our horizons. I say, “Life out of the er hua, " because the “er hua” is the Beijing accent. Basically in Beijing, everyone adds an “er” sound to the ends of many words. So, one of the coolest things about traveling last week, was how much I was able talk to people. Besides how neat it was to see so many cool sites, I felt like I was able expand my language speaking ability and had so many opportunities to practice.

We began our travels on Monday night, by taking a night train from Beijing to Shanghai. 12 hours. It was just like taking a train to Hogwarts. We didn’t sleep much, but no problem, because the whole week we didn’t sleep much. We arrived in Shanghai Tuesday morning, eager to begin our adventures. Shanghai is near the coast and is the most populated city in China! I’ve never been to New York, but from what I have heard, it’s like New York City on steroids. There are very modern looking, super tall buildings everywhere, with a few splashes of colonial and European architecture. Basically, you don’t really feel like your in China, but you kind of still do because there are Chinese characters everywhere, the street vendors are out, and your walking past Asians speaking Chinese. Although a good amount of the people you talk to there know at least a little English, they are very kind and willing to practice Chinese with you. I feel like in Beijing, being in a very crowded city, sometimes people are more closed off, and you have to initiate conversations and keep them going. In Shanghai, I felt like it was easier to carry on a conversation with people and they seemed to have more of an American mentality, they even dressed more like westerners.

It was kind of nice, in Shanghai, we didn’t have to pay for a hostel. We stayed at a family who are members of the branch. They graciously welcomed us, as well as their two adorable energetic boys! The mom even cooked delicious American food for us while we were there. There were many adventures that happened every day but I will just tell a few.

Tuesday, we saw lots of cool buildings and walked like 5 miles, as we did every day. We came across a fountain on People’s Square, like the one at the Gateway that little kids run through, except for their were no little kids running through it. I jokingly said to Adam, “Hey I dare you to run through it.” He in turn dared me. I don’t know what happened, but five minutes later we were saying, “One, two, three,” and we raced through fountain as fast as we could. About halfway through, there was a whistle blown at us, but there was no turning back, so we finished running through. The next thing you know, 200 Chinese people are starring at and applauding these two soaking wet Americans that are laughing their heads off! The rest of the afternoon I was wet, but it was great.

Wednesday, we set off to see more tall buildings, including an old colonial style, 10 star hotel, with an original elevator from the 1920’s with an old school gate. In our endeavors to find a ferry to take us across a river to see “The Bund” (A area of tall buildings, that wasn’t even there 10 years ago), we managed to get lost, and ended up walking around for a couple hours. While we were walking, we had a contest to see who could say “Guo qing jie kuai le” to the most people. (Wishing people a happy holiday for that week) In order for it to count, the person had to respond. There was one guy who responded to me saying it, and it sparked a conversation. He asked me how long I was going to be in China for. When I told him a total of four months. He like got super excited and pointed to some words on his fan that he was holding, and started saying something to me in Chinese that I didn’t understand. He then, gave me his fan, and parted with the smile. Haha, it was all kind of random, but really nice of him.

We soon, were able to find the ferry that went across the river to “The Bund.” There, we saw the third tallest building in the world, as well as the construction where they were working on what will be the tallest building in the world when they are through. We didn’t go to the top of the tallest building, because it was “Tai gui le.” (too expensive) So we went inside the building that was right next to the tallest building (85 floors) (it’s in the top ten tallest in the world) It was tai gui le to go to the top of that one too. So we decided to go on a little adventure and see if there was another way to go in another part of that building. Of course, there was. We ended up going into the hotel part of the building, took an elevator up to the 50^th floor and then another elevator and got all the way up to the 83^rd floor. We could see the people that were looking out from the 85^th floor. It was pretty sweet.

Thursday morning, we went to a park where we rented 4 person motor boats and rode around on a cute little lake. They don’t go very fast, so the most exciting part about this was ramming into other people’s boats, especially boats with little kids and older folks. Everyone got a huge kick out of it, except for one lady who looked at us like we were crazy and gave us the glare to leave their boat alone. But besides that everyone else in turn came right back to ram into the two boats with the hysterical Americans. It was quite fun.

After that experience, we rushed to the Railway station where we were going to take a three hour train to Nanjing. I have never ran so fast through a train station in my entire life, then again, I’ve never had to run through a train station. We ended up barely making our train, like I’m talking like a few minutes, and soon we arrived in the old capital of China. Nanjing.

Nanjing has more old school Chinese architecture, and has a completely opposite feel from Shanghai. The hostel that we stayed at in Nanjing was, well, exciting. And great for under 10 bucks a night! Our beds were basically like a piece of plywood. The funniest part about this was on the door of our rooms was list of prices if you happen to break something in the room. The bed was listed for like 125 American dollars! It costs a 125 dollars to replace a piece of plywood? In China? Haha!

Now, I can’t say that I have eaten dog yet in China, but I can say that we ate wolf at a restaurant on Thursday night. It was kind of gross. After we left the restaurant, five cute high school girls ran up to me. They had never met American’s before so they were really excited. They asked for our picture with us, and I gave them English names. We parted and 20 minutes later, they came and found me again, and handed me balloons. It was so sweet of them.

Oh so while I am thinking about it. Speaking of seeing people, we randomly ran into a family from the Beijing branch in Shanghai, and then saw them again in Nanjing! What the? I know right? Two completely different places in China, seeing someone you know. They were traveling for the holiday as well. Then, one day in Nanjing, we were walking down the street, and all of the sudden there is a group of 7 American’s, one of the girls called out and pointed to the BYU Idaho shirt Adam was wearing, “BYU-Idaho! No way!” They ended up being LDS, and are teaching English through ILP right now in a city right by Shanghai. Anyway, small world.

Friday we went to Zhongshan (He was the father of modern China) park, where we took a lot of jumping pictures. There were a lot of tourists from western China, Jiansu province, and a lot of those people have never seen an Americans before, so every two minutes someone would ask if they could take a picture with us. Kayli even had people handing her their babies so they could snap a picture of her holding their child.

We went to an awesome Confucius temple that day. It’s amazing what you can do for just being American, like we gave a worker an English name, and she in turn let us hit a giant drum that usually costs two kuai to hit. Then Adam and Josh paid a worker an American dollar to play these instruments that normally people aren’t allowed to just play. We walked around a lot that day, so we ended the day with finding a massage place and getting an hour and fifteen minute massage for 9 bucks. Not bad.

Saturday, we went to the Nanjing massacre museum. Back in the later 1930’s, the Japanese invaded China. They broke through the city wall of Nanjing and killed 200,000 to 300,000 innocent people in just two weeks. It kind of made me sick and was really sad to see, but also was really eye opening.

That day we also rode a golf cart on the old city wall. That was exciting. There were so many opportunities to practice Chinese, and by the end of the week, I felt so much more confident with talking to people. But I still had some funny moments with language mess ups. Here is part of conversation with a girl working at a convenience store. We will call the lady, Suzy.

Me: So how long have you worked here for?

Suzy: Just over a year.

Me: Wow, that’s really far.

Then, like 5 minutes later. I’m talking to another lady selling meat on a stick. And ya know, we are talking about the usual: Do you live around here? Where’s your hometown? etc. Then I ask her about the meat she is selling. We will call the lady, Tamika.

Me: So, have you tried all this meat?

Tamika: Yes, of course.

Me: Which one is your favorite?

Tamika: This one, do you want to buy one?

Me: Hmm. Not bad.

And I asked another question.

So sometimes, I don’t catch everything they say, but I try and am getting better. It’s especially hard when they talk fast. I sometimes end up saying, “Ni ke yi shuo man yi dian ma?” (Can you say that all a little slower?)

Saturday night was exciting. We took an overnight train back to Beijing and we had hard seats. The best part was that they packed three times the amount of people on the train that there were seats for, so it was pretty crowded, with people sitting in the isles and stuff. Sometimes, they sat on the edge of your seat. Basically we ended up pulling an all nighter, and just talked to the people around us. Our 4 AM Chinese conversations were the best.

*Video coming soon*

We made it back Sunday morning to a sea of people in Beijing all trying to get home after traveling over the busy holiday. It took us like an hour, waiting to just get on the subway. It was a lovely week, but I am happy to be home now. Monday morning, Kayli and I both slept an hour past our alarm and woke up 10 minutes before class. We were just slightly tired.

上个星期很好玩儿!

Jumping!

2011-10-03T04:05:00.003-06:00

So much happened on Saturday, I don’t even know where to begin. I will start with 10 AM Saturday morning. Me: asleep. I heard a knock at the door, it’s Josh. I went and answered it. Josh: “Hey we’re going bungee jumping in a half hour! It’s going to be really fun. I’ve been up looking up a bunch of stuff about it and it looks really neat! It’s like a huge national park with caves, ziplines, boat rides, etc. So do you want to go?” Me: “Ok.”

I got permission from Tina to just copy and paste this next part from her blog. She went into awesome detail. So the next few paragraphs are from Tina…

“So a group of us started out to go bungee it up. Only, today is the first day of National Week, the second largest holiday in China. There were people everywhere, many subway stations were completely closed, and the buses and roads were abnormally crowded.

Finally making it to the bus station where our bus out to the park started, there was a long, long, line (which I subconsciously thought was odd, because lines don't really exist in China). We asked a few people in line how long they thought it would be until the front of the line and most of the answers were 1-2 hours. Whoa! We did the math. 1-2 hours to board a bus. 1 hour to the park. Then we'd only have an hour to explore before the park closed. A large portion of the group was going to try to wait it out, but Abby, Josh, Adam, and I decided we were going to ditch it and try it another day.

The four of us were leaving, weaving our way through the crowd, when we got sucked into another wandering crowd. What we didn't know is that the tape helping with crowd control for buses had been cut up ahead and a massive wave of people was attempting to cut onto the bus. Josh was the first to realize where we were headed, and he turned around, glee all over his face, "I think I'm gonna go bungee jumping today!" Sure enough, we decided that if we could get on that bus we'd totally go. We got our Chinese mode on and started pushing our way through the side. I've seen people push to get on the subway, but never anything like this. There were people yelling left and right. There was a Chinese lady that blocked the entrance to the bus and wouldn't let anyone on. "My child, my child, my child!" She wasn't going to let anyone get past until she got her child with her. So the people in the crowd picked up her son and passed him to her over the heads of the people trying to push her out of the way. This is so China. In America, this would have been the rudest situation and fists would have started flying. But here it's nothing. I love it. I'm going to get back to the US and it's going to be hard to break my habit of pushing, squeezing, and cutting. And I might not have much sense of personal space for awhile.

Here's the crazy part. We actually managed to get on the bus. But then the ticket lady, confused as to why four white people were crowding on, tried to tell us we were getting on the wrong bus, that the bus to the great wall was the other way, and that we needed to get off. "NO. We're staying. This bus has our stop." The problem was, we didn't even know what stop we were going to. The people who knew the most about it were still back in line, because they hadn't given up the way we had, and they hadn't been presented the curious miracle of the broken crowd tape. So we yelled over to them, "HEY! WHAT'S OUR STOP?" Hahahahaha... what a scene. So finally we established that our stop was on this bus, but then she still demanded that we get off. "No seats, no seats, no seats," she kept repeating. "We're riding this bus. We'll sit in the aisles if we have to," replied Adam. She finally gave in and let us on. Of course, if the waiguoren are willing to go without a seat, everyone else wanted to get on, too, so we ended up leaving with a bus full of standing people. Before, we'd been watching the buses leave and there had only been enough people to fill the seats, and none more. We Americans start trends because we tend to get rowdy. I've got more stories about that, but they're for another day, so just take my word for it. We have a different mindset than the Chinese, and when we want something our way, we get it our way.

So the four of us spent two hours and fifteen minutes on a bus, sitting on the ground. Adam sat in the aisle next to the cutest little Chinese girl who spent a lot of time talking to him in her broken English. She sang songs for him and Abby, they sang songs to her... it was adorable. I, on the other hand, got stuck in the aisle next to a mom and her little boy (the little boy was actually the same boy that was handed over the crowd and onto the bus) who were both throwing up the entire time. Yaaaaaay. Every time they got out a new plastic bag, I barrelled my head into Josh's shoulder. Ain't no way I was smelling that stuff. After Adam and Abby's wonderful ride, and Josh and my unpleasant ride, we were all ready to get somewhere. But we really didn't know where we were going. Asking around, we found someone going to the same area as us, so we followed him and got on the next bus just fine.”

Wasn’t that a wonderful excerpt from Tina’s blog? So, after taking a few buses and a “taxi” (the guy tried to rip us off) we made it to the most beautiful place! It was awesome, because their were no foreigners, this is just a Chinese tourist spot. The sky was blue and we took a boat ride up a gorgeous gorge and arrived at the bungee jumping spot, the jump was about 200 feet over the river. We watched many brave people see their lives flash before their eyes. It looked safe and I felt good about it, so we paid our 25 bucks, wrote our name on a paper, stood on the scale and hiked up the staircase to the platform looking out over the gorge. No need to sign any waivers or anything. This is China. They did have us read a “Rules” sign before hiking the staircase though.

We got up to the top and it was a bit chilly. The wind was blowing, and I felt my stomach rolling. The guy strapped my feet in and had me stand on the platform. I had a strong grip to the pole next to me and I wouldn’t let go. The Chinese guy said something to me in English which I didn’t understand, but he was pointing to my feet and saying something. So I started freaking out and I was saying, “oh my gosh” like 10 times, and saying like, “Is something wrong? what do I do?” But I guess everything was fine, because he motioned to go, and he took my hands off of the pole that I was gripping onto, and placed them above my head, and then, “He pushed me.” He’s worked with a lot of people who freak out on that platform, so he knows to just push the ones who won’t jump on their own. This was Josh’s explanation of what my jump looked like…

“You were so gitty and excited and when the guy gave you a push you gave a gasp and your arms first go out to catch yourself but then realizing there is nothing there you must have freaked out because your arms start to flail and wave over your head but no sound…very interesting. Your first scream came as you arrived at the bottom of the fall or pretty close too the bottom. Then there were constant outbursts of screams/short high pitched yells. It was really funny though because when you fell your hands first flew around and then your arms tightened against your body but your legs kept on kicking like there was no tomorrow. I am not sure what it is with girls and kicking their feet when they fall but when we go bungee jumping there are always the girls that kick their feet like they are swimming or something. I guess those two sensations, falling and swimming, are pretty similar…Both of you and Tina went out like this like you were about to fall on a platform and you came to the sudden realization there was nothing solid until 100ft below you…and probably wondering who that random Chinese worker was who had pushed you off the bridge too.”

*Video of the jump coming soon.*

When I got to the bottom and I was hanging upside down by my feet, there were two guys who held out a stick and told me to grab onto it so they could pull me into the boat. It wasn’t even a legit stick, it was like a long stick that they found on the ground that day. I grabbed a hold of it and they demanded me to sit. That was a crazy thing to say to someone who is still hanging upside down. So, I they helped me down, I got seated and they drove me back over to the dock. Wow, what an experience, I will only do once.

The rest of our day was spent exploring the park, including, A CAVE. Chinese caves must be a lot different, because this was nothing like a cave in America. We walked through the opening and from that moment on, I had a flashback of being in Disneyland sitting on a rowboat, hearing, “It’s a world of laughter, a world of cheer….It’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world…” No joke! Everything was fake, the flowers, the trees, and the river was like painted on the ground! Haha. It looked just like that ride, but without the music and the animatronics. So, Adam and Josh hopped the fence into the “It’s a small world” scene and acted as animatronics. The Chinese people walked the path and took pictures. Some were confused, some were laughing.

*Video, also to come soon.*

It was a crazy day, but it was fun. We barely caught the last bus back to Beijing that night and made it home safe. What a day.

Dian Dian

2011-10-03T02:12:00.000-06:00

This is our new pet bunny, "Dian Dian," "Dian" means dot, or speck, and so since he has a little speck of white hair on his head, his name is "Dian Dian."

He is so cuddly and will stay this size. He enjoys being pet, and snuggling up next to us, and also doing little bunny jumps on the bed.

He also likes to sit on lap tops and watch us type. He has a little cage and nibbles on a lot of things.

We love our little one.

China

2011-09-28T08:14:00.002-06:00

So, after writing my post about rice the other night, I went to bed thinking of all the cool ways that a bowl full of rice is like life and each experience, like how we can share our rice with others and let them receive the blessings too. Or, how there are many different kinds of rice (speaking of which, I just looked it up, did you know that there are over 40,000 different varieties of rice?) Or how when we let cooked rice sit out, it will go bad and we can’t eat it anymore, similarly to how when we don’t take the opportunity to soak in the moments we’ve been given, it’s too late and we’ve missed the chance. But instead of boring you with analogies on “not wasting any rice,” I will just show you some pictures instead. :)

We went to a families house in our ward for dinner on Sunday!

Our kou yu teacher, Yang lao shi. He wasn't wearing yellow that day... And us four Americans.

Relief Society activity at the branch

Beijing.

Beautiful roses.

There is a chinese character in these flowers. It's the character for land/country. 国。

I was looking out the window one day during class and I saw some people repelling off the side of the school cleaning the windows. Cool huh?

And then I was in my room, and they scared me. They were right outside my window, just cleaning the windows.

"Never waste ANY rice"

2011-09-24T09:01:00.000-06:00

Today we had a lovely relief society activity at the branch. I was sitting around a table getting to know the wonderful sisters. During our get to know you game, we drew the question out of the basket, “What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?” How would you answer that question?

One of the sisters, Yan Ping, said that the best piece of advice she ever got was from her mother, “Never waste ANY rice.” Growing up in China, they had been going through a famine and food was scarce, so they were taught to never waste rice. How grateful they were for EACH grain of rice.

Every day, we are each given so many opportunities and it is our job not to waste them, but to embrace them. (Boy that was cheesy) But for real! Life is like a bowl full of rice. (hehe) Do we let it sit there and let ourselves go hungry, or do we take advantage of each little blessing that comes our way and eat it up? I am going to always think of Yan Ping, as I try my best to, “Never waste ANY rice.”

“Living in China is not just dipping your foot in the water, it’s full immersion.”

-Sister in the branch (I’m horrible for not remembering her name)

How true is that! I feel so blessed to be living here at such an amazing time. I am also so grateful for the awesome people that I have been able to spend the first month with and for the next 3 months I will get to spend with them. Oh, China. And your rice. I bet any of you that are reading this will never think of rice the same when you eat it.

My Zhongguo Mama

2011-09-22T10:08:00.003-06:00

So, my Zhongguo(Chinese) mama sent Tina, Josh and I an email! She was the sweet lady who we met on the subway a couple weeks ago and who came with us to go buy our bikes. We sent her some pictures of us together from that day, and she emailed back with this. I couldn’t read all the characters, so I just plugged it into google translate. Google translate is funny sometimes, here is how it came out…

(An Jiahui, Li Xiaoyin, and Ren Jiexiong are our names)

“An Jiahui, Li Xiaoyin, Ren Jiexiong: How are you! Very pleased to receive letters. You can understand me and my family are very happy to have time to ask you all to my house to play it? My phone number is: (I will leave this blank) You can contact me at any time. My computer now some of the problems, sent the photo to see another lost, unfortunately. Can Zaifayici it? Trouble you! Love your mother in China - Zhang pieces

安佳慧、李笑音、任杰雄：你们好！非常高兴收到来信。能认识你们我及我的全家都非常的高兴，有时间能请你们都到我家来玩吗？我的手机号码是：(I will leave this blank) 你们可以随时和我联系。我的电脑现在有些问题，发来的照片看到又丢了，很遗憾。能再发一次吗？麻烦你们了！爱你们的中国妈妈-张枚”

The Stereotypical Image of Americans

2011-09-22T10:03:00.002-06:00

It’s really fun when something happens, and people wonder what the heck are these American’s doing? Our response to their reaction is, “Duibuqi, wo shi meiguoren.” (Sorry, I’m American) We use it as an excuse. Let me explain with these recent experiences…

#1

So, it was Kiersten’s birthday a little while ago. She is from BYU – Idaho. What do you do when it is someone’s birthday?…You randomly burst into song when the birthday person is least expecting it and you sing the usual, “Happy Birthday to you!” Right? That’s what I thought too. So we’re in class, and the topic comes up that it’s Kiersten’s birthday! Sweet! Amber and I start singing happy birthday in Chinese thinking everyone would join in. – “Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le….” The teacher joins in. Everyone else is silent while the three of us sing this happy tune. The Koreans, Japanese, and Italian’s stare at us with blank faces wondering WHAT is going on. We awkwardly finish the entire song and end with a smile. Sorry, we’re American.

#2

So, last night, I was with Adam and Josh, walking to the subway on our way home from institute. We were in the busy city part of Beijing, where the sidewalks often have people and bicycles dodging each other. I must have been really into telling a story or listening to them because I wasn’t paying any bit of attention to where I was walking. So I’m looking over at Adam and Josh, and all of the sudden I turn and there’s a guy on a bicycle like a foot in front of me. “Ahhhh!” I jumped out like a starfish! It startled me so bad, I screamed and walked around him. I think I scared him more though, because the super worried look on his face was priceless! Sorry about that. I’m American.

#3

One thing you should know is that, in China, people do not have the right of way. The cars do, unless you are in a huge group of people, and everyone goes against the law and decides to cross in front of a car as a herd. The other day, I was walking with a couple of my American pals and it’s like we forgot that we were in China, because we walked in front of a car that was turning into a business parking lot, thinking that he would stop for us. Well, of course he did, because we’re alive, but he laid his horn down as we ran in front of him, and the look on his face was like what do you think your doing, I’m driving here! Sorry, we’re American.

(Side Note: Driving is crazy in China. The law is like: anything goes! Every which way you want to drive, oh it’s a red light, that’s ok, no seat belts, no helmets, constant horn honking. But accidents rarely happen. In China, there is such a thing as a good, bad driver. They have to be super alert and they are good at bad driving.)

#4

Josh bought a bingbang (popsicle) for 3 kuai. He handed the lady, we will call her Jill, 10 kuai. 10-3=7. Jill handed him back 7 kuai.

Josh: “Wo gei ni shi kuai. Ni gei wo qi kuai.” (I gave you 10 kuai, you only gave me back 7 kuai…)

Jill: ….?

Josh: (coming to the realization of the math) “Oh, duibuqi, wo shi meiguoren.” (Sorry, I am an American.)

It’s funny how people perceive Americans. Adam was talking to a Chinese guy on the subway, and the Chinese guy asked, “In America, does everyone carry around guns all the time?” Adam was like, “What?” The guy continued to explain that’s what they see on American TV shows so he thought that all American’s carry guns with them everywhere they go.

We asked the Korean’s in our class what the English language sounded like to them when they hear American’s talking to each other. They said that we always sound REALLY excited!

Welp. I like being American!

My Kou yu (speaking teacher) Yang Lao Shi and his yellow shirts that he loves.

"Hallo? Wtih you, we can take picture?"

"Oh yeah sure, of course!"

And then, before you know it...The whole family jumps in!

Subways.

Awkward moments.

...and very awkward moment.

People watch at the park

2011-09-19T08:53:00.001-06:00

Today, I rode my awesome asian fold up bike to the park around the corner from the university. It was a gorgeous day! The past four days I’ve been able to see the blue sky, which is a miracle, because usually it’s a gray smog color. I sat on a bench under a beautiful tree and took out my homework and read. I got quite a lot done, but I was slightly distracted by my surroundings, and my focus was turned to the people scattered about the park. I’ve decided I really like to people watch, especially when it’s a different culture. I watched the cute Asian grandma playing with her grand kid, the 70 year old guy working out on the exact same outside gym equipment that they have in parks all over China (even down south. Communism), the adorable couple sitting on bench, giggling and laughing as they shared a huo long guo - 火龙果 (dragon fruit). Then there was the cute little boy that threw his ball in my direction and I got to play catch with him for a bit. There were the three competitive teenage boys playing ping pong. I can’t forget the 8 year boy that talked to me for a second, ran over to his mom and talked for a minute, ran back to me and invited me over to His house for Japanese food. I kindly declined, because I was by myself and didn’t know them. But it was a lovely people watch. I love how important caring for family is for the Chinese people. There was so much happiness in the park today. At sunset, I rode my awesome asian fold up bike home to my su she 宿舍 (apartment)

The Tale of 小胖（Xiao Pang）

2011-09-19T08:42:00.002-06:00

The other day I was outside Josh and Adam’s dorm. They invited me in to see a friendly little creature living in their bathroom. “Xiao Pang” (Little fatty) was his name. He was a giant crab (almost the size of a hamburger with legs) that they bought at the Supermarket earlier that day. The next day Adam came home to his apartment, and just before he walked in, the cleaning lady that stops by the apartments yelled to him from down the hall. This was their conversation (in Chinese of course)

Lady: Hey! What’s that crab doing in your bathroom?! It scared me half to death when I walked in there and you’re not supposed to have pets!

Adam: That’s not a pet, it’s our 晚餐 (wan can)(dinner)

Lady: Wan can?! How are you planning to cook that?! (We don’t have stoves or ovens in our dorms)

Adam: Microwave.

Lady: Microwave!? Your going to cook it in the microwave!?

Adam: What can I say? I like fresh food. Suppose that I didn’t want to eat it until Monday or Tuesday of next week though, how do you think I can keep that alive?

And the lady then explained to Adam how he could keep it alive and that they should keep him in a little water in the sink because if he dried out then he could die. Well, anyway, later that night, Tina, Kayli and I were going to the supermarket, and so Adam and Josh asked us to pick up another crab, as long as it was under 6 kuai, and they would pay us for it. So, we picked out the most gross looking, hairy crab, thinking we would play some awesome prank on Josh and Adam with it. Well, the worker at the store double bagged it for us, put the price on it, and we walked toward the check out stand with our new friend. Success! Then we looked down at the price…

“37 kuai!!?” What the! Do we have to still pay for this? Will the crab worker let us give it back even if it's already been bagged? Who would have thought a crab would be such a delicacy!?

So, we walked back over to the crab worker. I held up the bag with the crab and tried to explain myself for a minute as I muttered my thoughts in Chinese, nervously hoping he would take the 37 kuai crab back. “Wo jue de (I thought)…zhe ge pian yi (this cheaper)…ummm….wo bu zhi dao (I don’t know)…maybe a different one…”

He stared at me, wondering what the heck I was trying to do, and then I handed him the bag and said…

“Wo bu yao.” (I don’t want it)

Crab worker: “Oh! Mei shi, mei shi” (no problem, no problem)

He took the crab right back with a smile, no problem. Phew. I should have just said “I don’t want it” in the first place. So we went home crabless, but it was a great adventure. Xiao Pang lived for several days. One day, Josh and Adam came home and found him dead in the sink filled with water. They had a funeral for him and buried him right outside the school. We will always remember our little (but big) friend, Xiao Pang.

啤酒（pi jiu)

2011-09-17T07:28:00.003-06:00

That’s "beer" in Chinese. So, I have decided that a day in class has not gone by where pi jiu isn’t mentioned. Often the teacher starts the class by asking in Chinese, “What did you do last night?” The response of at least one person is always, “Wo qu le Wu Dao Kou, he pi jiu.” (I went to Wu Dao Kou and drank beer.) Yeah, we are really living amidst the stereotypical college life. Everyone drinks and smokes. Our bathroom often smells of smoke, from the Korean guys next door. Yup, Kayli and my neighbor’s know us really well because when our bathroom smells of smoke, I often go tell them my feelings on smoking and remind them that they are not allowed to smoke in the rooms.

The other day in class, one of our assignments was to show a picture of our family and talk about them. One of the Korean guys in my class got up and said…

“这是我的爸爸. 他喜欢喝啤酒. (This is my dad. He likes to drink beer.)

这是我的妈妈. 他喜欢喝啤酒. (This is my mom. She likes to drink beer.)

所以我喜欢喝啤酒. 在我的家有和平. (So, I like to drink beer. There is harmony in our home.)”

And then he sat down, and there was a giggle through out the room. So life is exciting! Friday night was way fun. So, we went out to dinner to a pizza place at Wu Dao Kou with my entire class. (There’s about 20 of us) My teacher even came. How cool is that? Only in China, you go to a party with your teacher. Anyway, so the four of us from BYU Idaho explained to them why we don’t drink as the others downed their glasses of beer. It’s actually really neat how people respect it and are completely shocked at the fact that we have never drank in our lives. It was actually a really fun night though and all of the people in my class are awesome! They are from Italy, Japan, Korea, and one from Dubai. Once they started getting drunk, that’s when us American’s peaced out.

When we got back to the University, I stopped in the lobby and talked to some of my friends from Italy. They were celebrating someone’s birthday with beer of course. I have never been offered beer so many times over and over again in my life. This is how one of the girl’s and my conversation went.

“Oh, please drink some.”

“Oh, no I don’t drink.”

“You know you want some.”

“Oh really, I don’t, thanks though.”

“Oh, you know you do. Just drink some.”

“No, I really don’t.”

It was quite exciting. She gave up after a while, trying to offer me some. So, I’ve decided that the BYU- I crowd is getting pretty well known around the school these days. A lot of us have been asked lately, “So, you’re the Mormon’s?” I think it’s great, I love standing up for what I believe. Do you want to know what else I’ve realized? “Not drinking alcohol saves so much money!” What a blessing! I love being LDS. The church is so true!

“Ren shan ren hai!” “Dui bu dui?”

2011-09-13T04:31:00.002-06:00

This is what we say to people when we squish on the subway. They laugh and wonder where we are from. When we reply “meiguoren (american), then they are not surprised by our cheesiness. “Ren shan ren hai” is one of those cool Chinese idioms meaning, “Mountains of people, seas of people!” “Dui bu dui?” basically means, “Right?” The equivalent of this in English would be like if a Chinese person walked up to an American and said with a grin, “Birds of a feather, stick together! Am I right?!” Yup. I would laugh too.

We have fun fitting on crowded subways and buses. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to barely fit on a di tie (subway) without your leg getting caught in the door and you’re smashed against a bunch of Asians, and you smile at them, and say, “Ni hao ma?” (how are you?) And then you strike up a conversation. Once in a while they want nothing to do with you, but most of the time, they are surprised and thrilled at the opportunity to liao tiar (chat) with a wai guo ren (foreigner) that is speaking han yu (Chinese). Excuse me for my hen duo de(a lot) of Chinglish. It seems so normal after a long day of studying. Anyway, there has been so many funny moments using the Beijing transportation, but I thought I would tell three funny experiences…

#1 Can I sit on your lap?

Sometimes, the subway can be jerky. There I was, holding onto the pole on the subway, talking with my peng you (friends), when all of the sudden the subway slowed down slightly. Somehow, I flew backward, grabbing onto the pole for dear life, swung around and landed on some lady’s lap. I quickly jumped up and said, “Dui bu qi, bu hao yi si” (sorry, excuse me) The lady glared at me and did not look happy. So I turned around. Five seconds later, I turned back and said a second time, “Dui bu qi.” She still had that same friendly glare, staring right at me. So I turned away again and that was the end of that. Guess I should ask next time I want to sit on someone’s lap.

#2 “I like it.”

(Disclaimer: This happened a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully if this conversation were to occur again, I would be able to understand what the person is saying to me)

So, there I was talking to this guy on the subway. He had kind of a strong accent that was hard to understand. My friend Adam, who served a mission in Taiwan, Chinese speaking, was listening to my conversation to see how well I would do on my own. He later told me what the translation was of our conversation and what the guy said to me. This how it went. We will call the guy on the subway “Joe.”

Me: Have you eaten Beijing Duck? (Beijing is famous for their duck)

Joe: Oh, yeah it’s really good.

Me: Do you like it?

Joe: Yeah, have you tried it?

Me: I like it.

Joe: But have you tried it?

Me: I like it.

Joe: Ok, so you’ve tried it?

Me: (I just shook my head at this point, because I had no idea why he kept asking me what I thought was, “Do you like it?” And I also realized that I didn’t know why I was telling him that I liked it, because I actually haven’t even tried it. We got to our stop, and Adam had told me that he wasn’t asking me if I liked it.)

#3 “Your Chinese is very good”

This conversation took place with Josh and a Chinese guy on the subway, but Adam and I were listening. We’ll call the guy he was talking to “Ted.” So Ted and Josh were talking for a short time and Josh was able to carry on a conversation with him pretty well, and then…

Ted: Ni shuo han yu shuo de hen hao. (Your Chinese is very good)

Josh: huh?

Ted: Ni shuo han yu shuo de hen hao. (Your Chinese is very good)

Josh: Wo ting bu dong. (I don’t understand)

My friends who have served foreign speaking missions have told me that the motto when you don’t understand what someone is saying to you is, “When in doubt, bear your testimony.” Here, I’ve found that the motto is, “When in doubt, say “bu cuo” (not bad) and ask another question.” You can never go wrong.

现在我跟我的朋友去吃晚饭因为我饿死了.好吧!

Dove

2011-09-13T03:33:00.001-06:00

So, my roommate came back up to our room after making a quick trip to the convenient store.

me: what did you get?
kayli: dove chocolate
me: oh. (wow, that looks good)
kayli: do you want a piece?
me: do I ever!? If you’re offering some...
kayli: yeah!

……...mmm...that was good....

Food is cheap in China, compared to America. The only thing that is the same price here in China as it is in America are things like Dove chocolate, Reeses, McDonalds and other Americanites, so I try to avoid buying them because they seem so expensive here in China. Well, after devouring a piece of Dove chocolate, I sat there for about 10 minutes and then decided I loved my home country too much.

Next thing you know, I am currently, enjoying a Dove chocolate bar. (dark Dove chocolate bar that is)
My roommate and I share a love for chocolate. What can I say?

我爱我的同屋!

Church. Chinese style.

2011-09-11T08:21:00.004-06:00

Going to church in China is one of the most unique and special experiences. The church is true wherever you go in the world. Living in a country where the LDS church is not prevalent and the members are slim, sure makes me appreciate the gift that this gospel is and increases my faith in it. My desire to share it becomes greater.

Last time I was in China, the nearest branch was a 4 hour bus ride, so we had the unique opportunity of receiving permission to and holding sacrament meeting in our apartment. Each week, about 20 of us English teachers would gather in a one room small apartment and were able to renew our covenants and be strengthened by each other’s testimonies.

This time, as a student in Beijing, I'm blessed to be so close to the Beijing Branch. It only takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get to church taking the bus and subway, quicker if you go by taxi. Today we were part of a miracle. It was the Beijing International District Conference and for the first time, they had seven branches linked together from across China through telecommunication, and many other people dialed in to hear the meeting. There were nearly 800 people listening. We had the opportunity to hear from Anthony D. Perkins of the Seventy, over the Asian area. I feel so renewed when I go to church here and really feel like I need to be spiritually recharged every week. I love going to church in China.

The coolest part about being in China at this season of time, is that we are planting seeds for the future. I have heard so many cool stories lately of Chinese natives that have kept in touch with their LDS friends, leave the country at some point in time and are then allowed to learn about the church that way. I know that the people we come in contact with here in China will remember our examples and will have the opportunity to receive the gospel in the future. They will remember the light that they saw as we lived and will want to have that same light and knowledge. We are all put in places for a reason, and at the time we may not know why, but it’s for a greater purpose that we can’t comprehend.

在中国今天很漂亮! 我喜欢星期日.

Our church in Beijing

Muslim Mosque

2011-09-11T06:52:00.002-06:00

So, this blog is actually from Thursday night and I forgot to post it, so here it is!....

I love how our school is an international school and I get to meet people from all over the world. My Muslim friend Sam, from Iraq, invited some of us today to go to the Muslim mosque in Beijing. It was so cool. We wore a hijab covering our head, so we were able to go inside. This mosque has been there for 1,000 years, and part of it was the original building from 500 years ago. I think it is so neat to learn about other religions and cultures and see the way people live. We ate Muslim food at a really good restaurant after. Well, it’s time for me to go to bed. Wan an!

我每天学习很多的汉子!

"So, I live in China"

2011-09-06T09:28:00.005-06:00

So, basically, I’m just happy to be here. Living in a foreign country can be hard. Sometimes China frustrates me. But I feel like lately I have been enjoying China so much more and missing America a lot less. I haven’t been to good about updating my blog about zhong guo (china) so far, so I thought I would just make a list of cool things that have happened this week.

· Classes are good and are just at the right level. Except for my kou yu (speaking) class, I feel like I am going to fall asleep sometimes, so I just practice writing characters during class. My teacher is hilarious though. He always wears yellow shirts, talks really slowly, and makes us repeat everything 40 times. He will pause after he says something, and turn his head and smile, and lets us soak in what he said, as if what he had just told us is huge words of wisdom. It probably is. All my classes are all in Chinese, except for his class. He speaks English like a fourth of the time, which I don’t really know why, because there are only 4 Americans in the class, the rest are Italian and Korean, and don’t speak much English. I wonder what it must be like for them trying to learn two languages at once…

· We went to the Beijing Ballet on Friday, because we got tickets from the branch. It was amazing.

· I went to McDonald's and got a mcflurry and chicken nuggets. I don’t even like McDonald's in America. McDonald's in china = heaven. They’re just taking over the world or something like that.

· I went running at a really neat park the other day. Some Chinese guy let me play his er hu (a small string instrument, kind of like a violin/cello). He plays in the park every Saturday. I asked him if I bought a er hu, if he would be my teacher. He said yes. Still looking for a an er hu.

· I held a giant frog. A guy was selling them on the side of the street.

· I found banana bread and something kind of like nutella. Happiness.

· I still enjoy practicing my Chinese on the subway and on buses. One lady told me, “You have a great Beijing accent.” Another person the other day said, “When you go back to America, you should teach them Chinese.” And here’s the best one yet, yesterday I tried to start up a conversation with a guy, and I didn’t understand what he said back to me. I turned to my friend Tina and said, “Do you know what he just said?” She said, “Yeah, he said,“You shouldn’t be talking to me in Chinese, because you have no idea what I am saying back.” Yep, I guess he was slightly right about that one.

· Practicing Chinese with the natives is great. It’s how you get better. I have plenty of embarrassing stories about this, but that’s an entirely different blog for another day.

· I bought a bike yesterday! This story begins on subway. Josh, Tina and I embarked on our hunt to find bikes. While on the subway, Josh told an older lady that her hair looked beautiful. From that point on we became best friends with this lady. Her name is Mei. We laughed, took pictures, exchanged emails with her, and she even accompanied us to the bike shop. The man who we bartered with at the bike shop called her our Zhong guo mama - 中国妈妈 (Chinese mama). We all laughed and she agreed to the title. He said I smiled a lot, so he gave me a good price on my bike. Smiling always has benefits. It was 300 kuai (46 bucks) for the bike, lock and the awesome bell on the handlebars. This isn’t just any old bike, it’s a fold up bike because I am going to take it with me back to America. So, Josh and I ended up buying bikes that day. Tina is still looking. Our zhong guo mama was all worried about us being able to get home. We didn’t understand everything she was telling us, but we assured her we would get home safely. And then we parted ways. So our plan was to just go back the way we came, on the subway, because we had our “fold up” bikes. Well, I guess even when they are folded up, they don’t let you take bikes on the subway! That’s when we realized, that’s what our zhong guo mama was trying to tell us the entire time. So, we sent Tina on the subway by herself (even though we were a little worried about doing so), and Josh and I started riding home on our bikes. Even after asking many people if they knew which direction “shou du shi fan da xue” was (our university), after a while of riding through the streets of Beijing, we realized that we really didn’t know how to get home from the far east side of Beijing. (We live on the west side of Beijing) So, we took a taxi. We made it home… and a couple hours later…Tina made it home. She only got lost a little. What an adventure! I have a red, Chinese, fold up bike, with small tires and an awesome bell.

我现在应该去做我的功课.

The Beijing Ballet

Buses.

China! Hello from the Asian land.

2011-08-29T09:53:00.006-06:00

China! Hello from the Asian land. Well, I arrived here in Beijing on Wednesday night. I flew in at about 10 PM, got off the plane and took a good whiff of that Chinese air. Oh how I have missed you. Haha, yep, that’s just slightly sarcastic. There is something about the smell here that you just can’t explain to anyone; you just have to experience it to know what it smells like. Basically it’s a mixture of Chinese food that was dumped into a trashcan to rot, sewer, and well, I can’t make out the other smells. It’s quite exciting. But actually as you walk down the street you do get good whiffs of yummy noodle shops and restaurant tasty smells.

Ok, so besides that, China is actually really cool, especially Beijing. These last five days have been amazing! School hasn’t started yet, it starts Tuesday. So we have just been hanging out in the city, taking the awesome subway, walking like five miles every day, eating delicious food, and Chinese delicacies (read further for details), getting settled in and getting things ready for school. We went to Tiananmen Square, where the natives asked to take many pictures with us. My wonderful roommate Kayli has blonde hair and blue eyes, which means that the Chinese love to ask to take pictures with her. She is so nice and we are going to be best friends. All of the 27 people in the group are amazing people and we have already begun to bond. There are 3 married couples, and 2 people that got engaged right before coming to China. There are also only two people from Utah in the group.

Saturday we went to the Great Wall of China, the Mitayanyu section. It was amazing! Last time I was here we went to a different part so it was neat to see this part. Josh, Adam, Brett, and I somehow went on an adventure on the part that hadn’t been restored. There was a sign that said, “Not open to people,” or something like that. But some people still go past. So we made friends with some natives and bushwhacked through that part because there was a bunch of overgrown plants covering the original rocks of the wall. It was awesome. The natives were telling us that they were certain there were no poisonous plants, and they were right because none of us walked away with weird rashes or anything. We got some awesome pictures though on top of the old towers of the wall. On the way back down, we rode an alpine slide from the top of the wall back to the parking area.

We went to an awesome night market the other night that sold many Chinese delicacies. We took turns buying crazy foods and shared them. These are the things I ate that night…

Water snake (I almost barfed)

Starfish (kind of strange)

Stinky tofu (gagged)

Centipede (tasted like burnt nasty chips)

Shark (not bad, kind of tasted like halibut)

Scorpion (tasted like the centipede)

Hawthorn berries (eh, not bad)

Oh yeah, and at the restaurant the night before I ate a fish eye. So food has been exciting here, I’ve eaten really good stuff too.

We went to the Beijing branch yesterday! It was so exciting! It took us about an hour and a half to get there by walking and taking the subway, about half of that time is walking. But picture this sight…20 Americans walking through a crowded Asian subway station on a Sunday morning, dressed up, with Asians starring at them. Yep, it’s pretty cool. We meet on the forth floor of an office building. There were so many people there. Normally they get anywhere from 120 to 150 people but there was well over 150 on Sunday and they said it was the largest they have ever seen the meeting. We are so blessed to be meeting here. The church is true wherever you go, even if you’re halfway across the world.

So, Iam really excited to start classes tomorrow. This is such a neat opportunity to be studying the language in the country because I can go out and practice what I am learning with the native speakers. We have been able to take the subway all over the city, and I have to say it’s like one of my favorite parts of our days so far. Crowded subways are the best places to start up conversations. With my little vocabulary I can’t have an intellectual conversation with anyone, but I can have chats about simple things. Mostly, we’ve had fun starting conversations by asking random questions like, “Do you like Popsicles?” or “Have you ever met superman?” It’s really funny to see how they respond. Like, when I asked this one guy about Popsicles. I had to ask him like 3 times, before he understood what I was saying, and then all of the sudden his face lit up and he told me that he used to eat them when he was a kid but he hadn’t had one in a really long time. Questions like that just make people’s day, and we both leave with a smile on our face.

Other cool things about china so far…I sleep on a hard mattress at night. When we walk through the park on the way to the subway station, there are huge groups of people doing tai chi, dancing, and even giant group singing lessons. Bartering, even if your not going to buy something, it’s fun to see how low you can talk the price down to. Asking the vendor selling food on the side of the road where the garbage can is for a wrapper from a Popsicle you just purchased and having him point to the ground. “what?” Then he tells you that the people will just come by and sweep it up. “Ok?” And yep, you throw it on the ground. This is China.

People! There are so many people! Beijing is a giant city!! You feel really small in a big world, but it’s amazing to me, to know that Heavenly Father knows each one of these people individually. I look around on a crowded street and feel so much love for all the people and want them to know that they are all children of a loving Heavenly Father. There is so much purpose in this life and we have so much joy that is waiting to jump at us if we will let it. Ah, life is so beautiful. I am so ready to embrace this challenging and amazing opportunity that this semester will be as I try my best to learn the language and put to the test every day.

我爱中国!

In front of our University

Tiananmen Square

Hiking the Great Wall

This was the part of the wall where it said not to go past the sign because it was the non restored section not open to the public, but it was so worth it.

The Alpine slide off the great wall

Subway maps. Where are we going?

Trying to eat water snake...

Hmmm....Scorpions

Ummm...is anyone hungry?

Starfish, shark and other tasties...

A whole smorgasbord of delicacies...

Bingbangs (popsicles) for 20 cents
. Um yes please.

Mission blog

2011-05-05T09:21:00.000-06:00

I am leaving tomorrow for Nauvoo to be a young performing missionary (YPM). My parents will post my emails and letters to my mission blog while I am gone. You can click on it here: sisterpaulsen.blogspot.com. Upon my return August 16th, I will go back to using abbypaulsen.blogspot.com.

Album Release!

2011-05-04T09:49:00.000-06:00

I have finally got around to it and finished the album! You can click on the link to preview the songs: "Anything Good" by Abby Paulsen. Buy it on Itunes for only $9.99. Enjoy!

Cover art by Mai K. Swapp
Photo by Brittany Hambrick
These two people are super talented!

Also, special thanks to Trent English, Hugh Pinnock and my parents for helping with recording!

And....I chopped it!

2011-04-29T15:28:00.001-06:00

This is the shortest I have EVER had my hair. I've never had my hair shorter than just past my shoulders, so this was a big step for me. It is so weird to have it this short, but I love it. It's a nice change. I cut 14 inches off and had it thinned, so my head is so much lighter, it's crazy! I think the lady who was cutting my hair thought I was kind of silly cause I like freaked out, when she cut it.

Well here it is. Here's the new me...

I guess it makes me look older. That's what every one of my piano students has said the last couple days.

Well, that was fun. Now I'll just grow it out again.

Provo and other awesomeness

2011-04-21T22:14:00.002-06:00

This is a blog post about not last weekend but the weekend before. I tried my best to document it because it was so fun, so here are some pictures from it.
Friday, I went to Provo and stayed with my friend Julie from Italy (she is in the middle). She is one of the most incredible person I know. Her friend Franchesca happened to be visiting from Italy for a few weeks, so we got to hang out and she is a doll.

We went to an amazing ballroom concert Friday night, I had no idea the ballroom team at BYU was like professional...seriously! Go check it out. And later that night we had a dance party of our own, and here is a picture of Julie in her pointe shoes!

This is Julie's temporary frog bowl, because the less shallow one broke that day.

Notice how there are no frogs in it. I know! This story is horrible, we woke up Saturday morning only to find that they were out of the bowl. They died. And one of them was found on the family room floor squashed. I think I had stepped on it that morning without realizing it. Horrible.

Julie and I went to the Provo temple on Saturday morning.

Later that day, it was so great to see my friend Lillian. We went and got bao zi at a chinese restaraunt and watched a chinese movie.

Saturday night I went to Sunshine and Stu's reception! She was gorgeous! This girl was one of my roommates my first semester in college and she changed my life. Literally. Her love for the guitar started mine. Her enthusiasm for life is something I will always try to emulate. I love her dearly.

And it was great to see all my other beautiful girl friends from school!

Later that night it was Anthony's birthday party!

祝你生日快乐! Anthony looks super excited about the cake.

Jonathan looks even more excited about eating it with chopsticks.

Sunday was Bugle's farewell! She is a Brighton camp friend, hence the awesome name Bugle. My name to her is Fermata. She did awesome and is on her way to Missouri to be a missionary and serve the Lord for a year and a half.

I love my Brighton friends!

I did a musical number in church that day with my dad and a less active member of our ward. It was a way neat experience. We had him and his family over for dinner later that day and of course my dad got a chocolate mint cake from Glaus bakery to celebrate the vocal number! It's a must try. What a great way to end a weekend.

The Time

2011-04-18T21:39:00.001-06:00

I think it's funny how technology is becoming so advanced and is such an important part of our society. Kids in elementary school have cell phones, you’re the odd one out if you don’t have a smart phone with Internet, there seems to be at least one I pad in every household, and people text each other when they are in the same room. My niece and nephew have there own I touches, I don’t even have one haha, and I see these two little kids playing on them. People of all ages are more and more expected to have a facebook and to have text. Here’s my embarrassing story from a few weeks ago…

So I’m on the phone in an important conversation, and towards the end of it, I say, “Yeah sounds good, just text me the info, and we’re good to go.” The person hesitantly replied, “This is going to sound so weird, but I actually don’t text, my kids try to get me to, but I just don’t do it…” I interrupted her, saying, “Oh your totally fine, no worries, just email it and that’s great.” I think we both felt dumb. Haha

Now for the beeping story. So I ran in the Salt Lake City Half Marathon yesterday morning. As I crossed the starting line I heard all of this beeping go off all around me. What the? Yes, everyone presses start on their garmins.

You can’t even run a race any more with out hearing people’s garmins go off the entire time telling them they are going too fast – too slow – oh wait, now your going too fast – ok too slow again, you have to speed up. Some people don’t enjoy the run anymore, it seems to be all about “the time.” Maybe I’m just jealous that I don’t have one of these awesome devices. Haha.

It’s also slightly sad how we just tend to tune out in our own world, when we put those little headphones in our ears. It used to be that people would talk to each other during a race, now more and more people, stick their I pods in their ears, and so you can’t even find that many people to talk to. With all the great technology out there, more and more people are, running the race by themselves, instead of everyone leaning on each other, allowing people around them to lift them up, and having people they can talk to.

Don’t get me wrong, garmins, I pods, and all those things are great, I just hope that we take time to enjoy the ride too and not just get through things to reach “our best time.” Gordon B. Hinkley said, “Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.” Lets not forget what matters most. Go for a run and instead of popping in the usual tunes, listen to the beautiful music around us that God has created. I hope that with all the great new inventions out there, we still take time to connect with people. I love how Elaine S. Dalton put it, “we should have virtuous friends, not virtual friends.” There are so many simple things to find joy in, so lets not obsess over the less important things, but remember what really matters most.

Conference Weekend and Birthday

2011-04-05T10:16:00.001-06:00

This last weekend was a blast!. Here's what made it so fun...

It was conference weekend, as well as my birthday on Saturday. My mom has been up in Washington the past couple weeks helping out with grandkids because my sister in law has been really sick. So, my dad and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for a birthday lunch, in between sessions of conference.

Our delicious meals...( we saved half of them for sunday dinner)

Mine: shrimp scampi and lemon delicious Salmon or something like that

Dad's: Some sort of awesome steak

And yes, THE BEST PART. Reeses cheesecake, that we shared. (we didn't save any of this for sunday dinner of course), Can I say favorite dessert? YES.

Saturday night I had a Nauvoo party at Sister Camps house! All ten girls that I will be going with were there! We got fitted into our adorable dresses, had dinner, laughed, shared excitedness feelings, and bonded.

Sister Cauncey in her halfway finished High Hopes and Riverboats dress. We are the lucky group that they are making new dresses for that show this year, so we got to get them personally made for us!

My dad brought over a surprise cake earlier, so they all sang Happy Birthday to me with their beautiful Nauvoo voices.

The guys, or should I say "Elders" came over after priesthood session. We had everyone there except for Elder Packer who wasn't able to make it up from Arizona. You were well missed.

Holy Cow, I love these people already and the summer hasn't even started!

Sunday was lovely. My absolutely amazing sister Angie had us over for breakfast in the morning.

And 21 candles! I'm so young/old/I'm not sure...ha.

My dad and I got to go to the conference center for the afternoon session of General Conference. Thanks to aunt Andrea who is in the tab choir and got us these down in the front tickets. We sat by some adroable sister missionaries from temple square. One was from Taiwan, the other from Belgium(the french speaking part). I got to speak some mandarin with the one from Taiwan. My dad and I no speaka french with the one one from Belgium. My good friend Rachel happened to be sitting next to us too.

General Conference was amazing! I love hearing from the prophets and apostles who lead and guide us in these latter days. There messages give me encouragement and uplift and guide me. I know that these men are called of God, and by heeding to their counsel, things will work out the way they need. Blessings do come. Life is always going to be hard, there are always going to be new challenges presented, it would be pointless and boring if those challenges didn't arise. But by living the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have the miraculous blessing of growing closer to Christ and allowing our trials to make us stronger and better people. There is nothing that brings greater joy than that! I'm so grateful that I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you would like to learn more about what I believe, visit http://www.mormon.org/ and/or http://www.lds.org/

Happy Birthday Mommy!

2011-03-22T22:19:00.000-06:00

Dear Mother, today is your birthday. I love you dearly! I hope you know how grateful I am for you.

Hey good lookin.

And you are the most youthful, beautiful, and fun Nana.

You also make a great crocodile.

Happy Birthday Mom!

A few pics from the Burg

2011-03-20T22:48:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, I took a fun weekend trip up to the burg with some friends. I drove up with Hugh and a full car, but the others went their separate ways for the weekend.

I visited some friends, saw extravadance, which was INCREDIBLE and hung out. Saturday morning I went to the temple with Hugh and two other Elders that I will be serving with this summer in Nauvoo. Great bonding time. We went to Cassandra's (a sister that I will be serving with this summe) apt. after and made some breakfast.

Paul, Hugh, Me, and Nick

Hugh and I participated in what was supposed to be the biggest dodgeball tournament EVER! BYUI tried to break the world record for the 2,000 player dodgeball game. They ended up only having 1,200 people...but still! It was amazingly fun.

Dancing through the semester

2011-03-01T11:59:00.001-07:00

Here's a flashback from this last fall semester. I had the wonderful opportunity to be on the Colegiate World dance team. I have a bucket load of picture from this that are just awesome and fun, so I had to post them. I miss these gals. We spent a couple hours just taking photos together and in our costumes at the end of the semester. Here they are...

This is our fantastic director, Amanda. She is wonderful and created some pretty sweet dances for us. So that is why we bought her this at the end of the semester...A sweet 80's boom box.

Yep she rocked it.

These are costumes from our hip hop irish battle dance. I was a hip hopper.

We had cool shoes. Most of them were Amanda's.

Me, in Amanda's shoes.

I jumped off a piano bench.

Yeah, I tried to be hard core for the dance.

These are costumes from the "Raining Men" dance.

Another jump off of a piano bench.

The african hip hop dance...

"Aboriginal."

Yes this was a jump from the dance.

In performance. We spent the whole semester learning dances and practicing for Extravadance. Here are some photos in performance.

In our Irish hip hop costumes.

Aboriginal. I started out as a girl who has a dream, and becomes part of the aboriginal tribe, only to find out that in the end she actually is part of the tribe. My FHE bro happened to play the didgeridoo, which is a classic insrument for australian aborinal tribes, so he ended up getting to play at the beginning of the performance and rocked it.

Irish hip hop battle. I wish I had more pictures of us battling the irish dancers.

It's Raining Men dance. This one was supposed to be super cheesy so you know me, I really got into the theatrical cheesy part of it all.

Our director, Amanda, overheard a conversation in the bathroom of two girls talking about their favorite dances in the show. It went like this.

girl 1: My favorite dance was Raining Men.
girl 2: I hated Raining Men. It was way too happy.

Haha, I got a huge laugh out of that one. Sounds like that girl may have needed her happiness boosted. I hope we did the trick, as she had to bear through through raining men, or to her, "the happiness dance."

African Hip Hop. I only have pictures from the hip hop part in motion, but the picture in in the black, yellow and orange at the top is from the african part.

And here's all the gals. it was fun dancing through life with you!

Sedona and Phoenix

2011-02-21T21:22:00.005-07:00

Last week, I got to enjoy 5 wonderful days in Arizona with some of my family. The first part of the five days began in Sedona. My brother-in-law and I ran the half marathon and my sister Cara ran the full marathon. It was a hard course because it literally went straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down... Crazy and it was totally beautiful.

Cara and I. I finished the half in 2:17 and showered (No I did not run in a skirt. It would have been wonderful prepartion for Nauvoo though ;) then went back to cheer Cara on when she came in for 4 and a half hours for the full!

We spent the day in Sedona. Sedona is like a lucrative, super artsy, "meditative," "energy" city. More to explain below.

Intersesting art.

Or psychotic readings.

There were special crystal shops everywhere and fun little boutiques like these...

Hippy clothes

I had to do something artsy too. Like take a picture of my mom standing in front of a cool looking wall.

There were a lot of cool churches too. Like this one built in the rock.

It was just as neat inside.

Sedona was fun, then we spent some days in Phoenix where my sister lives. She knows all of the best trendy little cafes and restaraunts down there. We had some fine dining.

My favorite place was Arcadia farms in old town Scottsdale. It's an organic, artful cuisine.

We all shared warm brie with carmelized apples and I had this tasty thing...chicken, wild mushroom and leek crepes with goat cheese.

We also went to the coolest museum ever! The Musical Instrument Museum with musical instruments from all over the world.

The african drums were pretty sweet, as well as the Steinway exhibit.

But I'm pretty sure this was my favorite. I kid you not!...The musical glasses. Unfortunately they were behind glass so people are not tempted to touch or play them and sorry for the glare.

Prepare to laugh because right under the musical glasses was this caption...

No wonder they have them behind glass. They don't want anyone in the museum to have a panic attack or a nervous breakdown by their piercing sound.

They even had a room where you could try out a bunch of instruments from around the world.

We made Valentines cookies one day.

And we had my friend Sam over for dinner who is doing his internship there right now.

Grace was inthralled by his guitar playing.

Ah. And there she is, the little beauty.

And you can't forget the lovely cactus in Arizona. Yep it was a fun trip in the 80 degree weather, then we came home to a blizzard. Spring is on it's way.

Shleding

2011-02-13T22:39:00.004-07:00

Up...Up...And out of the inversion

(A view from the canyon looking down into the inversion in the valley)

This is what happens every so often in Salt Lake, during the winter time when warm air gets trapped in the valley. Pollution starts to accumulate and we live in a thick layer of gross darkness, until a snow storm comes and wipes it all out!

Luckily, for us Utahns, we have the beautiful mountains so close by, we can drive out of it. That's what we did, and we went Shleding! Shleding is a mix between snow shoeing and sledding. We strapped snow shoes to our feet, sleds to our backs, hiked up a mountain for 4 hours, ate lunch at the top and sledded down.

At the top of the mountain. Of course my brother melted snow for hot chocolate.

The daring men, choosing the treacherous ride. I must say, we were all going down some pretty steep hills, you kind of have to. I took the more safe route on many places though, and of course went the slowest down the mountain by using my snow shoe breaks.

The crew. And an eventful Saturday.

From the Heart

2011-01-23T19:35:00.002-07:00

Flashback. So I have some fun pictures and memories from this last fall semester. So I need to do some flashbacks so I can have these special memories documented. This post is about a singing group that I was in during the semester. Part of the groups official intro goes as follows...

"From The Heart is religious choir that is comprised of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Rexburg Idaho. Although not affiliated, the group is primarily comprised of students who attend Brigham Young University-Idaho. From The Heart creates and performs religious fireside programs that are focused on our Savior Jesus Christ and his teachings. It is the goal of the choir to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through song and spoken word. The power of music is a powerful tool for praising the Lord, and testifying of his life."

They hold auditions every semester for this fun group. Practices are a blast and From the Heart goes on tour every 3 months. They also have an opportunity to record and a CD is produced with new music every semester. It is a student run choir and a new presidency is chosen every semester. Unfortunately, I missed the tour this last semester because of other obligations, but it was a highlight for the rest of the group.

Here are a couple other pictures from our retreat...

FTH firesides are awesome because we get to share and feel of the spirit through music.

I miss From the Heart! You guys are the best!

This picture is even better because Heather photoshopped her head in. See if you can find her.

Quote for the day

2011-01-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Yard by yard, life is hard. Inch by inch, life is a cinch!

Sing...Dance...Testify

2011-01-18T21:48:00.003-07:00

Sister Paulsen, you have been called to serve in Nauvoo Illinois as a Young Performing Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

That was the exciting news I got this weekend. It started with over 200 applicants and on Saturday 35 of us hopeful applicants were at a callback from 8 AM to 5 PM. At the end of the super fun day Elder Camp told us that we would be receiving a phone call the next day between 7 and 9 PM, if we made it. If not, we would receive the you did good email.

Well, Sunday evening rolls around, I’m feeling super antsy as 7 is just around the corner. At 6:52 my phone rang. I happened to be holding it in my hand, I quickly looked down at it and realized, “Ah, I don’t know this number! This could be it!” I answered with a chipper,

“Hello?!”

The voice on the other line said,

“Sister Abby Paulsen?”

(Oh my goodness, I almost wet my pants at the realization that THIS was the phone call and I was going!)

“Yeah?!”

“This is Elder Camp!”

“Hi!”

“Congratulations! You’re going to Nauvoo this summer!”

adsfjqweiuyvkjbkljaoasfoi!!!!

Wow, my heart is bursting with gratitude and excitedness! I feel so blessed. Since that call I have felt so strongly that I wasn’t just chosen because I did good at the audition or whatever, but it is a call from the Lord. He has been preparing me. This is a mission call and I feel so blessed to be able to serve the Lord full time for 4 months this summer. We will receive a formal mission call letter in a couple weeks, along with more information, and then it’s off to Nauvoo in a few months.

I am humbled to know that the Lord needs me, along with the 19 other called YPM’s in Historic Nauvoo this summer to…

Sing….Dance….Testify

Holiday Fun

2011-01-04T21:55:00.001-07:00

Boy, do I love the Holidays! I love the lights, temple square, christmas fudge and goodies (haha) family and friend gatherings, the music, the smells, the look of a snow (I never said the cold that comes along with it), the memories that come along with it, and the chance that we have to focus on the Savior's birth. So here were some Holiday happenings.

I got to enjoy and lovely 3rd annual friend party with high school girl friends. it was great to catch up and we also did a fun scarf exchange.

Making gingerbread houses with my neice and nephews. It actually turned into a gingerbread transformer. Oops, sorry Ang, I think it was my fault that I started the creative process of making it look like a jumbled pile of gingerbread, candy and frosting and then the kids just went from there! Or it just looked like the house was in a really bad snowstorm.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert with David Archuleta. What could be better?!

Christmas is always special. We have the fun tradition of going to my aunts house and having a Norwegian dinner, and seeing Santa come in the door, bringing us presents as all the cousins, and aunts and uncles pretend like they are asleep.

It was fun having Cara and Steve here for the Holidays.

And little Grace!

She turned one on New Year's Eve and we celebrated her birthday with a lovely princess party. I was in charge of taking pictures at her party and it was fun to capture this little one on her special day.

I also had the responsibility of making the decadent cakes.

Grace sure was cute with her new piano.

The parachute was a hit among the little ones as well as the adults.

"with my Nana."

...

"and my aunt..."

Well it sure was fun. Have a Happy New Year! Reach for some stars this year!

Everything testifies of Him

2010-12-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

So, I’m sitting here in my room studying for finals on Saturday, and I’m thinking “Everything testifies of Him, and that’s why I love the gospel.” I can be studying in my natural disasters class and learn about how a certain event led to something historical. I think about the Tambora volcano that happened in 1815 that caused a global cooling which then led to Joseph Smith's family to move from Vermont to New York because their crops were dying, allowing Joseph Smith to be in the perfect place to be able to find and receive the golden plates. And I think,"wow…

God is real."

Then Kallie tells me about what she is learning in biology and how intricate and amazing the human body is, and I think, "wow…

God is real."

Then I think about the other day when I walked out of the Taylor building and stopped for a moment to look at the beautiful sunset and I think, "wow…

God is real."

Then I think about how he placed someone in my path that I needed to see that day that just completely changed my life and I think, "wow…

God is real."

Then I think of the beautiful choir concert that I went to last night and all of the incredible harmonies that people come up with and can sing. And how the simplest, pure melody can evoke inspiring thoughts and how an open heart from a choir and from an audience can cause the spirit to be so strong that tears start to well up in people’s eyes and I think, "wow…

God is real."

He is the master biologist
He is the master geologist
He is the master physician
He is the master landscaper
He is the master musician
He is the master creator

God has a doctoral degree times like infinity in every single subject!!! Now that’s talent.

And yep…

God is definitely real

Sliding off the road, the ladder, adventures and other news

2010-12-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

So I’m grateful I didn’t die the other day. I was driving in my jeep back up to Rexburg, because I went to Salt Lake over the weekend. The roads were super icy and it started to snow. Well I slid off the side of the road into a ditch and it was one of the scariest moments of my life. Luckily I had four wheel drive, so I could drive out of it. I saw many other cars off the side of the road, and two trucks were trying to pull them out everywhere. One had even rolled into a ditch and was on it’s top. It was a pretty scary blizzard. Then about an hour later in the drive I hydroplaned on water, because it was an area where the snow happened to be melting rapidly so the roads were very wet. Well, I made it up to Rexburg! Angels were watching over me, and I am so grateful to be alive. The line from the song, “Count your many blessings,” “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,” took on a whole new meaning and I was counting my many blessings.

Later that day I got some good news! I made call backs for the Nauvoo Performing Mission. They had 200 applicants and took 35 for callbacks being held in January. Then they will cut 15 and 20 will be called to serve a 4 month performing mission in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Timber and Kallie and I found a ladder up against a wall in Greenbriar tonight, so we leaned it up against our friends apartment and said "HI" through the upstairs window. It was fun. We also went to the Battleship Championships that were held at the Hart swimming pool. The night’s adventures ended with an exploration of places in the Hart and the new building on campus “The BYU – Idaho center.” Too bad we could only go so far, until the doors were locked when we got to a certain area. It is so huge and they are dedicating it next Friday!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving was eventful down in the 801. Here are just some of the fun things that happened.

Hugh and I went to see our good friend Abe in Savior of the World. He did so great!

I just had to try on his awesome headband thing.

I happened to see my cute friend Gwen who did a show with me a while ago. She was in Savior of the World too and I didn't know it till I saw her on stage. It was a surprise!

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. Actually we had two..hehe. One at our house on Wednesday and one at my aunt's house on Thursday. Here is my mother's lovely turkey. Now that's a good lookin bird!

Josh is intensly cutting the bird. I must say he did a good job. Josh and Amy and there family came down to visit. It was so fun spending time with them.

Here is Isaac's wonderfully placed plate of food. Except for he is missing the yams. Yams are the best part!

Isaac and Bestafar

Now that's a good grandson.

Emma and me

Man, these desserts were so perfectly sinful. Megan's pumpkin cheesecake was divine.

On Thursday we went to my aunt's house for dinner.

Sam made everyone cute little name tags.

Again, everything was delectable.

I tried to burn off all those well worth it calories by going to an awesome two hour Zumba class on Friday. I also went to a movie with my parents...Inception. Oh boy, it gave me a headache.

One of the other highlights of the week was going to Tawny and Allie's mission shower. Tawny is going to Sweden and Allie is going to Nashville. They are going to make such great missionaries!

I will miss them!

Thankful

2010-11-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

I feel so blessed. Life is beautiful and I'm grateful for the simple joys. I'm grateful for my family, the white snow, the beautifully set table that I'm staring at right in front of me(my wonderful mother already has it all ready for Thanksgiving). I'm grateful to be able to move and to run, and to laugh with children as you're trying to keep them on task while practicing piano with them. (They ask me the most random things during a lesson and I love it.) Anyway, I'm grateful to be alive.

Pumpkin Galore! 11 things to make with Pumpkin

2010-11-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

Question: What do you do with extra beautifully home grown pumpkins that your parents bring up from home when they come to visit you at school, and they give them to you?!

Answer: You boil them...

And puree them...

Yes, I have recently tried something new: pureeing 2 large pumpkins, in attempt to see how many pumpkin recipes I could create. And boy did it make a lot of pumpkin puree.

It's hard to believe that you can do more with a pumpkin than carve your usual jack - o - lantern or eat your regular pumpkin pie each Thanksgiving. So here it goes...

11 THINGS YOU CAN MAKE WITH A PUMPKIN! By the way, all these recipes turned out great and I would recommend all of them! They were so good. I had no idea you could make these things with pumpkin. All of them were recipes I found online except for the pumpkin shakes and pumpkin herbal tea was my own creation and the pumpkin soups were taking ideas from recipes here and there and changing them with a twist. So let me know if you would like any of the recipes and I would gladly share them. So here we go...

NUMBER 1 The Classic Pumpkin Cookies

NUMBER 2: Pumpkin Seeds (sweet on the left, salty on the right)(featured with random pumpkin thing in the middle)
NUMBER 3: Pumpkin Lasagna! (with wine, maybe that's why it was so tasty...)
I know it sounds crazy people! But it was a favorite among many!!

NUMBER 4: Pumpkin waffles. mmmmm...tasty

NUMBER 5: Cream of pumpkin soup

NUMBER 6: Pumpkin shakes. This was a favorite, I recreated it another day by popular demand. The blend of ice cream, milk, pumpkin, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and grahm cracker crust was like having pumpkin pie in shake form, but better.

NUMBER 6 1/2: Chocolate pumpkin shakes

NUMBER 7: Pumpkin oatmeal

NUMBER 8: Peanut butter pumpkin bread. A great way to get your kids to eat vegetables and it's delicious!

NUMBER 9: Pumpkin herbal tea

NUMBER 10: Gingered pumpkin soup

NUMBER 11: Cream cheese pumpkin muffins

It was a scrumptiously successful week and a half, and I think everyone enjoyed it. I mean,just check out the looks on their faces.

Fall colors

2010-11-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

There is a reason why Fall is my favorite season. I love change, the crisp mornings, the bright colors of leaves and the crunching sound it makes as you step on them.

This is one of my favorite trees and I walk past it every day on the way to school. I never wanted the perfect weather to leave and the orange colors to disappear. Thank goodness winter waited a long time to come. It wasn't until just last week that mother nature decided to conjure snow down from the sky. Now this tree is covered in a puffy white blanket, but it's still beautiful.

Now I will just dream of these autumn days. See you next year my favorite season!

Mustacherade Ball, Guitars Unplugged...and the holiday where everybody dresses cool...

2010-11-06T20:50:00.000-06:00

So why is Kallie looking through that interesting mask?

The Mustacherade Ball! It was actually advertised as the Masquerade Ball, but I have a friend who went around telling people to make it a Mustacherade Ball and there were quite a lot of people with Mustache masks, and real Mustaches. Here we are!

Some people looked like this...

You can sing the song:

Mustacherade! Mustaches on parade....Mustacherade...

These were our masks...

They were random. Basically we went to the craft store and discovered they were out of real masks so Sam Stringham picked up a wooden cat and held it up to his face and we decided it was a winner! Then we just took eye hole wood things (that are actually supposed to be wreaths) and we colored them and made wonderful masks! Oh yeah and the cat ear thing that we glued on to the eye hole mask was from Tawny's cat mask.

Guitars Unplugged!

I have the best friends in the whole world! They made me this sign the night I performed in Guitars Unplugged. Let's give a big Wingapo! My parents were able to come up too. It was wonderful.

So these are the glow sticks that they handed out to every person in the audience at the Best of Guitars Unplugged night. Picture this, we collected a bunch of them and made a super long chain of glow sticks. Then the crowd started hucking more glow sticks at us so we could make a super long chain. We started sending it through the crowds - A long line of glowiness. It was sweet. We collected some of them after the concert was over and made a chain that we hung up over the walkway by our apartment.

Halloween!

Sacagawea and Hippy

Here are some of our awesome wardies.

So my costume started out as an Indian and then I started telling people that I was Sacagawea/Pocahontas/Indian/Hippy/Motherearth.

Jenny and I at the Halloween midnight 5 K run on Friday night. Friends are the best!

Tanya...aka fitz

2010-10-14T20:58:00.000-06:00

You will be dearly missed, our tiny friend... So Kallie and I went to Walmart on Saturday with the goal to get some dish soap and a rug that was very needed in our apartment. We ended up also getting a little friend, who I gave the name Tanya. The first time I set my eyes upon her, I knew that's what her name needed to be. Well, 4 days later I sat down at the kitchen table to eat breakfast, when I looked over at our little fish bowl and saw Tanya floating, belly up...dead. We had a quick funeral and flushed her down the toilet, and I ran off to class. Tanya we love you. I just don't understand why Kallie and I just can't seem to keep to keep fish alive. Maybe it's because we buy them for 28 cents.

College!

2010-10-10T12:34:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a while. I just thought I would update the world on how college life has been this semester thus far. Um, just grand! It's definately been one of my busiest, but I'm pretty sure it's one of my favorites. I love my classes and am involved in fun activities this semester. I feel like I am on campus all day long or studying, but somehow still find time for a social life. So here are some pictures from the non - academic side of college...

My roommates and I love to do Sunday Socials. This is from our first one of the semester.

This is the step right outside of our apartment. Yes that does say, "Find your eternal companion." With so many people in one apartment, someone there is bound to meet their eternal companion!

On a Sunday social evening, our apartment is always filled with wonderful people (or our lingo - good humans) and delicious food (we usually have a dessert potluck) oh and don't forget the tab choir playing in the back ground.

Rachel and Brandon

Some people like to dress up too!

Newsies! And chalk wars...

William and Jordan decided to make fun of the style where girls wear belts high up on there waist. Yeah they made fun of us that day.

Conference Weekend! I went home over Conference weekend to spend some time with the fam.

Lot's of laughs. And someone liked the cake...

Happy Birhtday Jonathan! I made a cake for his birthday.

And the next day surprised him with a surprise party!

"From the Heart" Retreat:

So this semester, I am in this singing group called "From the Heart." It's a small choral type student run group not affiliated with BYU Idaho, but everyone in the group goes to BYU Idaho. We perform at firesides and other local performances throughout the semester. We had a retreat over the weekend at the scout camp in Island Park. I wish I would have taken more pictures but unfortunately I only have these two, and they are of some of us in the kitchen the morning we left, we are just making pancakes!

My FHE family! Shaving cream war...

Out in front of Craigo's (best pizza place ever in the Burg) And yes I am rockin the Harold B. Lee's.Um, so we adopted a cat for 1 night. I heard a knock on our door, and so I went to see who it was and there was a random cat on our doorstep, so we took it in for a few hours and fed it.

One late evening we were alarmed by a surprise on our front doorstep: a giant cantaloupe. We still don't know who dropped it off.

You rock! Best doorbell ditch we've done this semester! (These were given to Ryan Bruce)

I love my roomies! We had a tea party for Jari's birthday a few weeks ago.

A day doesn't go by with out something special or exciting happening. Even amidst the ordinary, everyday acts, life is filled with adventure and blessings. There's never a dull moment!

"Insta - friends"

2010-09-13T11:48:00.000-06:00

“Insta – friends” – Basically that's what we are. That’s what being a volunteer or participant of Get Connected does. As one volunteer so perfectly described it…"It creates insta – friends.”

So that’s what I had the opportunity to be involved in right before school started this semester. There were two amazing parts of this fun, week long adventure…Spirit Conference and Get Connected. I will share pictures of both.

Basically, SPIRIT CONFERENCE is to prepare the volunteers both spiritually and logistically for Get Connected (New Student Oriention). This is an amazing and unifying 2 day experience to bond with others and to strongly feel the spirit through games, mentor sessions, devotional type things, meals, Spirit Challenge, talent shows, working with amazing people, and creating long lasting friendships.

There were 320 volunteers all together! My partner and I were mentors training our group of 16...I love these guys...

The frozen T - shirt game...

The point is to get the frozen T - shirt on. We never accomplished this, the T - shirt we got was like a solid chunk of ice!

Spirit Challenge...

This is my favorite part! During Spirit Challenge all of the volunteers who have never done Spirit Challenge before are blind folded. They are quite sure what they will be doing and what it will be like. No talking is allowed. They are ready to come to "earth."

They are led to a field, where they are left all alone in silence. This is a powerful thing to take part of, if your participating in it, or just watching. Worldy music, news, and distractions begin to play on big speakers. People feel alone, lost, confused, and frustrated. The ones who are not blind folded act as "Angels" and "Tempters" around the people participating.

Some stand there for a while, some wander blindly.

Some pray...

Anyways. It's really neat. I didn't get a picture of the end. But soon, the prophets voice comes in on a speaker on the opposite side of the field. People reach a rod, one by one at different times. They have to block out the worldy noise and listen carefully to the prophets voice to do this. Soon they reach the end where they are greeted by friends singing hymns. People are crying tears of joy and everyone feels like a family. It's really neat.

D & C 121:9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.

-Theme scripture of Spirit Conference

GET CONNECTED puts your hard work and preparation into practice and performance as you get to work with the new students coming to BYU Idaho for the first time. As a volunteer, you are a representative of BYU Idaho, and get to share your testimony often with the new students through example and word. You make sure that their needs are met as they go through the fun 3 day, involved orientation. The volunteers include council (green shirts), I – reps (blue shirts), and I - team leaders (Orange shirts). I had the privilege of wearing the VERY attractive bold orange shirt and be an I – team leader. My I team partner, Marshall, and I were over a group of about 30 – 40 freshman (depending on how many showed up to each activity.)

This picture only shows some of the new students. There are nearly 6,000 new student this semester!

Our I - Team group number was 75. Most people made a sign out of poster board or card board for their sign. We did ours a little differently, because my awesome roommate Kallie let me use her longboard. Marshall and I got really strong muscles holding this up all the time so we could keep our group together.

The frozen T - shirt game again...

This time we were able to do it!

Devin and Rachel are so cool.

Glasses were a huge deal. The five dollar Harold B. Lee style fake glasses from Walmart are kind of a big trend right now. Rachel rocks them well.

On Saturday we went on expeditions with our groups. Our group went to Mesa Falls. Isn't this so beautiful with the mist coming up through the rays of light?

Our I -Team group. We're missing about 10 people.

"There's nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer."

-Lieutenant Doolittle (Pearl Harbor)

4 Young Adults Survive Severe Thunderstorm on Top of Mt. Olympus

2010-08-30T13:07:00.001-06:00

So saturday morning was kind of like the last summer sha - bang! Maria, Tawny, and Sam and I started out hiking Mount Olympus early in the morning before the sun was up so we could make it up before it got too hot. Well it never got hot, it was the perfect temperature on the way up. We were worried we were going to get rained on because of the big storm clouds we saw moving our way.

Sam was our leader. With his long legged stride, we for sure made good time. Some of us had a hard time keeping up. hehe...meaning me.

You can find cool places for pictures, like this one, at the very top...the rock scramble.

The girls.

Just as we were getting to the top. It started to rain - more like sleet/snow. So we said, "hurry, take pictures, before we have to head down!" So we stayed at the top for a few minutes and started heading down. Sam looks pretty afraid of those storm clouds above him.

Right after we started heading down it stopped raining so we could eat our lunch/breakfast.

Favorite quotes of ours that morning where people kind of misheard words...

Sam: Did you guys see that gummie on the way up?

Tawny: Yeah I started kickin it to see what it was. (Maria and I heard dummy instead of gummie and we pictured Tawny kicking a dummy on the trail and we were totally confused)

Me: Do you guys like sweet peppers?

Sam: What's a sweet debbie?

Me: Uh.. I don't know.

Yeah it was pretty windy too as you can tell from Maria's hair. The sleet was hitting us in the face from the side.

Tawny was happy to be there. It's funny, because it looks like it's blue sky everywhere in this picture, but you can see from the shadow in the valley that the giant storm cloud was above us.

Enjoy the serenity of the mountain tops.

Dear old phone,

2010-08-24T18:39:00.000-06:00

We’ve been through a lot together, but it’s just time to let you go. Thanks for the memories. You toughed it out when I let you slip through my hands and scrape against the ground and you’ve been a trooper through those long conversations. You’ve been with me when I had laugh attacks, you’ve been with me when I cried. You’ve endured through the long days, the frigid ones and the heat when you felt like you were going to burn up. You were a happy camper when I plugged you in to charge while I slept. I even recall a text message conversation with you in the middle of the night.

You were understanding when I let you fall out of my pocket into a river. You dried out quickly.

This picture was taken moments before the phone fell out of my pocket.

You see the blur on the left? Yeah that's me as my phone is going into the river.

I remember that trying time of yours when I accidentally flushed you down the toilet, and you waited patiently for about 10 seconds until the pipes allowed you to float back up into the toilet bowl and I, out of love, reached down and grabbed you.

Thanks for letting me use those disinfectant wipes on you. Luckily, after a week long of drying out and being separated from your best friend: me, you were resurrected. Thank you for using your agency and living a good life, so you could make this happen.

You’ve traveled with me right by my side. You’ve been to the east coast and the west. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you along to China. It was what was best for you. You’ve been with me in Utah and you’ve happily embraced the college town excitement of Rexburg, Idaho. You even let me play a prank on someone by keeping it real, when I switched your battery with one of my friends who had one of your many non identical twins: the red chocolate...

You even let me tuck you away into hidden pockets in crazy jackets...Your service has let guys contact me for dates and let me and my girl friends plan meaningful parties. Your long lasting coverage has allowed me to talk to people I wouldn’t otherwise talk to and made it possible to keep in touch with friends and family across the states. What would the world do in these last days with out you and your other technological friends?

Unfortunately, after these many joyous years, it’s time to let you go. Your battery life is getting worse and you’ve had health complications that I can’t seem to fix. It’s just old age. You see, you work one second and in the middle of a conversation or text I find that you have just shut down, turned off, so I have to turn you back on and get you working again. It was happening too many times every day for me to function with patience. So this is the solution I just had to come to….

I’m sorry. You had to be replaced….with this new phone!!

Well kind of new, it’s my brother’s old phone, but was barely used and is in great condition. New phone, I’m looking forward to the experiences we will share together.

Thank you for your years of service old phone. I will never forget you.

Love, your distant companion…me

Let the races begin!

2010-08-21T14:25:00.001-06:00

It started this morning in Park City before the sun was up. Ready to go! Arriving at about 6 AM, there was plently of time to stretch and let the adrenaline kick in.

Almost ready to start, can you find me?

And we're off! It was a beautiful run, as we went past the river up through Park City. It was very scenic and most of the race was ran on gravel.

And finish! So it was just half marathon, but that doesn't matter! I'm slow but steady and slow finishes the race. Time: 2:20.

Thanks mom for supporting me and driving up to Park City early this morning!

All this running, makes me reflect on last Fall when I ran the St. George Marathon. Remind me how I did that again?...

Here's Isaac and I. You see I have this thing, where I don't really train very hard, but then I just run anyways. But oh well, I think it's partly a mind game. This was fun because I got to run with family.

Sadly, none of us got into the St. George marathon this year, but hopefully in the future we can.

Here was the crew...

So, put your mind to it. It's not about how fast you run, it's about enjoying it on the way and enduring it to the end. Then you can say, "I finished strong!" (or at least kind of, you might feel like you're going to fall over). And remember, to finish the race is one thing, but together's the best way to run.
So let the races begin!

Brighton Memories

2010-08-15T22:32:00.000-06:00

I recently went up to Brighton for the reunion that they do every 5 years for all the staff that has ever worked at Brighton. This was my first reunion and it was the coolest thing ever! I loved meeting people who worked at Brighton years ago and being able to remember and do all the fun things that I did as a counselor last summer. Things like the Brownie hike, singing camp fire songs, hiking up hernia hill, "creeping and praying" (It sounds weird I know, it's a Brighton thing, ask me about it if you want to know more) It was also great to be called Fermata again!

They had an awesome bench that they had staff burn their names into.

You weren't supposed to burn your finger, but I did anyway. Oops. That one hurt...

We climbed perch and jumped off and rang the bell!

This is the hardest part, trying to stand when you get to the top. The tree is shaking, your shaking, your mind is shaking and wondering why in the heck did I do this? (As you look down to the ground 50 feet below)

This was the cute maintenance couple that worked there in like 1956. They were awesome.

She is 70 something years old and even did the perch! incredible.

I met a mom of one of my campers from last year. She worked as a counselor at Brighton

My sister Angie came up too and we took pictures by our names on the wall. All three of us sisters that worked at Brighton in different years happened to be put in the same cabin and so we signed our names by each other. When I painted my name last year, I drew white dots from each of our names saying "That's my sister" so future counselors would see that sisters stayed in the same cabin. It's such a fun Brighton tradition. The walls are covered in counselors camp names.

Fermata = Abby, Wrangler = Angie, and Cheers = Adrienne

And then the adventurous ones, or the ones that didn't want beauty sleep, embarked for the sun rise hike at 2:30 AM on a Saturday morning. Here some of us are at the top of Clayton's peak!

Hoops and I! I met her up at the reunion. She worked there in 03 I think. And I found out she went to BYU Idaho.

And then there was light...

Heavenly.

Have you ever seen the sun rise, turn the sky completely red? Uh..no! You were in your bed! (taken from a lovely Brighton "Sunrise rap" that we would do to try to get campers to go on sunrise, I think it worked for a lot of them) But have you seen the sun rise turn the sky completely red? Well go check it out, I recommend seeing it up on top of a high mountain peak at 6 AM. Completely worth it. Thanks for everything Brighton!

Wo ai Brighton!

Paulsen Family Days 2010

2010-08-11T09:27:00.000-06:00

Last week, the family gathered in Utah for our Paulsen Family Days. We're all living in different parts of the country now, North Carolina, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, and Utah, so it's nice to be able to get together. We spent a couple days up my Aunt Louise and Uncle Gary's cabin up by Strawberry Res. just past Heber. Here are some of our adventures together...

It was beautiful up by the Lake. We rode ATV's and Mike managed to get one stuck in the mud, and we had to pull it out with the other ATV.

Remember, safety first!

Megan, do you like my helmet?

We tried on shoes that were too big for us.

We hung out at the cabin...Good morning Sunshines!

And gave each other back massages...

Out by the Lake, I did a little modeling photo shoot with Emma and I used my sarong for an awesome beach dress for her. Here are two of my favorites...

The last day Josh and Amy drove down from Washington so everyone was able to be together at Nana's and Papa's, except for Steve who is down in Arizona working hard in med. school.

Cara and I did all the girls hair...

We sat around the fire in the backyard and also did a "sibling resemblance line up...."

Ah, Papa and Grace

We roasted marshmallows, and had a "how many skins can you cook off of a jumbo marshmallow? contest"

Entranced by the water...

We had a birthday! It was Makayla's birthday, so I had some fun creating a Princess cake.

It was going to be a castle, but in the creating process, I switched things up a bit.

Top view.

I think the kids enjoyed it...

Happy Birthday Beaners! I'm not sure how she gained that nick name on this trip but thats what I started calling her.

All my beautiful nieces and nephews. It's hard getting everyone to smile at once.

The family. Wo ai wo de jia! We're actually missing Rob, Megan, and Steve in this picture.

Thanks family for a wonderful three days! Sure do love ya! Wo ai ni men.

Out on the small town

2010-07-28T18:14:00.000-06:00

This actually happened like 3 weeks ago, right after I got home from China, but I just had to post these pictures. Better late than never….

Was I on a movie set? I seriously thought that the cartoon puffy white clouds against the bright blue sky came straight from the wall paper in Andy's room on Toy Story. If I were to walk to where the sky meets the ground, would I be able to open a door and be snapped back into reality, like Truman does on the Truman show?

Well the truth is, it actually was completely real and wonderful! My parents and I took the 11 hour drive up to Pullman, Washington to visit my brother Josh and sweet sister-in-law Amy and their family. They live on the palouse, surrounded by wheat and lentil rolling hills! Seriously, they live in this cute little neighborhood, but you go out into their backyard and it’s just all rolling hills. It was so awesome. The weather was perfect, in the 70’s and life seemed so quiet and simple in a small town, especially after coming from a big city in China. The perfectly crafted landscape looked like an artist had painted it right there in front of us. And then I realized, an artist did create this. For us. And we can find joy in these beautiful creations.

So this actually wasn't their house, I just had to take a picture of this scene, cause it's beautiful. We went to a ward party at the house next door to this one.

And had a water balloon toss...

We hiked Kamiak Butte. I taught my niece and nephew to count to 10 in Chinese and the colors. They caught on really fast.

So beautiful!

We spent a day in Spokane! We went to Riverside Park and got on a giant wagon with a slide coming out of it...
And to Manito Park and saw the Japanese Gardens and frolicked through the lovely smelling rose gardens...

This was a delicious old fashioned hamburger place in Spokane called the Milk Bottle, that we stopped off at for lunch. It opened up in the 1930's or something like that and it's still a hoppin place.

Here we are enjoying our burgers and shakes.

I also saw some Chinese people in Spokane and talked with them. I felt right at home.

I had a fun time doing Boo's hair while I was there.

We also went up to Couer d' Alene and the Sorenson's were so kind to let us stay over with them at there cabin on Lake Hayden and go boating with them.

When we went to the beach on Couer d' Alene, Josh spent some time building this awesome contraption for shade.

Ok, I have the cutest neices and nephews.

We all tried wake surfing.

Even my dad tried it! He really got into it. The best part about it was hearing him yell, "Holy Cow!" and then he flew into the water.

After a long fun day...
We got to do a lot of other fun things too, like tour the small towns, saw Toy Story 3, went on walks, flew kites (Josh has an awesome intense kite) and I went on a bike ride with my dad and Josh into Moscow, Idaho where my brother works. We also made Jiao zi. (Chinese dumplings that I learned to make in China) The best part about the week though, was being able to see Josh and Amy and the kids and spending time together. Thanks for the fun week and for letting us stay with you! Wo ai ni!

Quote of the day

2010-07-08T21:14:00.000-06:00

I came across this quote today at an ice cream parlor in Washington and it made me smile:

In those whom I like I can find no common denominator. In those whom I love I do...They all make me laugh.

Back in America

2010-06-28T17:29:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's great to be home! Although I do miss China already. I missed it the day I got back haha. But it's great to be in America and be able to see all the people that I love and have missed.

I don't think I really have Jet lag which is nice. After reliving my day on Thursday and being in two places at once (I was in the Seoul Korea airport on Thursday at 8PM and in Utah on Thursday at 8 PM) Weird... But anyway after that long day of not really sleeping on the plane, I went right to bed Thursday night Utah time and have gotten right back on a normal sleeping schedule. Oh yeah my luggage got lost too and then finally appeared an hour of waiting at the airport, thank goodness. And we were barely able to make it to Cafe Rio that night before it closed with a minute to spare! Perfect.

The day after I got back I went rock climbing with my brother and sister in law's sisters up Big Cottonwood Canyon. My brother has some new sweet gear and it was my first time rock climbing! I'm pretty sure Megan's (my sister in law) little six year old sister was better than me. :)

It was nice to go to a ward on Sunday. What a blessing it is. I have an awesome ward. Everyone is so helpful, giving, devoted and kind. I got to be in Primary that day leading the music.

This week I should be starting up some piano lessons with some kids. Oh and I'm teaching swimming lessons this week...haha, I know. Don't pretend like you all just didn't laugh. If you know me, you know that I don't even know how to swim. Well "real swim" I guess. Lets be honest, I doggie paddle and make up my own swim moves. We'll see how it goes.

I've also had to air out all my things the past few days. Everything smells Asian. No problem.

Take time to laugh

There are two more!

Reflections of China

Primary

In a City of 20 million People

The Story of Room 420

Happy Thanksgiving

A little laugh for today

Dog

Universal Language

Eating Dog

Love

Overbearing and Awkward?

I love America.

Life out of the “er hua” – 可以

Jumping!

Dian Dian

China

"Never waste ANY rice"

My Zhongguo Mama

The Stereotypical Image of Americans

People watch at the park

The Tale of 小胖 （Xiao Pang）

啤酒（pi jiu)

“Ren shan ren hai!” “Dui bu dui?”

Dove

Church. Chinese style.

Muslim Mosque

"So, I live in China"

China! Hello from the Asian land.

Mission blog

Album Release!

And....I chopped it!

Provo and other awesomeness

The Time

Conference Weekend and Birthday

Happy Birthday Mommy!

A few pics from the Burg

Dancing through the semester

Sedona and Phoenix

Shleding

From the Heart

Quote for the day

Sing...Dance...Testify

Holiday Fun

Everything testifies of Him

Sliding off the road, the ladder, adventures and other news

Thanksgiving

Thankful

Pumpkin Galore! 11 things to make with Pumpkin

Fall colors

Mustacherade Ball, Guitars Unplugged...and the holiday where everybody dresses cool...

Tanya...aka fitz

College!

"Insta - friends"

4 Young Adults Survive Severe Thunderstorm on Top of Mt. Olympus

Dear old phone,

Let the races begin!

Brighton Memories

Paulsen Family Days 2010

Out on the small town

Quote of the day

Back in America

The Tale of 小胖（Xiao Pang）