cooking at gary's

we've been begging gary or tina to show us how to cook chinese food
and finally they did! yay.

we met tina and she took us to the produce and meat market. lets just say we're glad that we made it through the meat aisle without gagging. personally i think the pig legs look quite delectable

but it was actually a really good experience we got to see what real chinas like.



what was on the menu:

tomato and egg (our favorite!!)... cooked spinach ... cucumber salad... potato dish... green bean and pork... carrots and pork... fried tofu... white rice (the necessity)

what every house in china has. the rice cooker.

kitty in the kitchen please note the huge jug of oil that is being used as a doorstop


food prep


gary cooking

chinese cooking necessities, a wok, oil, oil, more oil, salt, soy sauce and you can not have the little packet of msg

hen hao chi :)

10 days left

yeah. thats right. we're home in ten days and we're kind of freaking out. i'm really super excited to go home, but i'm already missing china. its nice living in kind of an escape from the real world.
probably the hardest thing right now is knowing every day that passes means thats one more day closer to having to say goodbye to our kids.
its seriously heartbreaking. its going to be so hard. they're just our best friends.

right now we're preparing for our end of the year presentation that we have to put on for the parents. we're doing the three little pigs and they're so good at it. it cracks us up. they're so
cuute!!

one of our kids andrew actually left on wednesday, because he went to england to learn english. it was really sad actually. he was one of my favorites. and i know mom, i say they're all my favorite. but he was. we were buds. he'd come up to me after class and tell me how many tokens he got for that day and whenever i walked by the classroom, even if he was in chinese class i could hear him yell,"Teacher Jessica!". he's a super mischievous kid, but he really is good. a lot of our kids had like personality flips over this 6 months. and he used to be a headache, still enjoyable but still a pain sometimes, but the last couple months he was so good! and he'd still be goofy but thats why i loved him. and just how hard it was saying goodbye to andrew, we cant even imagine saying goodbye 13 more times...

10 strikes and we throw you out the window....buh-bye andrew

yeah..remember the infamous andrew puppet

me and my andrew ♥

andrew :)

Qu Ni Sheng Er Kuai Le (Happy Birthday)

Today was Karen's birthday. which means today was a very good day. We taught from 9:15-9:50, then we did play rehearsals (for the end of the year presentation for their parents) then at 10:30 Karen's mom shows up with the good stuff. Chinese kids school birthday parties consist of the mom coming in with a huge bag full of goodies (puffs filled with chocolate, milk or juice drinks, candy) and an AMAZING cake from the bakery in Guzhen. These cakes are seriously my favorite thing ever. They have the lightest frosting and chocolate and they top it with beautifully arranged fruit and sometimes vegetables (candied cherry tomatoes). A nd its always a white cake with two layers of frosting with chopped up fruit in it. Okay it may sound gross with the fruit, but seriously its amazing. They are the only ones that can put fruit and even vegetables on a cake and make it even more amazing than if it wasn't on it.

the cake.

So Karen's mom shows up and we had a mini birthday party, sang happy birthday in English and chinese. Qu ni sheng er kuai le (choo nee shung er kwy la) is happy birthday in Chinese. And we just ate and just had fun. Karen turned 6 years old and wore her new pretty pink dress that she had to twirl for anybody that came into the room.

karen and her mom cutting the cake

passing out the cake


me and the birthday girl ♥

paul, mike and ben

party :)
(mike, katie, yaya, blake, teacher apple, kid apple, tina's arm)

me and yaya ________________________________ me and paul

and probably my favorite picture ever.
this is me, and my apple ♥♥