Guests in the Village

Our Big Christmas Meal!!! Two families, Uncle Herschel to all!

December 26, 2016

We let our kids skip Chinese school this day (though they still had to do homework, ugh).
Our house helper, (whom our kids call 'Aunt' in Chinese, and I call her 'little sis', we are a bit like family!) invited us to her village. We  really wanted to give Herschel this experience, we love going to her house.

He counted this as one of his favorite things that we did. The folks here are super kind, generous in hospitality, and very fun! Not to mention this is a beautiful place.

This is a relative of our house helper, we went to her wedding last year .

Herschel took a panorama of her house/courtyard.

 And their fields.

Open air living area:

 
Kitchen. Sophia always gets in the kitchen to help.

 These are huge woks to us, but standard size in these homes, fed by a wood fire.

 They grilled us some delicious fish stuffed with seasoning.

Our helper's husband brought back this 'fighting' chicken.

One of her relatives is a chef at a nice restaurant, he came to help cook for us. 

He showed us how to make this corn pancake/funnel cake dish. YUM.

This lady made herself a pair of shoes while we were sitting there.

Another lady was weaving on a really old but intricate pedal-powered loom.
While lots of modern conveniences have come to village life in just the past ten years, it still feels like stepping back in time out here.

Dog under the table. He knows a good spot. Sophia serves up the rice.

Our helper's husband is on the far right. He sometimes works across the border in Myanmar driving heavy machinery. I asked him about the war there, which is literally an hour from our doorstep. And he did say it was scary with skirmishes daily. We hear horrible reports often.

The food was delicious, the day was delightful, but we did have to get home to let our girls finish their Chinese homework.  Our afternoon in the village was incredible. Once again we were so excited to show Herschel these places we love and frequent.

The Camera Contraption and Christmas Soccer!

December 25, 2016

Let's go ahead and look at this thing:

Herschel rigged his iphone with rubber bands to our ergo baby carrier. This gave him the needed cushion/shocks from bumping around on the moto and a good field of vision for capturing the streets and area as he drove. He got some incredible footage with commentary. It really felt like your were watching a TV episode of what could be dubbed: "Inside China: Not the tourist route".

 Back to Christmas...
Our friend, K had the great idea of getting the fams together to play soccer and Christmas Day seemed the best time.

We ordered a ham from taobao (the internet) and I put it in to bake and then we went to go play.
It was girls v guys (with David joining the girls team for a little help)

 This was on turf and I kept sliding. (a really good excuse too).

bro v bro. Both Herschel and David are excellent soccer players. This was fun to watch.

Yes, I may have been trash talking to an eleven year old...

 You can see he wasn't phased....

 That's okay, Sophia saves the day (I love CS's reaction in the back ground!)

Here she comes...

She gets a body check from JS...

Tobin brings it in...

Herschel tries to prevent getting 'megged by Bella.

The girls lost in the end but we had a blast!

We live in a beautiful place, look at those mountains.
Herschel loved exploring this valley, was impressed with its palm trees, and the hospitality of the folks around us.

We returned home to our ham, and the S fam came to join us for our Christmas dinner.
Herschel became a fave uncle also for bringing the old Star Wars movies, and we watched all three with the kids while he was here!
This was a very Merry Christmas for us!

Christmas Day...Yeah!!!

Our Christmas tradition has been to get up and ease into the morning. We celebrate Jesus first through a meal: homemade Paula Dean biscuits, bacon, and eggs! YUM. Next we get into the real Christmas story through our Advent Bible readings and calendar. We sing, we remember, we give thanks for the best gift. 

We were so glad Herschel could share in the things that make our hearts sing.

I love that our kids expect this and enjoy it. They don't rush to gifts and they don't pout about it. But they sure do enjoy digging in to see their loot when it is time. This year we stuck to our one big gift and 'stocking stuffers' only our kids had no idea there was still a 'big gift' to come. They had already enjoyed packages from Poppy and CC and loved putting together all the legos. 

Herschel was surprised (disgusted) by the pickled thousand year quail eggs I bought him. (He also got chocolate and other fun stuff).

This would've been a cute gift for Sophia, I am always pointing out teeny cars I think she could drive now (at 9 years old!), and this is usually when I am just too frustrated with traffic.

The trampoline had come the night before, but Christmas morning David and Herschel went to pick it up. I put in 'Home Alone II' for our kids to watch, closed all the blinds, and snuck around every so often to watch the guys work. Our kids had no idea this was going on in the back yard. 

They finished right as the movie was ending, and it was time for lunch.

We weren't too hungry but we all sat down anyway. That was when Herschel asked Tobin to go get his phone off the back steps (we picked Tobin because we thought he would give the best reaction). He got the phone, and came back unphased. We tried not to fall over laughing. With a smirk, David asked him to go back and close the screen. Sophia caught on to something and thought David had surprised me with a new back door screen, so we all got up to go look....

And surprise! They were ecstatic. And this really is so. much. fun. I jump every day too, it helps our homeschool, it helps our attitudes, it helps everything, what a blessing.  

That Herschel could share in this memory (and help make it happen with his labor) was priceless.

Next Up: Christmas Soccer 

Motorcycle Village Rides, Dinner Party, Christmas Eve with the Cokers

December 24, 2016

Herschel was very keen on seeing our town the way we do...by getting on our motorcycle and/or electric motorbike. After hiking the waterfall, David and Herschel went out and drove through some surrounding villages and through town a bit making sure they knew where the restaurant was for the party later that evening. He drove my electric bike (which has some serious zip to it) and David led on his motorcycle. Thus began Herschel's 'adventures on the motorbike' with homemade go-pro camera. This was a bit hilarious but successful contraption that I will introduce later. This particular day he was just getting his bearings on the bike, how to use it, and how to navigate traffic.

 Our landlords had a baby a few months ago and being part of a minority here, they must celebrate the baby's 100th day! This happened to be Christmas Eve and we thought this would be an excellent chance to introduce Herschel to a true cultural experience, so we said 'Yes! We will be there'. 

These are the type of events we go to all year round!

David and Hersch hang with the Men folk, drinking their rice liquor (watch out! SO strong, take a sip of this if you accidentally taste the raw pork dish, it will kill the amoebas), avoiding the smokes (almost every Chinese man smokes), and chatting it up. David makes conversation and translates for Herschel. One man could speak some English, surprisingly.

Our landlords dad was very drunk by the first course and kept trying to get David to toast more, and actually took him from our table to sit close to the front for a bit. Meanwhile our kids ate mostly rice. While we love local food, sometimes these events boast the fancy dishes that are not to our liking, though we usually have one or two things we can eat.

After David returned to our table I took the kids to play (they had been sitting awhile). Herschel and David continued eating. Herschel dug into the soup and promptly pulled out the chicken's head! When David told him what it was, he quickly dropped it back in. David saved him by pulling it back out. While we all do put our own chopsticks into these shared dishes, once you touch something your supposed to pull it out and keep it. The head shocked Herschel (when he realized what it was) and we all got a great laugh. David told the others at the table that in America we never see the chicken's head. David then realized he had to figure out how to eat it (or pretend to).This is the exact anecdote we were looking for in taking Herschel to this event. Probably every ex-pat in China has a similar story.

We made it home in time for some gift exchange. Sophia's best friend came over earlier in the day and we exchanged with her. And this year we had our kids choose names of another child in our fam. This would make them have to consider what would please another person. Each child really got into this and loved choosing and giving. It was lego-themed this year!

 Herschel proved to be an excellent gift-giver, giving Sophia some purple earrings (her fave color)

 Herschel brought gifts from Granddaddy, and boy was Tobin in hog heaven with his two faves: airplanes and grits! (though we made him share the grits)


Yeah! Books from Granddaddy Johnson too. His best gift to us was an awesome natural supplement to boost our immune system. We quickly ordered more! Our fam has had its share of sickness, but the past 6 weeks we have been well! Our garden was pretty 'epic fail'. I realized I did not have the time, though I LOVE the idea...maybe this book will get me inspired again.


I read Granddaddy's card to Gabrielle, and they love having a little of their own spending money! So fun. Plus, these were our first Christmas cards, coming just in time!

Night time reading with Uncle Herschel!


It had been a LONG day, when Herschel hit the hay, we got our kids stockings stuffed, with some overflow of course....

Herschel Hikes through the Rainforest

December 24, 2016

On day two we packed a picnic lunch and drove through mountain tunnels and literal clouds to get to the China/Burma Border and hike to a waterfall. This is pretty much a subtropical rain forest area that leads to a 100 meter waterfall. 

Our kids LOVE this, it is a child's paradise of nature exploration. All kids including Gabrielle hiked the mile in. We put her in the ergo on the way back.

Herschel enjoyed the hike and tons of photo ops.

superhero pose.

Yeah we made it! There was a ton of water coming down, more than last time and it is our dry season. We really cooled off once we sat down to eat our lunch. Chilly!

Gator Nation is everywhere folks.

This is a cool pic:

Not to be outdone by this one:

It had been less than 24 hours and already our kids (and us too of course) loved having Uncle Herschel around.

This park is filled with turkeys and peacocks. They like to sit on the ledge over the entrance to the bathroom.

This was Christmas Eve day, we returned home, rested, and got ready for a local dinner we were invited to that night.