Pray for Yuki

This adorable little boy goes to my church. Recently his family took him to the doctor, because his cheek was swollen. In the beginning, it was thought to be cancer, but now they aren't sure. A lot of tests were run and they will get the results this weekend. Please pray for him and his family. The doctor said it is likely surgery will be needed, regardless of what it is, because his cheekbone has been deformed due to the swelling. Thanks for your prayers guys!

More birthday fun...

Brett made a turkey for my birthday. I got to make turkey sandwiches for lunch--for the first time EVER in Japan.


George sent me a birthday cake in the mail. Not real cake--she's not that stupid. I put it in water and it grew...isn't science cool?

Happy Birthday to Me!!

George said, "Jenn, even Lauren has written about your birthday on her blog." Therefore, you will wait no longer. I will now share my birthday pictures with my hundreds of my readers.

Lauren had a surprise party for me. I knew they were having a party for me, but I didn't know any of the details or even the location, so it was a lot of fun when we showed up at Misaki church and people were there to say 'Happy Birthday'. Yuya and Liz made dinner and it was great.



The cake was fun too (but they didn't make that).



Some of the party-goers

Chiako, Yuya, Brett, and Yuya(Liz's fiancee)

The sweetest family ever

Dave, Shinko, Joshua, and baby Hana (Joshua gave me a birthday kiss...he's seriously the cutest kid ever.)

After dinner, we went to the beach to do fireworks. I've always done fireworks, or at least seen them on my birthday (July 4th) so Lauren knew I'd love it.

We had a lot of fireworks, but firework pictures are hard to capture...you'll just have to enjoy this one!


These are 2 of the coolest 13 year olds I know.

Me, Justice, and Parker

This is one of many pictures that Yuya jumped into that night.


The girls

Liz, me, and Lauren


This is all of us doing the typical 'ending fireworks'. The point is to see who's firework goes out last.

Save the best for last...

This was my favorite part of the trip--our rickshaw ride. We got to go through back streets in Beijing and see a typical home for a middle class person there.

Lauren and I with our rickshaw driver


Here are the pictures I took throughout the ride.















Inside a typical middle class home




And here's some very raw video footage...


That's it guys. I'm finally done with China. Next up--my birthday!

Our boys

(From L to R/clockwise) Yoshida-san, Kuwabara-san, Hirose, Seki-san, Kenji, Yamazaki-san, Ito-san, and Sato-san (in the middle, leaning on the duck)
**For those of you that don't know, -san is a term you add to the end of someone's name to show respect. All of the names with 'san' on them are their last names, because typically Japanese people introduce themselves with their last name. The two names, Hirose and Kenji, were the 2 younger guys. Younger people usually introduce themselves with their first name outside of business and school. So there you go--you've all learned a little about Japanese culture. This is an educational blog, you know.

Yes, they are as funny as they look. These guys were in our tour group. We loved them and even managed to learn all their names (which we were very proud of, because Japanese names are hard).

More random pictures...

I know I shouldn't have waited this long to post all these. I had all these grand plans and witty quotes to add to a lot of these, but now they're just being thrown up here. I'm very sorry for the sloppiness you're seeing here now...

A self portrait at the summer palace


Megan, me, Lauren, and Lilian


Some very adorable twin boys


Tibetan monks that we saw at the Summer Palace


A boat at the summer palace


Summer palace


Really tall Chinese soldiers

We were told they are in a special group specifically for tall guys. I wonder how hard it is for them to find these tall Asians. I can't ever find any.

Look at all my money.

I gave them some yen, and got tons of yuan (Chinese money). I hate trying to figure out how much I'm spending in other currencies. At least the Japanese yen is easy to convert to USD.

Chinese coke

China continued...

These pictures didn't really fit in a category, so they're going here.

Our view from the hotel window


Driving in Beijing


Construction site of the 2008 Olympics




Dancers


Here is a video of the dancers. However, if you want to laugh, you should really watch the lady on the left that is trying to dance along with the others. She was in our group.

Donghuamen Night Market

We went to eat 'street food' our first night. It was so good. Here's a little info on the night market.


(Yes, I do realize how lazy it is of me to post the picture of a sign, instead of writing this myself.)

A typical stand


This fruit looks better than it taste...trust us.


Anybody want some fried starfish?


What about some frog legs or octopus tentacles?


We also saw scorpions that you could fry and eat. Sounds delicious, eh?

The Silk Factory

How can you visit China and not see silk? We went to a silk factory and got to see how it goes from worm to finished product. It was pretty interesting.

The cocoons


Here are the girls getting the, umm, silk from the worms. (Yeah, clearly I don't know silk terminology.)



The silk being spun


Our fearless leader donning the finished product.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden city was the Imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is to the north of Tiananmen Square. Honestly, since I've waited so long to write about this, I can't remember any really spectacular details, so the pictures will have to speak for themselves.









This place was packed when we were there. Every where you turned, there were people. It was nuts at times. So, you can imagine what happened when all of a sudden we were being forced out of the place because some 'big important person' was coming. Lilian, our friend from Taiwan, asked one of the guards what was going on, and he said some president was there, so everyone had to get out. It was the Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiev. Kyrgyzstan is making an agreement with China to provide electricity. Thus, we were kicked out. This is how the place looked empty...


I have no idea who that guy is...some Chinese secret service, I suppose.

Here come the soldiers...


I couldn't get anymore pictures because I was being yelled at to stop taking pictures by this guy:


So there you have it...the Forbidden City really was forbidden for us.