Baby Henry!!

On December 21 at 7:22pm I became an aunt!!! 8 pounds three ounces and He is the most adorable baby ever!!! His name is Henry August Jasmer and look at that little face. I just wanna squeeze him and kiss him!!!!!!!! Too bad I am way over here. It is hard to believe that he will be almost 2 before I actually hold him. I am trying to come up with a new way of transportation so that I can be in two places at once. Thank you so very much to all you who were thinking to Father about Henry. Praise Him that Henry arrived safely!!!

Important Newsletter Info!!!

(((Some of you may be very confused as to why my official newsletters posted here always seem behind in the news--that is because they are the same ones that get printed at the headquarters company and mailed to many others and so I must compose it two months ahead of time.That is why it seems out of sync with the rest of the info on this page. I have been trying to update this site at least monthly. Please continue to be patient with me. )))

Official December Newsletter 2009!!

Merry Christmas!!!
A Child is born, innocent and pure, full of the hope of a life filled with the greatest kindness this world can give it. However, each of us is very painfully aware that life, with the help of this cruel world, usually gives us bumps and bruises along with the little and big joys.

I am so thankful that bruises and bumps usually heal. Since my last letter I have moved, started school, dealt with a rodent problem in my apartment, had a minor collision on my bike, and been to Walmart more times than I would like to say. And believe me there have been many items that have healed.

In spite of my continual blunders and constantly making things more complicated everything has gone pretty smoothly. My teammates have been ever ready to step in and help me in even the smallest instances. They are my source of encouragement and companionship. In fact they are my kindness from the world.

I have attended the Kunming International Academy Fun Fair and spent some extra time with the kids while their dad was in a village. I got to party with the team while making Chinese dumplings and pot stickers. We went on a picnic near the Stone Forest a national park. All of this was part of me getting to know the team better and being an integral part of them.

I will be on school break here soon and I am excited to get to say those two words together in reference to myself. SCHOOL BREAK!!! It has been so long since I have been on a school break. School started very easily with a week of listening and no speaking. This proved to be very difficult for me. No surprise!! However, it is easy to say that Chinese has four tones and thus it is a tonal language but to begin to try and speak them or to differentiate between tones is a much much harder task.
So what have I learned??

Lessons Learned: if I want to buy a potato I must speak carefully or I may offer to pay someone to smuggle me into another country. I can commission the making of a death trap, for a rodent, for a little over 3 dollars. I struggle with hearing the difference in tones. I need to lower my expectations for what I can accomplish in one day. I still love jiao za (Chinese dumplings/potstickers). It is much easier to study Chinese once you actually have a desk or another place to sit other than your bed.

I miss you all and ask that you would talk to Father regarding my emotional health. I can tell that I am beginning to miss personal connections more. I also ask for patience regarding language learning both for myself with myself and for my teachers. I know that you are all preparing for the celebration of the only true innocent and pure Child and I hope that you would think of me as you hang lights, decorate trees, bake cookies and pies and other delicacies and know that I appreciate those thoughts and miss the festivities but that I also par take in the celebration of who and what Christ means.
Love, Denise

My School held a Christmas party on Friday December 18th. It was so much fun. We all brought food and we had a time of talent sharing. Then we sang some Christmas carols together in both English and Chinese. Once we finished eating we visited the home of two other Chinese families who are having some difficult things and sang some carols to them. This is not something that is a Chinese custom. So we shared it with them. Let me introduce some of the friends I have at school.

Here is the whole class and all the teachers and their families. It is a small school and I learn one on one at this time but the atmosphere is so wonderful that I am very glad that I am a part of it all.

This is Jiang Lao Shi who is the hard working administrator and delight of the School. I do not have the pleasure of learning under her but I know that I have been blessed by her anyway.

These lovely ladies are my dear, sweet, and patient language teachers. The one playing the guitar is Xu Lao Shi and the one who is only singing is Jiang Lao Shi. Lao shi is the polite title for teacher. Xu and Jiang are their last names. They have given me a Chinese name because they determined that the one given to me before was not suitable. Zhong Jia Ni. This is a good name they inform me. (shrug) It means "nice girl." They have a suitable nickname for me which I do not recall the Chinese but the translation is "Hands and Feet Not Clever." I really love them both.

This is Whitney (in the middle) and her two sisters, Kelly and Devon, who are visiting for Christmas!! Whitney is from Missouri and works for a water provision organization here in Yunnan.

This is Mirjam. She is a nurse from the Netherlands. She moves this week to another city in China. We will all miss her very much.

This is Tom and Angie. They are both engineers and are from Iowa. Go Hawk Eyes!!!

Faye is in the middle there. She has the brown curly hair. Faye is a lawyer from New Zea land. She will be in Kunming for a long time too. We are all helping her sing a New Zea land version of the 12 days of Christmas. I am holding "seven eels swimming" and "Eight Plants of Puha."

The Yunnan Minority Museum.

Christmas Fair!!!

December 7, 2009

So the expats here have put together a fair of sorts to celebrate this season!!! There is a small Scandinavian population here and will be having a Santa Lucia party. I am not quite sure if I will be attending but it is so good to know that I have options. I have put up a small Christmas tree (from Walmart)and the small shinning lights on it make me happy. Today, I spent 45min sitting in my apartment's courtyard just "talking" to those going to and fro. There were lots of laughs and hopefully lots of good connections. I am going to be an aunt any day here. Which I am so so so excited about. Please keep Molly and Ben in your thoughts. Anyway, things are good here and continue to feel more like home. Love you all!!!

Official November Newsletter!!

Give Thanks in all situations. In Good and in Bad.

Salutations!!

As I write this letter I have only been here 8 days. But you are reading this, just days before or after Thanksgiving. I envy your holiday cheer, your bellies full of turkey and mashed potatoes, and your familial comfort. Yet, despite this envy I would not wish myself to be there with you. I am so thankful and delighted to be here in the land of Moon Cakes.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the peoples rejoice.

The Hard present gives me: patience to see what I can learn from those in my sphere of reference, hope that I will not always be helpless to do activities of daily life, and joy in the observation of those around me, and ultimately the privilege of becoming once more like a child experiencing the little things of life and relishing them as great achievements. I am quickly learning that when you rely on others to help you accomplish your daily tasks everything takes twice as long.

The Good future looks bright. I can see it shining ahead all the speaking, reading, and writing tasks ahead. Hopefully within the next two weeks I will be in school of some sort. I hope that by the time you hold this in your hand I am speaking more and going to and fro more confidently. I would like to introduce to you my new motto: “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.” John 3:27 This gets me through the day. I have been placed here through your generosity and conviction and ultimately by God.

I delight to tell you that as I enter language school I see it as a gift and a responsibility. I do not take it lightly. I will diligently learn so that I may effectively help those I come to help. Please hold me up in this task. I cannot do it in my own strength. Ask me what I am learning. So in keeping with my commitment to you let me tell you what I have learned so far.

Today: I learned how to make tomato soup from scratch, I do not have the cord that will transfer pictures taken on my cell phone to my computer, and that underwear can be purchased in the same place as shredded pork and candied melons. Yesterday: balancing on the back of a bike is tricky and that you can buy a week’s worth of vegetables for little over a dollar. Last Week: I learned that it is important to unplug the drain in the bathroom floor before you take a shower, plugging an appliance into the outlet may not be enough-you may also have to turn the outlet on, dvds from the united states do not play in all dvd players, and my textured flip flops have no traction on marble steps in the rain.

Thank you so very much for being a huge part in all of this. I will continue to tell you how things are going here. Your words of encouragement have been so touching.
Love, Denise

Tests of all Kinds!!!

11/22/09
So I am pleased to share with you all that the "Rodent of Unusual Size" is no longer a menace to my personal space. There was quite a bit of commotion around here though because of it. I had my cabinets removed with a large amount of evidence that my friend, whom I have named Templeton, had been here but he was not there at this time and we found no holes--except for the huge gap between my front door and the floor. So, we fixed that and were able to replace the cupboards. Thank you for all your encouragement-by note, by email, and by thinking of the situation for me.

I have had three tests at school and although I know that they are just the beginning I feel very reassured that I can and will master Chinese. I have learned to say things like-I am a student and am studying Chinese, I have a tea cup or I want a pencil. I have also learned that when two third tones are in a row the first one changes to a second tone. I also learned the difference between saying also about two objects and saying also about two people. This language is mighty complicated but I am beginning to understand some things.

A new bus line has opened up and it is my new favorite thing here because no one really knows how Awesome it is. It goes from my friend Whitney's home, to my home, to school, to the area where most of my other class mates live, to the foreigner's food store. Basically it takes me to all the Most Important places. :)

I also am learning that even though some things seem just so illogical here there are some things that are just so brilliant. I have recently had to apologize to my teammates for mocking them about how cold it gets here. Since most of them are from California I was sure that they were just wimps. However, the cold here is vastly different from Nebraska.

In Nebraska we have internal heat in all the buildings and we have cars with heaters. So we leave our heated home and brave the cold to enter our heated car and then drive to the heated building of our school or work. Here there is no such thing as a heated building. Therefore, when it gets a little chilly outside per NE standards it is always chilly and the slight chill soaks into your bones and you cannot get warm.

Thus, the brilliance of electric heated hand warmers(they look like pillows that you can plug in and then stick your hands into the middle)and oscillating space heaters. I am very thankful for these heating devices as well as my brand new water heater. Before I had solar water, which means that when the sun shines the day before you will have hot water. However, since about the beginning of Nov the sun has taken a holiday. :) It even snowed yesterday ( 11/21/09) which only happens about every two years. The whole city was buzzing with excitement over it.

Thank you for your thoughts and your love. Denise

October Update Note!!

Ni Hao!
I had my one month anniversary on Oct 15th!!! I am so thankful to have lasted that long. I have not had any major break downs or homesickness. I haven’t been sick-so I am still waiting for the nausea and vomiting to hit any day. Which I hope is not this week because I start school tomorrow. I recognize that I have been living in a state of alarm, since I arrived. At all times I am poised to react in some adrenalin filled way. This way of living is very exhausting.

I discovered today that I am sharing my new apartment with a rodent. This almost pushed me over the edge of emotional stress and divine dependence. I am confident that tomorrow the construction crew will find the hole where it came in from and patch it and everything will be all well, but in the mean time I do not feel comfortable eating in my home. So I went out for dinner and struggled to find a place to eat. I went to the first place and there was a wait of who knows how long so I left. The second place was closed and at that point I just went to the convenience store and bought a disposable bowl of noodles.

SO, here I am sitting on my bed eating my disposable bowl of noodles, pb sandwich, and writing to you. At this moment I am discouraged that there is going to be a construction crew taking apart my kitchen in the morning to find the source of the mouse/rat in my home. But on the bright side if the crew finds the hole and fills it I will perhaps get new better cupboards and counters.

I miss my friends and family. I am greatly learning to love and trust my team here, but to have people around you that know some of your deep history and have built integral relationship based on and in spite of that history are so precious. I think that your continual interest and support is encouraging and inspiring. Thank you.

Here are my lessons from these last two weeks: Riding on the street is less hazardous that on the sidewalk despite appearances, cucumber flavored potato chips are delicious, new light fixtures can really make a big difference in light quality, there is a law in Singapore forbidding chewing gum, Walmart doesn’t sell matches or any fire producing accessory, it takes 2 weeks to have furniture delivered, I should not wash a wok with soap and water, and finally to order food to go you say dau bau.
Please continue to lift me up in your prayers. As my life continues here I don’t envision that it will become less complicated.
Love you,
Denise
P.S. My bowl of noodles was delicious. :)

House Hold Appliances!!!

It is a red letter day!! I took the bus to my apartment this morning around 7:30am. I let the cleaners in at 9:30am-which I would like to make a side note about. The painter painted on Friday and it was him and his wife for three bedrooms, kitchen, living room plus all the ceilings and they had it done in one day-they started around 9am and by 6pm they were finished. The cleaners are a husband and wife team and they had a HUGE job in front of them and they expect to be done by 8pm. American's would never work this hard.

Okay, so after I had a brief dilemma dealing with the water and the lack of a functioning toilet-which everything was resolved in a timely manner and the toilet should be a-okay now. April and I went large appliance shopping. Yay!!! I wish that I had been thinking because I would have taken pictures for you...but I didn't, sorry.

We first came to the stove top appliances and oh the choices. There are infrared ones and just electric ones. The differences is that the electric ones can only be used with iron pots and pans. The infrared ones can be any kind of pans. The infrared do not heat as quickly and cost much more. Being as I have no pans or pots at this time I opted to get the regular one and just make sure that they have iron. If and when I need another kind of stove burner I will get one at that time. :)
When I bought my stove burner I got as a special gift two pots, a teapot, and.....wait for it....a pressure cooker. Wow....ooooo...ahhhhh!!

Second, the friges. It was imperative that I find one that I could stick magnets on-however there is no refrigerator culture here where they stick things to the frige-so it was pretty impossible to explain to the sales lady what I was looking for...April said that every one they have had was magnetic. So I bought a white one that has 135 in the refrige part and 75 in the freezer part. Don't ask me what unit of measurement it was because I do not know. I am very excited to hang people on it. :)

Third, my washer. This is my favorite one. I got an LG-(2002 northpark beijing team)front loading washing machine. April said that the top loading washers here are worthless-like just putting your clothes in plain water. My shiny silver LG(NPU 2002) has English and Chinese characters. It hold 6.5kg of clothing and I get to tell it how fast or slow to spin. It can spin as fast as 900 spins a min. Isn't that CRAZY!!!

Who knew that house hold appliances could be so exciting!!! The great part about it all is that every single item was on sale. The refrigerator would have been even more on sale if I could have shown that I was a Chinese rural farmer, however,that proved difficult to verify. So I only got the somewhat on sale price. :)

Then as I was walking home from the bus stop through the park next to Ruth's home there was a five piece band made with traditional Chinese instruments playing and there was this really old man singing what sounded like opera. It made my day. So I skipped and pranced the rest of the way home.

Thank you all for being a part of this day!!

Bike Ride

So, I took my first solo bike ride since being here and I have news for you. 1. Riding a bike is much more scary than walking here. There are so many things to keep track of. The other bicyclists, the other motorcyclists, the cars, the buses, the pedestrians. The many many many pedestrians. I biked from Ruth's home to my new home. It really didn't take very long but it was a frightful ride-against traffic, with traffic, paused in traffic. This is all very new and different and you can just continue to think of me during this time. Oh and for those of you who wanted to know I do have a basket on the front of my bike...:)

Here I am

I am finally back on Blogspot. I am sorry that it has been a while. The Issue: when I turn on the filter that will allow me to access Blogger my wireless internet is disabled. Something I intend to figure out the glitches before I move. If I am unable to-I will let you know that there may be a temporary break in my communication. :)
I sign my lease in the morning and then go pick out paint colors with the painter. Not much else is happening. I did not find the pecan pie flavored moon cake but I did have a grape flavored one which tasted like a fig newton. I watched the National Day Parade with some nationals and it was unlike any parade I have ever seen. I sat for two hours before I left. I guess the floats and dancers and entertainment followed after the third hour. But all I saw was the president and prime minister riding in fancy cars past all the military and the weapons oh and don't forget the speeches. I will upload pictures now. love you so much. Denise

Denise's View of KM

Pictures of My Un-Finished Apt: