WAHAHA competition!

If you know me well at all, you probably are aware that I am a wee bit competitive. Ok, ok...I am VERY competitive. In an effort to keep our team hydrated, our team leaders decided to have a competition to see who could drink the most bottles of Wahaha in one day. I was so pumped about it because I LOVE LOVE LOVE competing. At the end of the day, I knew that it was going to come down to Brynn and I, but I wasn't sure how many bottles of water she had consumed during the day. Not knowing how much water I needed to drink before midnight, I decided to sit by the WC (water closet/restroom) and drink as many bottles as possible. At 11pm, my stomach could take no more...I called it quits at 27 bottles of WAHAHA! I still didn't know how much water Brynn drank, but it was impossible for me to drink any more. The next morning I found out that I was indeed the winner, but Brynn came in a very close 2nd place. Shortly after, I found out that I what I did wasn't the smartest thing in the world because you can die from drinking too much water. So children, adults...do not try this at home!

Incase, you are having a hard time wrapping your mind around 27 bottles of water in 16 hours, here are a couple of pics of me with the empty bottles....yes, I saved them to take a picture. Enjoy!

As a Part II to this post, I have to make mention that I was a frequent visitor to the WC that day...and every hour that night. How many times did I have to visit the WC that day? Oh....33 times. It was pretty awful! Way too much H2O.

For those of you who have never been to China or have never gotten to experience the "squatty potty" as it is affectionately known, these next few pics are for you....

On the flip side....to all my friends in China who are reading this, I'm sure you are wondering why I am posting pictures of your restrooms. They are just so different from our toilets in America. Many people are just curious....

This is how you "flush"!

Jamaica!

One day Miss Brynn was sick and so I substituted for the Jamaica class. We had a lot of fun. Instead of doing curriculum the whole time, we decided to make cards and take them to Miss Brynn to cheer her up!

Working hard on the cards for Miss Brynn

Fun with fun foam!

One of the songs we sang to her.

The finished products! They had so much fun making the cards and giving them to their teacher.

I'm sorry!

To all of my faithful blog readers, I am so sorry for the lack of posting things about China lately. Now that I am home from school, it's more difficult to get the pics since I don't have either of my computers. I am going to post tomorrow! HOPEFULLY soon (sometime this week) I will know where I will be traveling this summer. I will let you know as soon as I find out. It's getting harder and harder to wait because I am so anxious to go back to China. Thanks for all your patience with the posting. You guys are amazing!

Graduation Party

Because my graduation ceremony was at 7pm on Friday night and was expected to last about 3 hours, there were a lot of people who weren't able to make the trip to College Station. My mom decided to have a Graduation Party at home on Saturday evening so that friends and family at home could celebrate too! The cook-out was tons of fun, and it meant so much to me for everyone to be there. Thank you so much to everyone who came!

Granny wasn't able to come to graduation, but she made it to the cook-out!

My uncle, aunt, and cousins from Dallas were at the cook-out as well!

Umm...no words but SPECIAL! My see-ster is "special"!

Graduation Day

Graduation Day!

May 11, 2007

Sorry it has taken a while to post; things have been CRAZY around here with graduation. I am also without my computer which makes posting even more difficult. SEE-ster...thanks for letting me use your computer :) !

I was so glad to have so many people come to College Station to watch me graduate! Thanks Dad, Mom, Trent, Jenny, Mei Mei, Christi, Pawpaw, Meme, PePaw, Amy, and the Roy family for sitting through the EXTREMLY long ceremony. I appreciate it more than you will ever know. Graduation for me was made very entertaining (to say the least) by the guy sitting next to me...there wasn't a dull moment with him around!

Here are some graduation pics. I can't believe my four years at A&M is already over. Enjoy!

My beautiful graduation present!

My fam at graduation

The whole group! Thanks for coming!

Love these girls!

Our super-secret BFF handshake!

Bring Me Hope

Here's another precious adoption video from China.

These are a few of my favorite things....

Today is GRADUATION DAY in Aggieland! WHOOP! I decided to make a Top 10 List of my favorite things/people at A&M. I love EVERYTHING about A&M, but here are a few favorites!

10. Upstream

Group 2...my freshman year! (above)

Group 5....I was a leader my junior year! (below)

9. The Last Corps Trip by Philo H. DuVal, Jr. '51!

8. Fightin' Texas Aggie Bonfire!

because of the Bonfire trajedy in 1999, I was never able to attend an on campus bonfire....but it still is one of my favorite things about Texas A&M!

7. Fightin' Texas Aggie Muster!

6. Fightin' Texas Aggie Football AND B.T.H.O the t-sips in Austin this season!

5. Fightin' Texas Aggie Elephant Walk!

4. Fightin' Texas Aggie RING DAY!

3. Dinner with my Chinese friends!

2. FCA

1. The BFF...Christi!

man...this girl is amazing and SUCH a blessing!

No other word but....PRECIOUS!

I miss these precious girls!

BEAUTIFUL girls, BEAUTIFUL smiles!

This picture shows 6 BIG reasons why I want to go back to China!

My Team...

My team from last summer was amazing...SIMPLY AMAZING! This summer is going to be so different without them, but I know that Father will do amazing things through a new team as well! It should be getting close to finding out our specific school assignments, and so I will let you know as soon as I know. Today I found out our departure/arrival times so that I can book my domestic flights to California. Going back to China is beginning to feel more real!

For today, here are a couple of pictures of my team from last summer. I just can't tell you how thankful I am that through some crazy circumstances, Father put us all together. Team Wahaha, Team BuDong....you guys are such a blessing!

Jiaozi Day!

Hmmm...in deciding which story to write about today, I realized that MOST of my stories from China involve or are centered around food. This story is no exception. While I was in China, I had two different groups of girls I would hang out with. I posted a few days ago about the older girls I got to hang out with, and so I decided to make this post about the younger girls.

After class one day, one of my sweet students came to me and asked if I would come to her house for dinner one night for jiaozi (I always told the students how much I loved it!) . I was a little bit reluctant to accept the invitation at first because I wasn't sure how to communicate with her parents, but I agreed and we made plans to go the next evening for dinner. The next day during class she was so excited about us going and told me to meet her to walk to her house about 4pm. In my mind I was thinking that it was pretty early to be going for dinner, but I didn't question her. It ended up being so much fun because she also invited some of her classmates as well as another teacher.

I was in for a big surprise though. She told me that we needed to go to the market to pick up a few things for supper. So, we got into rickshaws and went to the market. I had assumed that we just needed to pick up a couple of items, but we ended up having to by everything to make jiaozi...FROM SCRATCH!! At this point I was still pretty excited about it because it was (like everything else) a brand new experience. All of the girls we were with started discussing and arguing over the different ingredients needed, but about an HOUR later we headed back to make dinner. I made one very big assumption though....I was under the impression that there were going to be parents eating with us. On the way home I was informed that my students parents were at work. It was at this point that I began to put the pieces together. We (as in four 12 year olds and two American teachers) were going to be making dinner by ourselves. I was in for an even bigger surprise when I found out that these girls had NEVER made jiaozi before on their own. One thought went through my mind, "this could be VERY interesting!"

We tried to help them prepare it, but they all insisted that Rachel and I just sit because they wanted to fix and serve us. We agreed and just enjoyed the conversation. I went to check on the girls to see how dinner was coming along and one of them (the crazy one) was chopping veggies with a butcher knife that was almost the same size as her. All I could do was hope that there would be no fingers chopped off in the process. After they prepared all of the ingredients, the students brought it to the table so that we could help put them together. I started laughing uncontrollably when my student said asked ME how to make the jiaozi....I was assuming (once again) that she KNEW what she was doing. And yet once again, my assumption was incorrect!

We made the jiaozi and then had a great time talking for the rest of the evening. These girls were so cute and so much fun to hang out with. One thing that I love about the Chinese students (all of them!!) is that they are so interested in getting to know all about us and what we enjoy doing.

Look what I made!! See guys...you just thought I couldn't cook!

Yi, Er, San...QIEZI! (1, 2, 3...EGGPLANT!)

That's what they say instead of 1, 2, 3...CHEESE!

The finished product! YUM!