Thanksgiving and Deb's birthday dinner.

DJ and May and Deb.

One of our friends from the thursday social meeting we attend was kind enough to come with us to a restaurant to help us order and celebrate Deb's birthday and Thanksgiving.

 May also got Deb a scarf for her birthday.

George and Connie and Roxanne.

 

Chloe and Adam and May and Suzanne.

Carl, May, Deb, Suzanne, DJ, Chloe, Adam, Connie, George, Roxanne, Debbie, Archie.

Mid November update.

I have been busy the last month transfering our movie collection from DVD to an external hard drive for easier storage and use. It will be easier to carry a hard drive than a suitcase full of DVD's. Since we are adding to our collection all the time, I have also purchased a program to catalog our collection. I have also started looking for the next job. My contract here ends on the 19th of February next year. We know we would like to find a place were Deb and I both can work or at least a place that would permit her to tutor on the side. We also would like to move to some where that doesn't have such hard winters. We had our second snow the other day and more is expected tomorrow. We went to a birthday dinner for David, who turned 19, but forgot to take the camera. Everyone was there, including all the TA's and teachers. Everyone except Mei. Mei was in Beijing on business, but after she returned, she had a new teacher welcome dinner for all the Ivy staff. Again, I forgot to take my camera. Debbie's boys came over to our house while the teachers had their dinner. Last week, Suzanne home bleached most of the black out of her hair and then went to get it dyed blue. She came home with purple instead. DJ has been busy as usual playing until she drops and takes a nap. We are having a Thanksgiving / birthday dinner for Deb next week with a few friends. I won't forget the camera this time.

Friends on National Day.

Meet Winnie the DJ.

Roxanne, Archie, Suzanne and David.

David, Debbie and Carl.

 

Yesterday was China's National Day. The government offices are closed for three days and most people take off for the whole 'golden week', although most of the stores are open. We had Roxanne, Debbie, David and Archie over for the afternoon and evening. We had spaghetti, garlic bread and salad for lunch. After visiting and playing games we watched a couple of movies and brought back 'char'( meat on a stick) for dinner.

Early birthday dinner for Suzanne.

We had an early birthday dinner for Suzanne this evening at a very popular restaurant. Her birthday is September 30th.We invited a Chinese couple that live in the same housing community we do. His name is Jason and her name is Bella. She doesn't speak any English, but Jason isn't too bad. I was glad he could makeit, but the waitress was even more happy to see him because it would have been very interesting to try and order even with a picture menu.

This is a new family from England. They are from Essex county, just south of Suffold county where I lived for a while and graduated from high school. They just arrived a week ago. Her name is Debbie and works at Ivy with me. She shares a birthday with China's National Day, October 1. In the middle is her oldest son David who is 18, and on the left is her youngest son Archie who is 11.

Suzanne got this pillow from Jason and Bella.

She got a hair straightener and a few other things from her mom and 500RMB from me and $20 from her grandma back in the states.

The nice restaurants in China have seperate rooms for patrons. The smallest rooms are for eight people and you have to order a certain amount of food. Tonights dinner was 572RMB and there was plenty of left-overs to take home. We had pork ribs, fried shrimp, pepperd steak, asparagus, broccoli, fried rice, fried sweet tofu, spicy pork pies and brown sugar pies.