Mix of pics.

The local convenience store has some small kiddie rides. They play music and move back and forth with a little up and down motion. DJ does not like it.

Suzanne gave DJ a pony tail.

These are DJ's new summer shoes.

We had some friends over for dinner. They brought DJ a new stuffed toy to add to her collection.

The boys name is Mike.

The two girls names are Cindy and Alice.

I went into KFC early one weekend and this was inside.

This is a picture from a forth floor window of the public school I was teaching at. The kids were practicing for something.

DJ found this friend to play with down by the river.

This little boy was a little shy.

This kid came along with his bike.

The kids loved the bike because it played music.

All the kids gathered around the bike.

That's a six pack of kids.

This building looked like it was new when we moved here but wasn't used by anyone. Now they have gutted it and are remodeling it.

Dinner at Nichole's.

How lazy is this? He has such a hard life here in China.

This is out back of our apartment. All three kids sitting and resting.

We went to dinner at a friends apartment on the southeast edge of the city. This is looking back to the north. You can see some of the low farmers housing to the left if you look closely.

The apartment where our friends live is right next to the toll gate for a busy road. Every city charges you a toll to enter or leave.

DJ and Harold get along great.

Nichole did a wonderful job preparing dinner.

DJ watched everything Harold did.

Then it was her turn.

Dead eye DJ.

She took us down one by one.

Not even her big sister was safe.

Look out DJ!

The apartment was a little smaller than ours but still nice for its age. They bought it when they got married in 1997 and in a few months they will be moving to Harbin where Nichole's husband is working.

This was just out back of the apartment. It is a local group doing organized dance marching to music.

The food was good. She cut some tomatoes for us to eat and asked if we wanted salt or sugar. I am glad she asked, because they never eat tomato with salt, only sugar. They also do not cook their rice with salt. I suggested she try it sometime.

Deb had bought me several games and we brought them with us to play. Harold and his friend wanted to learn how to play chess. It was nice to have someone to play with again.

After getting a good lead, I let them start to win a little. That was almost a mistake, because they were are both very smart. In the end they saw that I was not going to let them win.

Play date for Suzanne and DJ.

This is Deb's friend Leann from the tuesday meetings.

This is Cindy and Alice. They are 'sisters'. They are probably just cousins. Because of the one child policy, many kids will call their cousin, brother or sister. Alice is Leann's daughter.

Cindy and Alice do not speak much English but I think they could all be good friends.

Leann is holding D.J. and the other woman is Kim with her little boy named Mike. Mike is about two months older than D.J.

D.J. was more interested with our guest than eating.

I fixed western omelets and toast for dinner. They had never had omelets before. Mike loved his so much that I had to fix him another.

Suanne didn't want omelets, so she had left-over cheesy pasta.

D.J. really took to Leann.

Mike was a little scared by everything new at first, but soon settled down.

Mike and D.J. were not quite sure what to make of each other.

You can see here that Mike is as tall sitting as D.J. is standing.

Kim was trying to get them to hug and he wanted nothing to do with it.

D.J. liked Alice too and was blowing her kisses during dinner.

D.J. even let Kim hold her for a picture.

Mike really liked D.J.'s singing, dancing goose.

Mike was even starting to make friends with Suzanne before they had to leave.

Suzanne was so good with him.

Mike was also starting to make friends with Spot.

I think if they had more time, they would have played for hours. Maybe next time.

He didn't want to go.

We gave him this little truck of D.J.'s. He seemed to like it and she didn't play with it much.

Difficult but possible.

I went to Bible study with Deb yesterday morning. Some of the ladies brought their kids since they were out of school. It was a really good time. One of the ladies gave Deb a gift just like she had given Sharon. It looks very beautiful and is now hanging in our living room.

The school had provided furnishing for the apartment when we came but ours didn't have a table. We decided to buy a table since we are staying another year. Yesterday, after Bible class, Deb and I went to the local furniture outlet and found a table and chairs for our apartment. We looked at several kinds, glass and wood, small and big. We had an idea that we wanted something that could change from small to large so we could put it to the side when we weren't using it and pull it out and make it bigger when we have company. We found one that we liked and they wanted 2000 RMB but we wanted to finish looking around before we made a decision. We found one just like the one we liked at the end of our search, and they only wanted 1650 RMB. We negotiated down to 1400 RMB and got them to throw in delivery and assembly. We did all this by ourselves without a translator. The only help we had was the name of our housing area, building and apartment number that was wrote down on a piece of paper by one of the Ivy School staff when we first came here.

We also bought a new wireless router for the computer so we could move it from the office into the living room. Then we changed the office into DJ's new bedroom. Now we have our bedroom to ourselves again. When I buy something like this in the states, it comes in English, Spanish and half a dozen other languages, but here it is only in Chinese. It wasn't easy to install without knowing any Chinese but thank goodness I have a natural talent with computers.

Starting next week, for six weeks, Deb is going to have the Bible study group over here while Leroy and Sharon are on vacation. Suzanne and I moved things around this morning. Deb went shopping for some slippers and stools for our guest, and some Chinese new years decorations.