Happiness

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!

The faces of joyful children light up the streets and villages of China. This one giggled and posed for the camera before breaking into fits of laughter. What a day brightener this little one was!

But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful. Psalm 68:3 (NIV)

Trivia for Today

This picture has nothing to do with what I'm writing about today, but I thought you'd like to see that my dog "collects" things around the house and puts them in the middle of the floor. She feels comfy when surrounded by as much "stuff" as possible.

Here's my trivia story for today. I get paid in America by money that is put in my U.S. bank account. To get my money over to China, I have to use an ATM machine. Every transaction with the ATM machine costs me $7.31!!! It used to be that the most I could get in one transaction was $250, but now they've raised it to $300 per transaction. I think that is rather high, don't you? The only other option is to wire myself money, which is $50 per transaction. The cost of living keeps getting higher and higher over here. I'm not really complaining, just thought you'd be interested in knowing how much things cost over here. Food? Cheap. Banking Fees? Atrocious.

Wheat Harvest

The spring wheat harvest was in June, and here I am posting a picture that shows part of it. The wheat is cut down and laid out in the middle of the road so that cars can drive over it and break down the different parts of the wheat. (Okay, I don't know any terms related to wheat, but I'll describe it the best I can). Then they use shovels to throw the wheat up in the air, and the usable and unusable parts separate. Then they lay the usable part on the side of the road (to dry maybe?) and then scoop it up along with rocks and dirt into bags to sell. I can't really tell you what these farmers are doing with their little air-polluting contraption, but it looks like something Granny Clampett might enjoy working with. In the countryside, every road in every direction was covered in wheat for a full week, maybe longer. In the city we saw no such thing, but it was kind of funny seeing BWM's driving through the city with straw sticking out from the bottom...there was no mistaking that they had been out in the countryside during the day! Hey, check out those farmers' hats...aren't they cute?!

Mid-Summer

I got out of the house today for the first time in six days. I was out of Kleenex's, so I had to go to the store to get some more. I have had a bad cold since last weekend. (Uh, well, I did take my dog downstairs to the grass twice a day even when I was sick, which is technically being out of the house since I live on the 5th floor, but that's as far as I got all week.) Even though my voice doesn't work well, I was glad to get out this morning and go into the town. It feels like I just wasted a week of my life.

Prior to getting sick, some friends and I went to visit the Venice of China, Suzhou, for about five days. It is just beautiful and quaint there. Suzhou is about an hour from Shanghai. Suzhou also has a couple of Starbucks Coffee shops and TGIFriday's restaurant, so that makes it an even more attractive destination! It is one of my favorite places to visit. The bad news is that we went during monsoon season, and most of our planned activities got washed out. We can go weeks at a time without seeing the sun around here during the summer monsoon season. It is usually really unbearably humid, but today there is a cool breeze blowing and it almost feels like fall. The apartment complex mowed down the foot-long grass blades and my dog enjoyed romping on it for a change. I don't want to get a relapse with my sickness, so I'll probably lay low for a few more days and watch a few more American TV shows on DVD. Hopefully next week I'll have something more meaningful I can do.