Pretty little liar

On my trips to Houston, sometimes I stay overnight with a family consisting of two parents and a 8-year-old boy named Cole. I just met this fine Christian family in recent months. My brother J has known them for years.

Last week when I was in Houston, the adorable boy Cole took down the collage of his baby photos that was in the guest area where we were staying. He was embarrassed by one of the baby photos in which he was taking a bath and his private parts were showing. His mom made him put the framed glass collage back on the wall before he broke it. But we gave him an idea that he might put a post-it note over the one offending part of the collage. He ran in the kitchen, got a yellow post-it note, and covered the photo.

The cute little fella was relieved. He laughed along with the rest of us and said, "Sometimes I am forced to lie and say that the photo is of my cousin instead of me!" 

Fun with the kiddos

I had an exceedingly great time this summer with some little kids who learned English and other stuff. Fun times … this is one event I certainly hope to remember forever!

(BTW, that adult leg in the top photo is not mine.)

Little things

Some friends of mine have an adorable 4-year-old daughter who speaks great English. When they were over at my place recently, she wanted to play hide-n-go seek. She's not very good at it, but I pretended that she was hard to find. I kind of feel sorry for kids in China. With the one-child policy, most of them don't have anyone to play with except adults. That means they are really pathetic at playing games.

 She fits into amazingly small spaces. She's tiny.

She displaced my water bottles that were previously residing in the box where she decided she was meant to reside.

 Some game was going on in her mind. Not sure what kind of game, but she was happy.

My house is not child-proof. I spent the whole time she was here picking up stuff and putting it out of her reach … things like Mimi's water bowl and Mimi's dry dog food (the little girl decided to mix them together).

Mimi did not find this 4-year-old intruder to be adorable at all. Oh contrare, Mimi thought the girl came to steal her food; she failed to hide her irate feelings over this. So Mimi had to go to jail while the girl was here, and by jail I mean inside the kitchen where she could see out the sliding glass doors. Poor Mimi. 

Busy and cold

Update on my life: I have been really busy, thus my longer-than-usual blog absences. And my feet are really cold these days. They are cold right now. Cold feet.

I have an American friend leaving town somewhat unexpectedly, so I told her I would take on a group of four junior high kids whom she was helping learn English. I went to their meeting place yesterday. I wore three layers on my feet, four layers below the waist, four layers above the waist … and then on top of all of that, I put on my down coat, down gloves and scarf. I still felt like a popsicle during the 1-1/2 hour lesson. I had to take off my gloves to write on the whiteboard, but we all wore our winter coats throughout the entire lesson.

I asked the kids if they were cold and they said no. They go to unheated schools, so they think cold is normal.

I already kind of wish I hadn't promised to take on this class. The kids are lovely, of course, but I find the cold conditions rather horrifying. Chinese people often ask me "你怕冷吗?" ("Are you scared of the cold?") And I always answer "yes."

Summer school

Chinese kids in their classroom ... too cute!

Strolling through town

Hey baby, I like your hot wheels!

Baby seen on the streets of a town in the middle of nowhere. The mom ducked out of the picture.

Don't drop the kid

In China, it seems that even the statues are limited by the one-child policy. :-)

Go ahead, tell me what you really think

A little baby I made acquaintance with at the recent wedding....