A Little Bit More

 Here are a bunch of other random updates that don't really fit into one trip or category:

On Mother’s Day all of us women got roses and chocolate from the Branch

The cafeteria ladies dying each other’s hair in the cafeteria

This outfit almost captures the Chinese attire: Plastic neon pumps with nylons and plastic green booty shorts, a animal print name-brand bag, and a jacket (with shoulder pads) on a hot summer day.

Speaking of attire, so many couples here wear matching shirts and sometimes whole matching outfits. Come on America, why can’t we pull that off?!

This creature is their Youth Olympic Games mascot so he is everywhere all over Nanjing and at the school.

 These last couple of weeks ALL of the students in the entire school put on performances. There are so many students that they have one or two productions of about 8 performances per week so they can fit everyone in before school ends. These performances aren’t like any little kid’s shows in America though, the school goes all out for them. They have to have it perfect or the school won’t allow it to be shown and they have full on costumes and makeup. Here are some pictures of my kids in their costumes:

Sam and Miranda

Steven, Michael, and Sam 

Moffy, "big" Jason, Elaine, and Sisi

Kelly as a shepherd

Ethan as a sheep

We done got pranked. Amber and Ellen busted into our room one night and said they found a bat on the roof that was just laying there so you could see it up close. None of us really wanted to go but they convinced 4 of us to check it out with them. We went up on the roof and unfortunately nothing was there and they were so bummed! When we went back to our rooms, Madi & MaShea and Alyssa & I opened out doors to see this picture: an over-turned bowl sitting in the middle of our rooms. It really shouldn’t have been that scary but my heart actually started racing! Even our male head teacher wouldn’t lift up the bowl for us in either room. I finally bucked up and went behind it and lifted it up so it faced the rest of the group but I couldn’t see. After seeing the confusion and then instant fear on everyone’s faces I quick and lifted the bowl the rest of the way so I could see. Someone had put a MASSIVE bullfrog in both of our rooms! After a playing a bit of real-life Clue we discovered the marrieds had found them and decided to prank us. Haha they got us so good.

This is Elissa, our trusty bullfrog wrangler.