1 more week

one more week left of wheaton :)

grip it and rip it sam!

i took samantha for a little wakeboard ride:

back in usa

now that i'm back in the usa, i guess i can get back to blogging.

not much to really blog about, except that i'm in my last month of classes at wheaton :) almost done!

yesterday the in-laws were in town and they brought me the local austin, mn. paper. which contains the local police reports. it entertains me for hours, i love it. next to the spam museum, it's my favorite thing to do in austin. the best one was the report from the fourth of july. in it, there was two complaints for loud noise and one fireworks complaint. it's the fourth of july the one day that people are allowed to be loud and light off fireworks?

gender colors

in china i quickly learned that pink and blue have no special meaning for boys and girls. boys are always wearing pink, purple and pastels. girls wear everything under the sun. when samantha goes out in her pink parade of clothes, it always confuses me when people ask me if she is a girl or boy. i kinda look at them with a stupid face and say, "of course she's a girl, that's why she has all the pink." obviously it's not obvious to them that colors help tell people the gender of the child. but then i realized that the kids all wear split pants, so it kinda takes the guessing out of the picture; with the split pants it's pretty obvious if it's a girl or boy. maybe we're the stupid ones, with all our colors and stuff.

here's a picture of a pink jeep with a robot and a machine gun. now in america, i'd say this was for a girl (just based on the color), but in china, i'm not sure, it could go both ways. either way it's pretty sweet! guess what sam is getting for her birthday?

spring is here!

spring has arrived earlier than normal in siping, i'm pretty stoked about it. the only thing is that the siping peeps, aren't as excited about it as i am. students are still wearing long underwear and bundling up. old ladies in the park are concerned about our health when we are not wearing enough clothes. so i decided to write a poem and dedicate it to the old ladies in the park:


Dear old lady in the park on this super fine day.
Yes I know it’s not the first of May.
But do you know it’s 80 degrees out today?

What if I told you it was my birthday?
Would that make you stay away?

Stop harassing me.
You’re scaring me.
Great, now I have to pee!

Yes lady, I know my kid is wearing too little
I’m the one that picked out her clothes; really, she’s not very brittle.

What? You’ve never seen flip-flops before?
You can buy them from the blue store.

Yes I know I'm showing my toes.
But did you know in America, anything goes.

Yes, I own more clothes but this is my favorite T.
Besides, it’s 80 degrees, are you kidding me?

So thanks for your concerning,
But my toes are way too happy and you look like you are burning.

b-days in china

b-day's in china never get old, because it's an endless week of birthday celebrations with students. i think they feel sorry for us or just want to butter us up to get better grades. either way, i don't really mind. i kinda like all the attention.

i had a total of 3 cakes for my birthday. surprisingly the chinese ones were pretty good too. last year my freshman girls threw a party for me instead of having class. this year those same girls forgot, i guess they missed out on an opportunity to not have class.

my cakes (obviously the hot dog one was the best):




the team had a hot dog b-day party for me, it was awesome. you can't get good hot dogs here, only stinky smelly ones, that look like hot dogs, but surely don't taste a thing like it. although samantha and will really seem to enjoy them. we had to go to the big city of changchun to buy some imported dogs. who would of thought that you'd have to travel 2 hours away, just to get good hot dogs, but it was worth it!

thanks villanova

so last night i was ranked 198,998 in the espn bracket challenge. i was in the 95.7% of 5 million people. not bad. well after today's games, i quickly dropped. now i'm 1,011,868 and in 78.1%. i picked pitt to be in the final four, so my shot at winning is pretty much over. nuts!! i hope i'm still ahead of president obama.

you tube is blocked

today, you tube is blocked. but blogger is up (for now). who knows how long this will last? i'm still surprised that they haven't blocked this site more. that's really why i stopped blogging. ahhh, just kidding, i haven't blogged because i'm lazy and i like to take naps. plus nothing exciting happens anymore here. well except the earthquake that was pretty cool (only because no one got hurt).

speaking of earthquake ... yesterday in class, we heard a really loud boom (i think it was a cannon going off for a new store), the girls in the front row said earthquake in chinese. so i yelled really loud and made my knees give out. they yelled and said "xia si wo (吓死我)" which means "you scared me to death". i laughed so hard, it was hilarious!!! their faces were awesome.

earthquake in siping?

on friday we had an earthquake in siping. i know crazy??? i didn't feel it at all, i was making a fort with sam and we were running around the room. rach was taking a nap and she said she felt the bed move, i told her she was crazy. the thought of an earthquake didn't even cross my mind. but we had one.

here's our fort (kids got some static in her hair):



here's a little blurb from the news:

According to China Seismological Network Center, the determination of Beijing at 14:48 on March 20, 2009, Siping City in Jilin Province Yitong Manchu Autonomous County, Gongzhuling City at the junction (43.4 degrees north latitude, 124.9 degrees east longitude) in 4.3 earthquake, epicenter depth of about 19 kilometers. Epicentral distance of about 70 kilometers in Changchun City, Changchun City, there is obviously felt. Changchun City School students evacuated to the playground or after school for students to advance. Xinhua News Agency reporters Shao Shou and Zhi She.

sam's trip to the orphanage

today we took sam to the orphanage. it was her first time going. we've been planning to take her for a long time, but she likes to nap when we normally go. so we took her, it was pretty funny.

she sat on the potties with all the other little kids. i hope it inspires her to go when we are at home.



there was a ton of students from our university there. the funny thing was that they all thought samantha was an orphan. that was pretty funny. i just let them believe that i was holding another orphan kid.

it's been a while

i realize that it's been forever since i posted anything remotely interesting, but how do you follow "samantha's tricks"? i figured i'd give it some time before i found something else to post.

we've returned safely from thailand. everyone in china says that samantha and i are black now? is there not a word for "tan" in chinese? they should really have one, because calling people black seems rather odd.

on my way back we had to fly through a few different airports and along the way, i had two thing stolen off my luggage. one of them was my awesome jingjing luggage tag that was ripped off somewhere and another thing was a flip flop key chain that said "samantha" on it, it was attached to her stroller and they totally stole it. jerks! these are things that don't accidently fall off, they have to be purposely taken off.

here's picture of samantha eating bamboo worms in thailand. she kept asking for more, she must have eaten about 50 of those little guys.