Jingwei Fills the Sea, a Legend from China

Many years ago, the Chinese god called Yan Emperor had a beautiful daughter.  One day he took his daughter out on the East Sea in a boat; however, the boat was capsized by a large wave, and the daughter drowned.  Her spirit became a beautiful bird that flew over the sea and cried out “Jingwei!”  This bird hated the East Sea and decided that she would fill it up.  Every day, without rest, the Jingwei bird would carry stones and tree branches from the nearby mountains and drop them into the East Sea.  She never tired of fulfilling her mission to fill up the East Sea so that no one else would ever drown in it again!  (The pic is the coast of the Indian Ocean, Thailand.)

Baby's First Picture with... um... Santa?

At our annual Christmas banquet for foreign workers in our province we had the opportunity to take our little girl's picture with Santa, the Chinese version. This "Teenage Chinese Santa" was super excited to have his photo taken with our family. He is also proudly displaying our little girl's Christmas gift, a stuffed dragon in honor of the Chinese New Year on January 23, 2012. Happy Year of the Dragon!

Christmas in China

Christmas is always a very busy time for us. We keep our schedules full of parties with students, the annual provincial banquet and final exams. Below are some photos from this very exciting time.

One of the traditional Hui People dancers at our annual banquet. Our province is the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a special province for the Hui ethnicity. They are descendants of the Middle Eastern traders along the Silk Road, so Middle Eastern styles influence their traditions. Click here to watch a short video of this performance.

Ladies performing a traditional Chinese dance at the provincial banquet honoring "foreign experts" who work in Ningxia.

One of 45 students who came to our apartment for one of four Christmas parties. One activity was helping us decorate our Christmas tree. Students made some very creative ornaments. One even made an ornament with a special message for Brian, "Dear Teacher, I want to pass my exam."

We also had visits from some of our former students. These three were Annie's students last year. They were very excited to visit and meet our little girl for the first time.

Of course, this was also our little girl's first Christmas. We think we were more excited about it than she was. We excitedly helped her open some presents. We want to thank everyone who sent us care packages and gifts for our little one this semester. We feel very loved by your kindness and generosity.

4 Month Milestone

We admit that being new parents we are super excited by every small thing our little girl does. So, to share this excitement, here's another video. This was taken this morning. She is 4 months old today! As you will see and hear, we are quite excited! Click here to see our newest video of our little girl.

New Parents

As we are learning so many new things about our little girl we are often amazed at what she can do. Click here to see some of her first giggles. On some of our more difficult days we can just watch this and it makes us smile.

West Coast meets the Far East

This is some graffiti art that we found near our school. For those of you who can read the Chinese, please forgive us if it says anything inappropriate. We cut out the bad stuff in English. :)

This is just another influence from the U.S. that we find in our city. Being that our city is considered smaller we are amazed at how Western influences have made it this far out in China. Other things we see are a lot of Western products like Oreo cookies, Lay's potato chips, Johnson & Johnson baby products and, of course, Coca-Cola. Recently the second Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut opened in our city. (We still have no McDonald's.) We also see Western influences in clothing and lifestyle. Sadly, some of our bad habits from the West are making it here to China, like smoking and promiscuity. Something we were surprised by is that now more Chinese are putting their babies to sleep in cribs. This is very recent. The tradition is to have the baby sleep in the bed with the parents.

So, should you like to come to China and visit us, you might be surprised by what familiar things you find!

3 Months Old!

Our little girl is three months old today. It's hard to believe that she has been in our lives only this short time. We've learned a lot from her and about her. The biggest lesson is that we can see how great a parent's love is for their child. We realize how great a sacrifice the Father made for all of us by sending His Son to die for us.

Smiling for the camera!

I love it when she wakes up happy like this.


Play time!

Her new crib! And she's exactly three months old here!