jie jie

Oh my goodness! We have been having so much fun this past week with our Chinese exchange student. She is such an incredibly sweet, thoughtful young woman. We will all be sad to see her go next week. But in the mean time, we're making the most of her visit. On her first day here, we went to old town to listen to jazz music and eat ice cream...yum!

  

S. joined us for church on Sunday and had a great time. We're kind of an exuberant bunch at our church, but S. didn't mind a bit. In fact, she joined right in on the clapping and dancing!

On Monday, our good friend, Yi, came over. Our lovely neighbor, Kristi, also stopped by to chat.

S. has gone from fear to great affection for our dogs (except when Rosemary stole her sandwich today...oh my goodness, who's training these dogs?!).

Lily loves having a much older jie jie in the house. She's has been wearing many elaborate Chinese hairstyles this week!

There's been some serious silliness happening in the kitchen.

Lily and I took S. to Famous Dave's Barbecue. S. declared that barbecue was now her favorite food.

Perhaps the highlight of the week was the four-hour dumpling-making party.

Jadon stuck with it for the entire time.  He kept saying, "This is fun!"

Yep...Jadon really got into the dumpling-making!

(You should have seen his hair!)

Look closely...there's a flour footprint on the chair...lol! It took us almost as long to clean up as it did to make the dumplings!

Lily's friend, X., also came by to help make (and eat!) dumplings.

Look at my cute little pumpkin in the middle!

Today, S. made one of David's and my favorite foods. It's a very spicy fish soup that we had at a restaurant in Fuzhou. We've never seen it here, but S. knew what it was. She called her aunt in China and got the recipe. Wow! It was fabulous! 

 I'm sure that there will be more adventures with jie jie in the next week! We're just trying not to think about her leaving after that!