Amazing trip!!!!!!!

I'm back! What a great time!! I have several things to say and stories to tell and pictures to upload. woo hoo! I guessed that some of you might not have time to read it all so I put all interesting things and stories in groups/sections/paragraphs or whatever you would call them. :o) It's worth reading it all!!!!!!!!! Have fun reading and looking. Here I go typing and uploading........

Amazing Children
So, I thought I was going to the city for a mini vacation and relaxation. That was partially right in some ways. I was reminded that you never take a rest from the Father's work. DUH! I said before that I was very scared about the flight. It worked out fine. It was extrememly smoothe. I had some amazing little people that are my neighbors here that helped me not to be so concentrated on the fact that I'm scared of flying. :o) I will talk about them quite a bit in this section. Their ages are as follows: Amanda8, Hope5, Spencer3. On the flight we made barf bag puppets, ballerinas out of the wipes that they give you, and I cut my self while opening a can of orange juice for Hope. Hope hung my little doll that a friend gave me on the window which we got a kick out of. That was all enough to keep ya busy on a 35 min flight. :o) Ok, I'm gonna go back to Amanda, Hope, and Spencer. They have blessed my life so much and I seriously doubt that they know it. These kids look up to me so much and it makes me fell good that I can be there for them! I really don't quite know how to explain how much they mean to me. They've helped me in a big way. In America I don't think that I would have had the opprotunity to do this. It has made me look myself over every day and make sure that I'm being a good example to esp. their two girls. This is also true for my own sister. :o) Our houses are like not even three feet away from each other so we are always together. I get to be a big sister to my own sister and two other little girls that I love.
I'm SOO blessed!!!!!
In the hotel we actually got to stay together in a really nice suite. The three girls in this pic and my sister. We had lots of fun!!! :o) Here are all of the kiddos on our team except for me...they're trying to act like monkeys in this picture. I love em!!!!!!!!

The best zoo ever...

One of the greatest parts of the trip was our team day at the zoo. This is a pic of our team. Please click on it if you would like to see it better. I'm not going to say a whole lot about the zoo because there are millions of zoos in America. There are just a few differences that I will point out for fun. The signs are in characters. I can only read about 50 and that's NOT enough even though it sounds like it is. :o) ha ha As you can tell in this picture you can't read anything and when they do try to write English it doesn't make ANY sence!! LOL

Anyhow... the next cool thing is that I PET A ZEBRA. How cool is that?!?! At first I was a bit freaked out because it was just standing there in the road, dead still and then when I finally pet it, it was awesome!! In the language that I speak over here "zebra" translates to "halve horse". ha ha :o) Then right next to the zebras, a deer walked right up to my dad and I. In Texas, you don't even see them before they run away!!!! I actually got close enough to it to take a picture myself with the deer and me in it!!! talent...... :o) The zoo was pretty cool, I'll have to say... :o)

Friendships with a begger

You might be blown away by the title. Let me explain. :o) Everytime we go into this city we stay at the Sakura Hotel and every time we leave the hotel or come back we see these two girls who look very poor begging for money. Our heart went out to them. One night my mom went out there where she was and sat down on the ground with her to talk. She found out that she was sixteen and that her sister was four. They talked like normal people who had just met it was so neat. More that neat!!! It just so happened that she asked my mom to come to her house! AAAA, is what we thought! My mom agreed. She called about two days later and my mom and I went together. We decided that it would be okay to go but we didnt bring anything valuble and we both just had our cell phones in our front pockets. It was the craziest thing. My mom had to go buy some fruit so she asked me to go ahed and meet up with the girl. I did and she just started talking to me like I had been her friend forever. I took my earings out before and I have a ear infection. I guess they looked bad because she immidiatly told me what to put on them to make them feel better. We talked for quite a while and then my mom came. (no english spoken. Father really helped me cause I understood everything) We got on a bus and when we got of she led us through a bunch of alleys all the way to her house. I got scared when we entered. There was a stinch and it was dark. THe house was SMALL and devistating but at least she wasn't sleeping on the road. I felt more comfortable when I met her father who was very kind. We sat down and she brought her new puppies out. They were cute and they told us to take one. Then,we played with the little girl that sits out and begs with her older sister. She is so precious and was very hiper. After a while, I invited them to go to a market with us and then go out to eat American food. SHe lit up like a light and agreed. I insited that her little sister would also go. We had a lot of fun. My sister liked her sister. I bought the little girl new shoes at the market. SHe was so thankful. The restaurant was ok. I think they liked the food (a burrito :o) ) but thought it was different, of corce. :o) The whole day was amazing. I had to smile inside and out when the little girl held my hand tight and so did her sister to my mom. It amazed me at how they weren't embarrassed at any point of time, that we could tell. It's so different in this country. We walked passed other beggers and the place where she begs and she never hung her head or anything. I think that in their culture, they just see it as how they get by. :o( The next day, we got a phone call from her. She wanted to see us again before we left so we met back up with her again and played for a long time. Then, she got really sick. My mom thinks she has pneumonia. pr for her and her situation. He knows best and we just thank him for this opprotunity. THere's more details to this storie but I won't go into them now. :o) I will actually throw in one major detail. They are all believers!!!!

Random funny things.....

* I had the best taxi ride ever while we were there. My mom and I were together and we were singing some songs that our friends had taught us. My mom said that the driver was humming along. When we stopped singing he asked us if we were also believers!!! We said yea! He sang us a few songs and gave us his story. An AM led him to Dad at the age of fifty!!

* One day my mom, my sister, and I went to Wal-Mart to buy a few things that we needed to take back with us. Here, a moon festival is about to come so they have gift baskets every where. They are filled with wines and snacky foods.They cost around 257 yuan. Katibeth came around the corner and accidently knocked one over. The wine bottles busted and immediatly we drew a crowd which annoys me really bad. The manager of that floor came over to us and told us that we were going to have to pay. My mom said that we shouldn't have to and showed her how the baskets were all hanging off the edge and how easy it was to have one knocked over. She was a very nice lady who didn't want to make us pay but for a second time she told us that we would have to. It turned out that they didn't make us pay and we were thankful. :o)

* One day I took Amanda, the girl that I talked about above, to a hair salon to get our hair done together. What they do here is they wash your hair and massage your head and then fix it in a fun style. It's so cool, they wash it in a chair by using water bottle to wet it and they they go rinse it off in one of thoes hair washer merbobbers that they use at hair salons in the states. :o) This is Amanda right before they washed her hair. Like Normal, a bunch of people came to sit and watch the foreigners. Then, they found out that Amanda and I could speak the language and so then, they wouldn't stop talking to us. :o) I asked them to straighten my hair and I ended up having five guys do it. It was an excuse to just look at it. :o) lol Here's what the outcome looks like when you have five people do your hair. lol again

So, that's about it. I did eat a lot of American food. mmmmmmm Give me a comment or two. :o) I'm so glad to be home!

For His glory,

Holli (Ma Li) :o)