Happy Easter! .... belated

Hey guys! I know I'm late but.... Happy Easter! Maybe I should say, hope you had a good easter! :O) I'm not going to write a lot but I just wanted to upload a coupld pics and let you guys know that I had a great easter and I hope you all did too! :o)

My birthday is coming up in seven days! People keep on asking me what I'm going to do and what kind of party I want to have. This year, I don't want to have a big party or anything. I'm planning on going into town with my mom and emily to get a massage and then maybe eat with everyone that night. THat's all I want to do. :o)

Hope you enjoy the pictures... :o) Hmm... I added a ton of smily faces. :)

May you be blessed!

Your friend,

Happy Holli

Village Trip :o) fun!!!! :o)

Well this might end up being quite a long story. I went to another village as well as Sammy, My Dad, Emily, and a good national friend. The purpose of the trip was to work on the spring. The village is the same village that we’ve been to several times before. I’ll give it a fake name so that I don’t have to keep on calling it “the village”. :o) Hmm….. well, I guess I could translate it’s real name into English and call it that! I’m stupid! Haha I will be calling it, 4PM (four point mountain) from now on. Of course, I’m going to have to say something about how beautiful it was! The four hour ride to the “city”, GM, was outstanding. This time of the year, they’re flooding the rice fields so it’s quite amazingly beautiful. The national friend that I was talking about is about my Dad’s best national friend. He’s great fun and made the trip so much more (In the pic - Holli, Hal and XY) enjoyable. Emily and I taught him some English phrases that he was intrested in learning. He wanted to know how to say…. I don’t know and What did you say? So, the whole trip when we had been talking in English for awhile he would randomly say, What’d you say?? It was so hilarious! His pronunciation was great. Now, his favorite phrase is, I don’t know. After he asks, what’d you say, he follows with, I don’t know. :o) cracked us up! :o) (picture of Emily, Holli, and xy)
Once we arrived in GM, we ate at our favorite restaurant. We wanted to order dog but we weren’t sure if that was the special of the day (seriously). We had stir fry pork, patatoes, cabbage, and beef. Yum yum! :o) Emily and I went on to buy water for the rest of the trip. On our way there, we drew a crowd of people that wanted to see the foreigners. It’s so crazy, they’ve never seen foreigners before! We’re so different to them. Emily and I kept on saying how amazing it was that this rual, dirty, poor place in the middle of nowhere is all that they know. It was kind of mind boggling. Anyways, we bought seven BIG bottles of water. Then, xy (the national friend) and emily and I went to the market to buy some vegtables and meat. Xy kept on walking WAY up in front of us or WAY behind us. When I talked to him, he would look down and barely answer my question. Emily and I laughed to ourselves because we knew he was avoiding the people staring. He didn’t want people starting at him too!! :o) After buying all the supplies, we traveled on to the village. As soon as we got there, the two guys from our TC came out to greet us. We had all missed them so it was a happy time. :o) The two guys from our TC, were there to work on the water project.
We talked for a little while about the contract that they made that said they had purchaced the spring and everyone agreed on the project. The contract was all in characters and we couldn’t read it. I can only read 100 characters and believe me that is NOT enough to read a contract or any other writings. I can only pick out a couple characters in a sentence. My dad was looking at it and then one of the head village leader person snatched it from him and gave it to me and told me to read it to him. Haha! We all laughed and I handed it back to Dad and told the guy that I couldn’t read it either. It was just funny the way he said it. :o) They ended up not being able to buy the spring that they wanted and so they got the other one. My dad and Sammy had already had the spring that they couldn’t get all planned out. They had to start all over planning at the other one. That’s the song of this culture! I overheard my dad on the phone saying, “I have to laugh to keep from crying.” So we all laughed and drove up to the new spring. The drive is about an hour on a dirt road and then a hike up a mountain. Emily and I rode in the back with several other nationals. We were so glad we did because it was SOOO amazingly awesomely outstandingly gorgeous. The pictures that we took just didn’t capture the beauty. Our Dad’s handycraft is …. WOW! Like I said before, the pictures just don’t do it justice. Once, we got to the mountain on which the spring water rolled down, we parked the truck and got out. The hike up to the source of the spring, really wasn’t that bad of a hike but it was slippery and a little hard to do. One time, I fell and thought I was really going to tumble down the mountain, but thankfully, I pulled myself up to safety. :o) Obviously, our staff has been on several trips like this before with my Dad because when we got up to the spring one of our staff guys knew exactly what to do and worked with my Dad perfectly. It was kind of cool for me to see their teamwork, working together for one reason. Then, I saw how SMART my dad was. We were stading there with a cirle of very little educated villagers watching intensely as my dad timed the water filling up to the top of the bottle and then he calculated how much water is put out in a minute. In like 5 seconds, he said to all the villagers, 6 jins of water in one minute. They all looked at him nodded their heads and said ok. It seemed that they appreciated knowing that little piece of (This is a picture of the village chief and my dad talking) information. In America, we usually wouldn’t care about stuff like that, they do and for me, for some crazy reason, it was cool to see. What I’m trying to say might sound really confusing but I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was neat seeing my dad just use his little bitty piece of knowledge and in five seconds help all the village leaders know more about the spring that they were about to work with. Oh well, that might still sound confusing, I guess you had to be there. The feeling was cool, they were all just looking at my dad like… thanks for telling us, that was helpful.
Emily and I didn’t end up going all the way up to the spring, we only went part ways and then waited for the others to come. The village chief stayed down the mountain with his other chief friend. When Emily and I came tumbling down the mountain, we found the chief and his friend down at the bottom. When I reached the bottom, the chief looked at me in the eye and said, don’t go back to your country, you will live with us, I want you to live with us. He said that he would build me a house and that I would help all the women work on the mountains. I told him that I would love to but I sill have some studying to do. They both shook their heads in disbelief. Then when emily reached them, the chief’s friend asked her, “Are you finished studying?” I translated what was said to Emily and, at first, she didn’t understand what he was talking about but when I explained the story better, we all had a good laugh. When everyone was back in the truck, we went to another mountain and planned where the pipe would run. On the way, a few guys that were riding in the back asked me how to say donkey in English. I told them and they repeated it several times. It was funny. Then, they taught me how to say it in their minority language, luo la. Then the dude asked me if Emily could speak the lauguage of the country and I said that she could only say and understand a few words here and there. In this language you say, ting che when you want the driver to stop. One time, Emily and Amanda were in town and they needed to stop. Amanda wouldn’t tell the driver so Emily said, ting ting ting ting! No one ever says it that many times here so it was funny. The driver stopped for them immediately, she got the point across!! I told the guy that story and he thought it was great! It just so happened that as soon as I got finished telling him that story, we had to stop. We were in the back of the truck so the guy hit the top of the cab and said, ting ting ting ting! It was great!! People don’t usually joke around a lot, here, so it was good to see him trying to be humorous. Good times!! :o)
(The picture is of two little kids that we saw in the area where we ate dinner)When we finished planning out everything and arrived back at the village, it was dinner time. They usually say it’s ready and then still have to cook forever so our national friend that we hadn’t seen in awhile took us to his house just to see. While we were there, Emily and I played with a few kids and gave them all candy that we brought with us. It was exciting for them, we were like cretures from another planet, but really we were just people from another nation. Haha! Sounds almost the same!! :o) Emily and I also enjoyed playing with them and watching them as they warmed up to us and finally really tried playing with us and not just smiling at us. :o) They were beautiful children.
Back at the dinner table, we ate, flowers off a tree (freshly picked, I might add) , fish all cut up as a soup, a whole chicken cut up as a soup, and cooked soy beans. It was quite a meal! Afterwards, Emily and I got the privalege of helping the lady wash dishes. The lady cooked for us and it looked like no one appreciates her or wants to help her so I think we were able to be a blessing to her, just by helping her wash the dishes. I could communicate with her just a little bit. She spoke the minority language and could only speak just a little of the common language. She told me that this was her job and that we shouldn’t have to help her but I said that we wanted to and she smiled. One of the guys that was still eating, got up and came over to Emily and I and told us that we didn’t have to wash the dishes. Again, I told him that we wanted to and then he just left. While we washed, Emily and I told her that she was beautiful. She widened her eyes and said, “not really.” I said, really! and she seemed to be quite flattered that the “magnificent” foreigners would say something like that to her.
After eating and washing the dishes, we went back to the house that we visited before dinner. There, we spent the night. It really wasn’t bad our room was very very clean and there was a door and a window! The bed was rock solid hard like always but I’ve learned to deal with that already. Emily has too. We had a nice rest and woke up early the next morning to go back up to the spring. We had set up a certain time to leave the village so that we could get up to the spring at a good time. Then, of course, like this culture is, we had to stop to eat breakfast, not like planned. I was glad we stopped though because we had my favorite breakfast, rice noodle soup!! Mm mmm! Yeah, I’m pretty much a national, I could eat anything for breakfast, now. Don’t know what I’m gonna do when I come home!! :o/ Anyways, after eating a quick breakfast, we made a second strike at going back up to the spring and made it this time! :o) When we got up there, they immediately started working. First, Emily and I filled up big rice bags with dirt and they hauled them up the mountain and then they hauled HUGE rocks up. Emily and I kept on telling each other how astoudingly strong they were. The little ole villager guys don’t look all that strong but then… wow! After awhile, Emily and I decided that we didn’t have anything else to help with. So, we went hiking. We hiked around the spring mountain and found a nice view and a good place to sit. Right under where we were sitting, we found an old hut. It was most likely built by some tea pickers who wanted to stay there while they were harvesting the tea. I walked around to it and went inside. It was really nicely built, I thought. It was sturdy, had a nice floor, and there were supplies inside. I would have lived there! It would have been so cool to have been living there and one morning, got up and walked outside to the fresh mountain air. Well, I’m saying that now but if I actually did live there, I’d find several complaints and never think of the good stuff! :o) hehe Anyways, that was fun. Then, Emily and I decided that we should go up and see the progress on the spring. We were almost there when we saw the chief coming down. The chief just barely looked at me and waved his hand down the mountain and said, “GO! You and her (pointing to Emily) will make us lunch.” He didn’t even stop to say it, he said it as he was walking down the mountain and it wasn’t a request, it was a command. I thought that we had better do what the chief said but I was excited about doing it anyways. I asked the chief where we would cook as I raced after him down the mountain. He told me that we would cook just up one terrace from the truck. Once we were down, he told Emily and I that the food was in the truck and that he would meet us up where he would make the fire. Emily and I peeked in the back and there were tons of dirty bags filled with meat and vegtables and spices and bowls and chopsticks. Emily and I hauled, literally hauled, the bags up to the next terrace. The chief and another guy made us a new spicket for the spring water to come out of and then they made three fire places to cook the food. Emily and I washed the vagtables in the spring water and popped the green beans. Then I stated on the meat. I pulled out a BIG slab of meat out of one of the dirty bags. It was huge with some bones in them and with the fat and skin still on it. I washed it in the water and then a guy took it from me to cut it up. I won’t go into the whole blown out story about the cooking but it was amazing fun for me and for Emily too! It cracked me up how all of the guys bossed us around and told us to clean this and clean that! I really felt like a village girl! :o) After we cooked, we waited another hour and a halve before Dad, Sammy, and the workers came down to eat. It was great when they did! Dad told me that we would go home right after we ate, I was so greatful because Emily and I were already dreading having to spend another afternoon wandering what to do. So, we told everyone good-bye and they happily waved, adios! BUT, actually what they said did not sound like adios at all, it was nothing like that! :o) hehehahahaha Ok, we’re going to pause and have a little language corner. Make the “z” sound and then say the letter “I”. Don’t make the sound that “I” makes but just say the letter “I”. Ok, now put the sound that “z” makes and the letter “I” together. That’s the beginning part of good-bye. Now, take the sound that “ji” makes and then the word “in” and put say that together. Now, take both sounds and you have the word good-bye! Congradulations! :o) haha For thoes of you that can already say that word, I’m sure that was probably the most horrible way to explain it. I’m talking to mainly, James Kristi, Micah, Michelle, Uncle John,and Aunt Stacy. :o) Hey Micah and Michelle!! :o)
Ok, now I’m going to get back to finishing my story. Hopefully I don’t have a lot left, I know your eyelids are drooping and your eyes are straining. If I had a prize to give, you would receive it for reading this far! Woo hoo for you! :o) I’m rambling off again. We loaded up in the truck and headed off to GM. IT wasn’t that far away, just an hour. BUT it seemed forever and a day to me because Emily and I rode in the back. It made me laugh when we rode through the village on our way out and 10 people came chasing after the truck, wanting a ride into town. They all crowded in the back with Emily and I and some got to ride in the cab since Emily and I weren’t. We made it though and now I have bruises on one side from hitting the side pole on the truck so many dozens of times. :o) When we hit the road where the police might be, we made everyone get out except for the one girl that was there. She and Emily and I rode in the cab the rest of the way. This is a picture of us. We couldn’t communicate with her that well becasuse she could only speak the minority language but Emily used sign language to tell her that she was beautiful. I’m sure no one has said that to her before so she was very happy. :o) In GM we found a very very very very very small convenient store. We bought a lot of nuts, coke, and water. We ate and slept and took pictures all the way home. It was a great trip. Mom had spagetti, rolls, and brownies on the table. You don’t know how great that is after being in a village for two days. I came back, so thankful for what I have and came back with a blessed heart.
Now, it’s been about 2 weeks since that trip and I’m just getting around to writing the whole thing. My dad and brother just got back from going to that same village again. Emily and I bought rags and cuptowels and soap for the lady that we helped wash dishes. My dad gave it to her and he said that she was very greatful. I’m so excited about that. I left her a note inside and I hope she understands and if not I hope that she asks someone else to read it for her.

For this country, good night.
For America, good morning.
For whenever you’re reading this, good…. Whatever it is.
Hope you are blessed by my radom stories that are filled with silliness and grammar mistakes and I Hope you have a blessed day! :o) :o)

With a happy heart,
Holli

PS As always, click on pictures and leave comments!! :o) Hope you enjoyed the pictures! :o)