Shakin' up the family part 3

Yet again, there is too much to say about everything that’s happened in the past however long it’s been. I can’t even keep track of the time! Things have just been awesome! :)

Let’s start with Father’s day. On Father’s day, my close friend CX came down. She lives in the same city we do, but she still has to travel an hour to come see us. We had a good time together! :)

Besides Sundays and the days we went out to camps, I spent most of my time at the workshop with my dad. I was there every day for two weeks. I could usually find something to do even if it was small. I did computer stuff for my dad and ran PowerPoint presentations, and maybe screwed some water filter thingies in. haha. After two weeks, I got bored though. So recently, I haven’t been going.

On the eighteenth, I went to some areas again. We went to a more devastated place this time. It was so sad. Mostly driving down the roads, I saw how bad everything was. Everything was destroyed. I didn’t have a chance to really talk to anyone or stay in one place for long because we were traveling to different sites where our water system was to do some troubleshooting. Here’s a picture of dad working. At each site, I had to fill up water bottles so that we could do water sampling later. I also had to train someone how to do it. Maybe it seems that filling up water bottles isn’t that complicated, but it can be!! Haha. In the second pic, the guy in the green shirt was my water bottle filling student. hehe

Here is a picture of the volunteers that are with the machine. The guy on the far right was just a friend they met. It seems that everyone’s doing really well and the systems are lookin good too! :) At the end of the day, we went back to the bigger camp that we’d been to before. It was around supper time and the place was pretty alive. Some adorable kids came up to me and gave me a really really sweet and cute gift. Well after that, more kids came up to talk to me and I bent down to talk to them. I offered to give them English names because that would give us something to do. Well, they jumped all over that idea! When I stood up, I saw the HUGE crowd of people surrounding me. They were holding cameras up and everyone was trying to talk to me. The kids were screaming that it was their turn to be named. Then, everyone wanted signatures and pictures all at the same time. I felt like a celebrity. It was crazy!!!

Another fun thing about that day was that my friend xz came along. She’s one of the most amazing person I know. I thoroughly enjoyed her presence as well as all of the other refugees. :) She’s such a great girl.

Ok, so we were just all sitting in the jeep waiting on something and then we saw this lady. We could not figure out what was wrong with her. After awhile we saw her sitting in the driver’s seat of the same car with a crowd gathered around her. She looked like she was pretty zoned out. It was an interesting thing to see.

At one place, this lady was talking to us about what happened. The lady in this picture was covered by rubble for 24 hrs before she and the rest of her family finally crawled out. We heard many stories that day. They were all very sad or very touching. One lady came up to us and touched her heart and told us how thankful she was to us for coming to help them.

This little boy is just precious.

Not to be too selfish but I think my favorite part of the day had to be when we got back into the city. We went to a hotel to pick up EMILY!!!!! Emily had come with the Langstons and she was going to be staying with us. I love this girl and I was so blessed to have her come.
The next day, with Emily :), we went out again. I didn’t feel very good because I had a cold and I was super tired so I didn’t have much energy. I was worried it was going to be a horrible day but it was a GREAT day. WE had bought 50 notebooks and pens and candy to hand out to kids once we got there. These items were bought thanks to people back home. Thank you! We got to give those out to a bunch of kids and they seemed to be grateful.

Dad was working on the system so Emily and I decided to go walk down a road. You wouldn’t believe the devastation!! We walked past a house and three elderly people yelled hello at us. Emily and I proceeded down to their house. We talked with them for quite awhile. They were extremely nice and considerate. Even though everything was destroyed, they were just living life the way they had to. They got chairs and made us sit down and they told us stories about when the earthquake happened. In that village they lost over 80 kindergartners when a school collapsed. :( Once we finally left their house, we continued on down the road. We ran into three other people who were cleaning out rubble. We stopped and talked to them. They were talking to us and just carrying on like nothing really happened. I was really touched by this point and I told them how I thought they had such a great attitude in the midst of all their trouble. They were humble in their reaction to what I said, but they also said that they didn’t have such a great attitude all the time. He told me that there were so many people hurting. As we walked that road, we talked to more people and even talked to the old people again with xz.. After talking, Emily and xz and I were just playing around on some terraces when we bumped into a nice-looking, old man. We found out that he had lost his four year old granddaughter. XZ talked to him for a long time while Emily and I sat and waited. It was very good. :) It was a very, very good day.

Here are some pictures of just some of the damage that we saw...

Since Emily was here, I’ve been taking a nice break and I’ve enjoyed every second of it!! You’re never bored when you’re around Emily! She’s so friendly and awesome and fun and spontaneous and awesome!!!!! Since we moved here, I’ve been working with dad and going to camps so I haven’t really had a chance to check out the city. Emily and I got to do plenty of that while she was here and I had so much fun. We discovered this really cool park! It was fun because of the water and light show and it was just really nice out the time we went. Here are just a few of the pictures we took when we were there. :)

Just the other day she and I went down to see CX at her house. It was boring but very fun all at the same time. Haha.

Very sadly, Emily left today. :( I was very, very, VERY sad to see her go. She is planning a road trip to Texas when we get home so that’ll be awesome!!

I guess that’s all for now.

Love y’all!
Holli :)

Shakin' up the family part 2

So much has happened since our move! I don’t even know where to start and what cool parts to share. I guess I’ll briefly explain the move. It was very nice that my close friend hy traveled all the way to chengdu with us. We were sad together getting on the first plane because we were leaving, but we were happy on the second flight into our new home. :)As soon as we arrived, we dropped all of our luggage off at the apartment. It seemed nice. After sitting our luggage we went down to the TEX-MEX RESTAURANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YUMMMY!!! I was very confusing after being in the restaurant for a little while. I didn’t know if we were in China, Mexico, or Texas. It was such yummy food!!! :) We live in a pretty nice community. A big store like wal-mart is just a block down, and the Tex-Mex is just a few blocks down. There are many other conveniences as well. It’s perfect!

We stayed in a hotel for the first couple nights because our house didn’t have enough furniture in it yet. Honestly, it was pretty frustrating the first few days. Our apartment was so dirty!! We felt pretty overwhelmed with the huge cleaning job on our hands, but mom worked hard and we got it done. It’s kind of interesting because we have several cracks in our apartment walls from the earthquake. The picture is of some of the patched-up cracks. There are some bare ones though. Oh, and the apartment is LIME GREEN!! :) It keeps us awake. Dad was saying the other night that it makes him want ice cream. Haha The picture is of Kb and my room. Kb and I share that bed right now. It’s not bad! As far as the city goes, it’s pretty good. I’m still getting used to hot weather. It’s a little humid but not bad. Getting used to city life has been interesting, but we’re all coming around. :)

Like I said earlier, we spent the first few days cleaning. Then, Marshall and I and a friend got to go spend a day hangin out. We ate at subways and watched Prince Caspian at the theaters. Well, we watched it in Chinese. I understood most of it and that movie is fairly easy to follow. It was quite enjoyable. :)

The next day, I got to begin work! My dad and Marshall and I got to go out to a hit area for the whole day. If I were to describe the whole day, you’d be reading for forever. So, I’ll save you from that and just say a little bit and let the pictures do more explaining. We didn’t go to the most damaged place but it was still pretty messed up. Even though some buildings were still standing, there were all mostly condemned. You could usually find the places that gave evidence for it being condemned. There were many tents for stores that just had to set up their store on the streets, and also many tents for all the refugees. I met many sweet people, and played with tons of cute kids. It was really a great experience. All the people we ran into were very hospitable. Everyone in that area were just so impressive to me. People had houses and everything they had taken away by a disaster, and no one knows when things will be normal again. Even with all that hopelessness, everyone seemed completely happy. They just conformed to life. They ddin’t have a choice so they are just making the best of the situation they’re in. American’s wouldn’t be able to do that! I love these people!! The whole trip just really made me think a lot. It was great and it will continue to be great as we go on more trips! Enjoy the pictures! I'll try to explain a few. The pictures are in no real order.

This is a picture of a very sweet girl. She came up to my dad and asked how many of us there were and then asked if she could get us some water. My dad said no because we were about to leave. She just said ok and then turned and walked away. I did notice that once she had her back turned she started digging in her purse. Then, she walked up to me and gave me a little mirror with pretty colors on it. It was used but she just wanted to give one thing that she had. It meant so much to me and made me cry once and almost made me cry a few other times. It was just so meaningful to me in many different ways.

These are just some soldiers that ran by. I'm not sure if there were on a mission or if they were just hurrying.

This is my dad and some other people we were with unloading a machine from the jeep.

This is just a really cute little girl. :)

This little boy was a hoot. He liked to follow us around and he was always funny. :) The second pic is him with his sis.

My dad wondered why I was uploading pictures of water bottles and I'm sure you are too. These are pictures of water bottles that people just walked up and gave us. Just an example of their hospitality...

Ok, so, my feet got really dirty and disgusting while we were there. You can't really tell in this pic. :)

This is my name tag. It says volunteer and somethin else. I'm not sure what the somethin else is. ha ha

isn't he cute?!

Working on installing the system...

The people in this picture are just a few of the people that came to watch/help with installment.

They are a cute family. :)

I really like these next two pictures. This is when the water was ready to drink. One picture is of my dad drinking it and smiling and the other one is of everyone piling in to fill their containers up! :)

This is just one of the many refugee camps. This one had fewer people in it too.

Our jeep...

These girls were the first people I talked to on the trip. They were precious!! :)

This lady came up to me and talked to me. She was real kind! Then, she put her arm around me. It was really sweet.:)

The next several pictures are of the damage.

I was really encouraged by these people, and I hope you were as well. I'll be going to this same place tomorrow! :) yay..

Love you all!

Holli :)