All in a day's work: Mondays

So I thought I’d take a few shots around town just for friends and family to see life around our “new” place.  Yes, we’ve been here for over a year and a half now BUT 8 months of that time we were technically in America.  So, while we lived here for 6 months prior to getting Ajay, we had to leave quickly after getting Ajay because the Chinese government would not give him more than a 60 day visa on an Indian passport.     So, we were in America for 8 months finalizing the adoption and getting Ajay on a US passport with our last name.  It took a while!  But now we are back and settled.  Finally settled.  And finally I feel like I should give a proper introduction to everyone about our new place.  I don’t think I ever officially did that the first time around!  Ooops!

In order to keep it true to daily life, I just took my camera with me for a week and whatever we did, whatever we saw, I snapped it.  If I thought it was interesting I snapped it.  If I thought it might give a glimpse into how life was different here than in America, I snapped it.  Hope it gives a good snapshot into our life here.  Oh and by the way, I did this a few weeks ago.  Sorry it’s just now getting up.

So, here goes.....  

Monday:

This is our apartment.  We live in ShanShuiYunTian.  Mountain Water Cloud Sky.  Very lovely sounding, isn’t it.  We can in fact see some mountains out our back, see some water down to our left - a tributary of the Mekong River no less, and there are occasional clouds in the sky.  

This is the pagoda near our house.

This is my favorite twisty tree outside our house. 

This is the kids playing badminton outside our house.

This is Canaan and Ajay eating popcorn by the patio.

These are the Dai women in our town.  We live in a Dai autonomous prefecture.  The Dai are a minority people group here in China.  Only, where we live, they are the majority!  Dai = Thai.  Same same.  I caught these women at the market. 

 Here are some other things I saw at the market.   Jack fruit - the large spiky one - it’s very stinky, coconuts, tamarind.  the pink spiky one is dragon fruit.  Other than the fruit stalls, there are also stores selling just a bunch of junk.  Anything from plastic buckets, plastic stools, to rolls and rolls of really poor quality tape to, you know, penguin fans.  

The Dai women aren’t the only ones wearing skirts around here,  The Burmese men do too!  We are on the Burma border.  Lots of Burmese come here to live for a short time and sell jade.  The quality of jade in Burma is much better than the jade in China so many Chinese tourist come here to buy Burmese jade.  There is a whole street called Burmese street with many jade dealers but they are scattered all over town as well.  The Burmese speak a tiny bit of English and a tiny bit of Chinese.  It makes communicating with them difficult!  

It’s Ajays birthday.  Here I am making a cake - from scratch of course (not by choice).  Daryl- Ann helped me.  We made marshmallow fondant.  The marshmallows came from the capital city.  We called in and ordered them, the store owner then packaged them up, bought them a bus ticket and sent them our way on the bus.  Alot of work for the little guy’s big day, eh?  I am pretty fond of the fondant.  It made great red polka dots for his Dr. Seuss them.  And here are some pics of his party.  We played pin the heart on the grinch.  

And now i think i will make a quilt form the left over scraps from the birthday banner.

Tuesday's pix will be up tomorrow.