The week before Christmas

Thursday:
This week was the week before Christmas, we did a special homeschool co-op kind of thing with the Dutch family in our town. The children put on a Christmas musical and also studied about stars. They met every afternoon for a week after they had completed their regular studies. We even still crammed in Chinese class this week. It was a busy week!

Today we all hung outside on the corner patch of grass outside our house for a while. The neighbors were out. This is the head gardner that I mentioned before. Canaan loves her and her daughter. She follows her around picking flowers, pulling weeds, and “helping out” all the time.

We went to the bird and flower mkt today. Also happens to be the dog market. We are getting a cocker spaniel for the kids for Christmas. Saw this venus fly trap type of flower. It’s fun living in the tropics.

Here is one of three “Christmas” stores in town. It is classy stuff let me tell you. And all about the Santa.

China has it’s own Christmas Eve tradition. You give fancy wrapped apples as gifts to all your friends. The apple growers put chinese character stickers on the apples while they are still on the tree. The sun ripens the apple and leaves the part under the sticker yellow. they pick the apples, peel off the sticker then you can still see the yellow chinese character on the red apple. Fun. But nothing to do with Jesus. These pics are of the mobs of people outside the major supermarket buying apples and wrapping them as gifts. You pay by pound for the apple, by sheet for the paper and by the meter for the ribbon. It’s almost like homecoming mums in the south! The more ribbons, more paper, the more this, more that - the better the gift, right?

This is Buddha. He lives down the street from our apt complex. When I go out our gate and look right, there he is.  And I guess when he looks down the street, there I am.

This is Eben on the way to Tae Kwon Do. He is a blue/green belt. He will test in just a few weeks to be a blue belt. In case you dont know, next comes red then black. It’s kind of a big deal to be a black belt. We are going to encourage him to stick with it.  He takes with another American kid here in town.  They are good friends. 

This is the public square area near Eben's Tae Kwon Do.

There was a vase vendor there today.

And just to prove how safe the bike lanes are I decided to post a picture.

And then on my way home from Tae Kwon Do I noticed this.  Someone from the fourth floor is running an extension cord out their window, down into the stairwell and is charging their motorcycle.  Not unusual, but interesting.

Tomorrow a Dai village, more homeschool.