China Christmas

Recovery week

We have had a good recovery week here, no encounters with the police, no funerals.  The highlights of our week were that I got to visit with Mom and Dad on the phone, Matt and I went on a run (it's our once a month training routine), we found a great market (Chinese dumplings, veggies, boots, toys), a friend took me and a few of the kids to a indoor play place that is amazingly close to us and not very expensive.

Matt and some neighbors took the older girls out for dinner and karaoke,

and at church we had a missionary homecoming (I just love those) with lots of family visiting and then a potluck afterwards.

This week will be full of Christmas festivities.  I will make sure Klora makes a video, that is more fun than reading about it right?  We will be thinking about you all week and thinking about the great Christmas gathering s back home. We will try to be happy that these good things are happening and not sad that we are missing them.

love you,
Julie

A Visit from Friends and a Police Escort

Kind of a lot has happened last week.

On Thursday evening we got a visit at our apartment from Maggie and Geff -- Maggie is our friend from China who was our neighbor in Boise for a while and whose hometown we are in right now--, who were in town visiting family. So fun to have friends from home here!  They left, we put the kids to bed and were just getting ready for bed when we got a message from them saying--do you want to go out?  So we went out with them at 10 o'clock on a school night and got Chinese street barbecue and an hour long Chinese foot massage (that was a revelation)!

Street BBQ with Maggie and Geff

Saturday we went to Maggie's parents house for lunch and to get a few warm clothes and blankets that her mom had for us to use for the winter.  We got to play outside some more too and then walk up the road to where the house that Maggie grew up in used to be and then go to their old neighbor's open house for the new home they had just built.  I guess it is custom to have a few days open house when you build a new house and feed everyone a big meal for those two days--as if building a house wasn't expensive enough!  They even sent everyone home with a goody bag.  Then we said goodbye to Maggie and Geff as they were leaving that evening to head back to the States.  It was really a treat to have them around for a few days.

After they left we packed up to catch the bus to Hangzhou for church.  Our driver couldn't take us this Sunday so we had to go by bus and didn't want to leave Sunday morning by bus and risk being late because it was Christmas program in Sacrament meeting and Klora and Kendra were narrators, our whole family was singing one song, Kendra and Matt singing another, me in a women's quartet, and primary kids singing!  So we packed up and went to our bus stop and waited.  Our bus number passed us twice without stopping!  And it was not full!  We were trying to figure out what was going on but no one around us spoke English.  We decided if it passed us once more we would just go home.  Then a neighbor (who we had met "just by chance" last week because he was playing ping pong with his son when we came in to play and we played together a little) came by and said we had to go to the bus station and get on the bus at the beginning of the route because Chairman Xi Jinping would be visiting the area next week and their is heightened security for 10 days.  So he took us to a bus stop across the street where we could catch a bus to the bus station and then catch our bus there.  So we waited there.  And waited.  Yeah, we were all pretty tired and cold.  After 10 or 15 minutes there our neighbor friend showed up again, this time in uniform in a police SUV.  He said half of you get in here and then he got a taxi for the rest and we were taken to the bus station with lights flashing--a real police escort.  We had to go through a security check at the bus station and then were taken back to a boarding area where they asked for our passports--why would we have our passports?  We never need our passports to ride the bus.  We didn't have them.  Our neighbor/friend talked to them for a few minutes and they let us on the bus.  We sat down relieved and ready to relax for the hour and a half drive.  THEN the manager came on the bus and made us get off.  Most of this time we were mostly guessing at what we were supposed to do as no one spoke much English and our Chinese is lacking.  Our neighbor friend called Jane, our Chinese friend who is our coordinator through the school and had her explain how we needed our passports to take the bus these few days.  So we went back out of the bus station and were loaded in a police SWAT van.  Matt and I in the front and the kids in the back with all the shields and assault gear which Kyle thought was really cool.  And they took us home.  Well, OK we wouldn't get to have McDonald's in Hangzhou but we told the kids we could eat at home and watch a movie.  As we were working on that Jane said our driver could take us that evening instead of the morning.  We thought about it and decided that even though we would be paying more for transportation this week we better do it or we would have to leave at 6 the next morning in order to get to the bus station, go through security, etc. etc.  so we ate and...   Sorry kids no movie at home but we can watch a movie on the iPad on the way!  Then the iPad didn't have the movie...  Sorry kids, again and since we are getting there so late it will be bedtime and no time to play with the Phillips kids either...  Man our kids are adaptable.  It was a little rough but they all did pretty good.  We made it there at bedtime.  And enjoyed the Christmas program on Sunday--everyone did very well.  After church was a reception for a couple who had just gotten married so we were even fed before being driven to the bus (a friend in the ward drove us to make sure there were no problems with us getting on this time) rather than take the taxi and the ride home was pretty calm.  We got home tired.  it really hasn't felt like that very often here, just another adventure to record.

So much more to tell... Next Time