Dirty eggs and Other Chinese Stuff

Some funny stuff, some sad stuff, and some meaningful stuff:

1. Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday - We went to an egg hunt/Easter Party Sunday morning in our neighborhood. After walking down to the front of the neighborhood, then following the directions of various security guards, we eneded up at the bottom of the 188 steps behind our back door. There was pizza (at 9 a.m.!) and a bunch of other food. And an egg hunt, which consisted of eggs that were buried in the ground (the dirt) that kids were trying to dig up with sticks or whatever tools they could find, like broken pottery shards. If you were lucky enough to find an egg (few were!), and if there was a piece of cardboard inside your egg, you got a prize. If not, tough luck and keep digging in the dirt. It was the strangest, silliest egg hunt I've ever seen, and we had a good laugh about it.

That afternoon, Andrew had a birthday party (yeah, on Easter Sunday) and Alex and I went to the Catholic church. I felt a little lost, enough said.

2. Last evening we went to a Gala at the school to benefit students in Guizhou Province, which is a very poor, rural province in northern China. The children there didn't even have a bathroom, just a ditch. The building was a shack with big spaces between the roof boards (so, no roof, really). Desks were primitive wooden tables with a bunch of kids crowded around each one. It's very cold there and the children were without warm clothing. And the drinking water came from a ditch - it looked pretty green and gross. Last year's Gala resulted in a bathroom, 6 water cisterns for drinking water, a school building, desks, supplies, warm clothes, hats and mittens, and pigs for many families to raise. It was heartbreaking to watch the presentation of before and after, and even the "after" would be considered sad in the U.S. It was heartwarming at the same time, to see the difference in these childrens' and their families' lives. The really nice thing was, all the work, such as building the desks, was done by people in the town there, so the money went to the community in addition to providing the school facility to the children. We had a nice time, spent as much money as we could on a few auction items, and met so many wonderful people. We met some people from Wisconsin, even, and had a great time talking about "home." We did bid on a "win" a digital camera, so I'll be taking pictures this week of Resort Land and our house and the kids for all of you who are asking : )

3. Church today was a completely different scene from the last time I attended the Protestant service. This morning, we all went and had a very uplifting, moving, spiritual worship experience. It was really fantastic, and I felt so at home. All the Wisconsin folks we had met last night were there, along with a mix of Christians from all ends of the earth. The music was inspiring, the message was solid, thought-provoking, and challenging (in a good way), and the kids had fun in Sunday School. It was the thing I've been so missing since coming to China, and I'm so glad we went back for another chance. I feel like a hole inside me has been filled.

4. This afternoon we all headed down to the pool where Alex beat me severely in a water gun fight (that I started) and we all had a nice time on a hot afternoon. Even Ella got to go swimming, which she loved as long as she could hang onto Daddy. Tim is out starting the grill two hours before we plan to eat because Chinese charcoal is much more difficult and fussy than U.S. briquets. There is no lighter fluid, either, just these wierd little pills, about 3 cm around and 2 cm tall that stay really hot and help the charcoal get fired up. It takes forever to get a fire going, and we've had some really late dinners because of this. Also, the grills don't have covers so the food takes much longer to cook.

5. And yet, aren't we so very lucky and blessed to have what we have!