the year of the peace sign.

The invitation to Aaron's party

Every year I really look forward to Aaron's birthday. It's really fun to think of things that he loves and surprise him with them on his birthday. This year for his birthday, I decided that I wanted to get him a grill....then Aaron made it his quest for the summer to learn how to make North Carolina barbecue, making the grill the perfect gift, so that he could learn to smoke a boston butt on a charcoal grill. Family helped by ordering him a boston butt, grill accessories, and surprised him with a sling box so that he won't have to miss a single Carolina basketball game next year. We spent the day after his birthday preparing pulled pork, baked beans, coleslaw, hushpuppies, and sweet tea for a pig pickin' in honor of his birthday. Here are pictures from one of my favorite days of the year.

Start of the day

His request - chicken biscuits at a local western restaurant for breakfast 

1st gift - hickory chips

3rd gift - the grill to cook his 2nd gift, the boston butt, on

putting the grill together

"butts rubbed nightly" - that's the slogan from one of my favorite barbecue places
and happens to describe what's going on in this picture.

candid peace sign while eating dinner at our favorite japanese restaurant

mochi - a newly discovered love of mine and an ole favorite of Aaron's

starting the charcoal.  i love him and that peace sign...ridiculous.

waiting on the meat, and getting the house ready

finished product

the spread

enjoying sportscenter on the slingbox after the festivities

When it's summertime and the weather is high...

OR is it when the weather is hot? Does anybody even know? Mungo Jerry, solve this - what are you singing? hot or high?

I'm still really missing home. When skyping family and friends I wish I could be there with them, instead of on the other side of a computer in a city as equally muggy as North Carolina in the summer, but without all the perks of a Carolina summer.

So, to combat all this homesickness of late, I have decided to become a little more proactive in my summer plans. Aaron and I have been brainstorming things that we can do to make new summer traditions - things that we can do no matter where we are in the world and that we can look forward to doing every year. I don't want every summer to be hard as I think about all I wish I could be doing at home, but I want there to be things that we do here that I get excited about as well.

Movie matinees once a week was the first thought I had, then I remembered that the movies here are in another language and I don't think I'd really like doing that more than once in a summer. Then Aaron came up with Western Wednesdays. Every Wednesday throughout the summer (which just started for us this week, since Friday was our last day of class) we will watch a Western movie. I'm not talking about Western - like Asians are Eastern and we are Western. But Western like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

And I decided that we should come up with a peach drink. Like in America - peaches are only available here during the summer months, so I thought it would be fun to come up with a drink that I know we can only have during one season a year. But, the problem is, I don't know a peach drink recipe - so I've been looking all week for peach drinks. The other trick is - the peach drink has to be something that couldn't be done better in America (like a peach milkshake). Because that will just leave us wanting and comparing it to Chick-fil-a.

Today we watched The Outlaw Josey Wales. No peach drink yet though. I'd love to hear your recommendations on peach drink recipes, westerns, and other ideas for new family summer traditions....just remember we can't drive to the beach here or drink cheerwine slushies.

God shed His grace on thee

How do you celebrate America's Independence Day while living in China? By having a cookout (or "a barbecue" to apparently every other English speaker, except those of us from the South) at the home of your Kiwi friends, of course.

our gracious hosts

This is Vernon and Gaynor.
Though they are from New Zealand, they hosted a 4th of July party for all their American friends - as well as some Canadian, Australian, British, and Swiss friends. It was a lot of fun. We enjoyed traditional American 4th of July dishes like potato salad and a Kiwi/Australian Pavlova.

all decked out

Making hamburgers

Thanks Aamee & Pop Pop for the flag decor!

I guess the little 5 year old boy in our apartment complex could see that we were patriotic people by the clothes we were wearing, because when he ran up to say "Hello Stacy!" he asked me my Chinese name, and then - "Japan is bad.  Is it or is it not?"  Aaron: "What?  Say that again?"  Kid:  "Japan is bad. Okay, Bye."  I guess he thought we would share his sentiment.


Another classic Chinese moment today - one of our American friends received a text wishing her a "Happy Indecent Day!"  Indecent, independence....tomayto, tomahto.

Happy 4th of AMERICA!

I love America. I miss America.

I don't know what else to say. George doesn't know what else to say.

Should I go on?

Game. Set. Fireworks.

pandas

While Becky was here we went to the Panda Park in the city. Aaron and I have been holding off going to the park because it is most likely a place that we will go to over and over, if people come to visit. I thought the park was pretty well done and we got there early enough in the morning that the pandas were active. Apparently they are really lazy animals that just sleep and eat. If you get there around 8:30 in the morning though, they are just waking up and are getting fed.

They were pretty cute. I didn't think that I would think they were that cute. I was wrong.

What is a t-shirt quilt, you ask?

Only the coolest thing ever!

So semi-unbeknownst to me, my family went in on a t-shirt quilt for me and my mom brought it when she visited last week. This thing is WAY cooler that it probably sounds.

Think of it as a way to preserve and immortalize 20 of your favorite shirts all at once.

I now have the ability to give shout outs to the coolest things in the world all at once. See picture.

America? Check.
Chapel Hill? Check.
India, where I fell in love with my wife? Check.
Hansbrough jersey shirt retired? Check.
Recognition of the Krispy Kreme hot light being on in Greensboro? Check.
Cheerwine? Check.

The list goes on and on. Is it exhaustive? No. Is it awesome? Yes.

Thank you to my amazing family!

missing home

Aaron's mom came to visit! She wasn't able to stay long, but we are really thankful that we got to spend the time we did with her. While she was here we skyped home and Aaron's dad showed us the beach and the beach houses that Aaron grew up going to. When looking at the beach, Aaron said, "I want to go there." The beaches of Thailand that we visit can't compare to the beaches of home. I miss the humidity, the waves, the familiarity, the full length shorts on men and the tops on women, the mullets and farmers' tans donned in stars and bars, and the stars and stripes everywhere and on everything.

It was unbelievably hard when she left on Sunday. I spent Saturday night crying myself to sleep in anticipation of saying goodbye the next day. We have really enjoyed being in China so far, but we don't have plans to go home or see family for at least a year. I anticipated that Christmas would be a hard time to be away from family, but I didn't anticipate summer being as hard as it is. We miss home. I miss family and friends. I miss North Carolina. sweet tea and cheerwine, barbecue and cookouts, camping and fly fishing, Aaron's neighborhood swimming pool and Chapel Hill....the list could go on forever.

professional pics

You've been waiting for them. Here they are - or at least some of them.

We livin' life like a video

Hong Kong....what was it like?

This is not awesome:
1. That Krispy Kreme closed their stores in HK in 2008.....which we didn't realize until after we spent a good amount of time looking for Krispy Kreme.
2. Crossing the border from Mainland China into Hong Kong. I'm not sure what we did wrong. But we did something really wrong. On the way in we ended up at some "station" which was not a subway station and only had cabs into the city or buses back into China....and all of them only took Hong Kong Dollars (which we did not have at that time). On the way back - we thought we went the best way back into mainland China, until we ended up walking in the rain for an hour looking for buses to take us to the airport.

3. The size of our room. And the size of the bed, which was about 4 inches too short for Aaron's legs, and was up against a wall.....luckily there was a few inches not touching the wall that he could use to hang one foot over.

This is kinda awesome:

1. Frozen yogurt. I have been missing frozen yogurt and Hong Kong, like America, in the past couple of years has really gotten into the frozen yogurt fad. It wasn't Feeney's. But it'll do.

2. The world's longest outdoor escalator, which is like taking a conveyor belt through a delicious buffet of restaurants.  It is at the same time the best and the worst ride, because it makes it so hard to decide what you want to eat for dinner.

3. A statue of Bruce Lee. It was kinda awesome.

This is awesome:

1. Okay - so I didn't realize that Hong Kong was more than just a big city on a harbor. It's a bunch of islands! We went to the south of the island one day and I was blown away by how beautiful it was - mountainous islands over pretty blue water. I loved the south part of the island and Gwen, if I was rich girl, I would love to vacation at the south side of the main island instead of in the city.

2. The food. Barbecue, grits, thai food, tostadas, quesadillas, cottage pie. delicious and not available in the mainland....at least not that good anyway. We ate like fatties. Oh yeah - and the free flowing root beer, cream soda, ginger beer (which is like a stronger ginger flavored ginger ale), grapefruit juice.....(and by free flowing, I mean you could buy these things at convenience stores).

3. Movie theaters. With movies in English.

4. The ferry ride across the harbor. and the harbor at night.  Beautiful.

Calisthenics

In keeping with the theme of Aaron's last few posts, here is a sign that I saw in the airport on our way to Hong Kong.

Western toilets are for babies. Squatty pots will pump you up.