10 August 2014

Here's a photo of our vegetable garden.  It always looks its best in August.

Becky loves the sunflowers.

It's pear picking time!

We took our Chinese exchange students to the pear farm to pick pears with our family on Monday night.  They live in a big city in China and had never seen fruit trees before.  

 Brandan worked on the platform picker one night.  This is a slow moving machine that lifts the pickers so they can pick pears off the upper half of the trees without ladders.

 Brandan's clinic had a picnic on Saturday.  The photo is of Abe in a water fight with other kids at the picnic.

 Our Chinese students left early Sunday morning.  We ate with chopsticks for our last dinner together.  Helen used her chopsticks like knitting needles.

Joey used a similar technique.

Gibson stabbed his food with his chopsticks.

Sofi is a pro with chopsticks after spending 2 weeks in China without forks.  The learning curve only goes one way.  According to our students, it is very easy to eat with a fork.

 We only hosted Frank and Oliver for 2 weeks, but it was an intense experience.  All of our kids gave up space, time and attention.  Their favorite part of hosting was eating fancier food than we usually do.  We learned 16 year old Chinese teenagers are pretty much the same as 16 year old Americans.  We'll remember Frank for his earnestness in practicing English, his athleticism, his helpfulness and his American girlfriend.

 We'll remember Oliver for his excellent English (much of it learned from American movies), his love of music, his sense of humor and his natural cool factor.  We learned about Old Mother sauce (a spicy condiment), Jay Chou (a Taiwanese musician) and gained a greater appreciation for the United States. Frank and Oliver are smart boys with bright futures-- we think Frank will be a CEO in 10 years-- but their experiences growing up in China make us very thankful for our freedom and opportunities.