We decided it was time for some new pictures, so we asked one of our friends, who is also a photographer, to help us out. Unfortunately, it was super hot so we were sweating like crazy. Also, I was just having kind of an "off" day-- my hair, my heart, everything, so I'm not super thrilled with them all, but her photography was really good and we have a few keepers. (I also threw in one of the cheesy Chinese shots with the two hands making a heart.) Thought I'd share a few in this slide show:
Half birthdays are a young Sirles family tradition. This year, for Austin's 24 1/2 birthday, two of his friends came over for homemade hot pockets and cake. Now theme cakes are most certainly a Lowe family tradition. Following in my mother's footsteps, I decided to get to work. This year I made a dinosaur theme cake. So fun, and altogether pretty easy!
First, I made two round chocolate cakes. The recipe will appear shortly on the "Cooking & Eating" page.
I frosted the first cake with some green cream cheese icing that was a total experiment with some cream cheese we'd been randomly given from another town. I covered the top of the cake and let the frosting hang down around the outside edges.
First, I made two round chocolate cakes. The recipe will appear shortly on the "Cooking & Eating" page.
I frosted the first cake with some green cream cheese icing that was a total experiment with some cream cheese we'd been randomly given from another town. I covered the top of the cake and let the frosting hang down around the outside edges.
Then I chopped up the second round cake to get four small cirles, each one slightly smaller than the last. This was for the volcano.
I stacked those four circles and cut around them to even them out. The volcano look was a good thing and allowed me not to worry about any rough or uneven places.
Now I went into a number of toy stores looking for dinosaur figurines and could find none. The conversation usually went something like this (in Chinese, of course):
Shop worker: Miss, what age child are you shopping for?
Me: (Thinking to myself: There's no way I'm going to answer that question.) Um, I'm just looking for some small dinosaurs.
Shop worker: We don't have any. [Kind of looks at me like I'm crazy.]
So I settled for these paper dinosaurs I had at home. Yes, I just happen to keep a collection of paper dinosaurs. I laminated their feet with scotch tape so they'd be re-usable, then I dug them in. I also placed some candy rocks from the local supermarket around the cake.
Shop worker: Miss, what age child are you shopping for?
Me: (Thinking to myself: There's no way I'm going to answer that question.) Um, I'm just looking for some small dinosaurs.
Shop worker: We don't have any. [Kind of looks at me like I'm crazy.]
So I settled for these paper dinosaurs I had at home. Yes, I just happen to keep a collection of paper dinosaurs. I laminated their feet with scotch tape so they'd be re-usable, then I dug them in. I also placed some candy rocks from the local supermarket around the cake.
The last thing to do was to add some lava to that volcano. I made some vanilla pudding and dyed it red, then poured it down the side of the volcano.
And that was that. We had a great time. Austin loved it.
Wow! It's amazing to see that I didn't blog at all during June. Since the last time I posted,
-I've started grad school.
-I finished my third year of teaching.
-I celebrated by second anniversary.
-I've watched High School Musical
-I've bough Austin two soccer balls, one of which was eaten by a dog and the other of which was punctured by a nail within the first 2 hours of him owning it.
I'm loving grad school, and teaching was really good too. We're excited, however to move across town to teach at a local college next month. I'll be teaching 3 sections of spoken English and 4 sections of American literature (ah, what to do with the assumption that because I'm American, I should know anything at all about American literature!). No, really, I remember loving it in high school, so I'll spend the summer brushing up and I'll be good to go.
We're coming to the close of our second year living in China. I'm learning a lot and have been challenged in lots of ways lately. I've seen my fear of engaging with people, my fear of awkward moments, my extreme selfishness & hesitancy to love anyone but myself, a certain ethnocentricity and pride that I've come to hate, and I've seen a need for change. And so slowly, I'm learning to engage more and more, to stop what I'm doing to spend time with somebody, to truly come to love the people around me, to see things through the eyes of love and be broken.
Someone asked me the other day what I missed about America. Just for fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Cereal
2. Dishwasher
3. The appreciation of funny, sarcastic comments
4. Events to get really dressed up for
5. Community
6. Canned vegetables
I think that's mostly it. And yet, none of those things are enough to send me packing right now. I love living here, and there are actually a whole lot of things about China that I'm sure I will grieve the loss of whenever it's time to head for the hills... But that's a post for another day.
-I've started grad school.
-I finished my third year of teaching.
-I celebrated by second anniversary.
-I've watched High School Musical
-I've bough Austin two soccer balls, one of which was eaten by a dog and the other of which was punctured by a nail within the first 2 hours of him owning it.
I'm loving grad school, and teaching was really good too. We're excited, however to move across town to teach at a local college next month. I'll be teaching 3 sections of spoken English and 4 sections of American literature (ah, what to do with the assumption that because I'm American, I should know anything at all about American literature!). No, really, I remember loving it in high school, so I'll spend the summer brushing up and I'll be good to go.
We're coming to the close of our second year living in China. I'm learning a lot and have been challenged in lots of ways lately. I've seen my fear of engaging with people, my fear of awkward moments, my extreme selfishness & hesitancy to love anyone but myself, a certain ethnocentricity and pride that I've come to hate, and I've seen a need for change. And so slowly, I'm learning to engage more and more, to stop what I'm doing to spend time with somebody, to truly come to love the people around me, to see things through the eyes of love and be broken.
Someone asked me the other day what I missed about America. Just for fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Cereal
2. Dishwasher
3. The appreciation of funny, sarcastic comments
4. Events to get really dressed up for
5. Community
6. Canned vegetables
I think that's mostly it. And yet, none of those things are enough to send me packing right now. I love living here, and there are actually a whole lot of things about China that I'm sure I will grieve the loss of whenever it's time to head for the hills... But that's a post for another day.