Warm Weather = Happiness

I feel like my mood changes with the weather. As much as I try to be happy on a daily basis there is nothing like warm weather to lift my spirits. Friday morning started with a walk to the store with one of my good friends Jada and then a yummy tuna melt for me and tuna sandwich for her. We then proceed to chat as she went through my clothes. I love giving my clothes away, I am not sure why but it makes me happy. While going through the clothes this conversation happened many times:

Jada "you don't want/like this!!!??!"

Me "yes but I have so much back in America"

Jada "oh." As she picks up another piece of clothing and exclaims "you don't want/like this!??!"

She soon realized we were having the same conversation every two seconds and we both laughed. Ah, I'm going to miss that girl a whole lot.

I am currently involved in the Self Challenge by Self Magazine. Trying to get into better shape- you know its an on going process. This past week I have been hanging out on the stationary bike at the gym. I have been riding for about one hour. I bring along my Twilight Book (I'm on the third one in the series now) and the time just flies by! It amazes me!

We then came back from the gym and whipped up some yummy smoothies and fixed homemade pizza for dinner! I am getting a little braver in trying new things in my cooking and baking now. This time I added some ground flax seed and wheat germ to the pizza dough. It was still delicious AND healthy. Curtis and I love cooking together. We do it whenever we can. It gives us time to do something together, chat and just relax. Plus we both love food. I used a different kind of yeast then normal and for some reason it didn't rise. I'll have to figure that out. Spicy BBQ Chicken Pizza
Fresh Veggie Pizza

We enjoyed our veggie and spicy BBQ chicken pizzas while watching the movie Fireproof. It was an interesting movie. The acting was not very good but it had some good messages in it. I'm sure it got some differing reactions by the public as well.

Saturday I enjoyed a sunny day in Beijing with Rena. We ate a delicious meal at Outback Steakhouse, tracked down a tanning salon and stocked up at Jenny Lous (the western grocery store). On the way home we met some students who were carrying along a little turtle in a plastic bag. They graciously let him out to run on the silver platter for a good portion of the trip. We tried to have a conversation but my Chinese is horrible and their English was "poor" (as they say). We discovered they went to the same school we teach at and they live at the airport. However I'm sure the second part was some sort of a mistake - but ya never know!

The two students. The one on the right is trying to think of the English he knows...