mmmmmmm mangos

My wonderful husband went to the veggie market last night to grab me a few things for dinner and brought back some wonderful surprises! Mangos and delicious looking Strawberries!!! I hadn't really eaten many mango (real mangos) before coming to China and last spring I feel in love with them! I cant wait to make some mango smoothies and enjoy them! Sadly, it looks like I am going to be missing a good part of mango season when I head back to the Continental US in a few days....so sad.

On another note. I watched the movie Twilight with some friends last night. I was greatly disappointed as it did not do the book justice at all. However, I continued to read the book last night and this morning and still love it, even though the movie was so vague.

My suggestion: don't watch the movie- read the books!

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...

Twilight and a Latte

So one of my friends/co-teacher here in China returned from her winter break back in America. This Christmas she introduced me to the book series called Twilight. I think I read it in like four days while we traveled to see the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an. Every free minute I had I wanted to return to this other life I felt like I had with my good friends Bella and Edward. When Rena returned from America, she brought me the other three books in the series. I am SOO excited - I started to read the first one already and can feel the desire of simply ditching this world for the next two weeks and spending it with them. It's a very possible scenario but probably not too healthy. I do have some work I need to get done. Plus what would you do without me for two weeks - ha.

This morning I woke up feeling EXTREMELY tired, more than normal, it was very difficult to keep my eyes open- but I managed to make myself a latte. I thought it would cure the lack of energy my body was sending to my eyelids but nope. However, I did fix my espresso machine. For the past month or two the frother has been frothing very very very slowly. Despite my incredibly drowsy state my mind managed to problem solve - this happens at random times. I guess I was able to think of a solution because I could only focus on one thing at a time due to my tiredness. Usually I am multitasking physically as well as mentally. This morning I could only think about my espresso machine - one step at a time - putting espresso in it, filing it with cold water, adding white mocha to the milk and Irish cream to the mug and then dwelling over the fact I would have to stand there holding my milk under the frother for 10 minutes due to the amazingly tiny amount of steam that was casually spraying out. So, by random impulse I stuck a tooth pick up the frother and sure enough more steam than I had seen in 4 months came shooting out! I am so happy my lattes wont take 10 minutes to make anymore. I wonder if I hadn't been so sleepy if my mind would have figured this solution out or not. Its the little things in life that can bring the most joy. I must go enter another world now!