The Mayan...

One year ago yesterday, the Mayan Adventure Restaurant closed!

It was really sad because Lance, Tyce, Mary, Mccall and I were all working there together as performers. Lance, Tyce and Mary had been working there for years! It was such a fun job and it provided so many opportunities. . . . the Mayan was the reason Lance was recruited to dive in the circus in China and the reason I ended up learning how to do trapeze, silks and lyra!

When the restaurant closed, we were able to get in to get our equipment, costumes, and to play on the cliffs one last time.

our last day at the Mayan

Some pictures:

me & Lance trapeze

trapeze

looking down from the rafters at me & Lance on trapeze

me & Mary double silks

Lance diving

Some Videos:

Voodoo Darlings Water and Dive Show

Lance, Mary and Tyce just performed in a water and dive show for Voodoo Productions. Mary performed on corde lisse and Tyce and Lance performed on russian swing and 3 m diving.

Lance in the rafters taking things down

Lance-russian swing

Tyce - Russian Swing

Lance- russian swing

Mary performing on corde lisse:

Russian Swing:

Back in the U.S.A.!

Lance and I are back in the U.S.A.! We are in Florida right now where we are enjoying eating salads and sandwiches and getting water out of drinking fountains. Last night I saw stars in the sky for the first time in a long time...how exciting!!

We were able to go to church today. It is such a blessing that no matter where we are in the world, we are able to find a church to go to.

On Saturday we went to a person's house in Orlando who has a high dive structure and swimming pool in his backyard. Lance practiced some high dives, and I did my first trick off the diving board. Here's some pics of that.

China Update!

Here is an update on some of the adventures we've had since our last post:

*Russians love cheese and sausage..... We followed a Russian to the market where she buys cheese and sausage and came home with a freaking WHEEL of cheese weighing about 6 pounds. We cut it into 5 wedges and stuck them in the freezer...but we are already down to our last wedge of cheese.

*Lance and Sam recovered from a case of the bird poo flu. Expect to see it in the U.S. this winter.

*We had a night time visitor that would leave treats on our balcony. He had whiskers and a long tail and he squeaked when he saw cheese. Lance flung him off our balcony with his lacrosse stick, and our visitor has not returned.

*A bear thought Lance looked like cotton candy in his blue puff ball costume and took a swipe at him. Lance barely escaped from being a mid show snack.

*We like to eat at a pizza restaurant called Tomatoes. One day we had leftovers so we had them box them up to take home. They kindly put them in a 7 Eleven bag along with plastic gloves and chinese soup spoons..... ?? Napkins? Of course not!

*Sam is now babysitting a little Russian girl whose parents are performers in the circus. She is the cutest little girl. She doesn't speak English and all Sam knows in Russian is how to how to say Mickey Mouse. Needless to say, they get along just fine. :D

*Sam had a birthday! She was excited that she got to go swimming in October and on her birthday. She and Lance and some of the other circus monkeys went out to eat at Oggi's Pizzeria. Sam and Lance got a humongous calzone. It was delicious.

*General Conference was on the 2nd and 3rd, but the Guangzhou Branch got to watch Conference on the 9th and 10th! We all met at the church to watch the sessions and ate potluck in between. Thank you technology!

*We went on a lightning vacation. We went to Hong Kong on the earliest bus leaving Guangzhou at 7:00 am. We miraculously made it to the Hong Kong Temple in time to catch the 11:00 session. And....we bought 25 loaves of bread (which we have already completely devoured) and caught the 2:30 bus back to Guangzhou, making it back just in time for the circus.

*Ratattouie is based on a true story. We were eating at a Chinese restaurant when the biggest rat we have ever seen (and we've seen a lot of rats here) walked out of the kitchen and into the pantry. Most restaurants have cats they keep on guard duty to catch any rats, well the cat that was on guard duty at this restaurant took one look at the new "chef" and ran and hid under a chair. Not even kidding, the rat just walked out of the kitchen and into the panty and the cat bolted and cowered under a chair.

Pictures From China

Eeeekk!!!

My heart is beating so fast right now. Lance just did the HIGH DIVE in the show for the first time tonight! It was AWESOME! I think I was more nervous than he was! I got a video of him, which I'm proud of, because my hands were shaking so badly. Yay Lance! I'm proud of you! And thanks for landing in the water!

Do a flip

Alrighty, so Samantha and I are wandering around this sports mall when we run into their swimming section. The nice little Chinese worker lady comes over to talk to us we do the usual "Ni Hao. . . (alot of Chinese I don't understand) . . . then they turn to Samantha and repeat it all over again cuz She'll understand it :s . . . then comes the Oh I'm an American. a few giggles from the worker girl. Then comes the Chinese I can understand. How Long have you been in China? . . . You're girlfriend is so pretty . . . Your Wife? . . . You are so young to be married . . ."
Ok, now to business. We found where they had their Speedos and the girl tells me that they are 50% off. So Speedos are $4 bucks. Ha! It was hilarious, I bought every Speedo they had in my size. The girl is just giggling the whole time as I pull one after another off the hanger that I found in my size. So I now will never have to purchase another speedo for as long as I live (or at least untill my gutt is too big to fit into them any more).
We found Samantha the cutest pair of shoes too that she said she refuses to wear while in China cuz they are way to cute to get buggered up here in China before anyone can see her sporting them. So she has sealed the shoe box and won't be wearing them till we get home. Ha!
Ok so after my Speedo binge we head back cuz I have a practice for the circus. At the end of the practice I told Brian (our dive Captain) that I wanted to warm up a high dive. So, after promissing him that I wouldn't get dead or fly out of the pool he said ok. We got Sam all hooked up with the video camera so just incase I did die she could submit the sweet footage of my death to America's Funniest Home Videos so she could win their $10,000 dollar prize (Ha!)
Unfortunately for Sam my high dive was a success so she won't be earning the $10,000 dollar reward for sending in the hilarious video of me missing the pool.

That night before the Show Samantha and I felt like eating mexican and we wanted to go Authentic so we were gonna make our own tortillas. Ha, they were great, they turned out to be like Squashed, cooked Play-dough pan cakes. We thought they were absolutelly delicious but whatever they were they weren't quite tortillas but we felt pretty dang proud of our Mexican skills.
We ended up just crumpeling the wanna be tortillas over the chicken and salsa and eating it like a salad because we couldn't wrap the chicken and salsa up with them, our little play-dough tortillas just fell apart when we tried to wrap every thing up. But it was good so No Complaints. We are planing on making them again very soon :)