China says,"Church is cancelled"

*Ok, Samantha says that she is done with blogging for a minute so now it is my turn :s He he

*In our dive shows we do a mass dive where 13 people all dive into the water at the same time (for those of you who don't know, our pool is TINY, we can bearly fit 13 people in our pool) the dive I do is called the JAVELIN. I am on the highest perch on our dive structure and I am holding another diver over my head (Anya is the lucky diver who fills that spot) we then dive off together and I toss her in the air and she does a back flip while I do a front flip and we land in the water only inches from each other and the other 11 divers going into the water at the same time (well that is how it is supposed to go) yeah. . . just the other night I landed on her. I threw her too late and when I did my front flip instead of landing in the water first I landed on Anya first. She has recovered quite well though and we are back in business.

*PITA'S!!! We are thrilled. We found a store that sells Pita bread. We went on a pita stuffing extravaganza. Sloppy Joe mix, Mexican style shredded chicken, tuna, egg salad and a new one we just created we, call Sloppy Luigi.

*Today at church I had one crazy Sunday school lesson. Brother and Sister Thomas are recent converts to the church. She is from Spain and speaks very little English, he is from the U.S. and does his best to translate for her. Brother and Sister Martimbianco are from Brasil and they speak hardly any English and then there is Sister Virginia, she is Chinese and speaks very little English and has another sister from the branch translate for her. All of them are in my Sunday school class. So, I got so tongue twisted and lost in my own lesson. I say a part in Portugues, then I say it again in English and wait for Sister Chen to translate it to Chinese and Brother Thomas to translate it to Spanish. We'd read a verse in English and then again in Spanish and Portugues. HA! it was great but I was a little lost.

*Alrighty so at church today the branch President got up and announced that the Church would be closed for the next 7 weeks. Guangzhou is hosting the Asian Games starting in November and during that time we arn't allowed to use the building we have been using for our meetings. ? How strange is that? Chinese government officials will be staked out at the church building during the Asian Games to make sure we don't try and sneak in. Yeah, so we are not sure exactly what we are going to do yet during those 7 weeks.

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.

District Conference

On Sunday we had District Conference. Our district spans all of China. There are branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou (our branch!) and a few other cities. We couldn't all meet together in one place, so the conference was held through a conference call. A lady from our branch gave a talk. Instead of standing at the front of the room at the microphone, she went into the branch president's office and spoke into his telephone. It was quite a different experience from Stake Conference back in Utah! It was cool to know that there are members of the church throughout China. We are blessed that we are even allowed to gather together for church each Sunday.

Chinese Hospital

The other day I went to a Chinese hospital to visit a member from the branch. I am so grateful for hospitals back in the states! The hallways were filled with patients in stretchers. I guess either there weren't enough rooms to put these people in, or they couldn't afford to be in an actual room. There were six elevators, and everyone used them....doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors. When an elevator would arrive, everyone would try to be the first to push themselves on...they'd even butt in front of a doctor pushing a patient on a stretcher. If you try to be polite by letting patients on first, then you'll never get on an elevator. While I was riding one elevator, a woman got upset because she wanted to squish onto our elevator, but there wasn't any room. Instead of waiting for the next one, she yelled at a mother to make her son, who was sitting in a wheelchair, push himself closer to the wall so she and her family could squish themselves on. It was ridiculous. The nurses and doctors seemed very nice, but the hospital experience was very crazy. I feel lucky I didn't catch someone's disease while I was there! Oh, and for all you grown men here in China...stop picking and flicking your boogers! It's disgusting!!
~Sam

Chinese Street BBQ

We went to a Chinese BBQ last night. Lance ordered the food by going over to the "fridge" the BBQ guy had and picking out the skewers of meat and vegetables that he wanted. I thought most of it tasted good but..... I ate a chicken heart!! Lance didn't tell me what it was until after I asked him why it was crunchy.

Korean BBQ

Last night Lance surprised me! After the show, instead of wearing his swimming suit and smelling like bird poo and rotting fish water, he showed up at the door wearing clean clothes and smelling great! He took me to the Korean BBQ restaurant down the street from where we live. The restaurant was sweet. We got there right before it closed. When we ordered our food, the waiter kept trying to tell us something in Chinese, but we had no idea what he was saying. Immediately after we ordered, the waitresses brought in all different kinds of random dishes: salads, fish, sushi, kimchi, vegetables.... Then they brought us a platter of raw meat. Yep, RAW. I was pretty confused...but I guess it turns out that the chef had gone home early or something, so the restaurant just gave us all these random left over side dishes... So we ate what was on the table, and then took our platter of raw meat home and cooked it ourselves. It was pretty funny.

say what??

While Lance was performing tonight, I decided to go for a run. As I went running by the hotel, one of the security guards started yelling something at me. I have no idea if he was commending me for running, making fun of me, or telling me to get the heck out of there......I guess I'll never know.