Memorial Day Break

China has a holiday similar to Memorial Day. It's called Qing Ming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day). Families usually get together and go visit their ancesters. We burn incense, sacrifice the best food we have, and boys have to line up in front of the tomb and kowtow. Girls don't have to do that. I don't know why but my grandma always tells me that girls' knees are worth more than gold. But I'm the only girl in the family. So I usually go with the cousins and kowtow as they do. As I grew older, my grandma just simply stopped me from going. I guess she needs me to be more girly :-)

Anyway for this Memorial Day, we went up to Provo Canyon and had a little pinic in South Fork Park. It was supposed to rain, but it didn't. We were happy about that. John hated the big crowd, but I enjoyed it. Back in China, if you go on a picnic somewhere outdoor, and if you sit on a blanket, your blanket usually touches other people's blankets. They only way to get some privacy is if you bring a tent. So we would see all the tents in the park where people are having picnics :-)

Dragon Boat Festival

Accoridng to Chinese Lunar Calendar, today is the Dragon Boat Festival (May 5). It is a fun holiday with lots of history and traditions.

It was started to remember the Great Chinese patriotic poet QuYuan, who lived during the Warring State Period. His country was really corrupted and people were suffering too much. Quyuan wrote lots of poems to give suggestions to the King. But the King rejected him and put him on exile. He continued to write to inspire people to rebel and change their stars. After years of exile, he was very much in despair. One day he jumped into the river and ended his miserable life.

People loved him and they wanted to rescue him. She they jumped into boats, trying to save him, but no success.

Nowadays there are some traditions that come from that story.

First, people race dragon boats. The drummers and the rowers are usually very loud, symbolizing that they want to scare away the fish and sharks that want to eat Quyuan's body.
Another traditon is eating Zongzi. People used to just throw them in water, hoping the fish will eat the Zongzi and spare Quyuan. Zongzi is acool looking thing with sticky rice wrapped up in bamboo leaves. The rice usually have different fillings in them. My favorite are red dates, red bean paste, egg yokes, ham, sausage, and coconut.

At my house, we usually cook a big dinner with lots of traditional food. But one thing we have to eat is Baozi, steamed Chinese buns with filling inside. My mom makes the best Baozi. My favorite is the pork and green bean filling.
I miss home. Can I go home yet?

Stream of Consciousness

So I have two blogs.

On my Chinese blog, I tend to write things that are provoking and such, in Chinese. But the English one has turned into a picture blog without any thoughts. People who read this blog may think my life is nothing but fun, which is not true. But somehow when I blog here, my happy side shines through and I tend to forget the worries in my life.

It's not like I'm short of things to worry about. I worry about whether John can pass the FSO test in October; I worry about when we could afford a baby; I worry about whether I can make enough money to keep us from debt; I worry about my parents worrying about me; I worry about my brother's safty on his mission; I worry about whether I'm doing a good job being a wife; I worry about getting fat and having no motivation to lose weight...

I know Heavenly Father promises us if we're good, we need not worry. But what is being good? Am I good enough to claim this promise? Should I be better? How can I be better?

I'm grateful John's not so much a worrier. He can usually brighten my day and make me laugh when I wanna cry.

I don't know why I only blog happy things on this blog. Maybe it's because everyone who reads this blog has such a happy life that I wanna be just like them. Maybe it's because I feel closer to my Chinese friends and don't mind crying in front of them. Maybe it's because most of my Chinese friends have so much pressure from life that I don't want them to think my life is better than theirs. Maybe my English is not good enough to produce a provoking piece... who knows?

I sometimes feel I have two personalities: the serious Chinese me, and the relaxed American me. Which one is the true me? I have no idea. I think it depends on the day and the mood :-) And right now I'm not too cheerful :-( But in a minute, I may forget about all the worries and cook up a storm :-)

So this has totally turned into a Stream of Consciousness piece. Sorry you have to read this :-(

ELC Opening Social

John's already half way into his summer semester, and the ELC has just started. Today we had an opening social in River Park. I ate too many hotdogs and had to skip my chicken fajita dinner :-( But I ate a whole cantelope in like 5 minutes... or less :-) Anyway, back to the park. I had fun taking pictures of the students playing games.


A chubby kid of my co-worker's

It was fun~~

Star- Trek and Crabs

John's a HUGE Star-trek fan. I think he's watched all seasons of the Star-trek show. So when the new Star-trek movie came out, his excitement was beyond words. We went to the I-Max theater in Jordan Commons for better effect. OMG I don't think I'll ever watch another movie in the regualr theater again after the I-Max experience. It was simply AMAZING!

I wasn't that much into Sci-fi. So as an incentive, John promised to take me to Joe's Crab Shack after the movie. So I went and the crabs are awesome!
John thinks I look like a prego in this pic :-)

The onion string is REALLY long! The coconut shrimp was tasty!

Like my bib?
I ate a whole bucket of seafood and I was still hungry when we left. I don't think I'll ever get full with seafood. Oh how I miss Qingdao :-)
May turns out to be a great movie month, mostly John's favorite movies, X-man Origin, Star-trek, Terminator Salvation, etc. Very exciting...

Egg tarts and pictures

My cousin Megan had her second discussion. She was taught about prophets and her questions was "how do you know a prophet is a prophet". The missionaries were in a hurry to go home before curfew so the question was not well addressed. So John and I went over yesterday to explain more about her question. John did a good job drawing pictures :-)

When John left for class, Megan and I made egg tarts, which is an Asian dessert you'll find in KFC and Mcdonald's in China.
Then we played with this Chinese photo software to work on some of my old pictures. We had fun :-) Here are a few examples.
These are pictures from our second date :-)

This is when I graduated with my first degree in 06.

This is when John pushed down trees in the canyon:-)

This is when I went to Hawaii.

This is when we saw the most gorgeous rainbow in the mountain.This is when we were married :-)

weekend

Today is kind of important because my cousin Megan took her very 1st missonary discussion!! I was so excited :-) The two Elders were great. I was impressed at how clearly they expressed things and how in tune they were with the Spirit! While I was sitting there, I couldn't help thinking about my own brother who's doing the same thing in Seattle. How proud I am to have a missionary brother! Megan's really accepting and she's having another discussion next Wed. I can't wait!!

After the missionaries were gone, Megan and I decided to make a great dinner to celebrate the event and also to break my fast. We looked at the fridge and decided the pig feet looked great. So I told John to have leftover pizza for dinner cuz I knew how much he would love to eat pig feet with us :-)

Saturday night we were invited to one of my best friends Jessie's house for dinner. She's marrying into a Pakistanian family and the mother-in-law was going to cook us some Pakistanian food. We had a great evening together. I learned two key words about Pakistanian cooking: spicy and yogurt. It's so spicy that they have to have yogurt on each plate to ease your tongue. They also cook a lot with yogurt. For example, the chicken below is cooked only with yogurt and salt and it tastes great, very tender.


The potaoto panncakes are great. They remind me of Chinese cooking because of the scallion in it.
chick peas and beefthe dessert is made of some kind of noodles. Strange texture, great flavor.

the dessert ingredient
Us, Jessie, and Sohil

Las Vegas!!

During Spring break, we went to Vegas, mostly to show my cousin Megan around and have a little fun. John's good friend Zach came with us so John doesn't have to be bored out of his mind when Megan and I go shopping :-)

Megan's fav store.
a Chinese store in the Forum.

The buffet at Wynn's is THE BEST!! It's well worth the money.
The dessert buffet is heavenly. We ate almost one of each kind.

John loves the shiny butts~~



We had fun at the F.A.O toy store.



This guy is so talented if you watch it to the end.

Here's the link to more pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/sherrycarr07/LasVagasSpringBreak09#