Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration

We wanted to share some of the sites during our celebration with many of the scholarship students on Nanjing University of Science and Technology campus during the Mid-Autumn Festival weekend.  The Whetzell, MacPherson, and Carlson clan went to Xuanwu lake with the students and had an absolute blast.   We played with the frisbee, football; ice-breaker games, shared picnic lunches, and the club launched their 2011 organization.  The students are forming a club to serve the students and people in the community. 

I enclosed some pictures of our journey to the park and in the park.  We love spending time with these kids and getting to know their hearts.  What's even more exciting as they are taking the lead in forming this club and thinking outside the box so to speak. I know that's an overly used phrase, but to see the kids thinking about serving others are a great site. 

We hope you all had a great September!!!  We are looking forward to what October brings.

Hike to Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum

  One thing that is different this year from last year is the guy time on campus. Chad, Mac, and I are spending 2 - 3 hours, every other Saturday, to hang out with students.  Two weeks ago we went for a hike up to Sun Yat-sen mausoleum who is some what of a hero to the Chinese.  I've attached a quick bio from Wikipedia so you know who he is.  We also had a visitor in Brett Hildreth who was traveling around China on business, with IBM, and wanted to check out what we were doing in Nanjing.  Meeting him could be a whole other blog entry as it was extremely strange how close he and his wife paralleled Sharolyn and my life.   Anyway, enclosed are some pictures as well as the bio on Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

Sun Yat-sen (12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)^[1] was a Han Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" (國父), a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China^[2] and the Republic of China.^[3] Sun played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution. Sun was the first provisional president when the Republic of China was founded in 1912 and later co-founded the Kuomintang (KMT) where he served as its first leader.^[4] Sun was a uniting figure in post-Imperial China, and remains unique among 20th century Chinese politicians for being widely revered amongst the people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Language Learning Gone Wrong

     If you don't know, in China they use a lot of shame based techniques in order to get the students to learn.  With that said, we had a friend over for dinner who was also teaching us some Chinese.  Below are some pictures of what happens when either you don't pronounce the words correctly or say them fast enough.  I must do better next time.

Freshman Training

     Each year, the freshman around the country, have to participate in a 3 week military training indoctrination course. (Mini - mini boot-camp)  I believe this started after the '89 incident however we see thousands of freshman marching around campus for these three weeks.  These kids look so young.

 

Trey's Birthday Parties

      I guess one advantage of living in China and traveling back and forth to the States is you get to have multiple birthday parties.   It's hard to believe that Trey is 7 years old now however he got to celebrate his birthday 3 different times.  Once with friends and family in Colorado, once with our team on campus, and then another shared party with Caleb with all the Nanjing Team. 
     I'm extremely proud of the man Trey is turning into.  He has a soft heart and loves to play with kids and treats them well.   We hope you enjoy the pictures.

We promise, he did enjoy the cupcakes below.   LOL.