Team Work!

I received an email from Katelyn's teacher this past week that I want to share with you. It brought a smile to my face. Katelyn has made some wonderful friends like she always does and has been fortunate to be in such caring school environments.

"We had an interesting one today. The lift broke and Katelyn was in an activity on the 5th floor. As I went up to get her I found six of her friends helping her down the stairs and carrying her chair for her. Love it that they all helped each other, worked together and took initiative to solve the problem themselves. Was a moment !"

Yum, Yum - Chicken Soup!

Last weekend, Jason received a text from a co-worker who has a farm near Suzhou. Her family is going away for the Chinese New Year Holiday and she had tons of food to give away! Everything always tates delicious from her place. We are always well stocked with eggs and vegetables.

We had a surprise this time. She asked Jason if we wanted some chickens - dead or alive? Jason and I got a kick out of that because we could just imagine the scenario if she arrived with "live" chickens!

Fortunately for us and the chickens, they arrived dead. I'm sure they had a much quicker death than if we were to do it:)

Let me add a head shot.
Needless to say, I had no idea what to do with them. So I called Jin Di (ayi) to come to the rescue:) I'm sure she and her family are getting some good laughs from the Marchiondo's! She told me that I didn't have the right knife and all my knives were too good to use for cutting up the chickens. So she took them home to her husband and she brought back the breasts and thighs in Ziploc bags:) We definitely were not going to have pickled feet! I can definitely say that Jin Di has made our lives in China so much easier - we will definitely miss her when the time comes for us to move on.
Homemade Chicken Soup was the first recipe.

It tasted pretty good for that rainy day but I was missing a spice. I'm not exactly sure which one that should be. I had fresh celery, carrots and onion in there but I think I should have added some parsley maybe? I need to do some research. It sure was a fun experience.

New Year Walk thru town

Happy New Year - 2012!

It's funny, we have lived here for over a year and have never walked thru this little town that isn't much more than a mile away from where we live. If you look real close, in the haze in the center you can see the buildings that are being built right beside us. It was a holiday and very busy but it was fun to finally walk the area. The only thing we bought were some good strawberries!