Happy Easter!

Greetings! 复活节快乐！ Happy Easter!

Easter in Chinese literally has the meaning of resurrection, I think specifically referring to Jesus, but I'm not exactly sure about that.

We had a very tiring, but very memorable Easter - Audriana's and Joseph's first in China. Jay took care of the kids Saturday night, well he tried to. I think it would have been better had he not tried to warm up Joseph's milk to feed him in the bottle though....that decision may have tired us more than had Jay merely got up to give Joseph to Vikki (which is what we usually do when Jay takes care of the kids). If not for that, we would have had a rare peaceful night's sleep as Audriana actually slept the whole night through (lucky for Jay). Being up with Joseph, though, did allow us to get some chocolates and gummies in Audriana's Easter basket. Audriana was most excited about the gummies in her basket! She squealed with excitement, 'gummies! gummies! gummies!' We wished we had had a chance to get it on camera. Audriana may have liked the gummies, but we were most impressed with the Cadbury eggs sent by Vikki's sister - yum yum!

Friday night we had our friend's three children with us overnight and most of Saturday. Saturday morning we made Easter grass together by coloring paper and then cutting it into small pieces. We had a good time, it was interesting to see what life might be like six years down the road, though mostly we just played and had fun together. We didn't have too much responsibility. If I'm not mistaken, the ages of the children are 4, 5, and 8.

Audriana woke up this morning at about 6:20, which gave us just enough time to get to Chinese church this morning. We went to the adult service today after going to children's church last week. Vikki felt much better about Chinese church the last two weeks. Prior to that, we had spent most of the service with attendants almost constantly trying to hush Audriana. Children's church is quiet, but they don't have the same expectation for silence as they do in the adult service. Today we figured out the trick of staying on the first floor and watching the service on TV and the projecter screen. They hold the service on the second floor and there's also a balcony for a third level. Previously we had tried both the 2nd and 3rd floors, and we will probably continue to do the first floor from now on. There's mostly elderly folks and today there was also a five year old (who was smaller in stature than Audriana) running around and being more of a distraction - so we didn't stick out quite as bad! :)

Jay ran to the supermarket during our 'break.' We get about two hours before having to leave for our other meeting in the afternoon - which is usually just enough time to eat and maybe get Audriana started on a nap. Today we woke her up about thirty minutes into a nap, and to my surprise, she handled it pretty well. I felt bad for our poor kids getting drug all over China today. Hopefully it won't scar them too bad. On a separate note, while at the supermarket we were struck again by the fact that this is the tightest our money has been over the course of the year - we had an 800 yuan electric bill come in, which is a fifth of our salary, and every other month they take out 1400 as a fee for us having a two-bedroom apartment with only one teacher employed by the school. That 'rent' was deducted from our account this month. We also went to Shanghai this month, which took a toll on our finances. We currently have about $3 in our Construction Bank account, and we took out a 400 yuan advance of next month's salary (which is something we've not done previously). Jay had a little trouble convincing the school to do that, but it wasn't as much trouble once they found out that the size of the advance was going to be as small as it was. We do have access to our American bank accounts in China and also have a little bit of cash still in the Bank of China from when we first came over, but we'd prefer not to dip into those accounts if we don't have to...well, I'm getting sidetracked. Back to Easter...

Jay barely got back from the supermarket with enough time to eat before we left right about on time (to my surprise). We had visitors invited to our Easter meeting today and we brought Victoria as well as one of her friends who was visiting from Shanghai. We had a service together, our friend Josh spoke about the meaning of Easter, and then we had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. Audriana was excited to hunt eggs and gave some of hers to a few of her friends - she's a great sharer. We probably got home around 7:30. It took us a little longer to come back as part of the time we were going at Audriana pace.

Though it was a tiring day, Audriana had a great Easter. She still hasn't seen the Mickey Mouse marshmallow puffs Jay bought for her while at the supermarket. They're waiting for her in her Easter basket!

p.s. It's pretty much official that we will go to Jinhua next year to work at Zhejiang Normal University. We spoke with the university officials at Zhejiang Normal and though we don't have an official contract offer, they spoke as if the offer was withstanding. The school is looking to add several teachers this year, increasing the number of foreign teachers while here at ZUCC, they seem to be contracting the number of teachers they'll need. While we were out, Victoria asked us whether we had made a decision and we informed her about going to Jinhua, which she pretty much knew already, we just hadn't made our decision official. Now we just wait for the contract offer and are going to try to decide by Friday whether Vikki will also be teaching next semester. Incidentally, going to Jinhua should dramatically help with our finances. The salary there will be at least as good as what we make here, perhaps more, and we won't have to pay any utilities or 'rent.' They also will completely re-imburse airfare for teachers, while ZUCC has a cap on the amount they will re-imburse. What's more, the cost of living should be dramatically lower. Many products and services will have the same or similar cost as in Hangzhou, but I'm expecting we'll be able to cut in half the amount of money we spend on transportation. Zhejiang Normal is also going to extend night classes for teachers to study Chinese, which of course, is our purpose for being in China at the moment.