My Chinese, locked out, Mexican food, Thanksgiving.

Yes, each of those happened to me. Today alone.

To start, I woke up early and taught seminary. I am grateful for this opportunity for many reasons. I have never been very good at the Old Testament. I'm at least passable with the other books. The Old Testament is like me doing calculus. And if you know me, I haven't had math since I was about 16 years old. Not my thing. So now I am learning the Old Testament much better and I love that. I also get to start my days, every other week, with an hour of spirituality, despite the dead pan attitude of my skype attendees. Seriously, teenagers in the morning is bad, but over the internet where you can't stare them down? Worse.

But the best thing is the preparing of the lessons in which I learn and feel the spirit and grow according to my own knowledge. I believe I need this specific boost at this time, partly because of the challenges of living in China, but also dealing with the challenges that life is giving us in general right now. Things are hard and the gospel is good.

After this, I go back to bed for about 2-3 hours. I am not a morning person. I need that morning nap. It gets me going for the rest of the day. And apparently I need it when I roll over and find it is three hours later. Today I exercised, thank you Pinterest, and then called my mom for a good chat. Then I finished getting ready, had some leftovers for lunch and headed out the door. Without my key. As the door slammed shut I remembered that I saw my key outside my purse. Lovely. Now this isn't Utah, where the doors are unlocked until you lock them. I have no door knob. Just a pull lever. The latch will always catch. Which means it always locks. Always.

Fun, huh? Since it was 1 o'clock and I had stuff to do for a while I didn't worry about it much. I called Daniel and  told him I was a dork and to make sure he comes home on time. then I went with a woman that goes to church with us and we walked like around our nearby shopping centers for nearly 3 hours. I was successful in what I was looking for and came home with about 30 kuai in my pocket. (That's like 5$). This can't do much.

While shopping we found these little treasures.

In any of you understand what these are supposed to mean, please let me know. We are making a little bit of a collection of bad translations or just bad English in general. It's awesome.

When I got back I went to see if the building managers could let me in. Nope. Not unless I wanted to partially destroy the door and get new locks. Not happening. So I called Yimi, my translator, and had her call my maid to find out how she got in when the door was jammed. Turns out Ayi was in the neighborhood and she ran her key over to me on the condition that I pay for her taxi fair. Let me clarify here, that this is not a greedy move. For someone who only makes 130$ from me, a taxi fair is a luxury that is not indulged. So I said gladly, and 15 minutes later she came running into the building, handed me her key, told me to pay her tomorrow, and ran back out. Thank heavens. I was in.

Then Daniel and I talked about dinner and what to do. He text me on his way home and said "Let's do Coyote." sounds good to me. So I turned on Pushing Daisies, which by the way should never have been cancelled, and started to organize things for my trip home. 45 minutes later, Daniel text me and said he was at Coyote and was I coming. Well, yes. I had no idea that I was supposed to meet him there.

There are two times at which it is a nightmare to catch a taxi. During shift change, from 4:20-5:00 and after the work day, 6:00-6:30. It was not 6:15 and I had to wait nearly 15 minutes for a taxi. But I got to the restaurant (using 9 of my 30 kuai) just fine. I had a delightful dinner of soup that burned my throat a little, a quesadilla with black beans, and some guacamole (new recent favorite acquired taste). To top it off we indulged in this rare treat:

Look carefully and home made pumpkin cheese cake with white chocolate chips made in China and eaten at a Mexican restaurant. Jealous? You should be. It was amazing. We bough 2 pieces. One we shared there, and the other we will share tomorrow night for out at home date. It was so good.

Then we had the fun of giving our taxi driver directions home because he didn't know where it was. This, by the way, is only the 2nd time this has happened.

All in all, it was a pleasant day, though, despite the challenges. It made me grateful for things like cell phones with translation apps and cheap taxi rides.

I am looking forward to being home on Tuesday and seeing as many of you as possible. I can't wait to taste things like my grandma's cranberry jello. Oh,. So. Good. To sleep on a soft bed, to smell fresh air, to indulge in quiet. I know, "quiet you say," well yes. Even though I am often home alone, I can hear cars, wind, boat horns, the songs blared over the loud speaker for the kindergartners to exercise and have recess with, and the grinding. The jack hammers have quit for the time being, thank heavens, and all it is now is pounding with like a sledge hammer.

Well, have I been entertaining this post? I hope so. I hope all of you Americans that read my blog are grateful for the traditional Thanksgiving that will be yours this year. Enjoy some pie for me, okay?