Wedding Days...

I wouldn't normally post about something as mundane as how my hair was styled a certain day, but for this particular purpose I feel like it deserves a mention.

As you know from my previous post, one of my closest friends got married over the weekend, Saturday, August 28. We went to Hair Engineers West for our hair and makeup and everyone looked beautiful.

Let me mention that my hair is decently long, with almost too much to do anything with. It touches my bra strap and although it's not incredibly thick, it's heavy, which made it difficult to work with. But the girls at the salon did a wonderful job! I looked exactly like Taylor Swift! Just joking, but my hair was very similar to the picture of her I brought in and it was absolutely beautiful! I loved it. And I loved my makeup. It stayed on all day and didn't smudge or smear off from the August heat.

I felt bad because my hair took forever to fix. Eventually, they had to switch girls because the first one had a bride coming in. The second girl had a wonderful personality and didn't mind adding the finishing touches.

I was actually happier with this hairstyle than I have ever been with a paid-for updo. Not that I didn't like the others, I just really felt amazing with this style. Props to the girls at Hair Engineers West. Man, I love that place. I used to go there all the time, but had to stop to save money. Now, I'm definitely thinking about a nice haircut with girl #2. I'm going to call today to be reminded of her name. It'll be worth it I'm sure.

Front

Maybe not the best picture...I wish I had one of the other side. But what do you do?

And Back

A Night to Remember...

...was my best friend's wedding, Aug. 28, 2010. It doesn't seem like 1 year ago when Abby called me (while still at dinner!) to tell me her boyfriend had proposed.

The first few months went by with very little planning, but the past several months has been crazy, with her planning flowers, food, venues, entertainment, dresses and everything else a bride worries about on that special day -- Not to mention that at the same time she was planning all of this she was studying for board exams she has to take to become a doctor.

I was busy as well. I was finishing up school, working a new job and had more responsibilities than ever. But despite that, I think I managed to plan (with the help of the other maids) a wonderful shower and a bachelorette party we're sure not to forget. That last part was more to the credit of Kristen, Abby's chiropractic study buddy and close friend. She was a reader at the wedding, but more than happy to chip in and help with the bachelorette party.

Everyone looked beautiful, especially Abby. The ladies at Hair Engineers West did a great job. We had a rehearsal dinner Thursday evening with dinner at Joe Boccardi's in Eureka. It was delicious as always. Abby and I got our nails done on Friday afternoon. They looked really good and it was nice to have a pedicure on a Friday after working all day.

David is so lucky to have Abby (I think he knows :D). She is lucky to have him too, of course. Looking at their faces it was easy to see that these two were meant to be together.

All the stress and hard work of planning the wedding paid off 100 times the moment the two were united at the alter for their vows.

Mr. and Mrs. David Painter left this morning for a honeymoon in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, which David planned by himself and told Abby about in the surprise limousine he had waiting for her at the church after their ceremony.

I can't wait to see the professional pictures, but here are a few I had or someone else took on my camera.

Congratulations Abby and David! I wish you nothing but the best!

My best dancing photo

Bride and groom acting silly.

My sweeties.


Me and the beautiful bride!

What Would You Do?

Since I've heard about this story, I've been asking people what they would do if they were in this situation. It's hard to say. This girl did what seems to be the right thing, because no one got hurt. But it could have easily went a totally different direction.
http://www.emissourian.com/news/washington_news/article_b2e960ae-8511...
Please try to use your imagination when actually reading about what happened. It was the absolute best I, or my editors could explain it, and Channel 4 didn't do any better. It's just difficult to imagine.
What would you do?
On a side note: Usually with these kinds of stories, I hear from the person (or people) I've interviewed, and I haven't yet -- makes me a little nervous :s

School...

...is not getting any easier. But I suppose if it were easy, everyone would do it-or at least that's what people tell me.
Here's a quick rundown of the classes I have going:

• Newspaper Production Workshop: This class produces the weekly newspaper, The Journal. Some people write 2-3 articles a week, but because I have 2 8-week classes I've decided to only take on one/week until they are over. I want to be able to devote myself entirely to something and I don't feel like I can do that if I'm stressing over something else. I think this is a wise choice, because while I may not have as much for my portfolio, my articles will be good quality, hopefully.
• Copy Editing- Woah. This class is tough. It's not so much that the work is hard, but there's so much. There's an unbelievable amount, to where even one of the editors of the paper (who is in my class) stresses about it. We have weekly quizzes, which is good, but not fun. I have a lot more respect for copy-editors now.
• Layout/Design- This class uses InDesign to create newspaper/ magazine layouts. It's tough, but only because I'm still learning the program. I decided to purchase the program for my laptop so I can work on it a lot more, and not just at school. I really like doing it, and I like the finished product, but it's very time consuming. We also have quite a few quizzes in addition to the layouts.
• Media Law- This is one of my 8 week classes. It's not so bad. A lot of what we're learning (libel, trademark, privacy, etc.) has been drilled into us since day 1. Of course, we dig a little deeper into the issues and discuss how they affect speech. I really like this class and the teacher is awesome.
• Investigative Journalism- The teacher of this class is also awesome, very tough- and that's what I like about him. We are working on a project, which I won't tell you about until it's finished. Ten of us have 8 weeks to complete an assigned investigation. The investigation isn't really that cool, but I'm learning a TON! Most recently, I learned a very important lesson that I should have already known. I'm not going to tell you about it though, because it's embarrassing.
• Introduction to Dreamweaver- This class was the very basics of Dreamweaver, which is used to build websites. It was a 1 credit hour class that I took last weekend. It wasn't too bad, but a little slow. I wish we could have done more. I definitely think it could be an 8 week course, with as much as there is to know.

I'm still working on the weekends. During the week I have class from 1:30-9:30 with just a short break in the evening, enough time to eat dinner. Luckily, I only have class on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Friday and Sunday I work. Wednesday is my day off, but I usually spend it interviewing for my assigned newspaper article.

In 3 more weeks I will have 2 fewer classes, and have completed 7 credits in 8 weeks! Like my sister says, "It's like eating an elephant, you have to do it one bite at a time." I like that.

China Trip 19- Time to move on

I've been blogging about my China trip, trying to get out all of the amazing awesome things we did while we were there. But there's not a whole lot more, so I'll try to sum it up quickly. The rest of school was pretty much the same.

The kids ended up really liking me and I felt bad when I told them goodbye and they kept telling me they would see me tomorrow. Some of them brought me really thoughtful gifts and since their parents weren't there, they just had to make do. One girl gave me fer favorite doll, another a pink (kids) necklace and bracelet set, a fan, little notes, and an ear cleaner. Like I said... they gave me "found" items. Most likely something they wouldn't miss, but very, very sweet.

I brought cookies for my last day and tried to teach them "heads up 7 up" which they didn't even get a little bit, even after we went down to 3.

The night before we left we had dinner with Junior and the 2 girls we met at the coffee shop earlier in our trip. But one of the girl's grandmother was sick so they ended up having to leave. She looked very sad, which was quite a contrast to the perky girls who insisted we go karaoke. Understandably.

We went back to Brittany's room and watched a movie and talked for awhile.
I really liked those guys.

We had an amazingly long bus ride to Shanghai (6 hours!) where a lady threw up on the bus and they laid her in the street and moved on. And i had to use the most disgusting "bathroom" I've ever seen in my life. ew. There weren't even doors. Just girls squatting, some facing each other, some facing opposite. I decided I couldn't do it and went back to the bus. But upon finding out that we still had 3 more hours and it was the only stop we were making, I had to use it. I went back in and used it alone as about 40 Chinese people stared at me like I was... well, I don't even know. But I could tell they thought I was ridiculous.

We went to the Broadway Mansions again, and had trouble with our reservations. They said they didn't get them, but we had a printed out reservation. But they didn't have our room available so they decided to upgrade us. I knew this would be a problem and that they would want the extra money, but that's not how it works. They did, but ended up letting us have it for the price our room was supposed to be.

On our last day in Shanghai it was Barb's birthday. We decided to go all over Shanghai and some places downtown. She wanted to go to the aquarium first, Shanghai Ocean Aquarium.

The aquarium was really awesome. I took pictures like crazy, because G really likes fish and I knew he would appreciate it. I used almost all of my battery taking video. There were 4 stories of fish with a Jetson's style conveyor belt to keep traffic moving along.

We were in the gift shop at the end and I was trying to pay. I had my wallet on the counter and I was getting money, when I felt something. I just reached back and brushed it off though. Probably just a kid rubbing up against me...

I didn't want to turn away from my money to see what was up. But I should have. Someone stole my camera right out of my purse. Security took my name and number (more for my sake than theirs) and said they were sorry. That's it. They didn't want to call the police and Barb thought we would be there all day trying to expalin what happened. We walked around a few hours looking for "suspicious"people and I still think I might have saw them.

Two young Chinese guys were looking at a cell phone. They had a fanny pack (full of stolen things?) and when they saw me looking at them they hurriedly put it back in their pack and walked away really fast. We tried to follow them, but China is big and it's easy to lose a Chinese person when they all have black hair...

We looked for red cameras (there are surprisingly few) incase they had already sold it, and mused that they wouldn't be able to even read anything on it.
I was very sad that I lost my camera. It was new. I had just gotten it for Valentines day this year. And I was sad that I lost all of my pictures. Luckilly, I had just uploaded all of my other pictures the night before, so I just lost the aquarim pictures; there were a lot, but at least I didn't lose them all.

I had to wait 5 hours to call G and cry about it. The hotel was very nice and let me use the internet for free to call via Skype. G was really understanding and said I was lucky I didn't lose my passport, which is true.

I was too sad to do anything else and hung out in my hotel room the rest of the night. I feel bad that I ruined Barb's birthday, but she was okay with watching HBO in English in our room. After G made me feel a lot better and after I talked to him I was able to take Barb out to dinner.

When I got back, within 2 weeks, someone broke into G's car and stole his radio. I'm not bitter at the Chinese, these things happen everywhere.

The flight home I couldn't do much except sleep. I was so worn out and exhausted. And ready to be home. I was so happy to see G. He brought me a COLD soda and Sprees (my favorite) to the airport, which was wierd because I was just saying I wanted some Sprees. I don't know why, but I was amazed that Junior had never had candy... wow.

I was super happy to see Vin and scooped him out of his bed and slept by him. I couldn't sleep much, because of jet lag. It was only 4pm in China!

So. There's the condensed version of the rest of my trip and now I can move on to something else. I hope you guys enjoyed taking a trip to China through my eyes! I will add pictures later. I have a weekend class to go to.

China Trip 18-Italian Dinner!

Today when I arrived at school they told us we were going to go on a field trip. Just like that... no permission slips, or extra supervisors. We just walked to... guess where....

The Zhou Enlai Memorial Museum. They told us that we were going to go in the afternoon, but it might rain, so we were going to go in the morning. If you remember, I had already been there twice, but it was fun to go with the kids. They got to run around by themselves, mostly. And this time there were TONS of pictures. They wanted to take pictures to use for the school website (that even though they told me they would email me the address to, they never did). We were being filmed and everything... luckily... I looked really cute that day :)

We also took class pictures, but unfortunately the person who I asked to take a picture with my camera couldn't figure it out, so I didn't get them. And Tommy said he would send them to me, but didn't... like he would do anything he said he would.

We called Guseppi and made arrangements for dinner.

Guseppi's power went out, so we had to make dinner plans later than we thought, 7:30. He came to the hotel up the road to pick us up...

But finally, we found him. He took us to his business and dropped us off and told us someone would be there to pick us up., he had to run really quick to get two more friends. Ha! This part was a little creepy, and we did think about leaving. But before we could, the lady who was with Guseppi the day before came calling up the drive. It turned out he lived behind his business in a HUGE, beautiful house (with several guard dogs tied to trees).

All the kids were running around all cute, stealing my camera and taking pictures and dragging me around to show me something or another. I fell in love with one little girl and wanted to take her home.

Oh yeah. We found out that all of these cuties were orphans who Guseppi took in for the summer. The girl from the car was his nanny. Guseppi was married (maybe 2 times, or maybe to two different women, I'm not sure). But his wife was killed in a boating accident 6 months ago (or maybe 12).

He got back with 2 Chinese women and we began dinner. It was so, so good. We had some really good white wine called "Franchello." We had an Italian dish that was to die for. We had cheese! Two different kinds of cheese! It was hilarious. They don't eat cheese in China, so it was the Chinese ladies first cheese experience. I was sitting next to one of them, and she almost gagged when she tried the cheese! One kind was really strong, but it was still funny.

It was a really enjoyable night. We talked, and laughed...

The kids ran around and lit cigarettes, made us expressos, kissed Guseppi, served us wine. It was amazing.

Guseppi talked about how important the dinner was that there were so many different cultures together, which I also thought was cool.

Guseppi had adopted one of the children. He was fluent in 4 languages. I almost died when he lit a cigarette and started smoking though.

Anyways, the night went by really fast, and before we knew it, it was midnight.

I said we had to go home, and he agreed to take us.

But before we left, he gave each of the ladies a designer purse from Italy. I got a Prada. Brittany got a Coach. I'm not sure what the other ladies got. But it was an awesome night.

Guseppi said he had a friend in Italy that he got the purses from for cost...but still.

Muy Famoso.

Ugh. No one is looking.

The boys in one of my classes
The girls of the same class
Group shot of those of us who were awake at midnight.

The cute adopted oneHe took my cameraAll the ones with little fingers the kids took, or Barb, she's good at that too.This little girl to my left is the one I wanted to keep. She's 4.

China Trip 17- An Odd Meeting

Sunday, July 19

My birthday was pretty much a normal day, since I had to teach. My kids were very sweet and some of them even gave me gifts. I got a fan, a hangy thing, a necklace and bracelet, and some other small, sweet things from my kids.

During break, Barb and I were walking around (like always) and this car stopped and there was an Italian man inside, and a Chinese woman (who we thought was his wife), and 7 Chinese kids! He asked if we were American teachers. We told him we were, and he said he would like to have us over for dinner. Thinking back, I’m sure this was just one of those things that you offer, but never really think will happen. The guy gave us his business card. He told us he was a business owner in China and that he had moved here about 4 years ago. His business card said something about “Cold Forming Machines” and later we found out that part of what he made was (small) Fararri parts.

We rushed back to the hotel to tell Brittany what had just happened, which I could tell she wasn’t too thrilled about. She really tried, but I think we woke her up. L But, she did agree to go to dinner at his house with us.

At this point, we were so hungry, and an Italian meal almost seemed worth losing our kidney (as our families were worried about). G didn’t want us to go. My mom didn’t want us to go. But I felt like I could be a good judge of a person’s character. For one, his children were so cute and happy looking, jumping around and chattering in the back. For two, he just looked nice and legitimate.

We decided we would give him a call.

School was pretty much going the same as it had been. I was bringing in more pictures and magazines to look at, and I feel like the kids were getting used to me in a way where they knew when they were pushing too much. I’m starting to really like some of the kids and feeling sad that I have to leave them. I was sad about that, but ready to come home all the same.

Oh yeah! On our walk we also found someone to play pool with. They were playing in the street and we just walked up and joined. They seemed amused that we wanted to play, and were happy to let us. Barb swore she was good, but didn't make one ball in. She didn't let me even have the stick once, so I didn't get to try...

Afterwards, I was making fun of her because she said she was good. She insisted that she was good, but she didn't want them to lose face if she beat them. Ahahaha!