This weekend was a busy and exciting weekend. It was Patty's birthday!! This was extra exciting because Patty cannot remember the last time she has had a big birthday celebration. I had been hoping all week to have wonderful weather on Friday for her birthday and the weather ended up being super warm. It got into the 70's with lots of sun, so we were able to do everything that I planned. We got up and headed out to town around 9ish, and arrived at our destination around 9:30. Patty had been hoping to go boating on Hong Shan Hu (HongShan Lake) for a long time, but when we arrived the boating company was not opened yet, so we had a chance to take a fun stroll around the lake. It is a very beautiful lake with lots of flowers, farmers in the background, men fishing, and lots of scenic bridges. Patty got lots of birthday pictures with the blooming trees and the bees--there were tons of bees pollinating the flowers, but they work so fast that we could not get a good picture of them. It was fun to get out alone and walk and talk. By the time we made it around the lake, the boating company was open and we got a chance to use our Chinese to ask if we could go boating hua chuan (literally floating a boat). He gave us all kinds of instructions in Chinese (very few of which we understood), took our money and pushed us off the bank of the lake. Luckily, the instructions we did understand were to control the direction the boat went. Push the knob up for forward and down for backwards. We were the only boat on the lake, so we could do whatever we wanted. We stopped and talked a lot with the cool lake breeze and took pictures while floating around. It was a good time.

Afterwards, we went into town to get Patty's birthday present. She has been wanting to decorate the house with flowers for a long time, since we cannot grow a garden, so we went into the flower market and looked at countless kinds of beautiful flowers. We ended up getting five bags full of flowers and pots and the accessories. The flowers and plants are beautiful. We are watching as they bloom. My ability to know the names is very limited--that would be something fun to learn, the names of trees, flowers, birds, etc in China or even in America. I love getting pictures of all of these things, especially in Spring, but I do not know their names. After this we found a bakery and beyond Patty's wishes I got her a cake. She thought it was far too extravagent, but it was definitely a fun experience. We picked out a cake design and they made the cake in front of us. It was quite amazing to see the skill and all of the tools to make it look easy. The family that ran the shop enjoyed it, and the designer decided to take artistic license and made a totally different cake. When they found out we were Americans, he went all out designing the cake. It took about a half hour to decorate it!! Then when he was done and put it in the box, was tying it, he again decided to put more on it and opened it back up and added more things. You will have to check out the cake pictures. Patty definitely felt special (it had Happy Birthday written in Hanzi--Chinese on it also). So we gathered all of our things up and went to get on a bus--this turned out to be quite an adventure. The bus was packed full and we had five bags of plant stuff and a big cake and my backpack. The people were kind in trying to find us seats, and it turned out well, everything survived the half hour ordeal.

A few hours later, our friends from Guiyang came. Along with the cake came a crown, like the ones from Burger King, so Patty had to wear her crown the rest of the night. She was a princess!! We went out to a fancier restaurant to eat and we invited a bunch of students over along with our friends for cake and a little party. The little party turned out to be quite a crowded affair in our small apartment. There were people sitting on stools and the couches and also in other rooms and along with a birthday comes presents. Almost everyone that came brought something, cherry tomatoes, oranges, bananas, a stuffed dolphin name Haichuan (dolphin in Chinese), more flowers, candles, etc. It was maybe a little overwhelming, but a good way to celebrate.

On Saturday, we got up early and Patty and I made breakfast for our guests. Patty made granola and muffins and we prepared food for our hiking trip later that day. We went on a hiking trip to this old bridge as Kris described it, because the Guiyang team wanted to see lots of youcai (the yellow canola flowers). We got off the bus in the middle of a super small village and started walking through the fields towards a bridge, but we later found out that it was only a waterway suspended above the river. Along the way, we got lots of pictures of the flowers and the group and even though it was only a waterway, we still had to walk across it. That was quite the adrenaline rush to be standing on a skinny piece of concrete many feet above the ground. I am sure my mom would not have approved. We did a lot of hiking around the area and I found a few caves that I explored a little and we climbed some rocks and had lunch. It was definitely a tiring trip in the hot sun. It was so fun to get together with our friends!!

This would seem like enough, but about the time we got back I had to go play basketball with some guys--I will be playing in the 3-on-3 tournament next week. We had to practice and plan strategy which lasted for 3 hours. By the end of the day, I was so tired I pretty much collapsed. Most of Sunday was recovering as the weather was a bit chilly. We are going over the Truth Project with our teammate Kris for Sundays. It has brought up a lot of good things to learn and apply in teaching. We hope your weekends were filled with great blessings. We will continue to put more pictures on Flickr from this weekend and we pray that we can keep in touch!!