Rainy Cold Days Make Me

Happy. Rainy, cold, miserable days make me happy and motivated and energized.

I know, it's backwards. Maybe if it were weeks upon weeks of cloudy, gray, freezing cold days I might feel depressed, but right now I'm loving it.

The kids are out of school for the week, and I'm loving that, too. Today I slept in (well, until 6:30, but it felt amazing). We made sopapillas for breakfast and Madison and Logan took turns shaking the fried dough in powdered sugar. We spent the rest of the day playing outside, then inside, then outside. We spent over two hours putting a 300 piece puzzle together (Madison and Grant gave up after about 30 minutes). I canned 9 pints of chicken and Madison and I canned 14 quarts of potatoes. We made butternut squash soup for dinner. And we washed lots and lots of dishes. What a perfect way to spend the day!

Yesterday, Sunday, I taught Sharing Time in our primary at church, and we learned about taking care of the gifts we are given. I brought in a few gifts I found around the house--and one of them was a teapot that my Chinese "boyfriend" gave me. I have given or thrown away every other thing that was given to me by a boy other than Joe except for this teapot! Probably because there's not really a lot of sentimental value, so I feel that it's ok. And I like the teapot. The kids thought there was a genie living inside!

Well, there is a great story behind it.

As you know, I lived in Wuxi, China during the winter/spring of 2000 (before I met Joe). We lived about an hour's train ride from a city called Suzhou. We loved going to Suzhou because there was a lot of good shopping, it was beautiful and clean, and there was a Pizza Hut there!

One evening, as we were leaving Suzhou and returning to Wuxi, my friends and I were sitting on train talking. I pointed out that there was a taller, good-looking Chinese man sitting kitty-corner from us. We were laughing and talking about how one didn't see tall, handsome (we probably said "hot") guys in China that often. The cute guy and his friend were laughing and having a good time, too.

I was feeling pretty brave, apparently, so I went over to the good-looking guy and using made-up sign language said, "Will you (point to him) take a picture (pantomime a camera clicking) of us (point to our group)."

He said, "Sure."

Holy what? My cheeks probably got pretty red as I realized, "Wait, do you speak English?"

"Yeah. I study it at the university."

Crap! He understood all my brazen talk about how hot he was! That's why they were laughing!

Well, what was there to do but to introduce myself, give him the school's address, and get a picture taken to prove that I had a Chinese boyfriend named David (no clue what his real name is)?

(Sorry, I simply do not know how to turn the picture. It's not my best picture, and I think I have another one somewhere, but I don't know where. I still say he looks cute and....very young.)

So he started coming over to the school to visit me once in a while (the security guards were not impressed that I gave a stranger my address) and the day before I returned to the U.S. he brought me a teapot. 

I have a few letters from him, and we exchanged emails for about a year. The last email I sent to him I explained that I was getting married and he wrote back chastising me for getting married so young.

Now it's just a fun story to tell, partly because it's so unlike anything I have ever done before, and partly because I can say that I had a Chinese boyfriend.