玉湖 (Yùhú）

We celebrated James' 29th birthday this weekend by exploring a nearby village under Snow Mountain. It was absolutely idyllic. We played with puppies, picked wild blackberries, admired the ancient-style stone homes, and drank in the beautiful afternoon.

James kept looking for hobbits.  Don't these pictures make you people want to come visit us!?

Moo.

BFF

This is what friendship looks like in China.

UnPlugged

Our part of town was without power for 56 hours straight this week!  We've gotten used to frequent power outages and our water being shut off, but this was a longer inconvenience than usual.

James & I had to beg ice from local fast food places to keep our fridge and freezer cool (save the cheese!!!), and even still we had some nicely curdled milk for coffee the last couple mornings.  But that wasn't such a big deal, because the coffee maker didn't work.  Though the first two candle-lit evenings were kinda' romantic and fun, I was not looking forward to a third!

The electricity was turned on just about an hour ago, and James & I are happily charging all our devices and frantically trying to catch up on emails.  Hello everyone.  It's nice to be re-connected to the technological world.

projects

We recently came across a section of Lijiang that was being demolished. This section was on the edge of Old Town which is usually designed in ancient wooden architecture. These buildings they were demolishing weren't ancient, maybe 20-30 years old, but they used old style window shutters and wood work to make it look old. When we saw them taking down all the wood workings, we asked what they were doing with them. The said they were selling them! So we bought a few to decorate our house with.

For the last 2 months, they've been sitting on our patio as Laura waited for the "opportune" moment to refurbish them. Below are pictures of the work in process.

Window shutter before sanding.

Window shutter after sanding.

Only one step left, painting. C'mon Laura, you can do it!