Loves not time's fool

To the love of my life: this last year has been the best year of my life! One blissful moment of “yes” has turned into a year, wow!!!! Lucky me!

Because today, the 21st is the day of worship, we enjoyed our festivities yesterday. I woke up to yummy egg thingies that Alex bought off the street and brought home before I got up. We had a fun day of goodbye Beijing shopping (we’re leaving next Saturday, I’ll explain later). Then- soooo awesome, we spent the evening at Ho Hai lake. Here is a brief description of Hohai as described by google search; “Scores of trendy restaurants, bars and boutiques have sprouted along the shores of this old Imperial Lake, north of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. But the coolest new district in the capital isn't just currently hip, it has been for decades”. Can it get any better than that!!! Celebrating your one-year anniversary on an anciently popular lake in China! The lights bouncing off the lake were incredible, the lotus all over the water, and of course the "nacho man" across the table turned it into a fantasy.

Aside from an amazing anniversary the most interesting events of the week were:

The craziest thunder-death storm I’ve ever seen, I swear not it was black as night at 11:30am. I even looked on CNN to see if the end of the world had come or something. Give me a break, I know nothing but sunny days; California will do that to you (I promise I'm not working for the state of CA promotional board, it really is that great).

A ritzy dinner with a ritzy friend. He took us to this really nice Japanese place called Hatsune. It was literally the fanciest dinner we’ve ever had. I’ve never tried sushi cuz it’s too expensive- it was awesome! And get this, he paid for the whole thing. Yah, really really generous.

It was a crazy stormy all week but it seemed like it cleared up a little on Thursday night. We took the subway to go running at Chaoyang park. But, when we got there it was pouring rain!!! So we ran home in the rain and it was awesome!!! At one point I screamed cuz I stepped in a puddle. There was a couple strolling along in front of us and the girl screamed when she heard me scream, it was really fun- I guess you had to be there.

Life is good. Seriously, we are pinching ourselves every day we wake up in this place. We are now moving on to new adventures though. We’d planned on being in Beijing another month but we received a super kind invitation from Alex’s parents to go with them and the boys to Vietnam. And, since we’re going to be in South East Asia with them anyway, why not just stay? All our jobs are ending anyway because the Chinese school year is over. So we could start working at English summer camps or we could take our winnings and fold. We’re pretty excited! The plan is one month of South East Asia on a shoe string and Yunan province in China; then a month in Yangshou renting a place with our friend Lily for 150 kuai a month. Hopefully we can get some part-time work there. Wish us luck! We may be off the map for the next two months but we’ll try not to stay too far off the radar.