Happy Birthday, Rong!

Rong is a new friend of ours, from China. Neil and I met her at a Talk Time "Asian Cultural Night" event a couple of months ago, and have been getting to know her since. She's a visiting scholar here for one year. She teaches English both to children and at the university level in China, and she offered to teach our kids Chinese. So she has been coming over on Thursdays for lessons, and lunch. We are doing a unit study this summer on the Christian missionary Hudson Taylor (who spent the majority of his life in China), so this is a nice add-on for our study -- let alone a fun endeavor for the kids who are taking part, and a nice way to spend more time with Rong.

It was her birthday this week so today, after her lesson with the kids, we gave her a few little gifts, birthday cards (some handmade by the kids), and had a cake complete with candles and a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday To You". We hope she was blessed! We have invited her to join us for a day in Seattle (in celebration of my 40th birthday, which is soon-coming) and hope she can make it. If she can, we'll fit in a trip to Uwajimaya -- a large Asian market there, near the Chinatown district. Then we might soon after that enjoy the authentic Chinese dinner she offered to make for us!