Our branch either things we are awesome or super weird

(writer's note: I didn't have Chad/ my editor read this since he's bogged down with law school applications so if there are some bad grammar issues or horrible comma splices just know that I'm tired and trying my best)

So as I have mentioned before the way the Mormon church operates here is a little different. Everyone is divided into a branch and foreigners aren't allowed to attend church with Chinese nationals. Since there are so few foreigners (we are the only 2 Mormons in our city) we call into a conference call with other Mormons living in remote areas and we form a branch.

If you live in a bigger city with more Mormons you will probably meet someone as a group, but that's not what we have going on.

So the branch relies HEAVILY on email. We get emails about everything, including the program for Sunday meetings. 

We were asked to speak a couple Sundays ago (our topic was "Keeping Christ in Christmas"... if you know Chad and me well you'll already know how we felt about that one) and when someone speaks they want a picture and a brief bio. 

To be honest, most the people in our ward are pretty old and have pretty impressive bios... we don't. So we were scrambling with what to include (not to mention we were getting harassing emails about getting the bio to them). Here's what we sent and the picture we used... so like I said, our branch either things we are awesome or super weird.

We met in California at a wedding. Michelle was friends with the bride and Chad was crashing it with some of his friends. Chad was in school at the local community college and Michelle was working full time.

We got married in the Los Angeles Temple and then almost immediately moved to New York City for Chad to study Economics at Columbia University. Michelle got her degree in Political Science at Utah State University and, until we moved to China, worked as a Customer Service Manager, first for Disney then for Nestle. 

We are here in China for a year teaching Oral English at a Vocational College in Weifang. Then we will move to wherever Chad has gotten into law school (TBA) for him to study international business law. 

Between the two of us we have 27, soon to be 28 siblings and sibling-in laws (wedding in July) and 22 soon to be 24 nieces and nephews scattered all across the United States. It's hard to keep track of everyone all the time!

We both enjoy traveling, reading, watching movies, rock climbing, candy, oxford commas, and miss our dog, Batman, something fierce. 

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Beijing: Day 3

Sunday was also a pretty quiet day, but we did manage to take a few pictures. So get excited for that further down. 

Sunday started with a group trip to church. It was easiest to get to church just by taking the subway, but it involved taking 3 different trains so a lot of our group was incredibly nervous. 

Once again I cannot refrain from singing the praises of the Beijing subway system. Not only is it nice and clean, it keeps the track far away from the passengers. Basically, if you want to get on the track at some stations it is pretty impossible and at the rest you really have to work for it. So basically, it did wonders at relaxing my irrational fear of being violently shoved onto the tracks and killed or incapacitated While You Were Sleeping Style. Another thing that is super nice is that the cars have a computerized voice letting you know in Chinese and English about each stop. Seriously, there was so much English I think it would be really hard to get lost... unless you didn't know the name of the station you were looking for.

So anyway, traveling to church was pretty funny because at each place a group of like 35 white people would gather around and travel in a pack to the next line.

We got to church just fine and we didn't lose anyone. But, because we are such a large group they wanted to make sure we got there with plenty of time to spare... So we ended up hanging out around the building for an hour. The picture below was us trying to send a picture proving our existence to our parents at home, when we found wifi at church, but we lost the signal before we could get the email sent.

After church we separated from the pack because we are subway pros and got home in record time. On the way home we decided to stop and get some food at a place near our hotel. After we had ordered and paid, I noticed an interesting sign hidden in the corner. It appears that Beijing also does a letter grading system for their restaurants. You know just like New York and Los Angeles. This place had a C. Needless to say the food did not sit well and I got sick. It solidified my belief that there are too many restaurants in the world to waste your time, money or health at anything other than an A. 

After that we went to the 2008 Olympic Plaza. Below you'll see a hotel there. We later found out it was built to look like a dragon, but at the time we just thought it had a unique design to it.

The Bird's Nest

So this statue was pretty cool and we realized she is a GIANT. Do you see how big she would be if she stood up. Also, she had bigger feet than Chad so we took a picture.

While at the Park, I got a sweet Batman themed slap bracelet watch that if you look closely you might see on me in other posts. It almost makes up for missing out on the Mao watch. I don't quite know where it is now, but we haven't exactly unpacked yet...

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