Lily makes us smile and laugh, crazy eyes, and Life Education

Hi Everyone,

Summer just seems to keep rolling on by; I hope each of you are enjoying it. I had a couple things I wanted to share with you guys, so let’s get this party started.

I had a wonderful little moment with our foster daughter, Lily, this past week. A new movie has come out called “Rio” and in the movie, there is a boy who doesn’t have a mom, dad or bed. Well when we were watching the movie and they said that, Lily came up to me and said something like “He has no Mom, Dad, or Bed” (I don’t remember exactly how she said it). But what was touching to me, was that she was saying it in the way of feeling sad for this boy in the movie. It caught me off guard, because I would assume that seeing that part of the movie would make her sad about her own situation of being abandoned (twice), but she sees Heather and I as her parents and for that reason she could feel sad for the boy who had no parents.

Lily also had a moment this past week where she made us all laugh pretty hard. Heather’s brother Dan was speaking to her in Chinese (he’s only been studying Chinese for 3-4 months now) and after he spoke to her, I, in Chinese, asked Lily if Dan’s Chinese is good or bad. And Lily with a stone cold serious face, dismissively waved her hand and in Chinglish said, “No Hao”, the word “hao” is Chinese for good. So she was saying, no good or not good. I guess I won’t ask Lily what she thinks of my Chinese anytime soon…

One thing that Aubrey has been doing lately to make us laugh is doing her “crazy eyes”, which is just her crossing her eyes. But she does it randomly and each time it draws laughter. I think this has created some jealously in her sisters as each sister has also tried to replicate “crazy eyes”. When you ask Lily to do “crazy eyes” she just looks at you and blinks a bunch and now even Sydney will try and steal the glory by crossing her eyes.

It’s been 3 months now since I started teaching the Life Education course at a local community center. And it’s been going really well and we only have 4 more weeks until we’re done. The good news is that they’ve asked me to teach the same course during the summer break! I’m excited that I still have students showing up to my class and am humbled to have them invite me back. I will keep you posted on how the class ends and the next one begins.

Lastly, we have some friends coming to Xian and I (Matt) have the wonderful opportunity of taking them out to the orphanage we’ve been to previously. It should be a good time, we’ll be going for 3 days.

Much love everyone,
the petersons