Kyle and Friends

So in case you don't know, we've made these really cool friends here in our city, and they are always taking us out to eat and having us over for dinner. They consist of two families, which in China, is almost always a mom, dad, and one kid. One family is Steven, Summer, and Joy. The other family is Kyle, Lily, and Ron. We really enjoy spending our free time with them. Kyle and Lily are both doctors, and together, they make an OBGYN. They have a good amount of money so they are always taking us to fancy Chinese restaurants and getting us some really tasty traditional Chinese foods. They also invite us to have dinner at Summer and Steven's apartment sometimes and we eat special foods like chicken hot pot and fish heads and other fun Chinese dishes.  Kyle and Lily both speak English really well. Their son, Ron, is around 8 years old and speaks a little bit of English; he usually doesn't stick around too much anyway, he's a little ball of energy. Steven is a journalist for a newspaper, and Summer is a secretary. They both know a little bit of English, and luckily, their daughter, Joy, acts as a fantastic translator. Joy is 12 years old, but she's got the mind of an adult. She speaks English super well and translates between us and her parents (and sometimes just talks to us herself) about really advanced topics like American politics and global warming.

We've had lots of fun times with "Kyle and friends" (as we call them), here are a few highlights:

- We had fun one time when we taught them how to play Go Fish. Normally, Go Fish is a boring game, but it was fun to play it multi-lingual style.
- Joy plays some classical guitar and Tom had fun playing a little music with/for them.
- They introduce us to a lot of interesting foods, here are some of the most exciting: donkey bowel soup, spicy (makes your tongue tingle) fish in a gallon of oil, super spicy duck head, and hot pot (usually involving a lot of mutton).

Kyle is laughing because there are so many chilis to take off of the gallon of oil in which the fish is bathing.

This was a cool dish with some spicy tofu action. Not bad.

This is the fish that was soaked in oil, but very tasty, and gives you tingle tongue (literally).

SPICY DUCK HEAD! STAY AWAY! Your mouth will fall off.

Can you see it?

Kyle and Lily bought matching hats.

Panoramic at a hot pot. (Click to enlarge)

Another fancy hot pot. Took the picture after we all stood up to leave.

- We finally got a chance to introduce some American food to them. We made burritos (I know, Mexican) but the tortillas were really wimpy and we ended up eating them with chopsticks. What a multi-cultural experience. We also made jello for them, but they thought it was really weird (to be fair, it is really weird). However, they loved the homemade chocolate chip cookies and chocolate turtles.

From left to right: Alicia, Summer, Steven, Kyle, Joy

Joy was brave and talented enough to finish the whole burrito without using chopticks. The tortillas were falling apart like crazy for some reason.

Steven was chowin' down.

Lily liked them too.

Kyle even used his chopsticks to eat the cookies. They were so good that he was in a cookie coma.

This is dragonfruit. Summer always has these for dessert. It's such a perfect fruit for dessert.

- Our friends the Erbs came to visit us one weekend. Being a gynecologist, Kyle was excited to hear that we had some friends coming who were pregnant. He immediately offered to give Sharlie an ultrasound when they came. The whole ordeal was quite the experience, as you can imagine if you've ever been to a Chinese hospital. It was a lot of fun, the baby appeared to be healthy, and they got a "maybe a girl" prediction on the gender.

- Kyle and friends invited us this last week to a special theatre performance hosted by the hospital where they work. Lily sang a song in English so we went to watch her perform. Her performance was like number 20 of 30 so needless to say, it was a very long event. We appreciated them wanting to invite us. We've definitely learned that most Chinese performance events are anything but short, so take an energy shot before attending. That being said, it was really cool and a lot of work had been put into it to make it interesting. Our favorite performance was this acrobatic dude who balanced on one arm on a stack of like 10 chairs.

This is Lily singing. That guy is not Kyle, just some co-worker.

As you can tell, we are growing fond of Kyle and friends. They are also fond of us. They are always calling us their best friends. We are beginning to recognize that they are probably what we will miss the most when we leave Cangzhou. Now for the burning question.... When can we share the gospel with them?!!! All in good time.