Nathaniel and Sheree back in Australia

Another Update,

Where to start, a lot has happened: some good and some bad.

Firstly our little kitten Mao Mao died last Saturday. He had been sick for a while, but he wasn’t in any pain as far as we could tell. We gave him a good home and it was much better than the life that he would have had living in the adoption home. I miss him and occasionally I see something that reminds me of him, a particular place he would sit, or something he would play with. He was our little boy.

So that was the bad news, now for the good news…we have a cat. Our Ayi (maid) saw how sad we were and got us a new cat. She has white fur (just like my old cat back home, Mindy) but it’s short. She has yellow/greenish eyes and her name is Mi Mi. Ayi got her from a breeder friend that she has. But I haven’t even got to the good bit yet. She cooks for us on Thursday so she brought the cat over on Thursday. She put him of the couch, went about her cooking and cleaning, then when she went to give him some food, she couldn’t find him. When I got home she was frantic speaking really quickly in Chinese (which I don’t understand) and looking really worried. It turns out that the cat had gone missing. She didn’t know where the cat was – I helped her look everywhere, but I couldn’t find the cat anywhere either.

So to cut a long story short, the following day (24hrs later) when I got home from school – we found out that the cat was stuck in part of the wall. We had to literally pull the fake fireplace (it’s a one piece and just plastered to the wall after building) away from the wall to rescue the cat. She had been stuck in a space about 20cm x 30cm x 1m high for about 24 hours. It was tall, but not even wide enough for her to lay down. She came out very scared and timid, and also grey from the dust. She’s settled in okay now though. It’s nice to have a cat in the house again.

Okay in other news…We’ve made some new friends, 3 Canadian girls who live in YiZhuang also. They teach at the local kindergarten. They’re cool girls, and our ageish, which we love because we have really been lacking contact with people our age. They have been coming to church with us and last week we started up our own cell group in YiZhuang. We have it on Wednesday night. First we go out for dinner together, then we join together (either their place or ours) for Bible study, Worship and Prayer. It’s awesome getting to fellowship together and grow in God. So far we have about 5 to 10 attendees.

Church is good. We have regularly been attending BICF every Sunday morning. It’s cool being apart of a Multicultural congregation, however it’s not like Citipointe. I miss COC, it was my home for sooooooo long. I had, and still have, many friends their. But I especially miss Citikids. To all my Citikids people reading this…I love you and I hope everything is going GREAT!!! We have been asked to join the children’s church program over here, but Nat and I have decided to have a break for a while-besides the cell group is enough for now.

The weather is getting heaps colder now, the wind is icy but the sky is blue. It’s deceiving when you look out the window after a shower – you think wow it’s gonna be a beautiful day, but then you see the trees shaking violently and you know otherwise. Today Nat and I bought hooded Billabong jackets, we paid $27 AUD in total for both. I also got a pair of Louis Viton Sunglasses for $4.50 AUD.

It’s Autumn over here something that I’m not used to living in Brisbane (The Summer State). The leaves have been changing colour; from green to yellow, now red and brown. But with the windy weather over the weekend, I think all of the leaves will be on the ground tomorrow. We have been wearing our jackets (double lined) with gloves and beanies (especially at night). I have become a fan of my scarf collection even more and occasionally been adding to it.

So what else to tell you??? Oh I saw the strangest thing on the way to school the other morning. If I was the woman who did this, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with an excuse to tell my husband. Somehow a lady had managed to drive her car up onto the centre guard rail. She must have been going really fast because she hadn’t really done much damage to the front end, just somehow got it airborne and ended up in a 45 degree angle form the road. I managed to get an AWESOME photo from my camera phone…It’s one of those times when you think ‘Only in China’.

And lastly (mainly for the guys) there was A1 car racing in Beijing over the weekend – but not just in Beijing in YiZhuang about 3 blocks from our apartment. It was amazing when we found out. A1 is similar to F1 but they race in countries, not in car makes and models. We didn’t hear them much though as we weren’t home much over the weekend.

Well that’s all from me for now. Praying for you all regularly, and I hope that everything is fine in the land down under.

Lots and lots of Love from Sheree, Nat and Mi Mi xxx