Bringing Chinese culture home and balloon rockets

We have been playing host to Qing (He is the teacher/chaparone for high school kids here for an English camp) for the past week and a half. He will be with us until Monday morning. Today, we went to walk a portion of the Nolan Trail which we all enjoyed. Qing took some pictures. We discovered that people have been feeding the turtles at one of the bridges. If you stand and look at the turtles in the water for a few minutes they start coming closer to the bridge after a while, we even saw some fish responding to the turtle movement. Unfortunately we didn't have anything to feed them.

On the way home, we were driving through a neighborhood with some yard sale signs posted. I still feel an urge to stop every time I see one, but have not for some time (I always end up buying stuff we don't need that we have to store--or give away to a thrift store--seems silly after awhile). Today, I realized that this thing called a yard sale is uniquely American and asked Qing if he'd like to see it. He did and took out his camera to take pictures. This made the women holding the yard sale a little nervous, so I explained the situation. It was rather humerous. Qing shared after we got home that it was a little frightening to walk into someone's yard to look at their stuff.

Dwight's brother Dean (and wife and 2 grandkids they have custody of) is arriving this evening to visit us and his son and us. We'll be going to the Crab Shack tomorrow for lunch or dinner. It will be nice seeing some Kinters we rarely see!

On school--besides Sam's exposure to a non-American culture through our hosting, we found these "Screaming Rocket Balloons" at the dollar store (6 in a package). They are weighted at the top and bottom, and when you inflate them and then release them they go straight up--above the roof of our house and then fall down. As the air escapes it makes the sound. It was the cheapest and most fun thing we've done all week. We still have 4 balloons left (they usually pop after 3+ inflations). How's that for hands-on science?

We observed that even when it is windless on the ground, there can be air currents higher up. We discovered that the balloons fly truest the first time they are inflated--somehow the rubber gets more flexible and affects its flight pattern.

We also bought a helicopter, but it was missing a piece. I plan on going back to find a package that isn't missing pieces--I think that one might be able to be flowin indoors.