A little bit of China

Wow I can't believe it has been two months since I last posted! Man how time flies.
Earlier this year one of my students from China moved to California to attend college. He really wanted to come visit Mike and I and see how we lived in Idaho (because he had heard all about it in China when we talked), and see my hometown. We decided that coming in August for two weeks would give us plenty of time to see and do a lot of fun things! We were ALL (my family, my nieces and nephew, etc) excited for his arrival. Little did we know that Mike would have to work more than we thought and that my sister would have her baby a week into his trip; so the two days leading up to the baby's arrival and the few days after were CrAzY!!

His English name is Chris and this is just a glimpse at our adventures...

He arrived on a Wed. and he spent the next few days staying with Mike and hanging out with his roommates and experiencing "the college life".
The one thing Chris wanted to do while in Idaho was see Yellowstone and Old Faithful. I asked him to look up popular site-seeing spots he might want to see and he FELL in love with old Faithful and Yellowstone. We promised we would take him anywhere he wanted to go...So come Labor Day weekend we packed up our camping gear, food, and anything else and off we went!
The Beautiful Tetons


We got in late but Chris was enjoying every second of real camping with the real preparations to go along with it :) He was such a trooper. Chris cut our fire wood, Mike and him put up the tent, while I made tin foil dinners :)



The next day the agenda was anything we could find... firstly, of course, with Old Faithful! Then moving on to stinky geysers, walking, waterfalls, wildlife, adventure after adventure, lots of laughter, seeing a cowboy for the first time, and ending the night with no room in the Inn...
waiting for faithful Old Faithful to erupt

walking...
walking?
Geysers


still walking and enjoying our sight seeing...

Waterfall


WILDLIFE
mama and baby dear resting in the grass
Buffalo taking his sweet time

We worked our way back through the park to Montana and West Yellowstone, and there we found no room in the Inn...

We checked EVERY SINGLE hotel there was, and not a one had A room. So we traveled back to Rexburg to the Sand Dunes, 3am, and slept under the stars next to our fire, until the coyotes were getting mad, circling us and howling...So we jumped up, grabbed our sleeping bags, smothered the fire with sand and left! We drove to Mike's at 5am. I slept in the car til 7am then drove home. I couldn't drag myself out of the car to the house twenty steps away so I rolled over and slept in my car until 8am. Then I went to the house and knocked on the door and they let me in. I showered. Told my sister the funny story[ies] then crashed all afternoon.
The next day was Monday Labor Day, so we all jumped in the car again (cleaned up and replenished with sleep) and drove to Jackson Hole, WY to spend the day :)
Welcome to Jackson Hole, WY


When we were satisfied, we hurried back down to Blackfoot for Chris's very first rodeo!
YEE HAW!!


Chris had also never shot a gun before. Lucky for him Mike has two guns and Idaho is just the place to do some target shooting. He did amazing! :)
This is the sign to the entrance where we like to go shooting...
...LOL it makes me laugh every time

He was a natural

Time was getting closer for us to do/see a few last sites. The weather was still really nice. Mike had to work so I took Chris up to see the windmill farm...


It's so pretty up there! and the windmills just keeping going!