January has been a pretty slow month, not too much to blog about. But there have been a couple of highlights....

The girls and I celebrated Chinese New Year at the home of one of their fellow students from Chinese class. Their new teacher prepared an amazing smorgasbord of authentic Chinese dishes for us to feast on, I got to sample some wonderful high-altitude oolong from China (the hosts are fellow tea fanatics) and we had a fun time getting to know everyone better. Their teacher, Yuehong, also taught us how to make perfect jiaozi (Chinese dumplings.) Well, hers were perfect; they looked like little bonnets with pleats, perfectly symmetrical. Mine looked more like distended rodent stomachs (yes, unfortunately I do know what those looks like ...our cats like to hunt and sometimes share their "leftovers" - YUCK!)

Also among this month's activities, Jacob was excited (NOT! - more like "forced by his overbearing mother") to perform at his school's lunchtime cabaret...kind of like a mini-concert. The music teacher likes to line up musicians every now and then to play for half-an-hour or so during lunchtime, so the students get exposed to "good" music and learn proper listening etiquette. Usually she gets local musicians from the community, but Jacob reluctantly agreed to do it this month and he did a great job, despite his nerves. It is apparently WAY harder to play for a cafeteria full of your peers than for an roomful of overly-enthusiastic family members who applaud wildly at whatever you churn out....go figure! Here's a link if you want to listen to some of his performance...don't worry I didn't tape the whole thing, just the last 5-6 minutes. (The last song he plays is "Bella's Lullaby" from the Twilight movie, if there are any fans out there. I love that song!)

Jacob's cabaret performance: http://stinsons.us/video.html?data=xml/jacob_1.xml&flvID=0