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cassetta.info   Search Skip to content China Everyday Life Family Parties and Holidays Julianne Cassetta's Blog May 17th Posted on May 18, 2015 by Julianne May 17th, besides being my 17th birthday, was the seven-day mark of my coming back from almost three months in China. This trip was amazing in so many ways, a time of learning, serving, a time of growing closer to God, to the many old friends I met up with again, and new friends I met for the first time while I was there. In addition, it was the first time I’ve ever lived away from my family. (And consequently the first time I ever had to learn Beijing street names, call a driver, hail a taxi, order food, do my own grocery shopping, and so much more!) Goodbye dinner at the Muslim barbecue restaurant on one of my last nights there. Yes, that’s Daddy in the back, he came to pick me up! One of the most encouraging, definitely-God things that happened to me while I was there occurred right after getting off the plane in Beijing. Despite daily study in the US, I wasn’t at all sure I would remember how to speak Chinese, at least not well. However, I found myself able to say anything and everything I needed to say, including words I’m not sure I even reviewed! Add to that the fact that I hadn’t slept for about 20 hours, and all I can say is “God is good!”. Since coming back from China, the questions I get asked most are, “What’s next?” and “Will you be going back?”. In answer to the first question, this August I will be going to Grove City College , where I will be majoring in Special Education. Will I be going back to China? Yes, definitely. God has taught and shown me so many things during the time I was there, one of which is that after college, I am going back (permanently, I think) as a Special Ed teacher. I hope to go back again sometime between now and then, but I don’t know when. For now, although it was hard to leave, I’m just glad to be back home. Posted in China Tagged Beijing , birthdays , friends , Hohhot , photography Leave a comment Winter Memories Posted on January 13, 2015 by Julianne Since moving back to sunny South Texas, we haven’t had much in the way of cold weather. The winter temperatures here are mild, the wind-chill factor unimpressive. While temperatures like this are certainly far more comfortable than the frigid air of a Beijing winter, Gloria and I were reminiscing happily about the fun we used to have playing in the ice and snow. Remembering it was such fun that I decided to post it here, on my seldom-used blog. We lived next to a river in China. The river was pretty gross normally, but when it snowed it looked beautiful. We built this snowman right after moving to China, during our first week there. It was the first time any of us Texas-born kids had seen snow! (Except for Peter, who went on a trip to Maine with Mommy and Daddy when he was a toddler.) The picture actually doesn’t show all of the kids who built the snowman. This was only some of us. Snowman building is a team effort! (Especially if you want the snowman to be taller than you, because that bottom ball cannot be moved by only one person.) Snow-fort building is a team effort, too. Unfortunately, only one person can get in it at a time — unless you want to get really serious about dragging snow from all over the place to the building site. This was in 2012. What do you do when you’ve heard about how sledding is so much fun and want to try it, but lack a snow-covered slope and a sled? Why, you make use of an old metal dustpan and the ice-covered parking lot, of course! All snow must be played in, of course, but powder snow doesn’t pack well (unless you have some slush handy, as Elisabeth and I figured out…). What could you do with it then? My guess is that you wouldn’t have thought of what the boys did …neither did I… but their solution took the form of a miniature golf course. And finally, sometimes in the winter we would get to go chair skating on a frozen lake in Houhai. You could ice skate too, but usually only Gloria did that. Chairs were more fun anyway. There are lots more winter memories, but I’ll leave you with these. Which is your favorite? Posted in Everyday Life , Family , Friends Tagged China , fun , kids , photography , winter Leave a comment Family Pictures Posted on November 14, 2014 by Julianne Peter was home from college to visit over the weekend, so on Sunday while we were all dressed up I made him take some pictures of us so you can see how much we’ve Daniel has grown! Daniel is taller than me now! I confess the boys were less-than-enthusiastic about it, and only posed because Mommy wanted them to. I look so tall standing next to Mommy and Gloria! We got a picture of girls and one of the boys… …but when I tried to get a picture of me and Peter together, this was all I ended up with: Me trying to be angry at Peter for not smiling, but obviously having a hard time not laughing! And so ended our family pictures. Posted in Family Tagged kids , outdoors , photography Leave a comment Entering the World of Chicken-Keeping: Part 2 Posted on November 10, 2014 by Julianne In the post prior to this one, I promised a part 2 that would be posted “soon”. Clearly I have a heavily flawed definition of “soon”. In fact, my definition of “soon” is so flawed that I have waited for months to even begin writing this post. It’s a little shameful to admit. Not to mention, this post was supposed to track our chicken’s development from where I left off in the last post until the present. But as present became ever-farther from the date of my last post, and young chickens continued to grow, I hadn’t a single picture on my camera that accurately depicted how the chickens really look in the present. This lead to me having to take more pictures, which meant more photo editing and uploading, which means posting would take too long, which means I continued to procrastinate. Yup, just a little bit shameful to admit. Anyway, long-awaited as this post has been, I figure I should stop apologizing and start updating! So, where was I after last post? Ah yes, the chickens had just moved into their coop permanently. Well, here’s a picture of them when they first did that: And here’s a picture of them now! Clearly, they haven’t been wasting any time growing into their adult feathers, or growing up in general. Also, we’ve officially confirmed that all of them are hens! This is great news for us, because roosters are not ideal neighborhood pets… for obvious reasons. A hen can and will lay eggs without having a rooster around, so we were delighted to learn that all the six chickens we bought would grow up into egg-laying, non-crowing hens. They’re not quite there yet, though. In the mean time, it’s lots of fun to watch them grow. Wanna see some more pictures? This is Autumn, an Easter Egger chicken named by Gloria. This is Merry Poppins, a Barred Rock pullet that Mommy named: Nellie, our other Easter Egger, was named by John. Don’t you love her bright orange feathers? This is Mumthers, a Buff Orpington pullet. Daniel named her after a character in a book who could cook anything, and make it beyond delicious. He reasoned that with a namesake like that, his hen would lay the most delicious eggs of any of them! So far, she seems to be pretty food-savvy; she sticks around us even when the other chickens are off playing, hoping to get treats! Sunshine, also a Buff Orpington pullet, was named by Daddy and looks a great deal like Mumthers. Her feathers are a slightly lighter hue, pretty much the only indicator we can use to tell them apart. And finally, this is my hen, Bobbles. She, like Merry Poppins, is a Barred Rock pullet. She’s also a big eater and the fattest hen of the bunch! Having chickens has been a blast so far. And now, having fulfilled my blog-posting duties, I’m heading outside to go feed them! Edit: I wrote this post a long time ago and only just now bothered to post it, so the chickens are actually even bigger than you can s...