First of all China. I learned a lot in my first International Experience. The most important thing I learned was how blessed I am to live in America and to have everything that I own. From family, to the Gospel, and to freedom.
After China I had the chance to come to BYU and be a councelor for folkdance and clog camp. These are pictures of the groups I worked with. There were 22 girls in my clogging group and it was pretty overwhelming. The ironic thing of it is, almost half of them made up my group last year. I just couldn't get away from them.
I got a new niece this summer!!! Her name is Atley Jacille Jones, and she's the sweetest thing ever! It's been fun to live so close to family and to get to know their girls. This summer was made up of nights at Ty and Megi's, mostly watching "So You Think You Can Dance". Those were some of the most memorable nights this summer.
When Megi's mom and sister came to visit, Mom and I decided to serve lunch to the little girls to give thier mothers a chance to sit down and chat without their cute little faces interrupting. I painted their nails after lunch and this is a picture of them screaming while showing off their nails (sorry you can't actually see the work done...)
I've worked at the pool for the past 6 summer's now. I don't know what my summer would be like without it. Last year the dressing rooms and front area were remodeled and the walls were all white. Trish, my boss, wanted pictures to be painted on the walls of the characters from the books for swimming lessons. The top picture are two of the characters, and the bottom two monkies are my own creation. I don't know why, but as I painted the bottom one I thought of Cade and myself and all the fun summer's we had taking swimming lessons and playing around at the pool. It's secretly me and him when we were little :). 
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What would my summer be without an end-of-the-season quilt? Last summer I hand quilted one and I really wanted to do another. I really wanted to try and make a rag quilt and this is how it turned out!
Again, I'm sad to see the summer end, but I have it to look forward to again for next year! The plans so far for the upcoming summer season are Disneyland and Nauvoo!!! I'm really excited and am looking forward to those experiences.
There was so much of this summer I was unable to capture on film, including the train bridge, Shoshone Falls, Cauldrin Lynn, the Jones Family Outing, fiddling, and much much more. I'm excited to welcome in a new season, I love to see the world around me change. I'll sure miss the summer though! And here's to one more day!
All of the cities welcomed us graciously into their hotels. This is one of our hotels and this welcome sign was posted out in front.
Or first venue was in an amusement park. It was funny to see all the similarities between what is seen in the US, and what we saw there. What comes to your mind when you first see this picture?
The Great Wall of China was definetaly one of the highlights of the tour. If you look at this picture I'm sitting on the wall, and on the distant mountian in the background you can see the wall on that side as well.
This cute little man was at the bottom of the wall painting pictures of the wall during diffrent seasons. You can see he's working on winter in this picture.
This sign made me a little homesick, although it was nice to know where the potatoes were coming from!!!
We were assigned secret friends on tour and I pulled out Shan'tel's name, she playes the banjo in the band. I didn't have any money to spare to buy a gift, so I decided to fashion my own. The banjo above is made of a bottle cap, a clothes pin, clogging shoe nails, along with athletic and gaffing tape.
The Forbidden City
We performed a few numbers at the Beijing Dance Academy, and the students there performed for us as well. This is me with some of the boys.
A lot of our free time was spent exploring. One day we were walking by a park when we heard music and a framiliar voice. We ran to the park to find a little Chinese band playing Christmas tunes in the park and one of our very own singing a long. Needless to say, we joined in on the fun!
The last city we visited was Hong Kong. There they have "The Avenue of the Stars" where there are a number of handprints of famouse Chinese actors. Here I'm putting my hands where Jackie Chan had done once before.
There just wasn't enough time in Hong Kong to do everything. I gave up a trip to the beach to go see the Temple there, and it was most definetaly worth it!