It's been a warm, happy week.

Today was an I'm-not-kidding-you really warm day. And it made me very happy. I hung out with my brother and his friends again which was super great. We flew kites, threw frisbees and talked and smiled.  I soaked in quite a bit of sun, thank the Lord. I got home at about 5:00 pm and went straight back out to get myself some noodles, chips and mango from the market for my dinner. I rode my bike and watched as the last bit of sun fell behind the city. Sometimes (due to the stinkin' pollution,) the sun goes down blazing orange and you can practically stare right at it. Weird... and just a little bit cool.

This whole week has actually been pretty warm. Even when it's been rainy it's still been warm.

Except Friday... My brother and sister just informed me that Friday was not warm? Okay. :)

Love you all! I've had a fantastic week and hopefully I'll get another post together about the other highlights of it soon.

I'm off to watch Young Victoria. It's a sweet movie :)

Check out this crazy good song. I really want the whole Cd. Oh and my brother William did an awesome rendition of this song. To bad you can't hear it. :(

I like this color a lot. I have nail polish similar to this color... except it's just a tad orange-y-er.
How has your week been? Warm? Happy? I hope so.
Love, a

I'm happy

You may ask what are some of the things that I am happy about. Maybe it's because I haven't told you in a while or maybe it is because it's good for me to think about all those things. I think there are quite a few.

1) This post. Maybe because I feel the same way and I'm not just saying that.

2) This song.

3) Wonderful friends. *Fēi cháng hǎo. 非常好.

4) An upcoming trip to Shanghai.

5) New, black backpacks and the fact that my friend has the same one. Oh yeah, we bargained for them together. :)

6) Fresh ginger + hot water.

7) Dates with Leah at McDonalds.

8) Burger King dates with Lydia.

9) The color gold.

10) The Chinese language!

And much more than that.

I'm going to elaborate on #4 a bit.

On Sunday night Lydia, Leah, Becca and I are jumping on a train and heading to Shanghai until Tuesday! We'll spend the whole time with my big sister Rachael and the five of us girls will do some more galavanting around humongous Shanghai. Can't wait.

What are you happy about?

With much love,

love, a

*The Chinese I used means "very good" or "very wonderful" and the characters mean the same thing. hehe.

at three

Today's sounding sweet. It's 1:40 pm and I'm heading to coffee with my dear friend Lydia at three. I love coffee. The smell is most irresistible, and probably one of my favorites ever. Starbucks will be cozy, what with rain dripping down the windows and a big, comfy chair to sit in and a friend to talk to. I think it'll be lovely. I'll pop on my jacket and gloves (and I might just throw on my new, red hat) grab an umbrella, and head out into the grey.

Oh Suzhou

Listened to this amazing song as well as this one while writing.

I find this picture rather hard for my eyes to look at. Hope YOU like it though. It's the view from our living room window.

This song has been my constant companion for the past few days; I'm kind of in love with it. What do you think about it?

Oh man... this post :)

And this is happening in our little home town New Castle!

I love you all.

Love, a

cozy season

It's crazy how listening to one Christmas song sends countless memories flooding into your mind.

The day after Thanksgiving we always hiked up into the Colorado mountains, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree. Snow always spilled down, transforming our little town.
Everything was magical.

But... guess what? I'm not in Colorado anymore and everything is still magical. And I'm so excited for this Christmas season! 

China loves their lights, so naturally they put up lots of Christmas lights and decorations. Sure they might be really big and tacky but I, at least, am thankful for them. 

Classical Christmas music has already been playing in shops and restaurants for about a month. Now we can actually enjoy and listen for it.

It will get bitterly cold too. The kind of humid cold that settles in your bones. Burrr.

I miss Colorado a lot right now but as you know I love where I live and I love that I will spend Christmas here! And this won't be the first or the last time. 

Last night I made myself a cup of tea, went up to my room with a candle and our Sara Groves Christmas Cd.

I turned off the lights. But then I kind of wanted to cry. Then Bethy showed me a picture of New Castle... So I decided to listen to the Cd as I went to sleep instead.

A couple of days ago we started listening to our Christmas music and decorating our home with the same, familiar decorations and in a few more days week and a half my brothers will be here... Yes, yes let me put some exclamation points in there---!!!

So here's to the month of December, which has yet to arrive, and to more Christmas posts on azalea blue. 

Shirt: Target (Brand new, brought over with my cousin!)
Tank Top: Target (brought over the Summer.)
Jeans: From a friend (they're used but I love them!)
Shoes: Hand-me-downs from my Mom and before that, my Aunt Judy.

All three photos taken by Becca.

Love, a

Give this song a listen,

and this one! We have too many favorites.

 Look at these shoes! (I don't know if I could wear these but I think they're really cute.)

Did you check this out???

New design! YAY! I guess the "cozy season" got to me.

p.s. To ALL my friends out there, I miss you guys. So much. <3

Humidity in a puddle.

    
        I wish I could take a picture of the humidity here... oh well here's something pretty close to it!
        
                 Today we hopped on the 120 and headed to Auchan, where we met up with Leah.
                         Us four girls found a little tiny swimming pool, and decided it would be
                                   fun to buy and set up on our fourth floor balcony tonight...
                                                                     I'm excited.
                            We also have lemonade and a canopy to keep out the mosquito's :)

                        

                 There will hopefully be some pictures of tonight someday, so keep your's eyes open.
                                                                I love you all! Love, A

Home again, home again!!!

Were home! We arrived home Thursday night and it's been wonderful! Okay so a couple things...
It. Is. So. Hot. I mean the humidity is so intense that you're just plain wet! And my hair goes kinda crazy. So far I like it but at the same time it's pretty... UGH. We saw Lydia and Leah (along with their whole family) yesterday which was SO nice!! I missed them a ton and am glad to be back along side them. We also got our sweet kitten Shasta back yesterday. I missed her too!

An American note: I MISS AMERICA! I miss my friends a ton (I have the best friends period,) and the food and people. As we were driving to the airport in California to hop on that plane back to China we sang "God bless America" and thinking of leaving my country brought some tears to my eyes.

Another Chinese note: I am continuing to love China and living here and again, am glad to be home.

                                                                            Love, A

Photo's of the month~

Hey everybody! I am not back to China yet but I thought I would share a bunch of pictures of the last month! This last month has of course been AMAZING!!! There's gonna be plenty of story's to tell everybody when I get home!

Colorado is SUPER DUPER gorgeous!!! The sky was breath-taking most everyday!! 

Magical day! 

Mikayla's (She's in the purple) birthday at "Zheng" restaurant!!!! I'm in the Red and Becca is in the Yellow :)
(Taken by my sister, Beth Jones)

  Bubbles!!!! 

The AMAZING swing ride, up at the Glenwood caverns that takes you out over the canyon!!! I've been on it a total of 12 times now, counting when I lived here :)
Look it up on google!!!!

Love, A

I've been busy :)

Hey there friends!!! Please don't abandon me! I am on my vacation in America (since I live in China now) and it's my first time home, so I've been hanging out with all my friends, and doing everything! It has been SO amazing. The weather, seeing everybody again after nine months of being away from them, and being back to amazing, ol' Colorado!! The weather has been beautiful blue sky's and our mountain's have been so green and bold. I've enjoyed being here so much, although I do miss being in China.

Okay thats it for now, since I only have my little camera and I haven't uploaded most of the pictures to our computer yet, I'll just put up a picture I did on Polaroid (or is it Poladroid?.)
I love you all!!!

                                                                            Love, A

In celebration of Violet Mei Landino!

                                             Bethy's sweet, little bunny, out for a photoshoot.

                                                  

                                                

Welcome to the world Violet Mei! 

Our good friends, the Landino's just had a baby girl on May 20th. This year is the "Year of the Rabbit" 

So these pictures, and this post are in Celebration of baby Violet :)

I can't wait to see you Violet!!!!! (And your family!!!) And i'm so happy for my amazing friends the Landino's!!!! I love you all! 

                                                                         Love, A

*My New Castle city* (It's really a town)

I LOVE NEW CASTLE! I can't wait to go back and see every aspect of it again, including all my friends who live in it and around it. We will be leaving China on June 19th, flying to California, spending two weeks there visiting all our old friends and family and having a jolly time! Then we will head to Colorado for Four weeks!!! We arrive on July 3rd. The next day we will see most everybody at our annual Fourth of July celebration!!! So exciting!!! So if you can't tell, I'm really excited.

Colorado is so beautiful. The Sky is so naturally blue. The air is so fresh and beautiful. The grass is very green although the climate is dry. You can swim in the water there, making the Summer's more bearable!
I'm not bashing China, because I love China :)

The feelings you get in New Castle around the Holidays are so special. We had such lovely traditions there, as we will and do have here, but different (Obviously?). I had and always will have GREAT friends there. I miss seeing them all the time and saying "Hey do you want to come over and spend the night?" Or "Let's go to Glenwood together." Ahhh. Glenwood was so nice too. There's more of a buzz there since it's a city, and the little shops and places to eat are lovely. I am so looking forward to doing everything. I know I can't do everything but not living there but still having it my home I want to enjoy it. It's confusing. :)
Anyway, I'll be there soon. I love you all and really WILL see you soon!!! Oh and here's the Chinese for that... Cong lui yue shi jiu hao dao ba yue wu hao wo men hui mei gua! Translation: "From June 19th to August 5th, we will go back to America!"

This picture was supposed to be of our Van driving away but I guess it was another one! So sad, but beautiful!

                                                             Colorado here I come!!!!!


                                                                        Love, A

Friends do random thing's... Good posting materiel :)

Yesterday Lydia and Leah came over. We played lot's of games. At one point of our time Lydia and I sat on my stair case and drank coffee while telling each other of our family tradition's. Drinking coffee is so nice! Lately I have liked it just black :)
We told of past Christmas's, Easter's, fun summer activity's, and of family road trip's etc.
When we talked about everything we did in the car on the way to where ever we were going it made me think back and really imagine it again. I love road trip's so much and with all my family there, nobody can get out and were stuck together for hours! We always kept a trip journal (Super funny) and now we can also look back at those and laugh. My last road trip was just last Summer on our way back from California after China so i'm not really being deprived of them yet :)
The next morning when us girls woke up we played more games and my Mom brought out Pineapple and Chocolate! It was a good combination... Tangy, rich, sweet and pineapple-y chocolate-y!
I don't have pictures of the last few days but I will try to charge the battery and take some pictures soon!
By the way...! Our kitten... Becca and I have decided to share one. (other one were looking for another home now). She is so cute and were enjoying her!!!! Her name is Shasta~
I got the name from the Horse and his boy, Narnia book and it was kinda supposed to be for my own boy kitten but she fit's it and and I love the name! She is black, brown, cream, cinnamon, and she has blue eyes :)
I guess I kind of have a full name for her which is like 5 names but her official real full name is this:
Shasta Clover Jones (her original name was Clover so yeah) She's cute!
I love you all and maybe next post will be my pictures of our blue sky one day! T.T.F.N

One more thing... My Mom took Becca and I to the orphanage here. I will do a post on that too.

Gearing up to say goodbye

This was a glorious photo shoot! We ran through the grass with bare feet and in the river. The sun was so bright like it always is, come 4:00 pm. The Summer air was so nice and down next to the river there was sand and, everywhere, big rocks. The sky was blue and clear! Mikayla, us three girls best friend did it all with us (of course!) It was about a month before we would be moving to China and it sounded fun to take 200 plus pictures of us mainly just to have fun but also to make a photo book out of and always have pictures of us together that night. My camera has never been that good but we were going to do the photo shoot with it so... All the pictures that night came out great!!! And very clear and pretty.
The weather was soooooo beautiful just like Colorado~

You can't even see most of the blue sky! 

Oh yeah! 

I like all the glasses :) 

The river was so pretty 

One, two, three ON A BIG ROCK 

Right over those rocks is the field we played many games of frisbee on every sunday!!!  So much fun!!!!

Mikayla got in a more comfy position! 

Even though I live in China and it is my home now (and you know I love Suzhou!), Colorado/USA (of course USA!!!!!!!!)will always be there and it will always be my "home". and I love it that way!
Love you Mikayla!