How are you? Have you had a wonderful week or Thanksgiving vacation? Are you starting a good new week? I do hope you have and you are.

On my side, there are some good news and bad news. The good news was:

-- After living in my new and old house for 12 days, I did have a feeling that the first owner of the house is certainly a very smart person and he or she had used so much wisdom on design and built the house with an artistic style. Now in my mind, my little house is just like a big bird. Its front entrance is just like the head of the bird, the middle part and its attic part is just its belly and body and the rooms on the two sides are just like its wings. As far as the other parts should be added by the later owners...

So, now, I am working on reforming one of the wings to be my living area and the other wing to be my art work area.

--Because of the hard effort of my former classmate Mr. Zhu Bin, now the “ belly / body” part of my “bird ” has become white color and the old stairs which was the single "claw" of my bird has recovered its original wood color – so many layers of the paints ( red, green, blue) have been cut down and the original figures of the wood has been re-appeared there.

I would also fix a new sunshine room for enhance its safety and for enlarging the art work area to be 4 rooms. I have been feeling sorry that I had missed my favorite house with 5 areas in the basement, 1 area on the attic and 3 formal rooms in the main floor and would be able to support my art work for 10 years, right now, the little house can also support my art work inside for a while and it has some room outside to be developed.

-- I had gotten so much friendship, warm help and care for from the local American friends before Thanksgiving:

My new friend and student Mrs. Ellen, my work partner Mrs. Glad Eyerman, my former work partner Mrs. Wanda Nava, Professor Quhua Qiao, Mr. Joe Fang and his wife respectively invited me to have a Thanksgiving Dinner with them together.

Mrs. Wanda invited her friend Mr. Frank to come to my house and they would like to help me to do the winterizing and re-fix some equipment if I need.

Mr.John Walker who is my property agent came to see me and deliver some important files to me and taught me how to do many things to protect the house in the future time...

Mrs. Fran Giglio who is my new but one of the best, knowledgeable and most responsible English instructors at OTC wrote to me:

Dear Shirley,
This is Fran, your English teacher. I am just concerned that you haven't been attending the English class. You seemed like a great student and one who was interested in the subject matter, so I am wondering if everything is okay with you. I hope to hear from you.
Fran

As a common foreign student, a traveler and dreamer in the USA, when I got so many invitations, help and the letter, I did feel so warm in my heart in the cold weather. It is full of the appreciations in my heart, so that I am thinking, what I can do to return them is to work harder for helping more people in the world.

-- Mrs. Ellen, his husband and my classmate Mr. Zhu Bin have carried my painting board that had been stored in the house of Mr. Zhu Bin since March 4, 2014 to my own house. With so much delight, instead of going to attend any thanksgiving dinner, I painted 8 chrysanthemum paintings and 2 tree peony paintings in the Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving Day.

Really I had / have a so strong wish to paint as many as possible in my new house. It was not for I need these paintings but for a ungovernable longing to release something that had been hid at the bottom of my heart for too long time...:-)

--I have caught my training schedule into the 5th week from the 3rd week in the thanksgiving vacation even though the schedule of my tutors has been in the 6th week. I have learned so much from the training and I have made the syllabus ( 8 times), teaching schedule, a lecture of PPT, some teaching videos, assignments, quiz, forum... for opening I myself created course Poetry, Painting, Music - Comprehensive and Artistic Chinese (Together With Me, Learn Chinese Culture and Language by Enjoying and Experiencing Painting, Music and Poetry) via the platform of OTC. What my training tutors Ms. Sherry Phelan and Ms. Jacque Harris, the chair of Humanities Department and the Manager or Art Gallery Mrs. Kat Allie and the leaders of the college have done for me would benefit me and my little cross-cultural and comprehensive art project forever...

Something bad but inspirited me were :

-- I bought a washer and a dryer for my laundry in the new house, but I did not realize the dryer should be supported by Gas in the house so that I had to refund my beautiful dryer which is matched my washer. So, every day, when I look at the empty place that is for the dryer, I cannot help asking myself, why did I not pay attention to the pipe of gas there? Why did I not observe things more carefully? What lesson have I learned from this mistake?

-- Some mice ate my food in the kitchen in the fourth night I moved into the house, instead of catching them with a mice trap or any rat poison for I had not had time to buy them, just I hid all food into the refrigerator or cabinets as soon as I finished my cooked jobs and cleaned the desk and the gas stove with disinfectant water. Just kept doing this for a few day, now, the mice have gone from my house.

So, these days, I have been thinking, anything bad or anyone gets bad, it needs some conditions. Similarly, if a company or an individual can often clean its inside while cutting down the condition that would benefits the bad things produce or develop outside, then, the company or the individual would be able to keep their strength and be in an invincible position. Do you think so?

How about you? Do you have anything special to share?
Sincerely,

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Nov 30, 2015 (American Local Time)