Day Eight

Did I tell you about our incredible interpreters? Well, these young volunteer college students, eager to practice their English with us, are our guardian angels and continue to amaze us.  Susie is my interpreter. James is Howard's interpreter. There is Shirley, Tina and quite a few others. Judy is head of the interpreters, also a terrific gal. All of them extremely helpful and lots of fun. They look after our us, carry our art materials and see to our every need.  Susie was by my side the day that I got so violently sick and helped me describe my illness to Dr. Yung.  She has been an angel by my side ever since!  Everyone is charmed by these wonderful young people (here again, I wish I could attach photos so you could see them, too).

By the way, James wrote out the name of the district that we are in now.... Wengyuan. And he wrote the name of the Temple that we visited yesterday, it is Donghua Temple.

Today we were guests at the local art academy. It is huge!  The top floor was set aside for us today to paint models! What a great surprise! In the morning we had two gorgeous young ladies dressed in the traditional red dresses of China. Neither of them had ever modeled before and they were excellent! Then in the afternoon we had two more models, one gal and one guy, dressed in normal clothes of today. Wow, they were great too! I did get photos of all of us painting them that I will share with you soon. Every day that we have painted, we have been joined by local artists, some students and some very famous. Today was no exception. What a memory to be painting with them! Just painting with the American and Canadian artists on this trip is amazing. These artists are incredible! I can't wait to start showing you some more of their work they are doing each day!

After lunch we were invited to sample the highest quality tea at a beautiful tea shop, one of the finest in the area.....Tatea. The owner is also one of the finest calligraphers in China.

Apparently, our visit to China is consistently showing up in the news on the TV and radio every day. We caught a glimpse of one broadcast a couple nights ago, Nancy was on TV last night as she painted at the temple, and more about our trip is on tonight at the 8 pm and 10 pm on the news channel 22. We really are representing our countries (United States and Canada) while we are here. 

It is such an honor.