We are getting near to our start date of school--September 3rd. That is a very exciting thing and also a little scary. We are not totally sure what it will be like, but we are getting some small tastes of life in Anshun. That is what we will share. Today, we went to get our books for teaching--it is a little weird not having a book three days before class starts, but somewhat normal here. It was not an event, but more of a process. We were introduced to many people first and questioned about our classes and told to come back later and our class monitors (students from each class that are in charge of helping us and the other students) will help us. We returned to an excited room of monitors checking to see which classes we had and figuring everything out. Now, we are waiting as they decided it would be better if they brought the books to us as the book room is total chaos. It is a bit of a roll reversal having the students help the teacher and know more than us.

We have been trying to be more adventuresome and have gotten out trying to do more things on our own. Our language is still very low--we will start tutoring in Chinese once the school year starts. We have really enjoyed being able to go to the market and buy fresh vegetables. We are slowly getting better at understanding some of their Chinese. This has meant that we have tried making all kinds of new foods--all of them not from a recipe. Tonight, we are trying to have one of our favorite dishes, spaghetti, but with our try at homemade spaghetti sauce. We have eaten out at a couple of restaurants with students and our team leader, Kris. The food is wonderful. We have eaten at a hotpot restaurant where you add all kinds of food to a boiling pot and eat until everyone is totally stuffed. Instead of having beef, they eat waterbuffalo which is a little tougher meat, but still tasty. Patty has enjoyed seeing the waterbuffalo graze freely on campus and walking around town. Most people on campus are very active so I have taken many chances to go play basketball, run on the track and walk around by the lake with Patty. It is a very beautiful area with lots of hills and farmland everywhere there are no buildings. Many things are different and we are still adjusting, but there is still the One constant.

Sorry this has been so long since writing. We are now in Anshun, but we have been waiting to get our modem working on our computer. It has been very difficult not knowing much of the language. Luckily, we have a team member who is very fluent. We are slowly getting used to being in a new place with new ways of doing pretty much everything. We are learning such basic things like buying food at the market, taking the bus to certain places, how appliances and other things work, and what we will be teaching. It has been very overwhelming and frustrating at times, but it is a learning process. We are excited to be here and looking forward to starting school, though we are yet to receive at textbook. We have taken various trips into town and explored some of the beautiful area. We are looking forward to learning more of the language and getting in touch with our friends teaching somewhat nearby in the Yunnan province. We are looking forward to getting a newsletter out in the coming couple of days with some pictures of our apartment and the area. Hope all is well at home.

Many people have had reasons to blame President Bush for certain things, such as the war in Iraq, the economy or other problems. Patty and I are great supporters of our president, but you can add us to this list. We missed our flight to China, because President Bush was leaving the Minneapolis St. Paul airport at the same time as us. We were on the plane on-time and ready to take off, but we were left waiting two hours for Air Force One to leave and airport transportation to get back to normal. The flight went well, but we ended up in Los Angeles at about the same time our flight was boarding. Let's just say our long fast walk at almost midnight did not get us on the plane in time. So we went to our airline company and they set us up with a flight for tomorrow night at the same time after we got a delay of flight confirmation from Northwest. This is where it gets a little weird. We got the delay confirmation and the airlines gave us a reduced accomodations at a local hotel, so we went to email people about being late. When we got our room and started emailing, we found out that the airline company had actually booked us on a flight for two hours later and that we were set to fly in a half hour. We were more than that time away from the airport, so we decided to stay and try to sleep and figure things out in the morning.

Luckily, we did get things worked out in the morning, even though, we did not sleep much. We have been catching up on sleep and will be leaving LAX at 11:50 tonight and will arrive in China on Friday morning. Maybe we will go to the beach when Patty gets up. It has been a crazy situation, but it has allowed us the opportunity to meet some really great people and to share about our trip. We are looking forward to finally arriving in China. It has been a hard lesson in patience, dependence on others, and teamwork. We cannot even imagine what is ahead.

These past two weekends have provided a couple of trips to spend time with family on trips. Two weeks ago, we went to Fargo and the Brainerd area. We went up to see our niece's baptism up in Fargo. We were asked to be one of the godparents, which was a great blessing. Madison Sandra Alberty, Betsy and Chris's first child was really fun to see and spend time with. We spent the rest of the weekend and a few days of the next week at Patty's grandparent's cabin near Brainerd. It was fun to relax after getting the house sold. We spent some time on the lake swimming, canoeing, and paddleboating, but the weather was quite warm. Because of this weather, we spent a day up at the North Shore enjoying Duluth, Two Harbors, Split Rock Lighthouse, and Gooseberry Falls. It was wonderful to see all of the lighthouses and of course Patty was in her element.

Since that time, we have been living at my mother's house out on the farm. Tip likes being able to go run around and chase cats (we're working on that). He is a natural watchdog, so he has a watchtower up on our bed and warns everyone when anyone comes. It is very different not being in our own house though.

This last weekend, we went camping with my sisters, Racheal and Sara, and their husbands Matt and Bill. We went over by Lanesboro and had a great time!! We went biking, made food over the campfire, spent lots of time talking and went tubing. Tubing held lots of laughs for everyone and mom came to watch Isaac, which was very nice. It was great to get together just the six of us before we leave. We are now down to less than 3 weeks before we leave for China (ahh!!).