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.