It has been a wet, cloudy and rainy last week which has made it not so much fun. When it gets cloudy, it gets cold so we have turned on our heaters, but it still gets only to about 62'F. The students do not have heaters in their dorms so I do not know how they stand it. The classrooms are also a little chilly, especially since we did not bring much in the way of winter clothes. This week is the big week for our volleyball competitions--we have been practicing for a long time and now we are competing against other teachers at schools in the area. They had an official opening ceremony yesterday and today we had our first match. The school provides us with our own jerseys and really short shorts--this is not fun in the cold weather but once we start it is ok. We won our first match today and we have matches everyday through Sunday. it is really fun to finally compete with some of the same people we have been practicing with.

Today was a fun day as we have had a few students stop by who want to learn more English--they are computer science majors at the college. i also had the chance to eat in the cafeteria at the school which is quite the experience. You grab the typical metal tray and pay for some rice and they give you a huge scoop of rice and then you go to a long line of huge tubs of various dishes and choose the one you want and pay for it. The thing is all of these dishes have almost as much oil as meat and vegetables. It tasted ok and was rather inexpensive (it translated to about $1 per person, although that is more expensive than some restaurants). The students thought I was brave!! This weekend we will have some other American teachers coming to visit from our team that is also teaching in nearby Guiyang. It will be fun to see them, but it will be a busy weekend as we have the volleyball tournament also.

We are learning more and more Chinese and some of our students are writing to students in the US, so that is an exciting experience for them. We continue to miss all of you at home as it gets closer to the holidays and we hope that all of your lives are blessed immensely. Hope to hear from you soon about how things are going in your lives!!