This week has had amazing weather, meaning that we have spent a great deal of time outdoors. The crazy part is that it is November! We took many, many walks out into the countryside and visited a number of different places, many of the times with our students. We will talk about a couple of these different times in this week's blog post.

One of the most fun things I brought along to China has been my telescope. It has been fun to view the moon, Jupiter, and also this week to check out Comet Holmes. The school has put up huge spot-lights everywhere making it very difficult to do any star gazing, along with the usual cloudy skies, but this week has been great weather for this. I took the telescope out and many students wanted to see the stars as it was the first time they had seen a telescope. Comet Holmes was very different from other comets, it did not have the tell-tale tail, but it was an amazing sight to see.

During the week, we took a few memorable hikes, such as Friday where Patty and I climbed three hills in the countryside. Each hill was connected but we had to explore to find ways up and down those hills. It made for lots of fun and some great sites of the countryside and Anshun city. We have also been letting SanSan run loose in the countryside, which he loves, but now he is no longer scared of the water buffalo. Instead, he likes to chase them and herd them. He ended up chasing this farmer's water buffalo about a football field barking the whole way.

On Saturday, I got up early to go running and play basketball before the big basketball game on TV. They were broadcasting the Houston Rockets vs. Milwaukee Bucks, Yao Ming vs. Yi Jianlian. This was the Super Bowl of events for China. It was a good game, but the students who said they would come did not end up coming. Afterwards, I ended up playing basketball with some students for what turned out to be three hours. It was very tiring, but a great time to spend time with them and enjoy their favorite activity.

On Sunday, we went hiking with a group of eight students. We went to the Airport, which had no one there (they have one flight a week). The walk was quite interesting because multiple times the path disappeared and we walked on the rocks dividing the fields. On the return home, we walked around the area, so our walk ended up lasting 3 hours. It gave us a lot of time to spend with many of the students, even though many of them were not our students. We also had supper with them later at night. These are the kinds of times that are great for building good relationships. It was a great blessing, as the weather has been lately. We hope that each of your lives are being blessed in unique ways.