After our safe arrival in Anshun, we rested for one night and headed out to visit one of our friend's hometowns in the mountains of rural China. It was an experience that really did a lot to help us understand some of where our students are from. It was a totally new experience for us.

We got up early 7am to take a bus from Anshun to Guiyang as we needed to catch a bus at 10am. The four of us, Kris, Robert, Patty, and I with our backbacks and some snacks. The bus backed up sounding not so reassuring and we went about 20 feet before the bus stopped and the driver disappeared. Then there was a second bus, we got on that, sat down and prepared to leave and minutes later were back on our bus and waiting for the driver. Now we were about 20 minutes behind schedule, but no worries as our driver worked hard to get back on schedule. We weaved through traffic and stalled vehicles to arrive at the bus station with just enough time to get tickets and get on our bus. The second bus experienced a number of problems--it overheated a couple of times and broke a hose so we had multiple stops to fix things. This allowed us opportunities to rest from the winding road through the mountains. About ten hours later, we arrived in Shijuan County, still 40 minutes from our destination. We needed to get a taxi and were told it would cost about 500 yuan ($70), but our friend got one for far cheaper and we wound through the mountain on rough roads to arrive dog tired beside the road with his father and a pair of flashlights. Now, we were going to walk up to the house--this faint light in the distance. It was a good thing we could see very little, because we later found out the paths we walked were about a foot wide, full of mud and dropped off to fields of rice ten feet below.

It was one rough trip to get there, but I have to say it was way worth it. I would not have traded the experiences we had for anything. This gave me a feeling of what I think life must have been like around 100 years ago in America. Here are some things we learned about living in rural China and the farmers of China:

The main transportation is your body. In the village, there were two families who owned cars and some others had motorbikes, but most people walked. We even heard of students who walked home for the Chinese New year from Guiyang (over 300 km or 180 miles). Most of the time when you are walking you are carrying something, such as a huge basket on your back with vegetables to sell at market, for these villagers one hour walk away. There is a new road through the mountains which makes life easier, but it also means far more accidents with motorbikes, buses, and lots of huge trucks. Vehicles travel at amazing speeds on such curvy roads!!

A normal house has one coal stove to provide heat. So that means a good deal of your time inside is spent on benches talking around a stove. Cooking is done in huge stoves heated by wood. Food is a big part of life in this culture, so most people are wonderful cooks.

I learned a great deal about hospitality during this time. Everyone in the village was free to visit at almost any time. People stopped by in the morning and they just made more food and piled closer together around the stove to eat. They would talk for hours and one night we went to visit a neighbor. They brought us all kinds of things to eat--it is normal to have peanuts and sunflower seeds for visitors or to eat in-between meals. There really is no need for phones, as to talk to someone you just yell out your window--even if they are a long ways away.

There is no need for an alarm clock, as the roosters will wake you up promptly at 5 or 6 am. I got up one of those mornings to go to the bathroom and walked around the hills and you could hear dogs and roosters echoing through the mountains from all of the villages--quite the morning experience.

Houses have a large stone tank you could call it that you go to the bathroom in. Over the top of it there are two planks to balance upon and I mean balance as one of them was warped at liked to move. This is the fertilizer for the fields. There are no showers so we walked about 20 minutes to a place where they have hot water to shower.

Most families had multiple fields terraced up and down the mountains and few of the families owned waterbuffalo, so most of the work was done by hand. They grew wheat, corn, rice, canola oil, and so other vegetables. Each family also had a forest of trees to get fuel from, but a majority of the trees were broken because of the storms this winter.

We learned a lot about the extent of the storms in China. On the way back we ran into one of my other students who lived nearby and everyone in her village lost all of their crops because of the ice and they had no electricity and water. So her Chinese New Year was as she said, "Awful, but good to see family once a year." We did lots of walking and climbing of the mountains and we talked a lot with Robert's family (well we actually just listened as he interpreted).

The farmers I believe are some of nicest, kindest people, but unfortunately many of them will leave their homes and that life to move to the cities because there they can get better jobs and a brighter future. Life is very traditional there--grandparents are taken care of by family, children have great respect for their elders, and everyone works together as a community. We have some pictures coming soon to our Snapfish account. If you would like to be added email either Patty or myself.

We are starting classes on Monday and it is exciting to see the students coming back to campus excited to see friends and to get started.

We are home!! We made it home to Anshun last night and are recouping from our travels before we leave tomorrow to visit a student's hometown 9 hours away (more traveling). We had a wonderful conference in Hong Kong--there were so many highlights and very few setbacks, but I will share some of them.

I was super excited to be able to get together with my friend Queenie from college in Hong Kong. She met us at the airport and rented a van so we could get all of our luggage to the conference center. We had many great adventures into Hong Kong with her. I tried Dim Sum for the first time (it was really good)!! We went up Victoria's Peak to see Hong Kong from the mountaintop during the day. It is such a beautiful city, but very big. She adviced us to get an Octopus Card to help with paying for buses, trains, and almost everything else and I would advice everyone who travels to HK to get one. It sure beats counting your coins at every stop to get perfect change for the odd bus and train prices ex. $4.20. The team from America that taught at the conference were amazing--the material was very useful to specific things happening in our lives and towards our work here in China.

We also went to Lamma Island hiking and to the Taipo Nature Center hiking also. Hong Kong is a beautiful area that is very jungle-like outside of the city center. We got lots of pictures of people and places. The most amazing time was getting to see and hear from some of the other teachers throughout China. Many of them have many years of experience that we could glean. It is a great way to prepare ourselves for the upcoming semester and our future work.

All of our bags and all of their contents made it to China safely, except for my shaving cream and a few other articles that I forgot in my backpack. Those things were taken out promptly in Minneapolis as being too big to carry-on. They searched Patty's bag to check out her shampoo choices.

One big change was seeing so many places devoted to worshiping God in Hong Kong. There were numerous churches and places with the words "Shangdi shi ai" God is love. When we arrived in Anshun, we heard more about the ice storms that affected our area. Our college representatives picked us up in Guiyang and they said it was almost a catastrophe, but that the government worked well to help the common people. There was a lot of ice and pipes were broken on our campus so they had to walk a ways to carry water to the apartments, but many people were able to go home for Chinese New Years as it got warmer just in time. Some of the food prices went up but we have not gone shopping yet to check them. We will try to post some pictures and more information when we return and school starts on March 3rd. Many blessings to you!!

We made it to Hong Kong last night. Yipee!! It was a long 15 hour plane ride added on a 2 hour delay also, so we were very tired when we arrived. A big blessing was that my friend from college, Queenie, met us at the airport and rented a van for us and some friends to come to our conference center in. Today, we are getting together with her to eat Dim Sum and also to see some of Hong Kong. We are excited to have arrived safely and to be able to meet some of the other teachers throughout China. WE feel that this time will be filled with many great blessings. We had a wonderful time in the States visiting family and friends, but it does indeed feel very nice to be back in China. It was different coming back to where our home was but not feeling like we were quite at home. We will definitely miss everyone from home though. It is already sinking in that it will be a year and a half before we return. WE will try to update our information a couple of times during the conference. WE send lots of love.

I cannot believe how quickly time passes. Our five weeks in the States are almost to an end. There are so many things that we planned on doing, many that we did not achieve, but also many great surprises and blessings along the way. We did not get to see everyone we planned on seeing, although we knew that was a certainty. We did get to see many friends and family members though and that was invaluable. We spent some time down on the farm, up in the Cities and up in North Dakota (for the Super Bowl with Patty's sister).

Going into our time at home, we had a few expectations, I was excited to see snow and Patty was frankly not excited to see cold and snow. We thought we would be leaving far warmer weather and calm weather in China, but it turned out that our weather here was better for the most part. In our area of China, in the Guizhou province, they experienced snow and ice for the majority of the days we were gone. We heard reports of large areas without electricity, water, and heat and astronomical food prices. There were even reports of 43 cm (about 1.5 feet) of ice on the roads, so much of the travel was stalled. We cannot believe what this was like and we do not really know what we will return to, although we will have a few weeks before we return to Anshun. Some of our highlights were seeing our niece, Madison, and nephew, Isaac, our dog, Tippy, and family and friends, but also getting to experience some of the foods and conveniences we have in America. Even though we did indeed enjoy all of these conveniences, it was hard to distance our thoughts from returning to China and our students there. We did really miss it and it feels very much like our home now (even though we did not know if that would ever happen). We did lots of shopping while we were back, and now we have to find room to get it all back to China. We bought a variety of books, a new camera (we are excited to have a DSLR and a couple of lenses to take some fun pictures), and some clothes. We did not get our lost bag back from airport-land, which was a terrible loss, but we did get to share many of our pictures with others.

We will be leaving for China on February 15th, right after Valentine's Day and arriving in Hong Kong for a conference. I am hoping to get together with a college friend living there also, Queenie. We will then travel back to Anshun on the 22nd and have a week or so to prepare for the next semester. We thank everyone for the blessings during our time back and apologies to all of those we did not get a chance to get together with. We will try to resume more frequent posts upon our return and add more pictures to our Snapfish account.