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.