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!!