This weekend was a busy and exciting weekend. It was Patty's birthday!! This was extra exciting because Patty cannot remember the last time she has had a big birthday celebration. I had been hoping all week to have wonderful weather on Friday for her birthday and the weather ended up being super warm. It got into the 70's with lots of sun, so we were able to do everything that I planned. We got up and headed out to town around 9ish, and arrived at our destination around 9:30. Patty had been hoping to go boating on Hong Shan Hu (HongShan Lake) for a long time, but when we arrived the boating company was not opened yet, so we had a chance to take a fun stroll around the lake. It is a very beautiful lake with lots of flowers, farmers in the background, men fishing, and lots of scenic bridges. Patty got lots of birthday pictures with the blooming trees and the bees--there were tons of bees pollinating the flowers, but they work so fast that we could not get a good picture of them. It was fun to get out alone and walk and talk. By the time we made it around the lake, the boating company was open and we got a chance to use our Chinese to ask if we could go boating hua chuan (literally floating a boat). He gave us all kinds of instructions in Chinese (very few of which we understood), took our money and pushed us off the bank of the lake. Luckily, the instructions we did understand were to control the direction the boat went. Push the knob up for forward and down for backwards. We were the only boat on the lake, so we could do whatever we wanted. We stopped and talked a lot with the cool lake breeze and took pictures while floating around. It was a good time.

Afterwards, we went into town to get Patty's birthday present. She has been wanting to decorate the house with flowers for a long time, since we cannot grow a garden, so we went into the flower market and looked at countless kinds of beautiful flowers. We ended up getting five bags full of flowers and pots and the accessories. The flowers and plants are beautiful. We are watching as they bloom. My ability to know the names is very limited--that would be something fun to learn, the names of trees, flowers, birds, etc in China or even in America. I love getting pictures of all of these things, especially in Spring, but I do not know their names. After this we found a bakery and beyond Patty's wishes I got her a cake. She thought it was far too extravagent, but it was definitely a fun experience. We picked out a cake design and they made the cake in front of us. It was quite amazing to see the skill and all of the tools to make it look easy. The family that ran the shop enjoyed it, and the designer decided to take artistic license and made a totally different cake. When they found out we were Americans, he went all out designing the cake. It took about a half hour to decorate it!! Then when he was done and put it in the box, was tying it, he again decided to put more on it and opened it back up and added more things. You will have to check out the cake pictures. Patty definitely felt special (it had Happy Birthday written in Hanzi--Chinese on it also). So we gathered all of our things up and went to get on a bus--this turned out to be quite an adventure. The bus was packed full and we had five bags of plant stuff and a big cake and my backpack. The people were kind in trying to find us seats, and it turned out well, everything survived the half hour ordeal.

A few hours later, our friends from Guiyang came. Along with the cake came a crown, like the ones from Burger King, so Patty had to wear her crown the rest of the night. She was a princess!! We went out to a fancier restaurant to eat and we invited a bunch of students over along with our friends for cake and a little party. The little party turned out to be quite a crowded affair in our small apartment. There were people sitting on stools and the couches and also in other rooms and along with a birthday comes presents. Almost everyone that came brought something, cherry tomatoes, oranges, bananas, a stuffed dolphin name Haichuan (dolphin in Chinese), more flowers, candles, etc. It was maybe a little overwhelming, but a good way to celebrate.

On Saturday, we got up early and Patty and I made breakfast for our guests. Patty made granola and muffins and we prepared food for our hiking trip later that day. We went on a hiking trip to this old bridge as Kris described it, because the Guiyang team wanted to see lots of youcai (the yellow canola flowers). We got off the bus in the middle of a super small village and started walking through the fields towards a bridge, but we later found out that it was only a waterway suspended above the river. Along the way, we got lots of pictures of the flowers and the group and even though it was only a waterway, we still had to walk across it. That was quite the adrenaline rush to be standing on a skinny piece of concrete many feet above the ground. I am sure my mom would not have approved. We did a lot of hiking around the area and I found a few caves that I explored a little and we climbed some rocks and had lunch. It was definitely a tiring trip in the hot sun. It was so fun to get together with our friends!!

This would seem like enough, but about the time we got back I had to go play basketball with some guys--I will be playing in the 3-on-3 tournament next week. We had to practice and plan strategy which lasted for 3 hours. By the end of the day, I was so tired I pretty much collapsed. Most of Sunday was recovering as the weather was a bit chilly. We are going over the Truth Project with our teammate Kris for Sundays. It has brought up a lot of good things to learn and apply in teaching. We hope your weekends were filled with great blessings. We will continue to put more pictures on Flickr from this weekend and we pray that we can keep in touch!!

Tomorrow is the big day. It is Patty's birthday, she will be 27. She has not been a big fan of birthdays since I have known her...I am not too sure why, but hopefully tomorrow she will enjoy the special day. We are planning on going out for a boat ride on Hong Shan Hu (Lake). The weather has been very beautiful here lately, so we have been out for many walks and today we made it out to play some frisbee (fei pan). This sport is something people here are very interested in, so it often brings great interest. Many of our students came out to play; they skipped out of their PE classes to play. It is a physical activity, I guess. This is a normal occurrence, many students will skip PE class, because they only have to test out of each physical activity.

This week was a good one. There were lots of fun little events. We received a package of goodies from my mother (some candy, peanut butter (we cannot get it here, but two hours away), birthday and anniversary cards, and other fun foods that remind us of home. It is always a happy event to receive things from home. We are hoping to send more things in the mail throughout the semester. We also had English Corner, which was centered around Festivals, so we had a chance to share on Easter and Christmas and hear students share on them as well. We are planning a American sports Open House for this week, so I am excited to teach them Ultimate Frisbee, we have some baseballs and softballs and gloves, a football, and a hope that the weather will cooperate on Sunday night. Spring is a beautiful time around Anshun. Some of our friends from Guiyang will come this weekend to check out the yellow canola blooming in the fields and the beautiful scenery. We are very excited. I will update how the weekend and the big birthday celebration goes. We wish you warm weather in your areas and that your days and nights are blessed in great ways.

After last weeks excitement with our trip to Kunming for our anniversary, this week seemed a little less exciting. We did do alittle traveling though. We went to Guiyang for Easter to be able to spend it with the big team of English teachers there. That was probably the highlight of the week. Before leaving, we got our first experience sending mail through the post office. It wasn't too bad actually. We will have to start sending home some letters in the near future. Sending packages are quite expensive though, but we needed to send something as all of our family Christmas presents were lost. We had to think small and light though.

We have had our first two Open Houses and that has been a richly rewarding experience. About 13-14 students have been at each and it has been a really fun time to share and to spend with students. They are very interested to hear about our Chinese learning and I think it makes them feel better that we are struggling with their language while they struggle with English. Our Chinese lessons are going much better this semester. We feel like we are learning a lot and now we have to get our and practice more or just try to talk Chinese in our house. In class this week, we did many Easter activities which the students really got into. They did not know much about the Easter story before, so they were very interested in hearing about it.

In Guiyang, we had a chance to do all of the traditional Easter things. Easter in Chinese is Fu Huo Jie (Resurrection Day, or Come Back to Life Festival). We helped the kids (the Millers and Caves) color Easter eggs and then we hid them and watched as they scurried around with excitement looking for them. That was so fun to see!! We got to eat and watch some movies and then on Sunday we went to the large service for all foreigners in the area (about 75). It is always fun to see new people and to share with people we rarely see. Such a great blessing.

The trees and flowers are all in bloom here, so it does feel very much like spring. I hope you will soon experience the new life of spring and that you will experience that feeling of the greatness of the new life we have because of Easter everyday. We send our love and greetings. An update on March Madness from China, Patty is doing much better again this year. She picked all of the higher seeds and I chose many upsets and it is not going so well for me. I guess this is how it works sometimes. All of the greatest planning and still the simplicity wins out!! Also we have some new pictures online at FlickR--they are under our email addresses. Dan and Patty

It has been a couple of weeks since the last post, but we have made it through our first weeks of classes. It is different being back and spring has many new things to experience and see. The weather is much warmer than in Minnesota, so fields and trees are beginning to bloom. One of my students took me with a group of bachelors to Long Gong (The Dragon Palace) for the canola oil festival. The fields were completely yellow with beautiful flowers and it was very interesting to see the longest underground river cave and some fascinating cave features. One of the highlights was taking a zip-line down a mountain. It was quite the view and quite the experience, but I am not so sure Patty would say the same if she came. Since it was a festival, the place was packed primarily with minorities and villagers and some tourists. Yet another opportunity to stick out, but also a fun time to share with others. I made a man’s day by giving him a quarter from America—he was willing to give me a lot of Chinese money for it. That was after he asked why Americans have so many guns if they are only going to shoot people. Needless to say, there are many pictures of this time (we will see when we can get them up as the internet is very slow lately).

As some people may know, Thursday was our 4th wedding anniversary. We have a little bit more free time, so to celebrate we made a trip to Kunming, a city in the Yunnan province about 11 hours away by train. Kunming is nicknamed the “Spring City” because of its constant warm weather and it definitely lived up to that being in the 70’s and 80’s. Two of our friends also came, Kris and Brianna. Some of our highlights were going to Shilin (The Stone Forest) and The Minority Village on Dianchi Lake. When I envisioned the Stone Forest, I was thinking along the lines of The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, but boy was it an amazing, breathtaking display of the majesty of creation. It was miles of limestone pillars and hills formed by the area being underwater. There were many of these creations that resembled animals or people and the weather was gorgeous. It was fun looking at the pictures and trying to find more things in the rocks. Patty now understands a little more my “unhealthy” fascination with rocks, even though that was actually the first “date” we had in the rock lab at Winona State, her quizzing me on rocks.

The next day we went to the Minority Village, which is a park with recreations of 26 of the minority groups found in the Yunnan province. I was super excited to see this park, as I have a love for the minorities of China. The experience was both good and bad I would have to say though. Each minority had representations of their traditional houses and some people dressed up and usually an activity or something that represents their culture. Some of the houses, temples, and other buildings were breath-taking and the dances and activities were fun, but it was a lot of walking and some of the workers were very lax (I thought it was like workers at Valleyfair). Some of the favorite things were seeing the water splashing festival, seeing some of the dances, and the Miao who actually had a church in their village and shared the gospel at the gate. We left after about 5 hours of walking in the park, not knowing that we would actually be walking another 4 hours before we stopped. We ended up walking almost the whole town looking for a reasonable hotel before actually getting to our supper destination, and later had a fiasco trying to get a taxi to get us to where our friends were staying. It was really nice to eat at a fancy Italian restaurant though (Pizza da Rocca). I had a pizza while Patty had a huge calazone. The next day we did some shopping to replace presents lost during our trip home and then we headed home on another tiring train ride (it is quite the experience). You have babies crying at high decibals, children running up and down the aisle screaming, and the super comfortable seating options. Let’s just say 12 hours (it was longer this time) did not come soon enough. It was good to be back in Anshun again. On that night, we had 13 students over for our first Open House and we played Uno and talked. And in the end we look back at the time and say, “it was very good.” Many blessings!!