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