Happy Mother's Day to both of our mothers. It feels very different being far away, but still knowing and feeling your love and care an ocean away. We love you tons today and always!! It was a beautiful day for mother's day here, though it is not the official mother's day in China. We had a rare day of blue skies--it is often sunny but with cloudy skies so we saw blue today and it was so nice. All around people are out in the fields working hard here as I am sure is also true in MN and elsewhere. We had a good week, even though it is a little sad week. It is the last week of classes for the senior students, so after next week I will only have three classes again. I will have to find more things to do--I am looking for jobs to do (maybe some farming, studying Chinese, helping students with English, or Patty said I can take over cleaning the house--she later took that request back). She actually loves to clean and I love to cook, so it makes for a good match.

We have lots of cleaning tonight though, as we had our Open House and we watched the movie "Facing the Giants." We love this movie and definitely recommend that everyone watch it at least once. The students also loved it and got into it. Some even asked to learn more about the book and kept repeating many of their favorite lines. We also made Chocolate Cookies and also some M&M cookies also. We did not put all of them out so we could save more for later. They were so yummy!! Thanks for the packages from our family--we love to have little reminders of things from home.

This week we were invited to go on a picnic with one of our classes--the whole classes decided to come, so we had almost 30 people. We took a bus for 40 minutes and then hiked for 30 minutes to a cave dug by a village that was isolated behind the mountains for thousands of years. They did not know about modern technology and still used stone tools until they made it through the mountain in 1986. It is insane to think about that!! It turned out that the village we ended up at was the same village that Patty and I stumbled across last weekend when we were out wandering near NingGu. Its name is Luo Xian Cun. At the village we went out picking strawberries with the students--it was the first time for many of them including Patty. They had a great time and some came back with pounds of strawberries!! We walked around the area, enjoying the nature and the friendly people and the bamboo forest. We spent a whole day talking, playing cards and mah jong, and hiking around. It was great to learn about true friendship and team work from the students. They are a great class and really keep together. That is one huge thing about the students here in China--they will stay with their classmates for 4 years so they build great friendships and support each other like a family.

On Saturday, we both went hiking and then a student called to give us a present. He came over later with some friends to give us a whole bag full of presents--it was overwhelming. Patty and I got these silly, colorful matching hats, but we also got some fun things like a traditional Chinese shirt, a windchime, and the stacking Russian dolls. After that, he invited us to eat at his restaurant where he works. It turned out that the restaurant is super fancy and serves very high class food. It is called the Monte Carlo. It was super overwhelming, but this is sometimes how things go in China. We have heard all kinds of stories of students giving gifts to their teachers, sometimes they are quite odd gifts too. Some of their "favorites" have been strange shirts and statues of anatomy. But at the restaurant, Patty even got the chance to play music for the dinner guests on the piano. Everyone stopped eating to watch her and the piano player kept looking at her as though we was saying when will you be done, but it was a good experience and she did well--everyone applauded at the end.

We tend to get very different treatment in all places. Today, we were on the bus and it is normal to give up your seat to elderly people or parents with young children, so today I gave my seat to an older lady who was blind in one eye. It made my day!! She was so gracious and kept turning around to thank me and her whole family said thank you in their own ways (with Chinese or thumbs up etc). When she got off she stopped to wave and say good-bye. As our shopping trip went on we determined that it must be Recognize the Americans Day. In the grocery store, they always play English music when we come in, like they have a spy somewhere that informs them that we are there. Sometimes it is horrible rap music with terrible lyrics, but today someone followed us everywhere because they were excited to see Patty (a beautiful foreign woman). At the check-out a guy kept trying to practice his English phrases, all four of them, Good morning, thank you, hello, and good bye. While walking around we had an unusual amount of people stopping to say hello and asking questions and that only got worse as we stopped to each noodles. The shop workers were high school students with a basic English vocabulary. There was one very interesting spectacle in town though. We saw a line of nurses who were graduating from college parading through town from the college. They had a big banner and walked around the middle of town, must have been several hundred of them in their white uniforms with the old nursing hats and tennis shoes often listening to music. Mom would have loved the sight.

Well, we wish everyone a wonderful Mother's Day and many blessings on your upcoming week. We send many hellos.