Tonight we say goodbye to Inner Mongolia, it will be sad but we are looking forward to seeing our students. We have had many great memories on this first leg of our trip from the camel ride where my camel broke loose and stole our friend's water bottle and decided to eat it, the flood we had the last two days here in Hohhot (it was almost a foot deep in many places with many cars stalled, lots of long train rides (I think over 140 hours now plus our 11 to Beijing tonight too). We have learned a lot of culture and history too (very educational time).

Tonight we will take the train to Beijing for a super short stop...we are not as excited about the Olympic mania and will enjoy seeing the Olympics on TV. We will then travel to the Yunnan province to see a student and do some traveling there. There are many famous places that we are looking forward to seeing such as DAli, Lijiang, Shangrila (zhongdian), etc. We are very excited to not be staying in a hotel for a few days...last night our room had no windows so we were not sure of the time or anything. We will also be traveling alone which will be fun to not have to worry about four people, but also we lack the language, but will do fine I think. We will give you another update soon. Hope you are all doing well.