I think we have gotten into the warmest part of the year here, which just happens to be when the farmers are starting to harvest their rice, the freshman students are doing their military training and I am sick. All of these things have been a big part of our last week. The military training has been a little more interesting this year. This year they gave the students guns to practice with and they have the heavy, dark military fatigues. Many of the other students are a bit jealous of not being able to practice with guns, but glad not to have to march endlessly on such warm days. They have been singing some pretty fun songs, but it tends to start around 6:30 am and finish when it is dark.

Over the weekend, I went out walking with a friend and was able to go and help some farmers harvest rice. This was always something I wanted to try to do. So the farmers allowed us to finish harvesting the rest of the field while they inspected and wondered why. My students wondered the same thing when I told them. There has not been much rain so the rice fields are bone dry and the rice is a crispy, florescent yellow color. I did enjoy the experience, but am yet to drive the water buffalo through the muddy fields to plow (we will wait for spring).

On Sunday, I got sick though, maybe from being out in the sun too long or just a bug, but it is holding on and making me feel very weak and very irritable. I have been despising having to stay indoors and not being able to enjoy the warm weather as much.

Classes are keeping us more than busy, I have 6 classes now and will get 2 more after our October Holiday break. Patty is hoping to get more classes, but still more than busy. Some of the classes have been challenging to make them relevant and useful to the students using the textbook and other resources. We have a holiday coming on October 1st, the Chinese National Day celebrating the 59th anniversary of China's history. We are given a seven day holiday, Monday and Tuesday of that week though we are asked to make up on the weekend though, so we will have class on Saturday and maybe make a trip to Kaili with some students or alone during the break. This vacation we will actually spend time together unlike last year's long excursion to the Yunnan one day on the train, one night on the bus, a few days with my friends in LuChun and then the same protocol backwards. It was beautiful area and great to see them but the bumpiest ride I have ever taken. At times, I could have walked faster than the bus through the mountains (we averaged 12 miles per hour for 12 hours) and I had to hold on for dear life so that I didn't fall out of the bus or off my bed. Patty went camping with some friends, unwilling to make the perilous journey. Hopefully this year's journey will be less crazy.

We continue to have students over for our weekend open houses and it has been very good. We also started our Chinese lessons this last week. We each have a different tutor on Monday and Thursday. IT should be interesting as they are very excited about teaching us, but have never taught Chinese before. I guess then they can practice for their own Putonghua test (Chinese language exam). Most students do not speak Putonghua with each other but their local dialects and some standard Chinese with others.

We saw that the Vikings pulled off their first win and the Packers their first loss, maybe this will cause a trend?!? We miss seeing those things at home, and hope you are enjoying the fall. Many blessings!!

AHH--it has been almost a month since I have written something. Time escapes me. School has started and is three weeks in. It is a new adventure this semester. I have many new classes--British Literature (I will use some American Literature too), Reading, Culture, and Oral English. Currently I have about 8 classes a week and about 200+ students. All of the students are new also--that is something to get used to as well. The freshman have arrived on campus and are currently doing their military training.

Military training is our favorite time of year. The students get up at 6:30 am and run around campus as loud as they can and then get into their groups in their military outfits (They look professional) and practice marching while screaming (yi, er, san...1, 2,3). The crazy thing is that they do this for 1-2 weeks. It has been great to be back at school though and have the students also back. Many of them had 'boring' summers as they stayed at their homes in isolated villages without anyone to practice English with and helped family with farming work etc.

There have been a number of important happenings since school has begun. Firstly, our school is improving everything because this is our year of review. The government will come and check our school and our score affects the amount of funding we get, so they have put in new lights every 3 feet everywhere so you can play basketball all night. They put in new professional ping pong tables and a fence to go around it to "keep" the ball in (it is proving to be more of a pain, because if the ball gets out you now have to walk all the way around the fence to get it). They are repaving all of the roads and putting new windows and exteriors to make the old buildings look newish. Our building has not changed though, I believe it is on the docket to be demolished (maybe depending upon passing the inspection and funding). We have had two holidays (Teachers Day and the Mid-Autumn festival). Teachers Day is not much of a holiday, but students do nice things for the teachers and sometimes you will receive gifts. Sunday was Mid-Autumn festival and we had students over for our open house. It is a traditional time for families to get together but many students are very far from their homes, so we tried to do something special. We ate the traditional mooncakes (they are like biscuits filled with any variety of things from fruits (yummy) to beans, meat, nuts etc. which can be more of an adventure. We tried to watch the moon, as is customary through our telescope but every time I got focused on it, the clouds would come and the moon would disappear...shy.

We had the next day off of school...so we went with some students to the famous HuangGuoShu waterfall. It was everyones first time to go there even though most were from this area. As whenever you try to have a large group, there are complications. We had our number of complications. The school provided a free bus, so we were there early waiting for the rest of our group who took their time and we missed the buses. I was a little upset, but found out that this was part of the plan anyway, because we had to meet more students in town to go out to the waterfall. So we took a variety of buses and made our way out to the waterfall. It turned out that other people wanted to join us but were at the entrance to the park, 5-10 km away and would meet us soon. We waited and waited (over an hour) and they finally came but said more were still coming. By that time we had spent 4 hours and had not even gotten into the first part of the park...there are three famous places to see there and we had to catch a bus by 7:30 pm and it was now noon. We decided to break into two groups and see the park separately. The rest of the day went rather smoothly, we saw close to 100 waterfalls, a couple caves, lots of cool stones and scenery and took lots of pictures. The Chinese love taking pictures, not of the scenery as I do, but of themselves at every place. They also enjoy doing strange, unique things in the pictures (the girls at least). Us guys mainly just stood or did something funny, but the girls had a wide range of poses mimicking the Titanic or other pop culture icons. Maybe the guys could have done our Usain Bolt interpretations from the Olympics. The HuangGuoShu waterfall is the largest in Asia (I believe) and is simply an amazing thing to see. I was really impressed, even after hearing the ravings from others who had seen it before. Maybe this is a good reason to visit us in Anshun--it is a simply beautiful area with lots of caves and waterfalls as well as lots of culture. We have posted a number of our pictures from the waterfall and from our summer holiday on our flickr account. www.flickr.com/photos/24255478@N06/

We wish everyone great blessings!!