Happy Thanksgiving a few days late. We are now back home from our four day weekend in Guiyang. Maybe a few pounds heavier (of things inherited that is). Some of our friends are leaving for America in the coming weeks, so we have inherited some things left behind. It is sad to see some of our family here leave and go home to family, friends and the unknowns. We are still trying to figure out what our plans will be for next year (following our two planned years of teaching here). We really are not sure about continuing to teach here, teaching elsewhere or returning home to America. There are so many things we miss there, but we are not sure of His will for our lives at this moment.

This weekend, there were many adventures besides those made with a plate full of food. We did have about 35 people for Thanksgiving, with tons of children and families and amazing food. We did not have turkey though, which was a sad change, but there were so many other delicious favorites and new foods. We ate and played games (I learned how to play the famous Bean Game), had a long worship music time, lots of talking and eating, and then the resting period.

The next day, Patty went with some women to a local hot springs for a day of pampering (in the cold--60's). They had massages, Patty even had a foot massage and enjoyed time in the hot springs and relaxing. While they were relaxing, I went with our teammate to the Botanical Gardens hiking. In an ever difficult challenge to find new places to hike, we endeavored to climb to the top of one of the mountains in the park. Initially, there was a small path, one person had gone before us, but that soon disappeared and we were on our own. I would name this mountain, "thorn-bush peak" because of the innumerable thorn bushes that we had to climb through, around, and over, but it was a great adventure. Eventually, we made it to the clearing on top and the view was spectacular. There were mountains all around and a lake nearby and you could also see a little of the city. But now we had to go down the mountain. Jason was enjoying himself greatly, as this reminded him of college in Santa Barbara, so we headed out into the unknown. We ended up shimmying down trees, sliding down overhangs, and getting caught by the thorns again and again. After about an hour of traveling, we found another small path and followed it through streams, over trees, down to the lake. This was definitely an adventure that you cannot find in the travel books, but it was a blast--we were trail blazers. But we soon found out that not far behind us, there were others following our path to make a path through the mountain for other hikers. Maybe we will be true trail blazers!!

We got back to the beginning of the park after about 4.5 hours of hiking and exploring and super hungry as it was now 3 pm, so we called a friend, Keenan and we went out for hotpot and played some football (we taught him how to throw and catch an American football). He loved it and caught on quickly. After playing that for a few hours, we went and had some hot drinks and played card games until the women returned from their relaxing spa getaway.

The next day was a long one, as Patty and I got up early to go shopping, using only the tour book of Guiyang. It was a fun adventure and we found all of the places quickly and got what we needed and were back to have a birthday lunch for our friend, Kara. Her friend, Kevin, cooked 12 different dishes of Chinese food, so we ate and ate again. AT 3 pm, I was invited to go and help teach some PE teachers and students how to play baseball at Shida College. I never thought about playing real baseball in China. As it turns out, there are only 5 teams in all of China and this school wants to make the sixth. It all started from a foreign teacher seeing a baseball bat in a man's bag and wanting to play baseball with him and now every week a group of foreigners will go and teach different baseball skills to these teachers and students. They have about a dozen gloves and balls and one baseball bat, but the only glitch is that the equipment appear to be from the 20's or 30's. The gloves are really difficult to learn how to catch with and take lots of concentration (mine broke after about 20 minutes of playing catch). The balls are made of balled up rags covered by baseball material--it is just funny that they had all of this equipment sitting around and that it turned out to work. We taught them how to catch, throw the ball, snag grounders, how to hit and pitch the ball. We got to play a little baseball in between the football games, so it was a fun time. It was a special opportunity and fun to do again.

A great weekend of fun and fellowship and adventures in China. You never know what will happen--we even had a barbeque one night with lots of yummy shishkabobs. Hope your Thanksgiving was filled with many blessings and that your Christmas season is filled with reasons to be thankful.