We have been anticipating Patty's parents coming to China and Anshun for months and months and it finally took place last weekend. We had many plans but knew everything was depending on the weather and other circumstances and the weather forecast was calling for a week of rain. We went to Guiyang on Friday knowing that their plane was going to get in late that night and planning on meeting them early the next morning at the airport. We received a call around 11 pm or so and we set up a time to call the next day. They made it safely to Guiyang from their visit to friends in Hong Kong.

The next morning, we changed plans and told them we would meet them at the college and that they would get a cab from the airport to meet us there. It turned out that the cab was much faster than the buses (get that one). They arrived early and ended up calling us on some students' cell phone and we met them at the track at Shida. Our plans for the day were to take them to Qianling Park in Guiyang, where there are monkeys and also a beautiful place to walk. The weather turned out nice and we had Noah along--it was very nice to see someone from home. We went to Guiyang by bus with our teammate, Jason and once they entered the park a crowd of people including an older man surrounded them and wanted to show them pictures of China and speak English. Welcome to China!! They were instant celebrities. We walked around for awhile, noah scared the monkeys and we saw a number of different baby monkeys riding on their parent's backs. It was good to be able to talk and hear from them in person. Afterwards, we got their bags and headed to the bus station to travel to Anshun--it would be a new world for them, but our home.

We arrived in Anshun and were met by a friend, Ike, who helped us with the hotel. His grandfather plays mahjong with the manager, so we got a better deal. We then took them to our college to see our apartment and to eat some basic Chinese food. It would be quite the adventure of food and a long week of cooking (I loved it) for me. We had many adventures ahead, but this was day one in Guizhou China, a real taste of rural living, living on the outskirts of a small city (300,000). I will continue this story throughout the week, running down their entire stay and the adventures we saw together.