Gong Xi Fa Cai!! Happy Chinese New Year. We have been able to enjoy some of the festivities getting close to the big day tomorrow. Yesterday, we traveled to the new capitals of malaysia in Putra Jaya and learned a lot about the fruit and forests there, lots of huge and different kinds of fruits. We also went to the wetlands and were greeted with a huge rainstorm, after Patty laughed at how weak the rain was coming down. Natures response was quick and adequate!! We also saw the new national mosque and capital buildings which look very much like mosques to show the direction of the government.

About the Chinese New Year, we went to the buddhist temple to see the display of lanterns and zodiac animals, there were thousands of lanterns everywhere and everything decked out in red (lucky color). There were tons of people there and lots of photo opts, and then we prepare now to go for the reunion meal with our friends family. They laid out lots of snacks and thus will go the next few days, eating and talking eating and eating. We are excited to see friends and their families and to eat all kinds of special foods. There is also a total eclipse tomorrow which is a very bad sign in Chinese culture because the sun is the life force and it means 1000X bad luck especially on the first day of the new year. But the year of the ox is for resilence and determination, something we may all need more of with the economy and the way things are going. It will be a new experience to see the new year from in Asia, but not China, maybe in the future.

We wish you many blessings and great joy in all you do.

Being in Malaysia has been a great blessing and has brought back many memories from our previous trips here. We have been able to get together with a few of our friends, see some places and enjoy the nice warm weather with the 1-2 hours of drenching rain almost daily around 4 pm. Here are a few of our highlights thusfar.

When we arrived, we had to walk from the plane to the terminal, but saw a number of people put on their artic coats, and got a laugh from seeing their reactions as they stepped off into the heat (32'C or more each day). We arrived in Malaysia early but were expected to meet our friends at the KL (Kuala Lumpur) Sentral station. We had collected many numbers of friends from different parts of the country and were feeling confident. We thought that we would send them a call to tell them we made it and to be prepared, but had problems with all of the phones. So we got our ticket from the airport by bus to the Sentral station. It took about 30-45 minutes to get there and we got to see some of the changes in Malaysia and experience some things over again.

We arrived at Sentral station and thus began our phone ordeal. We found out that we had only the home phone number for our friends who planned to pick us up but both were at work at the number was incorrect...we tried all combinations of the numbers to no avail and tried all of our other friends, except those very far from KL. Nothing was working, but we had a home number for a friend and finally got her sister. After a number of other calls back and forth, we ended up taking a train and getting to sit down to hot water and biscuits...no food from 8 am, until about 6pm. How difficult it is to live without a cell phone and to be dependent on foreign pay phones again...ahh!!

Since then we have stayed with our friends Kok Kiang and his wife Soo Hui and their 4 year old son Clarence. It has been a little different having a young and often naughty chld around, but a great learning time for us. We have taken a few trips out to enjoy the National Museum, lots of different kinds of food, the night market and today the Jungle, KL tower (4th largest in the world) and the World Famous Petronais Towers (we even had Burger King there). One thing we love about Malaysia is the variety of foods, we had our favorite breakfast food, Roti Chanai, a bread with lots of spicy Indian dipping sauces, and lots of Malay and Chinese favorites also including Thai too.

Our big plans for next week are for the Chinese new Year...it is my new year, since my Chinese name is Da Niu (big cow)...the year of the ox. We are planning on traveling with our friends Sherry and Anthony to their hometowns in Penang and Malacca. We will get to visit both of their families and get to enjoy lots of food and lots of new places. We will keep you updated. Many blessings and stay warm...we will try to send some of our heat your way.

It is so much fun to be able to come to Hong Kong again and to see fellow teachers and friends after a year. There were even a great number of new friends to meet, some from MN too. We were greatly blessed by the speakers and worship--lots of healing, physical and spiritual. Many people got sick from our group, but it was a great time of togetherness.

We also got a chance to visit with a good college friend, Queenie and her sister Green. They are such a great delight and I think we convinced them to come and visit us in Anshun during their spring break. We went to a fancy Korean restaurant and for the first time I enjoyed Kimchi and lots of the other favorites. We then went boot shopping for Patty, but found her feet are still too big for Hong Kong. Lots of fun to talk and see new places though.

Patty got a little sick on Sunday and is healing today, as we go and visit her parents friends, Jackson and Patty. Then we fly out of HK to Malaysia tomorrow for visiting lots of people in different areas. We are greatly blessed to see our friends and to encourage and be encouraged by them. We wish you all many blessings in all you do and all those you encounter throughout your week. In basketball, GO MN!! January has been good to most MN teams--keep it up!!

It has been 11 days of 2009 ...I hope it has been filled with many great moments. We have been mostly just waiting for our last finals which we finished on Friday. They are now finished and graded, and now students are gone for home. The campus is getting empty and quiet, and we are ready to leave for Hong Kong on Wednesday. We had a good New Years with our traditional toasted fish with friends. On New Years eve we got a treat of snow, and students out with their umbrellas and huge mountains of snow for their "snowball fights." It is quite rare to get snow in Anshun, but the most fun was to see multiple students who have never seen snow before (From Guangdong, Hainan and other warm places).

The cold weather has been long though, so we are very excited for our winter holiday break. We will leave on January 14th for Hong Kong for our conference and then the 20th to visit friends in Malaysia. It has been two years since we have seen most of our college friends, so we are excited to see them. From there we are heading to visit our Compassion child of five years in Indonesia. I have been planning a special trip to some famous places for Patty. We will get to see Siska and her family and then travel to Bromo National Park to see the volcanoes, mountains and hopefully get up early to hike up and see the sunrise. Then we will go to Bali to see the famous beaches. After that, we will finish our travels by going to visit our students in Zhejiang. We are super excited and then will take the 30 hour train back to Anshun and start classes again on the 2nd of March.

Can you keep in mind our next term of classes? We will have fewer classes, but more challenging ones and Patty is hoping to look into the foster care system here in China, but we are contemplating what that would mean for us. We are also looking at our future plans, but still planning on coming home to Minnesota this summer. We are hoping to get home for the 4th of July and a friends wedding and hopefully our class reunions (I cannot believe it has been 10 years already). We wish you all blessings!!