Thanks for your truth, it makes me moved

Hello Friends and Family,

Hope everyone is enjoying beautiful weather, wherever you're at. We are in the process of applying for a tourist visa for our trip to China and then when we arrive, we will go through the process of obtaining a working visa. There is less paper work to acquire with the tourist visa and we will have Mr. He at the University in Nanning to help us once we reach China. I had e-mailed him and asked him what would be the best course of action and that we wanted to be honest on our tourist visa application because it asked what our 'purpose for visit to China' is and how long we plan on staying. I was concerned that if we put 365 days on a tourist visa, then we would be denied the visa. Mr. He said we could put 30 days, since that is all it will take to get the working visa and he appreciated our honesty. In the last lines of his e-mail he wrote, "Thanks for your truth, it makes me moved"! Hopefully, that is a good thing. I think honor and integrity our very important to them and hopefully we can portray those qualities while in China.

We had a great time last night babysitting for the Shafferlys and they encouraged us a lot too when we had a chance to talk with them about China and what are role over their might be.

Dad, Mark and I had a great time last weekend in Chicago, a beautiful city. We did all the fun guy tourist things; museums, baseball, battlefields and football stadiums. We drove through four different states and got a great feel for the 'old northwest'. It was a lot of fun to be able to spend time with two of my best friends and we even got a baseball at the Chicago White Sox game.

Kealy has only one more week of school. She brought her fifth graders to the capital on Thursday and we had fun showing them around. The end of the legislative session is imminent and a lot of exciting and wierd things are happening. It is fun to be a fly on the wall and witness our government at work.

Sincerely,

Ryan and Kealy Thorson