Cooking on our own and swimming with caps

Hello Friends and Family,

Another good day teaching here. It was a much warmer day with no thunderstorms. By the time I (Ryan) arrived at the school I was very sweaty and the students kept telling me to stand under the fan because I was sweating so much. All classes went well and we are starting to use the text books some in our lesson planning. it is a helpful guide and tool for the students. One student walked into the class before it started this afternoon and I was writing on the board and whistling, he said something in Chinese and I asked him what he said. He said I was a giant hummingbird for whistling in class! Pretty funny.

This evening we were preparing our first meal at home when we heard a knock at the door. We opened the door and in walked our five year old friend Amy with three icecream cones in her hand. She had brought ice cream to share with us and came in and we played guitar and sang songs while Kealy cooked our wonderful first homemade meal. We cooked beef, corn, carrots, broccoli and noodles with soy sauce in our wok and it was delicious!





As you can tell, I like the meal Kealy made very much. She even invited Joe, Celia and Amy over for dinner tomorrow night and she is going to cook for them, and me. Amy watched us eat our meal and played around us. She liked to play the guitar and she is very talkative. She knows that we cannot speak Chinese but she carries on just the same. She has even taken it upon herself to teach us Chinese. Tonight, we learned the word Yao Yo (Swimming)!

After dinner we went to the swimming pool with Joe, Celia and Amy. The pool is much like the ones in America and very refreshing. It felt good to get the stickiness off from the humidity. However, it is a rule in Chinese swimming pools that you must wear a cap when swimming to keep hair out of the water. So...we each bought our very own swimming cap!



We both got a kick out of each other in our caps! We had a fun time swimming and now we are relaxing for the rest of the evening. I don't have to teach a class until 2:30 tomorrow for 1.5 hours and that is my work day. Kealy has one class from 8:30-10:10 so that is it. It should be a relaxing day. We are going to plan our weekend and go to the market to buy fresh food for dinnner. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Make new friends and keep the old--Fun English Names--New Dresses

Hello Friends and Family,

The last two days here have been very exciting! We have started teaching english to the students at the college. We have the same students only once a week for 90 minutes, so we have 9 different classes. We teach the same lesson to each class so we have lots of opportunities to refine it and make it a good lesson. This first week we are practicing having them introduce themselves and share about their favorite food, sport, etc. Then, we have them write their English names on the board and it gives us a chance to learn their names and ask them why they chose that particular name. We have heard some very interesting names: Berlinda, Spring, Green, Rice, Dumpling, Esan, Johnson, Carlos, CoCo, Silence and many more. They all have a very neat reason for choosing their name and they are able to share why they chose it. Most of the students are very eager to learn English, they even give us applause when we walk in the class and at the end of the class, so that is very encouraging. We are enjoying teaching so far, to say the least. They are all very interested in American customs and holidays and how to make lots of money. Initially, Kealy and I both had an evening class once a week but they changed our schedule so now we don't have any evening classes. I have to teach on Fridays now but that is still good.
Because we had this evening free, we were invited to make dumplings with Celia, Joe and Amy, a very kind family that is in the same apartment complex. Celia is the school administrator and is the one that did such a great job decorating our apartment that we like so much.



This is a picture of us making the dumplings this evening. We put the mix in the dumpling and then fold them up and boil them in water for only two minutes. Then they are ready to eat.



This is Amy, one of our new friends! She is five years old and loves to come over and play. We play with the dice and practice counting the numbers in english and chinese. she speaks very good english for her age and is a lot of fun!



Also, last night, we had a chance to see Kathy, the woman who we met at Western Oregon which introduced us to the college and helped us work out the details of coming here. She is studying in Hong Kong, but her mother is the president of the college here in Nanning so she was visiting her family for the holiday that they just had, which was a kind of halloween. She is very kind and her and Kealy get along very well. She took us to a 'Western Style Restaurant' in Nanning. You can check out the food blog for a picture of the great pepper steak that I had. It was very good to see her.

We like living here at the middle school very much and we are meeting so many wonderful people. But with every friend we make we think of all of you that we miss so much and we are thankful that we can stay in contact with you.

Now...the moment some of you have been waiting for. Kealy's dresses arrived today and they are so beautiful. She looks fantastic in both of them and they are authentic Chinese dresses, tailor made for a cost of 60 Yuan, about $8! She wore one out tonight as we explored the city with Joe, Celia and Amy and went to Five Elephant Square. The pictures turned out okay. We are going to go back during the day and take more pictures of the fountain but Nanning is so beautiful at night. There are many lights and wonderful colors and a lot of people come out at night because it is cooler. There have been thunderstorms and a little rain with wind the last couple of days here so that has been exciting to see the heat lighting. I have been telling my students that my family name means 'son of thunder and lightning' and they think that is pretty cool. Here are some pics of my beautiful wife in her new dresses:









The dresses turned out wonderful and I wouldn't be surprised if she asked me to buy her some more! Which she know I will, especially for $8!

We are having a good week and learning to adjust to a new schedule, a very nice schedule which we enjoy. We love being here at the middle school and meeting new friends and spending time together. We also like the 2.5 hour lunch break in the middle of the day to eat and 'have a rest' or take a nap. We will keep you posted on fun and new things that we are experiencing. Tomorrow we are going to do some cooking on our own, so check out the food blog in the next couple of days and we'll let you know how it goes.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Wow! What a weekend

Hello Friends and Family,

Sorry it has been a couple of days since our last post. We are still alive and still in China. On Friday, we were taken into town and had dumplings with four Chinese and a Japanese man, then taken to buy a cell phone. I think Mr. River was getting tired of us not being a home to answer our phone, so we bought a 300 RMB cell phone in China and now we can call anyone in China and they can call us. It came in very handy this weekend when we decided last minute to go on vacation to Beihai! The city of Beihai is on the Gulf of Tonkin, about 2.5 hours by bus. We hopped on a bus on Friday night and found a hotel we saw online. The taxi driver kept taking us to different hotels, trying to convince us we should stay there instead, but eventually he took us to our hotel. We had a great time together. It was good for our confidence to get out on our own and venture into China without any help. We had to do a lot of pointing and gesturing and we used our travel books and English-Chinese book. But we stayed at the Silver Beach all day, walking the boardwalk, swimming in the water and drinking coconut milk. We were covered by an umbrella and a hat for the whole day, except for one hour of swimming, but that was enough to burn our faces and shoulders. It is very hard to find sun tan lotion in China! We will post the pictures from our trip on our travel blog and you can go to that by clicking on the 'Traveling China' link to the right of this post. It seems that we are having problems posting pictures so we will get those up soon. We will also update the 'Fun Foods of the Far East' blog and you can see the meal we had this morning. Eventually, I will try and put pictures of the two birds I have identified in China so far so that all our blogs will be updated. We had a great time relaxing together and preparing for the week. We found out on Friday that we will start teaching tomorrow (Monday) so we have been preparing for that as well. We will each teach 18 45 minute classes a week. We got our schedule tonight. I (Ryan) don't have any classes on Friday! Kealy has one in the morning and she might see if she can switch it to Thursday and then we would have a three day weekend all semester long. The semester lasts 21 weeks with a 5 week break in between semesters. Sometime I will post our schedule but we each teach about 4-6 hours a day. They take a 2.5 hour lunch break and we each have one evening class a week and a English corner/club on Thursday nights. We will let you know how teaching goes tomorrow, we will probably start out with basic introductions and days of the week. If you have any suggestions on topics or teaching methods we should use, we would love to hear your ideas. You can e-mail us anytime, we check it constantly. Tomorrow we are having dinner with Kathy, the daughter of the president at the college here, who was a graduate student at WOU where we met her and arranged our teaching here in China. We are looking forward to seeing you again. Hope you all enjoy your Sunday, it was a good day here; palm trees, sandy beachs and my beautiful 'lao po' (wife) with me! Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

P.S. We found a movie store across the street in the market from the school that has new movies in English! We have already watched Fantastic Four and are watching Die Hard 4 tonight!!!

Feast Fit for a King (and queen)!

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, yesterday we had quite the experience! We spent most of the day in our apartment with the gentlemen that came to fix our toilet! That's right, we have a toilet now! It is so nice to be able to sit down and relax when going to the restroom. :) After the put our toilet in, we had to go across the street and get our photos taken for our new visas. We went to our contacts office, Celia, and she was not there but there was a gentlemen there that was very kind. He hardly spoke any English, but he wrote on a piece of paper 'we are good friends'. We managed to explain to him that our Chinese was not so good, so he handed us a Chinese Business book called 'the secret to success'. I think he thought that would help us learn Chinese.

Last night we went to dinner with our two bosses; Mr. River from the college, and Celia here from our apartments. They took us to an extravagant restaurant that was absolutely amazing. Everyone there was waiting to serve us and we had Beijing duck, fried pumpkin, pork, cabbage soup, flower tea and even a little fish head! They showed us around the entire restaurant. I think we are going back on Friday so we will take pictures and put them on the blog.

Today we traveled downtown to try and get our physical so we can get our work visa. We met two teachers from Thailand and learn some Thai words also. It is fun exchanging English for someone elses language and trying to learn.

Here are some pictures of our view from our apartment balcony:





And this is a picture of the entrance to the college where we'll be teaching. The classrooms are in the tall building in the back.



Looks like Disneyland!

Thanks to all of you that have e-mailed and called. It is so nice to stay in touch with you. You can call or e-mail any time. We are not able to view this blog after it has posted, so if there are mistakes, let us know, but China restricts access to certain websites and apparently are blog is censored here. But we can still post. We love you and will talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Feast Fit for a King (and queen)!

Can't Wait--Here's our apartment!!!

Hello Friends and Family,

Kealy and I decided not to wait until tomorrow to show you some pictures so here are some of apartment just to give you an idea and we will post some of the city tomorrow: We hope you enjoy looking at our pictures


Walking to our plane in Canada

Here is the outside of the main building at the middle school where we are staying

Our livng room with comfy chairs

The other half of our living room

Looking from our balcony

Bedroom

Kitchen

Bathroom-sorry it's upside down

The college

The flee market

Don't Be Shy, Just Try

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, we made it through the second day of our adventure here in China! It was quite a full day. We woke up early in the morning after sleeping for thirteen hours, still feeling the jet lag. In the morning we went for a nice walk around the college and got some good exercise! We have seen two new birds already. The equivalent of a house sparrow and a black and white beautiful bird called a white wagtail! We met up with our new American friends yesterday morning and spent time talking with them in their apartment. Then they took us and showed us around the neighborhood near the middle school. We found out that the college has only single apartments so that is why we are here at the middle school. It works out great because the Americans are here and the neighborhood has a food market, a few restaurants and a supermarket. They took us to lunch and we experienced 'Lao Yao Fen' (Old friend noodle). It was very good! We had it 'bu laa' (not so spicey). We are getting used to being stared at and being called 'Lao wei' (foreigner) but the people staring will say hello when we say 'ni hao'. It is a curious stare, not a mean one. Our American friend was so very thankful that we brought down some oatmeal, hot chocolate and M +Ms for him. he loved the REAL chocolate that they don't have here in China. After lunch we went and talked with the school administrator, Celia, and met her husband and five year old daugheter Amy. We played dice and uno with her and practiced counting in English and Chinese. Then, they took us downtown to the bird and flower market and Celia really wanted to pick out some dresses for Kealy for them to tailor make for her. At the bird and flower market, there were all kinds of things. Birds, turtles, fish, flowers, jewelry, pottery, hand-woven furniture. It was really cool. Kealy did a great job picking out fabric for her dresses. Celia said the style and color was 'very Chinese'. All of the women here wear beautiful summer dresses and so Kealy wanted to pick up a few. The total cost of the dresses is only about $20 US dollars for a handmade-fitted dress. In the evening our American friends cooked a great dinner for us with Mushrooms, spiced zucchini, duck eggs, pork and rice and it was very good. Then they took us to their favorite coffee place where I (Ryan) had a cup of Colombian coffee and Kealy had Rose Milk Tea with actual roses in it for flavor. They told us a great Chinese riddle as we were talking about food: "What is the only thing with four legs that the Chinese won't eat.......A Table!" When we arrived back at the middle school we had a power outage that was fun and only lasted about 10 minutes but apparently they occur about once a week. As we were sitting in our living room unwinding last night, we spotted a small gecko running across our living room floor. I swept him up in our broom and put him outside our door! We are having a great time. Today we are going to go downtown again and explore and hopefully we will meet back at the college. Tomorrow, we will post some pictures of our apartment, the college and the city for you to see where we are living and hanging out. We miss you all and will talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

We're Here!!!

Hello Friends and Family,
We made it China! It was quite the plane trip, but we were able to keep ourselves busy. The longest flight was actually the one from Beijing to Nanning. We were tired and the plane seats were very small and everyone was Chinese! How about that? After we left Beijing, the flight attendants and captains didn't even speak English over the intercom, so we realized we were really into it now! We arrived and Mr. River picked us up at the airport just fine. Customs was a little too easy. Hopefully we filed and claimed all the right items, we are not sure.

Our apartment is actually at the middle school and not the college. We were a little surpirised by this and are still trying to find out why. We do not want to offend them by asking why we are not at the college, because we like the apartment here, but it is about 8 kilometers from the college and we will have to take a bus each morning. On the upside, however, right when we arrived at the apartment, a man named Chris came out to meet us. He is an American and is teaching English at the Middle School. He has offered to help us in anyway that he can and we are about to take him up on it. We are having problems getting our laptop hooked up to the internet, which is why we haven't called you yet and accessing e-mail on the computer we were given. I did however manage to make it onto the blog and make this post. Our apartment is very big. We have a living room, a room with our computer, a bedroom with a closet for clothes, a small kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. In all it is about 700 to 800 square feet. There is airconditioning in the bedroom and a fan in the living room. We are on the fourth floor.

It is very hot and humid here. Yesterday, we were taking to tour the college and sign the contract. We met a very nice woman named Kate who is Mr. River's secretary. She speaks pretty good English. It is difficult to commnunicate at times, but we just laught about it and keep trying. She showed us around the college. By the time we finished walking, we were drenched with sweat. My shirt was soaked through and they laughed at me but there was nothing I could do about it. The classrooms are open air with no air conditioning. We met the president of the college and the vice-president and they were very kind. We were taking down to eat lunch and they were interested to see how good with chopsticks we were. We did okay. The food was good. Corn, potatoes, chicken, vegetables with rice and it filled us up. After lunch, we got a bus downtown with Kate and another gentleman and went to Wal-Mart to get things we needed for our apartment (i.e. towels, soap, more dishes, cleaning supplies). We had quite the time and it was fun sharing English words for things with Chinese words for things. Both Kate and the gentleman were our age and very kind. They both work for Mr. River.

It has just started raining at our apartment. It is 8:30 in the morning. Last night, we came home very tired and overwhelmed from our day and slept from 5:00 PM to 6:00 AM this morning. But we got up and went for a nice walk and have since been cleaning. We had oatmeal and ate it with our chopsticks. There is a large jug of purified water in our apartment. It is warm but safe. We fill up our bottles and put them in the fridge to cool them down.

Today, we are going to ask Chris (the other American here) to help us with our internet connection, where to throw the garbage, how to do laundry, etc. and maybe try and find out why we are here and not at the college. It is still a nice apartment, we are just curious. We also might go downtown and explore some more. For now we will just watch the rain. It is a little overwhelming, but we are together. We are getting used to being stared at and working on the language barrier. They do not speak much English. We are glad we have been brought here. Please be thinking about us as we continue to adjust. We love you and miss you. Hopefully we can call or e-mail soon.

Sincerely,

Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, the time has arrived. In less than 12 hours we will be in the air towards China! Today was a productive day. We were able to fit all of the clothes and items we wanted to take with us into our four suitcases. We went to Fred Meyer and stocked up on powerbars, hot chocolate and oatmeal, just in case it takes us a while to find food when we get there. We have confirmed that Mr. River, our contact at the college, will meet us at the airport when we arrive at midnight, Sunday night. For those of you on the west coast, we will be in Nanning at 9 AM sunday morning your time.

We hope to be able to contact you soon and post a blog of our apartment and an update on our first couple days. It will all depend on when we can get access to the internet. We fly to Vancouver, B.C. tomorrow, then from there to Beijing and onto Nanning. Including layovers, it will be 24 hours traveling time. Should be quite the trip. We have iPods, a computer, books and snacks so hopefully we can stay busy.

We love each of you very much and will miss you while we are gone, but we are excited to finally start this adventure and to begin to share with you the experiences we will have. Please be thinking of us as we sign our contract and get situated at the college, meeting the students and other professors we will be working with. See you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Tears at Triangle Lake

Hello Friends and Family,

Wow! we leave for China in less than 48 hours. We are busy packing today and seeing some family for dinner at Izzy's tonight. A good smogesboard (I have no idea how to spell that word?) of American food at easy should be great for one of our last meals in America. This last Monday through Wednesday, we were able to spend a great time with our mid-hi kids and friends at Triangle Lake. We had so much fun laughing and spending time together with people that we have grown so close to in the last three years. We went tubing, swimming, ate a lot of hamburgers and even through some cheese on windows! We also purchased a video camera to capture our adventures in China, and we took it with us to camp So...once we have a chance I can mess around with iMovie and put a compilation of clips from Triangle Lake onto the blog. We love each of you so much and we are really going to miss the fun times we spend with the junior high kids and the amazing adults that have become some of our closest friends. More updates tomorrow...for now, its back to stuffing the suitcases!

Sincerely,

Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Wondering in One Week--7 Days

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, one week from today we'll be in the air, on the way to our adventure. I think it might finally hit us when we get on the plane that we are really doing this. Everything will be extremely new and interesting. We are still very excited! Wrapping up a lot of little details and enjoying spending time with friends and family of course. Most of our days consist of running one place to return something we don't need and get something we do, figuring out how to put a year's worth of clothes in a few suitcases, and going out to dinner or lunch or coffee with a friend or family member. Kealy and her Dad are having a big breakfast out this morning and my mom is making french toast, pretty tough living with the parents again! It has been great being in Sandy with them and getting to see them a lot. Tomorrow is our last chance to see friends in Salem and then it is on to Triangle Lake for a little relaxation with some great friends! Should be a fun time, we are trying to get packed before then. We'll see if it happens and we'll keep you posted.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Counting the days on the fingers--10 Days

Hello Friends and Family,
Well, we've got a week and a half before we are out of the country! We are busily preparing, trying to wrap up loose ends here and pack and prepare for our adventure there. As you can see, I have strategically laid out all of our luggage so that we can effectively place the items that are traveling with us in the suitcases this week. We hope to be all packed by the end of the week, so we can relax at Triangle Lake with our friends, and then do a final check and rest the last two days we're in the states.


Yesterday we had quite the day shopping. We were told by many people that it is hard to find our size shoes in China. So, after trips to Joe's, Payless Shoe store and Ross, we came away with 10 new pairs of shoes. Normally we would never ever buy that many shoes in one day, I usually have only two to three pairs of shoes ever, but since we are going to be in the land of little shoes, we decided we had best stock up. So, I think we have enough shoes...hopefully. We have two suitcases each, a carry on bag, and a personal item; a guitar for me and the laptop for Kealy. We might have to stuff our pockets with random items as well to take everything we want with us. It will be nice that we can buy a lot of items over there (i.e. hairdryers, razors, alarm clocks, etc.) but it has still been hard trying to downsize and fit everything in. Oh well, it's just stuff.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Food blog? Bird blog? Travel blog? Blog, Blog, Blog!

Hello Friends and Family,
Wow! What a great weekend! We had a lot of fun getting to spend time with friends in Salem and be encouraged by our family there. We are down to under two weeks before we take off, and we have our suitcases strewn about our apartment as we begin to clean/pack/prepare for our adventure. Last night we received two great gifts: A Chinese bird book and a journal! Now, to some of you, that may not seem like much, but for me, I am really excited about this book. Being the lover of the birds that I am, I will be able to continue my hunting for the new species in China while we are there. Many of the great friends that we have been given pitched together and bought us the book and a journal, so that we can keep track of the exciting things about to happen. And, at the request of Conrad Venti, we will also be keeping a blog about what we are eating in China, as well as the birds that we see. So, this blog will be for fun, cultural things, sort of-everyday living-as it were, as well as our teaching experiences. We will have another blog that you can link to and sample the different kinds of exciting foods we have been eating and, if you are so inclined, I will keep a blog of the birds that I have spotted while in China. We may even create a blog for our different traveling trips that we are hoping to take. Hopefully this will give you guys plenty of opportunities to experience and enjoy our adventure with us. We will miss you all so very much, but we are very glad that we can continue to communicate with you. I will continue to post more frequently as the substance of our lives becomes more exciting and inclined toward our adventure in China! You can click on one of the links to the right and see the other blogs as they are begun.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson