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
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