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