Ryan Birthday Celebration

Dear Friends and Family,
Tomorrow is my Sweet Love's birthday. We are going to get a hour and a half massage by two blind guys. They are supposed to be really good! The cost for an hour massage is 25 yuan which equals about 3.5 dollars. After the massege we will make what we know to be Chinese food (stir fry) one of Ryan's favorite meals here. The High School asked us to M.C. an Oral English Corner Game Night tomorrow night as well. We each will be in a different classroom with about a hundred Chinese students and some teachers, but we will be running the games. Fortunately, they provided the games. One is bringing some students up to answer questions to win a prize, the second is having students act out verbs that they are shown for the crowd to guess, and the last game is like Simon Says. Then they have time to talk with us afterwards and are given a topic that we provide. So, since we are going to do that tommorrow night we are celebrating some of Ryan's B-day tonight with ice cream, mentos, chips, and movies after we eat our breakfast/dinner meal of eggs and potatoes (another of Ryan's favorites). Someone needs to stop us before we get sick. Ryan's birthday will continue onto Saturday with finding him some birthday presents. It is a little difficult trying to get him some gifts without him knowing and being safe at the same time. Chris and Hua, the other foriegners here at the middle school, invited us to go have a BBQ to celebrate. So Ryan gets a three day birthday with lots of fun and food!

Today, when we went to the market to pick up food for today and tomorrow we saw some interesting things such as when we bought our meat they have all the meat sitting on the table without anything under it, flies are landing on some, and people come up and touch to see if they like it. Then, when we buy the meat he grabs it with his bare hands, slices it and puts it in a bag for us, never washing his hands. Then we hand him the money and he gives us back change with some blood and guts on it. One interesting thing we saw today was sitting on the table next to the meat we bought: a water buffaloe's brains. Also in the market we saw a dog that had met his maker and was being sold for dinner. We didn't know how to respond. INTERESTING!

On a lighter note, we are doing good. Yesterday I joined Facebook and have had fun connecting with friends. My Mom started a blog which is nice because we will be able to share pictures and stories with each other. In our day in age it is wonderful for us to stay in touch even though we are miles away, making it seem like we are close. Thanks!

Time to celebrate!
Love,
Kealy and Ryan

Also, we wanted to say hi to the Jamison Kids; Clay, Gracie and Shelby, who faithfully read our blog each day. We miss you guys!