Silent Night

Hello Friends and Family,

Its Wednesday here and Wednesdays have become our 'date night'. We try to have a night to ourselves once a week out on the town where we can explore. So tonight, we took the bus downtown and stopped at McD's for dinner, then went for a walk and wound up at Wal-Mart. We came back to the school and the whole block was pitch dark. The power had been out since this afternoon so all we saw were a sea of orange candles glowing. We decided to go for a walk around the block, since our apartment would be dark and we didn't have candles. After negotiating the rocky road, we stumbled upon a park where there were men and women dancing to music. Someone must have had a portable stereo, so we sat and watched people dancing in the middle of China on a silent night and looked at the stars, pretty unintentionally romantic! We have had a busy week here testing our students. It has been tedious, but fun too, sitting down with each of our 400 students each and learning how we can better teach English to them. Most of them just need more work on their pronounciation. They don't use gender distinictions in Chinese either, so a lot of the students call their father she's and their mother he's, but they are getting better. This past weekend was very low key, we went to a french restaurant with Americans in China on Friday. Quite the international night and the food wasn't half bad, no french fries, though! We're hooked on the show 'The Unit' now, after finishing Prison Break in two weeks. This weekend we are thinking about doing some more shopping at the bird and flower market and maybe even going to the zoo here in Nanning. Supposedly they have dolphins! We'll keep you posted. Have a great day.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson