A Honeymoon in Thailand and Home, Sweet Home

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, in case any of you were wondering if we got stuck somewhere in the Pacific, we wanted to let you all know that we have arrived home safely in America! It has been a wonderful reunion with family already, a busy time, difficult to find blogging opportunities and and we can't wait to hug even more of our friends that we are so eager to see. Coming home was a reminder of how blessed we are to have the support and love of our family and friends.

Our week in Thailand was fantastic. We laughed all week about being on another honeymoon, since really all a honeymoon is is the joy of celebrating marriage and each other together and it was just that. Each day was the perfect mix of doing nothing and experiencing everything that Thailand has to offer. We were able to ride elephants, feed monkeys with bananas on an island in the bay, ride a fishing boat on the Gulf of Thailand and through a fishing village, experience an authentic Thai dinner and cultural dance, and we worked in a lot of just sitting on the beach, looking for shells and enjoying the beauty of Thailand. The people there were wonderful and friendly and it was a great time for Kealy and I before returning home. A time of reflection for God's faithfulness to us in China and a time of preparation and prayer for discerning His next adventure for us.


Here's our view from 'our table' at the resort restaurant


The view of the resort from our balcony
We returned home to the states after a long day of traveling. From Bangkok to Japan and finally to Portland. Thankfully all of our baggage arrived with us and made it through customs. We even got upgraded to the exit row for one of the legs of our flight. We have had a great time with our families, sharing photos and videos, gifts and stories of our time in China and the incredible things God showed us and the people we have had the privilege of building relationships with. We plan on continuing to see as many people as we can these first few weeks and if any of you are in the Sandy area on Saturday we are having an open house at 18500 Langensand Road from 2-4 PM.

The snow has been a wonderful surprise and quite the contrast from our time in Thailand. Ryan will be starting work down at the state capital on Thursday and we will be moving down tot he Salem area on Sunday after hopefully watching Kevin Boss and the New York Giants win the Super Bowl!

We hope to see each of you and continue to tell you stories of our time in China, as well as continuing to keep you involved in what is going on in our lives. Thank you so much, for your prayers and thoughts while we were in the Far East. We felt your prayers and your encouragement helped sustained us during our time there. We learned so much about God's faithfulness and the amazing things He is doing around the world. We love you and we'll see you soon.

In Christ,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

P.S. having problems posting pictures, will get more up ASAP!

Goodbye Nanning---Our Last Blog From China!

Hello Friends and Family,

Well, this is it. Our last blog from Nanning, China. We really can't believe how fast it has come upon us for us to head to Thailand and then back to the states. These last few weeks have been quite the blur, testing students, buying last minute souvenirs, visiting all of our favorite spots and, most importantly, and most difficult, saying goodbye to all of our students and dear friends here in Nanning. We have tried to make the most of each day, hanging out with friends, going to our favorite restaurants, etc. but time seems to be running out. Tomorrow is our last final at the college and then the afternoon and evening will be spent with some of our dearest friends here that we have made in such a short time. Friday morning we head to the airport for a noon flight from Nanning to Shenzhen, a ten hour layover in Shenzhen, then a 11:30 PM flight from Shenzhen to Bangkok, Thailand. We are going to stay in a hotel near the Bangkok airport on Friday night because Saturday morning a car is picking us up and driving us the remaining leg of our trip, a 3 hour drive south to Hua Hin and the Dolphin Bay Resort. If you want to see where we'll be staying in Thailand for six days, you can check out; www.dolphinbayresort.com.

We're pretty confused emotionally. We are wrapping up here and leaving a place that we can definitely call another home. It is very hard to leave friends that we have known for such a short time, yet feel so close to. At the same time, we are very excited for a brief rest in Thailand before getting to come home and have a wonderful reunion with all of you, our family and friends. We are busily packing up and cleaning up our apartment as we speak, trying to fit all of our stuff, as well as souvenir and gifts, into our suitcases. Please pray earnestly that we will not be charged too much for overweight baggage, we are a little nervous about that!

We arrive back in Portland, Oregon on the morning of January 25th. After a week in Sandy with the family, we are going to be heading back to Salem for at least a month. Ryan is going to work as the sergeant-at-arms again at the state capital for their month long legislative session and Kealy is hoping to jump right into substitute teaching. After that the road is a bit unclear. Please pray that God would give us guidance on where He wants us to serve Him next.

So this is it, signing off from China. A day we thought would never come has come faster than we wanted to. God has been so faithful to us through our adventure here and we will be honored to share more about our time here and more pictures with you when we return back to America. Please know that our adventures together and this blog does not leave with our exodus from China. We have had such a good response from people enjoying the blog that we will continue to keep you updated on the adventures God is blessing us with. We will also find a way to get a blog posted while we are in Thailand and let you know how our 'second honeymoon' is going! Thank you for listening, praying and being so active in our experience here in China. Knowing you have been praying and thinking of us has been so very important to us during those tougher times. We can't wait to see each of you and give you a great hug. Talk to you soon.

With all of our love and strength,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Happy New Year--A Busy Year so Far

Hello Friends and Family,

We apologize for the expansive passage of time between previous informational expulsions. We have been very busy hanging out with friends and trying to squeeze in every last minute of China that we can. We have also been busy relaxing! We haven't taught any classes for the last two weeks, which has been a little weird, but a good chance to reflect, rest, spend time with friends and prepare for the next adventure. We are slowly packing, trying to figure out how we are going to bring all of your gifts home and starting to get very excited for our five days in Thaiand as well. We celebrated New Year's eve with some of our friends and went to the 'Brazilian Barbecue', a buffett type restaurant where they brought different kinds of meat to your table, pork, steak, crab wrapped in bacon, so it was quite the treat and fun to spend time with friends ringing in the New Year. Most schools and businesses were closed for the two day holiday, but the real celebration in China takes place in February during the Chinese New Year which we will unfortunately miss. This past Wednesday we were able to do someting we have wanted to do since we arrived in Nanning...go to the zoo! The zoo in Nanning was a lot of fun and interesting to see the types of animals they have here. We even saw a dolphin show and an elephant and monkey show. The highlight of the show was the bears and monkeys that came racing out on their ten speed bikes zooming around the arena in circles! Seeing the elephants made us excited to ride them when we are in Thailand.

Beautiful purple flowers blooming in January!

anothe view of the park

After a few more days of relaxing and hanging with friends, enjoying doing nothing, we also visited the Green Mountain Park here in Nanning. It was a huge park full of open fields, forests, temples and other things. We didn't have time to see everything, but we enjoyed throwing the football and frisbee around with friends and then taking a minibus ride, that felt like a rollercoaster ride, around the park. We plan to go back and maybe even eat at the restaurant in the park. That's pretty much been our week. We don't really know where all the time went, but we have been spending a lot of time doing nothing, we watched the whole first season of 'Heroes' in three days and even bought a wii (nintendo game system) and have been playing that together. We are counting down the days until we get to see each of you and are excited to tell you more about the friends and adventures we have had here in China. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy

Our Last English Corner, Holiday Break, and "the Repairman was very SICK!"

What a Day Friends and Family,

Last night was our final English corner at the college with some games and laughter. Before students showed up, the foreign Engish teachers were talking about the upcoming week and what days we thought we had off for the New Year Holiday. We all had different information about the days off. Ryan and I were told that we had Monday and Tuesday off but we needed to teach on Saturday to make up for Monday classes. They do this so that they have the days off consecutively together even if that means teaching during the weekend. But then they asked us to switch our afternoon class to Friday so that we could attend a English corner at the Middle school on Saturday. We said okay but then the college called back saying that we don't have to make up our classes on Saturday at all. Great! But the next day we talked she told us that we did not have to teach at all next week so that the students can study for the final tests. Okay, then! Then she said that the English corner at the Middle school was canceled. So that means that we don't have anything for a week in a half and we only have to give our finals the last week in a half that we are here. A week ago we didn't even know that we had Monday and Tuesday off but now we have a week in a half off. We're glad to have the time off to enjoy relaxing and hanging out with friends. Since we didn't know that we had this time off some of our students don't know what groups they are in for their final so somehow we need to contact those classes. Before the finals, we hope to take some pictures of each of our classes as a memory of each class. I'm really going to miss my students and the fun times we have had together in growing and sharing special qualities we have to offer. My students have been so wonderful to Ryan and I. I hope that they know how much they mean to me. I told one student that we will not return next term and she teared up. I really hope that we can stay in contact but a lot of my students don't have email, they don't have as much resources to computers as we do. My students have impacted my life and I cherish the times we had together.


--Kealy with one of her students and Elaine, a teacher from the Phillipines--


--Elaine, Kealy, Ryan and Appiah, a teacher from Ghana--


--Kealy with more students--


--Kealy and Appiah doing Kung Fu!--

Today we hung out with some true friends that we care about very much. We enjoyed bowling together on the sixth forth of a building in downtown Nanning. They even had shoes that fit Ryan and the other guys. We had a great time, it felt like bowling in the states. It's truly amazing the people God brings into our lives and the connections that can be made so quickly and unconditionally. The families we have come to know and love will always be close to our hearts and the times we have shared. We truly feel loved and accepted for who we are by our wonderful friends here in China. Later, we went to a Pizza Buffet that was greatly enjoyed and it even had free drink refills, which is extremely rare in China.


--Ryan staying warm in front of our new space heater--

Before we left for todays outing we had an experience here at home with our toilet. Our Western toilet was placed on top of the Eastern toilet leaving a small hole for our shower water to drain into. One of us flushed the toilet today and had a great surpise when our toilet backfired and stuff came flying out of the small hole from underneath our toilet, filling upour bathroom floor. We thought since it was coming from the Eastern part of the toilet maybe it was clogged so we descided to flush the Eastern part of the toilet but that only filled up the Western toilet with the unspeakabe. Let's just say it was hard to eat our next meal. So we called our landlord and they said they would fix it while we were out. When we got hope we found a note in the door expressing their concerns, the note said, "The toilet is ok now. But it was really very dirty this time. so much so that the repairman felt very sick. They want to give you some advice in case it happens again." And then they listed four suggestions on how to prevent toilet cloggage. We laughed really hard for a long time and are still chuckling as we write this. We feel really bad for the repair guy but the sewer system is a little different then what we are used too. Why would stuff come flying out of a hole in the ground when you flush? What a day in China. We are so glad that they came and fixed it.

What will tomorrow bring? We will keep you posted!

Love,
Kealy and Ryan

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year--ETA January 25th

Hello Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! We hope that your last few days have been filled with love and joy as you celebrate together. We have missed being near you during the holidays. We had a wonderful time here with our friends, relaxing together and enjoying the peace and joy of Christmas. We also had some wonderful and amazing food and our now rested with belly's full. We are stocked up on candy as well for rest of our stay here in China. Speaking of our stay here in China, we have purchased plane tickets back to Oregon and will be arriving home at 7 AM on the morning of January 25th. We are excited to be home and see all of you but we are also trying to take the most of the time we have left we so many wonderful friends here and students as well. We have only a week and a half left of regular classes and then two weeks of testing and then we will be off to the Dolphin Bay Resort in Hua Hin, Thailand for five days of relaxation and rest before returning home. We hope to ride elephants, ride moped, kayak and walk on the beach during our stay at the resort on the beach. It has been getting colder here so we are looking forward to the tropics of Thailand, but we also bought a space heater here and have been sitting next to it the last few days, watching movies we received for Christmas, as well as a video of the Wolves and my talented brother Mark, playing football, which has been a great treat. We will keep you posted as we continue to prepare for 're-entry' and can't wait to see all of you soon. Here are some pictures from our holidays here in Nanning.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson


Kealy with the staff of the salon where we go to get our hair washed (about twice a week)

Kealy with some of the wonderful gifts we received on Christmas from home and from ME!

One of our new best friends here in Nanning

Kealy and I with cameras ready on Christmas morning

Merry Christmas Day One--2 feasts in 2 hours and 'I want to sit next to the pretty girl'

Hello Friends and Family,

We are trying our best to enjoy the Christmas holidays here away from you and creating new/different experiences while we are here. So Christmas will be in a three day installment for us while we are here. After a wonderful time with friends earlier today and a great Sunday afternoon nap, we got dressed up and went to the nicest restaurant with the best food around...Pizza Hut!!! Kealy wore a beautiful skirt and I put on a tie and suitcoat for the first time since arriving in China. We went to Pizza Hut and had a great feast with Pizza, soup, dessert and many other great foods fit for a king. We had a great time talking and sharing about Christmas' in the past and enjoyed each others company.

After arriving home from our delicious feast we got a call from our friends here at the middle school and they invited us to a christmas dinner they were having at one of the local coffee shops. We decided to go and wound up having another incredible feast. They barbecued corn, beef, chicken and had popcorn and icecream too. We had fun talking with many of their friends who are Chinese nationals. We talked about Christmas and they shared some Chinese words with us while we shared some more English words with them. They are enamored with Kealy's smile and told her tonight they she looks like, 'the beautiful women we see in the movies!' One of them named YaYa sat down next to Kealy and said 'I want to sit next to the pretty girl!'

Ryan enjoying one of our four meals of the day. Normally we don't eat this much:0)


Its been a busy and wonderful last week with lots of chances to spend time with friends and the next two days while be just as wonderful as we continue to celebrate Christmas here with our 'adopted' family. Santa Claus arrives for Kealy and I tonight and tomorrow morning we are going to open our Christmas gifts from family and each other. We hope the anticipation and excitement of Christmas is reaching your hearts as well. After our second feast it was cold walking home so we decided to skip the rest of the way. It was fun, but we forgot we were extremely full and hadn't exercised in four months!!! Have a great day...talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson

Hibernation and the joy of teaching

Hello Friends and Family,

We've had a lot of fun this week playing Christmas games with our students, giving away lollipops and sharing the Christmas story. As you can tell from Kealy's jacket over her pajamas, the weather is getting colder here and we are finding ourselves more apt to be covered in blankets indoors watching West Wing than out and about doing too much. Although sometimes our concrete walls and tile floors are not great insulators and tonight it is actually warmer outside than in. We have been spending time with other friends in their warm apartments this week and they are sharing their Christmas goodies with us...peanut butter fudge, home made cookies with real chocolate chips and we shared our almond roca stash with them as well.

This evening we had our weekly English corner at the college and I (Ryan) had a nice time talking with some of my students and even got to expand on the Christmas story with some of them, which was really fun. While I was talking with my students I saw about six students walk up to Kealy and pull her out of the group she was in and they took her to the corner where they handed her a gift bag of Christmas presents from one of her classes. The bag was full of gifts and when we arrived home Kealy opened the bag. Inside was a Santa Snoopy that was really cute, a Santa and House snow globe, two suckers, Chinese friendship knots and a notebook. Inside the notebook, each student in her class had written a special note to Kealy, wishing her Merry Christmas, gluing pictures to their note, and telling her how beautiful her smile is and what a great teacher she is. The last note expressed the hope that we could share the notebook with people in America as well. It was a wonderful gift that has to be one of the best parts of teaching and a meaningful gift, when students write you to show their appreciation.

We have one class left each tomorrow and then it is a four day Christmas Vacation!!! The college gave us Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off without penalty and we are celebrating Christmas over the next four days with the college, each other and some of our wonderful friends here in Nanning who have adopted us for this Christmas away from you. We will keep you posted on our celebration festivities and hope that you are continuing to prepare your heart to celebrate Christmas, too. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,
Ryan and Kealy Thorson