Almost there!

Hey everyone. I'm down to my last week of teaching before our Spring Festival vacation begins. I haven't been this excited for a vacation in quite a while! The constant cold has been really frustrating for me. Those of you who know me, know that I HATE being cold, and it is usually somewhere in the 30-50 degree range everywhere I go, inside or out. It's hard to get motivated to do much of anything with the weather.

After this last week of teaching, we will have about 5 weeks off. Kirk, Daniel, and I will be traveling to southern Asia for about half that time for some warm weather. We're going to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand where the temperature is usually somewhere in the 80's. I can't wait.

Other than planning the trip, there's not much new going on. I'm still enjoying getting to know a lot of new friends and old friends even better. I don't really have any complaints other than the cold!

Last week, we foreign teachers played a basketball game against some Chinese teachers. We played full-court 5-on-5 with a scoreboard and everything. I was excited just to get to play a full-court game so I could get out and run. It was a lot of fun. We stormed out to a huge lead and were up by 20 at halftime. In the second half, the Chinese teachers made a big comeback and cut the lead to just a few points, but we hung on for the W. I think the final was 70-61. I thought we would play a shortened game, but I think we ended up playing a full 40 minutes!

Last weekend, we traveled to Huangshi again to celebrate Sally's (our Zhong Relations teammate) birthday. We did KTV yet again and then went back to her apartment for some American brownies that were awesome. It's always fun to get together with our whole team. It's a really fun group to hang out with.

We had a great surprise just a few days ago. We have a string of small restaurants about 100 yards from our apartment, where we usually eat because there is not really anything else close to us. As we walked there one night, we saw that a bakery had just opened! Finding good bread is not always easy over here, and it usually takes a 2-hour grocery store trip to get it. Our friends in Huangshi have a bakery right by their apartments, and Kirk and I were just talking how it would be nice to have one by us as well. And the next day, there it was! They have bread, cookies, and even some Western drinks there.

I think that's everything from here. I'm hoping to post at least one more update before we head out on our trip in early February. Hope you're all doing great!