[Picture 1: Stan, Alysia, Chinese friend who's house I stayed at. Picture 2: Stan, Hanna]
I haven't posted in a while, I know. The internet was down, then travel, then things got busy. But I'm back :) Things have picked up. I'm teaching some more English classes, doing three times as much orphanage work, going to the clinic more, and I've added a couple guitar students. This just means less time for studying Mandarin. Last week was good. I went to Yu Ci (a city about 1 hour south of Yangqu and 10 times its size). It mostly consisted of shadowing doctors and sitting in on public health lectures given by Evergreen. I stayed with a Chinese family the whole time, which forced me to use my shaky Mandarin. They had three turtles, a bird (who woke up early) and a garden right outside their apartment. They were poor and extremely generous. Very faithful Christians. I liked riding my bike alone late at night -- it was a neat city to explore.
I have some new friends, Alysia and Hanna. They'll be with Evergreen for six weeks. Both are from Canada, but their families are originally from China and Hong Kong. Since we're doing a lot of the same stuff, we see each other a lot and they've been fun to get to know.
