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Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We hope that all of you were able to enjoy the holiday with family – eating turkey, watching football, taking a nap, etc., etc.. This year we actually celebrated Thanksgiving on a Wednesday night together with the Edminsons and our new friend Elane, another foreign teacher from another city who can be seen on the right. Tiff did pretty much the most amazing job preparing for this meal which including a fruit salad, a cabbage salad, stuffing, and – catch this – homemade bread rolls! They were beyond delicious. Of all places for her to master the art of baking, she doing it here in China where you can’t even buy baking powder or soda. I did my manly duty of picking out what has now been named “Ferdinand II”, our chicken, and brought him very much against his will to the butcher. A good friend of mine made fun of me for the fact that I don’t personally kill the chicken, which is true. Believe it or not, though, I would actually have no problem killing the chicken – but trying to pluck all the feathers? That’s not something I would look forward to, hence a trip to the butcher. Take in a live chicken and 5 minutes later I have a poultry starring at me through a plastic bag.

On Thursday we made our way down to Urumqi, the capital city to enjoy a little time off from work and to do some shopping. Our first stop was to Pizza Hut, somewhat of a tradition I believe. It’s really not our favorite spot to eat and there’s a reason we never went there when we lived in America, but since it’s the only American thing here we put up with the decent pizza and outrageous prices. On our list of things to do was to buy some more TV shows, stock up on cheese, and maybe get a new sweater or two for Tiff. We enjoyed our time together and accomplished everything we had set to do, and when it was all said and done we were ready to get back to our clean home. Yes, its a shame to say that the picture you see here is not a pretty sunset providing the background for the Urumqi skyline but rather a display of the plentiful pollution that envelopes this city. Tiff’s lungs are still recovering.

Ok, so that should pretty much catch you up on our day-to-day. These last few weeks have been very exciting for us due to a few new friends that we’ve met and events on our schedule. I think we’re finally beginning to get a glimpse of the small way in which we may be used by Him here in China and we can’t wait for things to unfold. Along with this excitement comes an added level of caution (hence the ambiguity of this paragraph) and it is difficult trying to learn what we can/can’t do or say. For the most part, however, we are finding ourselves in a position where instead of asking what we can do (which is what we’ve been doing for the past year) we are now asking when and how we can accomplish our different ideas.

When you get a chance, think about these things for us. During this time last year we were experiencing quite a bit of gloominess being away from family for the holidays, and although it’s never an ideal way to celebrate our Thanksgiving, now more than ever we have plenty of things to be thankful for. Another teaching partner went into labor today – our third friend having a baby if you’re counting – and we look forward to celebrating their new child very soon. This Spring holiday will soon arrive along with a visit from the Summers that we are looking forward to. Time is flying over here but we still remain thankful for the place we have been put and the people with whom we have been surrounded…we hope the same is also true for you.