Most of you are familiar with the couple in this picture. We have been friends with them from practically the first day we arrived here in Karamay and we found out they got pregnant last January. After a very good nine months and a birth without complications they became proud parents of a healthy son last September. I think we’ve told this story to most of you and even shown a few pictures so because of that we would like to share some news and ask for …

Hello everybody! We are coming to the close of a very fun, relaxing weekend and just wanted to share a few pictures with you before we started another week of school. As all of you are aware, Halloween is around the corner and no such holiday exists here in China. The closest thing we have here is the Mid-Autumn Festival which is celebrated at the end of September. The holidays have their similarities, but the differences are funny. In America we eat sweets and pumpkin (kind …

Well, we know we’ve been here for a few weeks now – completely over our jet-lag by the way – but we want to finish our “Travel-to-China” stories before we get into everything else over here. So quickly, we were delayed in our first flight to get to San Fransisco but thankfully weren’t too late to catch the connecting flight to Shanghai. The one good thing that came out of having to wait an extra hour (half-asleep, of course) was that the pilot was nice enough to allow …

Howdy Ya’ll! It has been quite an adventurous last month and a half that we have had, both the ups and downs of it. Most of you probably know that we spent all of our time in August in the Dallas area because most of you who are reading this actually saw us while we were there! It was a blessing to get to see you all, whether it was frequent visits or just a dinner out. Thank you for the time that you took out …

Well everyone…this is it. The last time we intend to post a blog before we leave for the beautiful country of America on Monday! It’s been 11 months since we arrived and we are ready to see our families! Our summer program ended (thankfully!) on Friday at about 11:30am and we left in a car for the airport only one hour later. We were ready to go! It was a gruesome day of traveling, but we are finally here in Shanghai and enjoying just the two full days we have …

Most of what happens in our lives here in China revolves around two things – the school and all those associated with the school, whether Chinese or American. This has its good and bad sides – the good being that there are quite a few people who speak (or at least attempt to speak) English to us and the bad, at least for me, is that all those people are made up of the female race. This has been great for Tiff, who towards the end of this …

A baby shower in China?  For most people here, that is a new phenomenon so if you’re planning on throwing a party, realize that it might be the first they’ve one they’ve ever been to.  Always one to venture into the world of the new and unknown, my wife wanted to throw a baby shower for all our friends that are pregnant this year, which turns out to be five. Because this year is the year of the pig, a very lucky animal in the eyes of most Chinese, …

Hello everybody! We hope that all of you are doing well and that the weather has been good this summer (especially you in Texas who we read are getting a lot of rain and floods!). We have finally finished our first year of school and have enjoyed this time of “relaxation” for a week or so. I put that in quotations because although we haven’t worked, we have been anything but relaxed.

Last week a couple from Louisiana that worked at our school last year visited for a few days. It …

We’re closing in on our eighth month here in China and we celebrated our very first “American Day” last Sunday. If you happened to miss this grand holiday, then I send you a belated Happy American Day salutation! This holiday was actually the idea of our friends, the Edminsons, but we gladly stole and ran with it. We did everything American last Sunday – absolutely no Chinese. We had a HUGE brunch with scrambled eggs, pancakes, french toast, home-made syrup, fruit, hashed browns, and biscuits. …

Happy Easter everyone! Easter here in China is not nearly the same as in the U.S., but we can imagine what most of you are doing at this exact moment. A teacher of mine asked me last week what we do for Easter in America and I informed her that just like during Christmas Americans celebrate two different stories on Easter – that of the gospel story and that of the fluffy white bunny. Even though they have absolutely nothing to do with each other we somehow …