To Mongolia and back again..

We made it back! After 38 hours of travel on a train and a bus, through the Gobi and border control, through the rain and the heat and even a flat tire... we are back and in fine shape. This year's Mongolia trip was great... fully challenging in every way, but well worth every bit. We spent the first week in the great outdoors, summiting the highest mountain in the area during a six day backpacking trip with 27 campers all together. We spent the second week in Ulaanbaatar working with the Amoglan Bible Church helping with local community building projects rain or shine. So much more happened, but we are glad to be back to tell the story. Let me know if you want a full update letter:)

my house is exploding

we leave for mongolia in a week. and my house is exploding. these two things are very much connected, as my kitchen and guest room have become base camp, trip kitchen, gear locker, program design and storage for gear all in one. last saturday dave and i spent hours at the grocery store (note to self, never go to a chinese grocery on a saturday afternoon if you don't want to push through crowds of people in a hot smelly place and wait in lines for near 45 minutes...) but, the result is plenty of drink mix, oats, nuts, dried mushrooms and other veggies, 150 soy preserved hard boiled eggs, peanut butter and many many other things. today i spent the good part of the morning baking a honeyrock recipe called hard tack. it called for 25+ cups of flour, and over 5 lbs of honey with some other ingredients. my kitchen absolutely exploded but the result is that hopefully our 26 wilderness trail hikers will be well nourished during the lunch hour. not to mention that dave and i (along with kim and moyer's help) carried about a full suitcase worth of textured vegetable protein and freeze dried beans back from the states last month. we should be gaining weight on this trip!! :) i just hope the koreans and mongolians will like the cuisine. the next trick will be packing it all in our backpacks and trying to get through the airport 20 kg/person limit! yes, never a dull moment...

so, needless to say, this journey will require all the verticle thoughts we can get!!

on that same mention, we went to the cancer hospital yesterday to visit our ayi. what began as the flu has become clear that it is definitely not the flu and much more serious. please lift her up, we are all very concerned, and things aren't looking good. she's been my ayi since i first moved here in 2001, and has been a wonderful housekeeper, cook and basically a mom to me. please ask for healing in many ways in her life.

Haircut Mania!

So Dave had this idea to raise money for the earthquake relief and summer trips, and got a bunch of teachers in on it. The goal, a haircut war. The students all drew weird hairstyles on pictures of bald teachers, and then bid for the one who would get sheared. Brandon was the lucky winner... and I got the privilage of being the shearer...

Spring Trip

Dave and I just returned from a packed 9 day trip to Southwest China with the 33 9th graders at TIS. We packed more into those 9 days in travel, sightseeing, little sleep, trains, planes and busses than I have done in a long long while.

We began in Kunming, visiting a local minority village one day and helping with a orphanage construction project the next, and finally, I put together a silly scavenger hunt around the city and we spent 7 hours seeing and doing more in the city than most kids have done in years of living in China!

Then, we took a night train to Dali and then a bus to Lijiang where we lived with a local family in a village and had a taste of village life... Then another bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge which is gorge-ous and hiked a few days through the wilderness, staying at hostels along the way. We finally ended up in the old city of Lijiang which is really cool, full of reconstructed shops, canals, cafes' and quaint corners everywhere with mountains in the background. I thought during out entire trip among the amazing views, fresh air, blue sky clouds, small towns and really good food that I could see myself staying there a lot longer. If you ever come to China... visit Yunnan!!

:)

Rumbles, Tumbles and Quakes

Just an update everyone, we are fine here in TJ and haven't felt the effects of the quake. There was an earthquake in southwest China yesterday afternoon. This blurb from International SOS:

At least 3,000 people have been killed and approximately 10,000 injured in the Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County in Sichuan, believed to be the worst affected area. Authorities stated that 80% of the buildings in the county had collapsed or were damaged from the earthquake. At least 50 bodies were recovered from a collapsed school building in Juayuan Township, Dujiangyan city, while several hundred students remain trapped in the debris. Approximately 50 people were killed in Chongqing municipality. In Shifang city, two chemical plants collapsed, burying several hundred workers and releasing 80 tonnes of ammonia into the environment, which forced the evacuation of 6,000 nearby residents. Provincial authorities declared that several buildings in the Aba autonomous prefecture were damaged. Landslides and repeated tremors damaged several mountain roads in the region, forcing the closure of roads to Wenchuan, Lixian and Maoxian.

However, we didn't feel the tremors here in TJ. The only thing that is shaking the ground here are the huge amounts of construction equipment that change the landscape here daily. One day you wake up to a road, the next day it's completely gone, the next day a highway is in its place. The same thing is happening with buildings. A 25 story 5 star hotel went up seemingly over night next door to our school. This is the just a minute detail of what is happening all over China!

We covet your thoughts as we embark on a small week long adventure this Friday to Yunnan province with our 9th grade class. It should be lots of fun! We hope that there will be no earthquakes!!!!

Ayi come back!

Last night 3 households in our community met with our Ayi-- she has been very sick the last three weeks and unable to work. And she looks it. Apparrently she's been on a liquid diet, and has no energy. Please think of her and her family as I know that her job is an important part of thier income, and medical bills can be really crippling here. Ayi explained to us that she has been thinking of us all the time, and worried about who would wash our clothes and our dishes... and well she should worry!

Not that I'm a poor housekeeper... granted I hate dishes... but keeping up with the sheer amount of dust around here is a real chore. And not having a dryer makes washing clothes and hanging them in the same little porch that houses our washing machine, kitchen counter and oven is always a trick. Plus, I don't match socks very well. And the dust in the corners piles about 6 inches without a bi-weekly sweeping.

So, with new resolve, and a day home, I decided to clean. I was up at 3:30 am, so I knew I had plenty of time. Around 5 I woke up my grumpy husband and convinced him to run with me. When we got back, Dave was off to school at 7, and I began my cleaning frenzy. First, I decided to dust.. it became a catastrophy. While pulling a rug out from under my dresser in order to sweep, the big wooden mirror that sits on my dresser and leans against the wall came crashing .. yes CRASHING down on my head. It shattered against the backside of my head, luckily first hitting the ponytail which deflected glass from entering my brain. I was numb for a moment, and promptly called Dave with the phone that was in my reach and burst into tears. Not a good way to start my day as an Ayi. I hardly knew how to clean my own house, and any attempt ended in my standing in the midst of a glass explosion. Scary.

Well, I only suffered one deep wound in my leg while trying to put the glass in a bag, so that's not bad. And I finished sweeping and mopping the house. I also made cookies! As a final hurrah, I decided to clean under the sink....it kind of smelled and I wondered what was under there. Another catastrophy....the floorboards and wooden veneer have become rotten because the usless sink seal leaks water onto the floor. I peeled back some of the veneer and voila--- lots of weavels and bugs crawling everywhere! Upon closer inspection, I found droppings all over the floor and on the floor of the neighboring cupboard. YUCK! So, I called the handiman and explained in Chinese what was wrong... my conversation went something like "there's weird things in my kitchen and it's wet under the counter" (not knowing how to explain "rot" and "bugs".. but it got the message across. Things seem to be on the way to being fixed. The cookies are done and Dave is home. And I miss my Ayi!

Indian Wedding Week

We are back! We had a very fun week with Dave's family, Sangeeta's family, and in Toronto. Jetlag has been a killer for me, it's noon here and I've been up since 3 am. Oh well, at least today I can be home. So, back to the wedding. First, we spent a fun 2 days in downtown Toronto which is a very cool city. Two of my students are going there next year and I think they will love it.


I feel like I stepped into a Bollywood movie, and I got to be an Indian princess for a couple of days. The Kumar family is an amazing group of people, we thoroughly enjoyed joining them in a 3 day celebration of Derek and Sangeeta's marriage. The night before the wedding was a traditional ceremony of gift giving and dancing... and food, and more dancing and more food. They certainly know how to dance! I joined all the other women to get henna on my hands as well.

The wedding itself was at a really cool art museum in the middle of the woods, which featured the "Group of Seven" (who happen to be some of my favorite artists)- so it was neat to walk around the gallery and enjoy the art as well as the wedding. It rained during the wedding, so the outdoor event was under a tent, but Derek and Sangeeta had a very cool Indian/fusion ceremony. The reception was in the gallery, a big rustic structure with plenty of character. Dave and I both got to dress up Indian style, which was fun.