our holiday 'hike'

Why is 2010 going by so quickly?! We can hardly believe it is already March, but as we look back at the first few months of the year, I guess we have been busy. We talked about Chinese New Year in our last newsletter, and how it was a sweet little re-start of the year. We had a pretty cool time celebrating New Year’s Eve with some of our friends, watching fireworks light up the sky all over town from the 27th floor. The fireworks continued every night for the whole week, so it was loads of fun.

We also had a chance during the holiday to take a little hike with some of our friends. What we are learning is that we need to get more involved in the research and planning of these hikes, rather than letting all of our Chinese friends plan them. At first, we were supposed to go camping for a couple nights, but then it went down to one night, and eventually was reduced to an afternoon hike…which was really like an afternoon walk…in a park…with a restaurant...where we played mahjong and ping pong before and afterwards. So again, our dreams of really ‘getting out there’ turned into something so very different. It’s always a fun time, don’t get me wrong…just usually never what we imagined. Next hike, we will be the leaders and there will not be a restaurant for at least 25 miles around us.