State Fair?

It's State Fair time in Minnesota, and while you may have deep fried pancake wrapped, bacon rolled hotdogs, we have some specialties of our own here in China. We wanted to share some photos from a recent annual festival we went to in Dali, China. It's just like the MN State Fair...kind of.

can demons possess scooters?

When I got off my electric scooter and tried to engage the alarm, there was only silence. It had been "losing it's voice" steadily over the last week, but now the voice was gone. That was a little unsettling considering the fact that i have already had one scooter stolen here. As it turns out, the alarm was the least of my problems last Wednesday.

When i came out of the store and hopped on the now silent scooter, a strange and funny thing happened. To be honest, it's only funny now as i look back on it. The only way to describe it is to have you picture a shiny blue mechanical bull in a bustling public parking lot with a confused 30 something white male on top as dozens of slightly amused Chinese people stare on. Yeah, that about sums it up. I am only partially kidding when i say that my scooter became demon possessed. I jumped off and backed away looking around as we all do in situations like this, scanning for a friendly sympathetic face. Then, without warning, the unmanned scooter began to rock back and forth as if taunting me, daring me to have another go-round. I cautiously inched forward and snatched the key thereby solving the problem...or so i thought. Imagine my surprise as the unmanned and now keyless scooter gyrated wildly adding bewilderment to my embarrassment.

I tried for the next several minutes to ride the scooter home. I am sure now i know how my mom felt sitting in the chevy chevette the first time she tried to drive a stick shift. Sorry for ever laughing at that, mom. Finally, when all attempts at driving failed, i was reduced to the ride of shame sitting atop the electric scooter, flinging both feet backward and working way too hard for every inch. I must say, most days I love my scooter. Last Wednesday was not one of them.

Business Class...the rest of the story

With the taste of chocolate drizzled strawberry cheesecake lingering in our mouths, we reluctantly disembarked the plane and made our way to the luggage hall where we quickly discovered the downside to our upgrade. As the last of the bags trickled off of the belt we saw a few familiar faces...the other poor saps who took the bait in Minneapolis. That family didn’t get any of their bags either. We had wondered about this scenario at the decision point, but the lure of the fully automated reclining seats was much too strong.

Thankfully, we had already planned to spend two nights in Shanghai on our way home, so waiting another 24 hours for our bags to come wasn’t too much of a disappointment. The only real drag was having to don our trans-pacific flight clothes again the next morning and endure the 97 degree Shanghai heat as we traipsed around the city. By the end of the day when we finally received the call from the airport that our bags had arrived, we contemplated sending our clothes to pick them up as they were now able to walk on their own. You’d think we would know by now to pack some extra necessary items in our carry-ons.

In the end, all of our bags arrived full of clean clothes and deodorant and we were happy and content again dreaming of the next upgrade which we would take in a heartbeat...if it ever comes.

Business Class

For the first time ever, Jon and I were thrilled to enjoy traveling Business Class on our flights back to China. With an overbooked flight out of Minneapolis, Delta asked if we’d be willing to fly 2 hours later, and take a slightly different route to get over to Shanghai...in return they would upgrade our seats, and give us some vouchers for future travel. They hardly got the the full offer out before we both said an enthusiastic - Yes! I can’t even begin to tell you how giddy we felt when we boarded the plane through the ‘priority’ line, and turned left onto the plane instead of right. If you’ve ever flown on one of these big planes, you know what I’m talking about...always looking longingly up at those cushy seats with comforters, everyone having their pre-flight drinks, and having enough leg room that even Shaq could lay straight. And the flight attendants were actually sweet too - amazing! Needless to say, I slept like a baby, ate like a queen and even wished we had 10 more hours of flying to enjoy. I’m totally ruined...I’ll never be able to fly coach class without complaining again.

God Bless America

For those of you that didn’t know, we are currently in the US on a quick visit to see family & friends and raise more support for our next year in China. As you would guess, our time is flying by faster than we can comprehend. We’ve had some incredibly fun times with people already, and have just a couple weeks left of all this USA hamburger goodness before we head back for our second year to serve in China.

We’ve gotten a few slaps on the wrist for slacking on our blog recently, so we wanted to at least put something new up here while we are in the US. Here are a couple of family photos of all the fun we’ve been having!

Every day here reminds us of how beautiful this country is, and how much we love it. We love being near our families, friends and American food...but even still, wouldn’t change our lives in China for anything right now. We’re looking forward to the year ahead with great anticipation about what God’s going to do through us.

I live in...

My parents used to make up names for the cities around western Pennsylvania. I'm not sure whether it was just for fun or to show what they really thought about the places. Either way, Aliquippa became Ali-creep-a. Coraopolis, became Crappy-opolis. Leechburg became Leech-bed and on and on it went. Recently, while driving out of Kunming we saw a sign for a town that really fits on my parents' list without a lot of editing. If you ever complained about the name of your hometown, rest easy. It could be worse...

(for those of you who speak chinese a little liberty has to be taken, but who's checking...)

back in business

The outpouring of love and compassion you have all shown us regarding our coffee pot has been...quite funny, actually. We received loads of suggestions about what to do and three people even offered to send us new ones! For all those of you that shared our pain, today I have good news. We got the coffee pot fixed! We found a "fix it guy" next to our vegetable market. You can tell he is a "fix it guy" by the mountains of half torn apart blenders, tv's, radios and dvd players spilling out of his shop. I approached timidly because we haven't quite hit the crucial "my coffee pot is broken" lesson in our Chinese book. Turns out I had no need to worry as our communication was more than adequate and two days later i walked out of his shop with a working coffee pot that cost me a whopping 40RMB ($5.88).

On a side note: through all of this we borrowed a french press from a friend that actually worked a lot better than ours and i have been re-introduced to the joy of the press. It's a good option for those of you that care enough to try.