Chinese New Year

Happy New Year to all of you who missed it last Saturday... at least it would have been if you went by the lunar calendar, as the Chinese do. One of their main forms of celebration is to set off fireworks...they LOVE those things. You heard them going on and off throughout New Year's Eve day and then pretty constantly from about 8pm - 1am, with the climax at midnight of course. Then they started up again around 7 am or so and went all day. I've never heard anything like it! My dad told me that they think it scares away evil spirits and I've heard several other people say the same thing since then. Most businesses close for 3 days at least...some have been closed for weeks though since there are not any students here. It was cool being here to experience it and the kitchen staff graciously cooked us a really nice meal too!

Crash!

I realize this is a strange picture to post. If you look closely, you'll notice a difference between the doors. You can see through the left door where a glass pane used to be and the right door is still complete. The reason the lefthand door is missing its glass is the result of my hands going through it! Since I am obviously able to type this, you can see I was mercifully protected from much harm. Let me explain what happened...10 of us were playing capture the flag in Peter Hall on floors 2-5. On the end of every hall there are doors just like this one and in my rush to get through the doors into the safety zone, I pushed through the window...sending glass flying down the stairs all the way from the 4th floor to the first. It was just one of those things that happened so quickly and could have been so much worse if not for grace. I escaped with a few cuts to the hands and one on the head, none of them very deep and thankfully no one else was hurt at all. My friends Rebecca and Kim helped me clean and bandage my cuts and then a lot of people helped sweep up all the glass. So remember, glass does not have much give to it :-)

Mystery Meat??

QUESTION: Suppose I were to eat dog. Would this anger you and cause you to think less of me as a human being? If your answer is YES, please disregard the question and go on to the next blog entry. If NO, then you can continue reading. In Yangshuo, not only do you get incredible scenery, but also some new foods. After reading that this restaurant served dog, Brent, Brian and I had to try it. Some of the girls did not approve, so they chose not to eat with us that night...but its not like it was our main meal, we ate supper and then ate it. It was actually not bad. The only problem was that there wasn't actually much meat there - lots of bones and skin and yes...paws. I'll refrain from showing those pictures...but if you want to see them, just let me know. Sorry to all you dog lovers, but don't hold it against me. After all, its only weird because we don't eat it, not because they do :-)

Yangshuo

There were a lot of cool places that we saw on our trip throughout China and Thailand. But I think in everyone's mind, Yangshuo was the most beautiful and cool place we went...I know it was mine! We rode bikes for 3 days to different places, climbed several peaks and were mostly in awe of the beauty around us and of the ONE that made it all. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers...what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4)