Our Trip to Karamay

It has been three weeks since we've had any decent contact with anybody over in the US, and there is so much we want to catch you up on! So let's begin with our trip to get here to Karamay. We left Dallas quite early in the morning on Thursday and thus embarked on our long journey of sitting. It was a four hour trip to San Francisco (no, we couldn't see the bridge from the plane) and then a good 12 hour flight from SFO to Beijing. We were met there by the president of our school and his son and took two taxis - that's right, two taxis because one couldn't fit all our luggage! - to the hotel. That was Friday, and we slept 11 hours straight that night. Saturday we travelled around Beijing a bit, making a stop at Tienamen Square and touring The Forbidden City. The picture is of us in Tienamen Square in front of the Heavenly Gate with Chairman Mao's large portrate right above Tiff's head. It was a hot day, and we were quite tired but still enjoyed the time. We had to catch a plane that afternoon to Urumqi, the capital of the province where we are now living (Xingjang) and stayed the night in another hotel. FINALLY at about 2pm on Sunday afternoon we arrived at our apartment. We'll try to quickly explain the apartment, but won't provide pictures until hey are done renovating it. It is a seven-room apartment - a living room, dining room, 2 bedrooms, a computer room, one bathroom, and a kitchen. It is a reasonable size for the two of us and comes all furnished. Beds here, whether you are at a nice hotel or at the apartment, are very hard; it has taken us these three weeks to get used to it. We will leave you with one last picture before our next post. Let us first explain that on the trip from Urumqi to Karamay, the entire four hours of it, we could see a few mountains off in the distant west but everywhere else there was nothing but flat desert. Now I realize that Texas is flat, but this is FLAT. There is no appropriate description by which we can express how the mountains to our west rose out of complete flatness. Then, almost out of nowhere, we saw a small city. The picture we took was a bit zoomed from the car because if it were too far out you wouldn't be able to see the city of Karamay. To the west are some "hills". By Texas standards they are mountains, but let's not get carried away. You can take a taxi or bus to any other edge of the city and see desert for miles. That's how separated we are. Thankfully we have the internet and will continue to try our best to convey life in this secluded, yet lovely city in the middle of the eastern world!