Back in the Swing of Things

Well, we know we've been here for a few weeks now - completely over our jet-lag by the way - but we want to finish our "Travel-to-China" stories before we get into everything else over here. So quickly, we were delayed in our first flight to get to San Fransisco but thankfully weren't too late to catch the connecting flight to Shanghai. The one good thing that came out of having to wait an extra hour (half-asleep, of course) was that the pilot was nice enough to allow people in the cockpit to answer questions while we were waiting. Two by two we squeezed into the cockpit and he allowed us to sit in the pilot's and co-pilot's chair. Here is a picture of Tiff at the helm of this multi-million dollar piece of metal - now there's the stuff nightmares are made of! Two things of interest that we learned: 1) an airplane is required to land itself once every 30 days - with passengers! - as a part of systems checks and 2) I finally found out where the "Fasten Seat Belt" switch is. It's got to be probably one of the most used switches on a commercial aircraft.

The next surprise for us came at the baggage carousel in Shanghai, when we found that not only had some airport security official decided that our bag looked suspicious enough to rummage through, but he (or she) had such a difficult time closing it back up that he just thought it would be best to use duct tape. Brilliant. Of course there's not a chance in the world he could have re-packed that bag after Josh - that would be like trying to repack an IKEA box after assembling and disassembling the furniture! At first we were amazed that the Chinese would not only look through our bag but even think of using duct tape to close it (the normal Chinese method is to use rope or a tie), but at second glance we found out that it was none other than our good friends at the San Fransisco International Airport. Yep, our fellow countrymen don't have enough faith in us - notice they didn't check the bag for our flight within the States, those sly detectives were worried about the trans-Pacific flight. Go figure.

The biggest news of this past month has been the birth of Heidi and Sam's baby! Tiff will have to go into more details there, but it was very nice to be able to be there for our friends and enjoy the excitement that is their one and only son. Mom and baby are thankfully doing well and are both healthy. We have two more pregnant teacher friends who should be giving birth before the new year begins which just goes to show how seriously Chinese people are about this "lucky year". This being the year of the pig, all our friends decided it was the right time to have a baby. How many births last school year? None. This year? There will be four in all before the year's end. On a more serious note, however, it is interesting to witness that although technically this is an atheistic society, it's really just a people who have replaced theism with the term "luck". Everything is either lucky and therefore acted upon, or unlucky and shunned. More on that possibly at a later time.

This year has been a very exciting semester for us, especially when we compare it to this point in our lives last year. Now that we know what we're doing, how our days usually run, and the people that we are working with, we are finding time to do the things we want. Both of us are engaged in books that are challenging us as well as entertaining us - which has been wonderful. Many times I see or hear people say they don't enjoy reading or don't want to find the time to read and I can't help but be saddened. I'm not judging anybody's schedule, for I know there will come a time when my life will be too busy to read as I am reading right now, but I don't think I will be able to stop reading. And we envy most all of you who read this because at a moment's notice you can drive down the street to pick up a book you heard about or suddenly decided you wanted to read. Ever thought about that? We can get any music we want at the click of a mouse. We can watch any movie over the internet now on demand. But if, while here living in China, we decide that we want to read something by C.S. Lewis, Bonhoeffer, Dickensen, Grisham, Elliot, etc., we have to fly - at the least - thousands of miles to get it. It's just not fair!

And now to finish this post we would like to ask for your constant "thoughts" while we are here. Our minds being free of first year worries, this year we have been able to focus on relationships - Josh and the young college freshmen with whom he plays basketball and Tiffany and the Chinese teachers as well as a very nice restaurant waitress we met. Heidi and Sam, friends in Dushanzi, the Edminsons - the list goes on. We'll try to keep you updated. That's all for now - we hope the beginning of your autumn season is beautiful and not nearly as cold as ours!