And we're off!

My family's been here for a week now!  I am sitting by myself at the HK airport.  Unfortunately, though we are all flying to Beijing, we have 3 separate airplanes!  My parents are scheduled to arrive in Beijing in 20 minutes, accroding to the website!  I am scheduled to leave in about 40 minutes, since my flight was delayed.  My brother is leaving around the same time as me. Even though it's craziness getting us there, we are excited to explore a new city!  I have never been there before, so it should be fun!  We are sad that our little brother (well, not so little..) can't be with us, but for me it's still fun to have my parents and older brother here!  I am excited for new experiences, as I've never been to Beijing before!

The pictures that are included here are from our time in Macau and Shenzhen.  I haven't taken many photos, but my parents have.  These are the ones that I have.

Just a note: my newsletter will be sent out a little late this month, as I will have limited Internet access until next week Wednesday!  I will also not be able to update this until next week.  Sorry for any inconvenience!

Past 2 days

Yesterday afternoon my parents and older brother arrived safely in Macau!  It was exciting to be able to meet them at the ferry terminal, and to show them my apartment and my neighborhood!  Last night I had to teach, so we came to the English center, and while I taught, they went out with a friend of mine to see Macau!  It was a good time.  Today, we started the day with a lunch buffet with some coworkers and friends, and were able to walk around some.  Right now, they are walking to get an egg tart from a famous cafe here in Macau, and I am preparing to teach my classes.

In 2 hours, we are going to go out to eat with the students that I am currently waiting for, and we'll be eating at a brand new restaurant opened by a former student of mine.  I am very excited to be able to share my family with the people that I encounter every week, and to be able to have some fun in the process!  Sunday afternoon we plan to go to Shenzhen to visit some friends, and then to Hong Kong and finally to Beijing!  My family will fly home from there, and I will fly to my friend's hometown for Chinese New Year.  I will come back to work once the holiday is over!

I am so excited for the next few weeks, and I am eager to spend this rare time with mi familia! :)

Familia's comin'!

I got an update this morning that my family is on the plane and on their way!  They're probably in California as we speak, and 25 hours from now I'll be at the ferry terminal picking them up!  I am very excited!

Prayer Requests

Today at 3am I received a message that my grandmother went to the hospital.  She's doing alright from what I have heard, but please pray for a speedy recovery for her!
UPDATE: She's doing better. I don't know exactly her condition, but it's better than before!

Another prayer request: my family will arrive a week from today!  I am very excited for them to be here, and please pray for their quick and stress-free travel.  They'll be traveling for about 24 hours before arriving here, which will be quite exhausting!

Please also pray for my classes this week and next...pray for me to have the motivation to get them done, as we're coming up on a 2 week break for Chinese New Year! On the same line, please pray that I can get a class scheduled to study Mandarin!

In with the new!

We don't have an 'out with the old' to go with the title of this, but we do have lots of new to be excited about!  A few days ago, we had a new long-term worker come to join us here!  He is Chinese-American, so he speaks both English and Cantonese as a native speaker!  It's exciting to be able to have him join us here, as it will help us in multiple aspects of our work.  It will help us with our English teaching, because he can teach beginner classes.  It will help with our church, because our target group is Cantonese-speaking.  Most of us teachers are studying Mandarin, which is quite helpful.  But having someone full-time who speaks Cantonese is a huge asset to our ministry!

Speaking of studying Mandarin--I e-mailed a local language center, and I was able to hear back from them.  I am looking at starting a new one-on-one class!  I am very excited for this, as it will help me communicate in Chinese with my friends and the people I come in contact with every day.  I have been a little overwhelmed recently with the fact that my Mandarin is not improving, so it will be nice to be able to have an improvement finally after a long time without.

Last week I changed our bulletin board.  It was a beautiful Christmas tree, but now it is a compilation of New Year's traditions.  I left out USA and Chinese traditions, as we cover those all the time.  I instead found some interesting world facts about New Year's traditions, and was able to create a true/false game out of it.

I don't have much else that is very new now.  I am currently waiting for one of my students to show up...that will be in about 25 minutes or so...so I guess it's time to go off and make sure I have everything copied and ready to go! :)

Recent Events

So, As you may have noticed, I have just posted quite a few posts.  I haven't been up to date, so I post-dated the posts as the dates that I should have posted them!

In other news, I've gotten re-addicted to a game called Settlers of Catan. It's  lot of fun!  My roommate and a friend of mine have been playing.  I really enjoy it, as it's a good combination of strategy, luck, and...well...geek.  :)

My birthday!

I turned 25 this year.  Ahh!  I know that more than half of the people reading this will say that I am so young, but I feel quite old...a quarter century!  It was kind of fun to celebrate another birthday, though.  I went to Papa Johns.  Yep--we have one!  The only thing is that you have to cross the boarder into Mainland and brave the Chinese-only bus map to make it there!  On my way, I treated myself to a pedicure (which was probably unsanitary and thus not worth it, though my toes look amazing...) and I got my zipper fixed on my jacket. We had a total of 11 people come--4 foreigners and the rest from Zhuhai or Macau!  It was fun to be able to gather together with some friends and to eat pizza together!  it was a little strange, because the friends were all from different aspects of my life here: some were from the English center (but didn't know each other because they came to different events), and some were not.  It was an interesting mix of people.  I have a picture of the group, but it's on my friend's phone: I don't have it yet!  In some ways, I am glad that Papa John's isn't in Macau, because I would eat there WAY too often!  They serve their pizza with garlic sauce and a pickled jalepeño, which a friend and I challenged each other to eat!

New Year's Eve!

I had a really fun time celebrating the New Year.  I got to sing Karaoke and then go to a friend's apartment to relax.  Then, we drove in the car to see the fireworks at the Macau Tower.  (The middle picture was taken in the wonderful red taillights of the car in front of us!)  The fireworks picture was taken by my friend--her phone takes better photos than mine!