I'm a slacker - sorry!

This blogging thing has been one of the last things on my mind the last month, but I'm trying to be better about updates again! Pictures on Picasa have been updated, so check those out!

Our trip to ZhangJiaJie during the National Holiday with the students was amazing - we got to see sights we never would have seen on our own and were treated VERY well by the students, the local military, and her family. We climbed 3 mountains (and by climb mountains I mean trudged up what felt like millions of stairs) to the point where my calves burned beyond belief! The Asians travel very differently than us Americans - we were up by 6:30 every morning (woken up at 5, however, by tour busses full of Korean and Chinese travelers) and didn't stop until 8 or 9 at night. Every 5 minutes provided a great "scenic spot" or "good place for photo." My apologies in advance for the abundance of photos - many were taken against our will! I'll be honest, a mountain starts to look like a mountain after a while, especially when the tour guide is not speaking your language and, therefore, you have NO idea what the meaning of this rock versus that rock is. Nevertheless, the trip was better than imagined, we paid for practically nothing (naturally treated myself to a new purse afterwards as a result!) and ate like Kings all week. We learned 'Gambei!' with the old Chinese men at our 12+ person dinners (where we got to sit next to the head of the table - which is hard to determine at a round table, lol).

IT was nice to return home to Changsha after a busy 4 days of traveling - I needed a vacation from vacation. We spent the weekend relaxing and planning to start our full (8.5 hour) work week with freshmen and sophomore students.