not on hiatus, yet

Family has been visiting, and blogging has taken a very appropriate back seat. I do hope I can capture all the memories. Lee and Laura already left, and we were SO glad they were able to share in our lives here, even if only for one week, it was incredibly fun to share in their amazement and joy over our girls, and over various aspects of culture here. Thanks so much for the sacrifice of coming to see us, we know it is very hard to travel so long for so short a time. We miss you already.

Here are tidbits of what we have been doing:


double date night: we went to eat pulled noodles and happened upon another dish that tasted like yummy Mexican food, so good. Then we got fruit drinks and walked around the big square.



We took a drive out to the lake and up to the Pagoda that overlooks the city.


we drove out to some surrounding villages, it was so hazy the mountains were invisible





we stopped for a little while in one village and talked to some folks

we looked at their temple ...


took pictures of their cute pigs...

and learned about harvesting tobacco.



On a separate outing we went a little ways into the mountains out of town and had a picnic dinner.



We met this lady who is 75 years old, and remembers the last time she saw Americans was when she was just a little girl, China was fighting Japan and the Americans came through to help (WWII).
She was collecting food for her pigs.