OK, we caved

Well, as you can see below, the craving finally got to us. After a 10-minute ride on the K-5 from the Tai He hospital, through the roundabout and just past the KFC, we glimpsed a sight so beautiful, we danced with joy....the golden arches.

With great gusto, we chowed down on some expensive (but well deserved) western food. I indulged in a plain double cheeseburger, Katherine chose 2 single cheeseburgers, and Luke had some spicy chicken nuggets. It was heaven. Now don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of the Chinese food thus far. It is simply a matter of variety (and the ability to safely order variety of food without fear of accidentally ordering live squid). Back in the states, I would probably try some fast food Monday, some Mexican food on Tuesday, Italian on Wednesday, Chinese on Thursday, homestyle cooking on Friday....well you get the point. Here, we are working on expanding our food vocabulary, but we usually end up ordering the same thing repeatedly.

Thankfully, Katherine has kept up a little record of our favorite dishes, which she asks the waitresses to write down after we devour it (pictured right).

Thanks to some exploration and some good friends, we have begun to navigate our way around the city. It is very beautiful here in Shiyan. Compared to Wuhan, the city is much cleaner, and much easier to manage travelling around. We have some favorite restaurants already, but nothing yet can compare to my neighbor's cooking! I suppose I should post a few pictures of the city so you can get an idea of our new home. Below, are pictures from the People's Square (left) and the front gate of our college (right).

I was going to share some pictures from Luke and Katherine's first day of classes, but I can't quite work the photo editor in Chinese, and they would be sideways otherwise :-( A battle for another day perhaps.

As for today, Katherine and I went to meet Luke in his classroom before lunch at McDonalds. Katherine's arrival was greeted with applause from the Chinese students (I just got wierd looks!); they were very excited to greet their new teacher's wife. We sat in on the last 5 minutes of class which seemed to go REALLY well. As envious as they are of my 3-week vacation, Luke and Katherine are settling into teaching just fine. After McDonalds, I convinced Luke and our friend John to travel up the hill to the school basketball/ping pong courts for an afternoon of ping pong (we had to stop at a supermarket on the way back from Mickey D's to get the paddles). Passers by watched with great interest as we battled it out on the little stone ping pong tables in the open air. It was a lot of fun, but certainly tiring. After a little rest, our friends John and Megan introduced us to the wonderful world of Shiyan DVD shopping. And so we ended the night with a movie.

I hope you are all doing well back in the states. Sorry the posts aren't quite as frequent as they started out, but life is busy here! Feel free to comment, Uncle Skip is the only brave commenter thus far, and we love hearing from home!

Oh, and one last thing. ROLL TIDE!!!!!! Woohoo, how 'bout that game????? We didn't get to actually watch it, but the ESPN gamecast was enough for us early Sunday morning as we crowded around my computer screen. That being said, thanks for the score discretion, folks, we'll be trying to watch games after the fact in the future.

Peace and Blessings,

Finn (and Luke and Katherine, but they're sleeping right now!)