The Final Weeks of Fall Classes

Hey there, loyal readers, Luke here again giving you all the news that's fit to tell from Shiyan, China. I know it's been a bit since my last post, so I'm sorry about that, but I figured I'd go ahead and let everyone know about our preparations for the Breland-Garner-Knight-WhoKnows Reunion Tour. Yes, we have our plane tickets to get us to the States, now all we need to do is survive the short, tricky portion of our travels--domestic travel in China without a translator--and then deal with the long, boring, and slightly easier trans-Pacific flight. Well, that's not ALL we need to do. We haven't packed yet, after all, and even though classes are winding down now, some classes will not finish until after we've left, so we have to pre-teach those. Oh, and we have to make, announce, give, and grade the final exams for our classes. It's one of those things than can be easy and SHOULD be easy, if you've done things right the whole semester, but ends up being harder than it should be since we really didn't know what we were doing in the classroom until a few weeks had gone by (I didn't, at least). My New Years resolution? Better organization for the classroom side of my work here! But impending finals or not, we're still looking forward to coming home.

As I type, my stomach is rumbling. It is disgruntled. I've already fed it some baozi (if any of you come visit us in the spring, which we would LOVE, I'll show you heaven on earth in the form of a meat bun), but it wants more. More specifically, it wants Mexican food. A basket of nachos and a bowl of queso would go down REALLY well right now, and beyond seeing friends and family when we return, I honestly think that our next priority while in America is going on a gastronomic tour of the restaurants and food styles that are just plain unavailable in China! We are excited more about seeing our family, of course; I'm just saying that we wouldn't take it amiss if anyone wanted to visit and converse with us in oh, say, a Mexican restaurant.

I'm trying to snap pictures of my classes this week, to be sure that I have photos to show everyone over Christmas, but the class sizes are rather big and even with the flash the pictures seem to be turning out a little dark and fuzzy, so I'm sorry if they're not the greatest detail. And speaking of pictures, our students love seeing pictures of family, friends, and just our lives from home--so with that in mind, could everyone please keep their eyes peeled for our wedding pictures? Especially the ones in the slim black coffee table book? My students ask me about my wedding just about every week! Oh, and I might be taking more Christmas photos than usual, so I can show my students what the holiday really looks like for my family when I get back. Their ideas of Christmas come mostly from Chinese TV and music videos, I think, and they don't really get the idea that each family has its own individual traditions around Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I know it would be rather uncouth of us to fly home without any presents from China to give to you folks, and that may simply be the best way for us to shop for everyone anyways, since buying presents in America on a Chinese salary can get a tad expensive. Keep in mind that this is not a big city, like Chengdu was, so things that are Chinese and are more of a souvenir persuasion are actually a little hard to come by. But with that in mind, what sorts of things would you like that you imagine we could find in China? American products with Chinese labels? Tea? Jade necklaces/good luck charms (those are rather ubiquitous)? There's not much time left, so please send us your ideas! Oh, and the less breakable your requests are, and the easier they are to fit into luggage, the better off we'll be. We're trying to not pack very heavily for our return trip, because there are actually a lot of things that we need to take BACK to China with us from America, but at this moment we're not sure how many bags (and which size) we'll try to take with us. After all, we need to do some domestic travel in China in order to get out, some of it on train, and luggage standards are very different for domestic travel in China. I'll be pushing for less baggage, but methinks the others will want a bit more baggage, so we can take more stuff back with us. I'm just worried about changing planes and terminals in the Beijing airport, handling luggage on the trains, baggage overage fees, etc.

Wow, didn't mean to start rambling about my worries. Sorry about that. I'm about to wrap up for now, actually--I plan to come back and edit this post or add a new one tomorrow or the next day to add some pictures--but I would just like to reiterate that we LOVE getting comments on our blogs, especially from folks we don't hear from too often (I'm looking at you, cousins!). So please, if you read this, leave your thoughts and such in comment form, as we love reading them.

Oh, and we also have a few prayer requests. Well, the big one, really, is for safe travel from and back towards China. We would really love to arrive in America with all of our luggage intact, but I'd much rather arrive with all of my limbs intact. The other one I should mention is just general prayer for me to be a bit more organized, and a bit less forgetful. We're about to be rather busy, trying to take care of stuff here in China while also trying to be prepared for Ryan's wedding and Kelly's wedding. We appreciate all of your prayerful support, and we love the care packages--it's like a mini-Christmas whenever we get one--and we're looking forward to visiting with everyone when we come home. I'll update again later, before we leave. Until then, be good to each other, and enjoy those new low gas prices!!!