Whoa… I guess it’s been much longer than I thought since my last update….

Well, as I said in my last post, our home stay was just great. We’ve been back in the apartment we’re staying in for a couple of weeks and I really miss living with our family. The last week we were there, they took us out for one of our city’s famous meals: Hot Pot. This special meal consisted of pig intestines, cow stomach, mud fish, chicken… somethings, chicken feet, and various veggies, boiled in a giant pot of hot oil and peppers. Let me tell you… it wasn’t good. For someone who gets queasy from eating fried chicken off of the bone… this was a challenge for me. But.. I succeeded and finished the meal. Fortunately, hot pot is incredibly popular in our city… so I’m sure I’ll have many other opportunities to enjoy it.

We went back this week to visit our home stay and ended up staying the entire day. The visit included the usual amazing lunch AND dinner… Shrek 4 in 3D (NOT in English), art lessons from our little sister, some back porch reading, and great conversation with our host mom.
Can we just move back there for the rest of the semester? I mean… I’m sure the dorms will be great, but I think I could manage another 4 months with this family.

Since we’ve been back at the apartment, we’ve been doing language lessons from our tutor in the mornings and spending the afternoons on some college campuses around our area. We’ve already made some friends and it makes me excited to get started with school so I can be around students more often. We don’t start school until the middle of September.

A few nights ago we spent the evening with some new friends. They took us to ride the cable car over one of the rivers in our city. On our way to the cable car, we passed by a B*ddhist T*mple. Our friends wanted to look inside, so we explored the grounds. It was a really eye opening detour.

We also had the opportunity to attend a wedding last weekend. One of the couples in our home stay family’s group was getting married and invited us to attend. It was so good to see familiar faces. The wedding itself was certainly full of western influence. The bride had a white dress, instead of the traditional red dress… there was no meal or banquet, just a quick ceremony in a hotel conference room.
Our little sister was the flower girl and she. was. excited.

Yesterday we all went to eat lunch at Pizza Hut (YES!) and spent the afternoon swimming at the pool in our complex. The weather has cooled down considerably in the last week (woohoo!) and that left the pool water ice. cold. I have to admit… I’m a little sore today from our intense game of keep away (which Karen, Stacey and I dominated, of course) but it was great to relax and have fun with our American friends. That night after the kids went to bed, we joined each other again at Chris and Karen’s for cupcakes and a game of Settlers of Catan. A looooong game of Settlers of Catan. A day well spent.

Well… I need to get some homework done. I just realized that with my SBU classes + my language classes at our university here… I’m enrolled in 27 hours. What!? And that’s why I have to dedicate entire days to homework… before school has even started.
Thankfully… our grades at the university are not our priority. I just have to remember that when I’m sitting in class and the teacher tells me I’m failing. Haha.

Thank you for continuing to think of Sarah and me. Think of us as school starts and our schedules start to fill up.

Anna B

ps- I'm going to add some photos as soon as I get them onto my computer!