Sufferin' Succotash

Hi!
Just thought I'd drop you a note and let you know what's going on this side of the world. Our internet was down again for four days, it's a holiday weekend here because it's "tomb sweeping day" which is a holiday kind of like our Memorial Day. It used to be a week-long holiday, but they changed it this year because the crowds were too big and it put too big a burden on the trains and airports, so they made it a 3-day weekend. It is Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and we don't have classes on Friday anyway, so it's a normal weekend for us, except the number of people at the stores and on the streets is larger than normal. And everybody goes on vacation, so they shut the servers on campus down, even though the students couldn't leave, so we were without internet. Oh, well. We sure feel cut off from the world when it's down, we sure miss hearing from all of you. We felt especially bad, as Mom and I both had messages to send to Amber on her birthday Friday, then couldn't send them because it was down.
The weather here has really turned nice, on Thursday we walked with Birds over to TGI Fridays for dinner and it was about 70 degrees out, so we just walked down some of the shopping streets and enjoyed being outside in the spring. It was nice yesterday, too, but a little breezy, but we enjoyed being out for awhile. Today it's overcast, forcast of rain showers, but I guess spring rains are nice too. It will help all of the new trees and bushes they are planting right now. We walked past a little park they have on campus, and all of the trees are in bloom there, it is lovely. There was a bride and groom having their pictures taken with the blossoms, and it was really cute. They are doing so much landscaping and changing preparing for the Olympics, even here in Tianjin, I guess because some of the Olympic venues will be held here. They have been knocking out whole blocks of old buildings and putting in parks and beautiful landscaped areas. They are putting in walkways along the canals, putting in massive rock sculptures along some of the city streets, putting thousands of trees and bushes where they just had grass, it's going to be really beautiful. It reminds me a lot of Salt Lake City before the olympics of 2002, with the construction and landscaping, and when it's over, the beauty remains. The whole nation here is excited about it, and everybody is trying to make China a better place. They are sure doing a nice job of it!
This week has been really busy, as it's the Foreign Language Festival. Three of us went and sang a couple of sings for the opening ceremony, we sang "This Land Is Your Land" and "You Are My Sunshine" and they seemed to like it OK. The mikes weren't working good, though, they had two mikes for the three of us, and one of them didn't work, so one side was really loud and the other you couldn't hear hardly at all. It kind of ruins the balance and harmony, but they were kind and didn't make a big thing of it. I think I told you about it last week, didn't I. That's the nice thing about getting old, every day is a new day! Anyway, I helped judge a "Dubbing contest" Wednesday night where the students took foreign movies and dubbed in new words in a different language. It was pretty interesting, they did some in Russian, Japanese, French, German, and of course, English. It was a pain judging the foreign ones, because I coudln't understand if the words were right or not. But it was fun and they were excited about it. I'm supposed to go do the finals this Wednesday night. Yesterday Mom went and judged a debate contest, and came back really frustrated, as they didn't know what they were doing, and nobody could tell her what criteria she was supposed to use to judge, so she felt it was pretty much a waste of time. But at least it's done. We did decide to learn to say "NO!" when they ask us to do these things in the future. We were supposed to help with their feast today, but they coudln't tell us what day it was until about Wednesday, and we had told them that if it was on Sunday we couldn't do it. Well, it's on Sunday and they were a little upset when I told them we couldn't come. I'm conducting in church this month, and we meet from 1:00-4:00, which is right when the feast is. Oh, well. They wanted us to cook something American that would feed 300 people. We weren't too disappointed.
Well, our semester is almost half over, I can't believe how fast it's going. We're enjoying our classes, the kids are awesome and excited, and it's fun to see the progress they make. Mom is correcting a lot of papers from her writing classes, and I'm glad I'm not teaching writing.
Next week is our Conference Sunday, today is normal Fast Sunday. We wait until we get the CD's from the church, then set up and watch the sessions during church the next Sunday. I guess we could stay up all night and watch them on the web, but nobody seems inclinde to do that.
Well, I guess I'd better start getting ready for church. Hope you are all doing well, and that life is settling down for you. Hard to imagine school being almost over for you for the year. How time flies. Have a good weekend, we sure love you!
Love, Mom and Dad.