Phoenix City

Hello everyone!
Lisa and I are terribly, terribly sorry for having not updated this in almost two months now.
So, I am having to backtrack here, but we want to fill you in on some of our many travel excursions that we have taken recently.
April has been a very busy month with us. As some of you know, Lisa's mother and younger sister Blair flew over to see us! It was really nice to see them.

However, haha, at the same time, we learned a lot of things NOT TO DO if and when people ever come to see us again in China, as we plan on staying here for one more year.

They arrived late Wednesday night and we really wanted them to see the Chinese countryside in order for them to get a real feel of China.

Therefore, since we didn't have much time and also not much money b/c we were also hoping to be back on Sunday afternoon for fellowship and we still had to fly to Beijing and pay them back for money that we owed them. Therefore, we finally decided up Feng Huang, or Phoenix City. We had also looked at Guilin where part of The Painted Veil was filmed with Edward Norton.

We also thought about Xian,the terra-cotta warriors, that would be too far and not enough time. Lisa and I plan on seeing that next year. Besides that, thats really all that Lisa wants to see in China. We would like to go to Indonesia maybe to see our Compassion sponsored child. That would be really cool!

Father was really watching over us as we arranged our trip to Phoenix city. It just so happened that the copy lady who works in our school and someone we have become friends with, was planning on taking a bus in that direction as well! So Lisa and her (Becca) went to the bus station and bought tickets for all of us. That would have been difficult for us. She even met us as the bus station Thurs morning and went with us most of the way. (Her hometown is the stop right before ours. )

We also had a small scare, when the school suddenly told us that we could not re-arrange our classes. ( I had been planning on making up my Thurs. afternoon class as well as my two Friday morning classes.) In all the time we have been here, I have never missed any classes. However, my request came at a time when many teachers must have been asking off and I was the last straw I suppose. Also, Friday contains low English level classes for me, so they were afraid that those few students who show up anyways in one particular class just won't come at all to their other classes.
In fact, right now they have had to bring in a chinese translator/ helper for the one class b/c their English is so low. But its also because they don't try very hard.


Anyways though... so we lucked out to have another foreign teacher here agree to teach my classes for me! That was a real life-saver on that one. Also, the following week the school wanted me to help administer a 4hr midterm test to our 2nd yr students! The week that Lisa's parents were here! Yet,we were also fortunate to have the other set of foreign teacher's here step in for that one as well. They had taken a trip last Dec and then all of a sudden the school changed some dates on them and needed them to give their finals.
So I gave the finals to her students so she could go on her trip and now it worked out that they could help us out! Sweet deal!


So, back to the now becoming long story. Haha, several other students from our class just so happened to be going to Phoenix city as well! We were excited about that!
We were told the trip should only be btwn 3-4 hours, but it ended up taking about 5 1/2 hours! The bus also just stoppped in the middle of the town in Feng Huang and we had to get out. Lisa's parents weren't even sure if it was the right stop! Quite a shock for them,but that's how China works.

Luckily, our Chinese friend had already had her mother book us a hotel for the night, and then a cheaper one outside of the old/ traditional city the next night. The problem now was that we didn't know how to get to our hotel.
Once again though, some more chinese english speakers kindly helped us out and got us a taxi to where our hotel was and where the manager was waiting for us after our friend arranged that as well.

The hotel was really nice and right along the beautiful lit up river. (I will have to post pictures about it soon! Am writing this from the school office)

So, the next day our student of ours arranged for us to go on an all day tour of Phoenix city to see 3 scenic points. Although Lisa's mom and sister were tired and still needed to adjust to their jet lag, they decided it would be worth it to have an english speaking guide help show us around this city and see it's scenic spots.

The next day we awoke to pouring down rain and we weren't sure if we should still go through with it, but our friend had already bought the tickets for us, so...what else can you do right? Godo thing Lisa's family are real troopers and braved it out.
(Maybe their motivation came from the fact that there was a chinese guy

will finish later.. have to go at the moment. sorry!