I'm HERE!!

Hey everyone!!

I finally made it! After 31 hours of up and traveling, I'm here in Liping, China which is about 5 hours southwest of Beijing. The population is around 70,000 people packed in to about the size of Proctor, MN.

The flight from Portland, Oregon was about 10 and a half hours long over the Pacific Ocean. On that flight we got two airplane food meals, which of course were not very good. For our entertainment we had only ourselves. They couldn't get the video/audio system working so it was pretty boring, and you can only sleep so long on and airplane comfortably. Plus its pretty hard to sleep when in the row next to you there is a screaming baby and a little kid who was around the age of 5 jumping off the walls, but after a while you tune it out :)

So, from Portland we flew to Tokyo, Japan and had a two hour layover. From Tokyo we flew four hours to Beijing where we stayed the night in a hotel called the Sino- Swiss which is about 10 minutes away from the airport. We had a good four hours of sleep and had to wake up at five in the morning in order to catch a flight to Guiyang that left at around eight a.m.

When we landed we were in an airport where almost nobody spoke English, so one of Jake's co-workers, who is German, met us at the airport and helped us get checked in and made sure that we had something to eat. From Guiyang we flew to Liping which took about 45 minutes and there Jake and Creed met us there.

Jake is my mom's brother. He lives in Liping with his wife, Monica and their 2 kids, Creed (5) and Chloe (2). Jake teaches teachers how to teach English, and Monica works on some community health projects. They have lived in China for 5 years--4 of that in Huaxi (near Guiyang) and the last year here in Liping.

From the airport in Liping we took a taxi, which was really scary because there were no seatbelts and we were going about 55 on a really curvy, narrow road. The taxi ride was half an hour to the apartment in the city. The apartment is 5 flights up so its quite a walk.

The other day Jake and I went to the store/market and on the way we met one of his new students who doesn't know English, but in chinese she told Jake that I was as white as tofu!!! In China being really white is like being really tan in America. She also really liked holding onto my hand she didn't let go until we were walking away. Tomorrow, which is Monday, I'm going to go with Creed to his Chinese lesson for 2 hours so that will be very interesting.

I hope to be able to update the blog a little sooner that this one but were doing so much here email isn't really a big priority.
I'll write as soon as I can.
Carly