Hey Everybody! We're Back!

We are officially back in China. My back tells me in the morning after sleeping on our board bed. No really, I am happy to be back, and that is the best part. I am HAPPY to be back! Maybe it is the return to a real schedule and regularity. Whatever it is, I am grateful. We arrived Wednesday night around 6 pm. We opted for a private car to get to our apartment and ended up having a nice discussion with the driver, who was studying English with tapes in the car and eager to practice with us. He thought it would be nice if the world was one united family and that us learning Chinese and he learning English was a good start. Yeah, we enjoyed talking to him. It was a good start to getting back. I am sorry that I am still unable to load pictures. Please be patient. We started school on Thursday morning. Why wait? And right away, I got my one hour a week job back, plus the next day a couple hired me to teach them. The second time around is going much smoother. Of course, we have to find more work than two hours but this is a very encouraging start. I am so glad that we used so much Chinese while we were in Korea, but still, we can see how much work we have to do to catch back up. Frank and I had lunch together Thursday and instead of asking for the bill, mai dan, I told the waitress that the meal was free, mian fei. Frank signed us up for what he thought was faster internet, but was actually pay as you go, per hour. We have to wait till October to change it so we have been disconnecting from the net to save money. So, back to school we go! A friend is giving me a bike tomorrow too, so things are really going well. That is, until class tomorrow when I can't write the characters because I was blogging instead of doing homework like Frank...Gotta Go!
mandy