Merry Christmas from China!

I am not sure where I left off before but things here have been going very well!

We had Thanksgiving with many friends, on Thanksgiving and on the Saturday after. The pictures from both encounters are online at http://picasaweb.google.com/riggs2820.

December came suddenly, and I can't believe its nearly over. On Christmas Day we will have been here exactly 4 months. It feels like it has been so much longer, and we still have over 6 months to go!

December was mostly filled with classes. We assigned our students a written paper for their final and the draft of that paper was due the first week of December. Even today I was still grading more papers. That is pretty much what we did everyday for this month. I am not sure how many students we have total but we teach 16 classes with 30-40 students in each one, so its quite a few. They begin their finals this week.

We went to a town called Zhenjiang on December 9th. Its very near here, only about 30 minutes away by train. We were invited by a student of ours because it is his home town. We saw many great things and had our personal tour guide thewhole time. It was very interesting to see parks and temples from the point of view of a Chinese person. We came upon a place in this park that used to have many stone structures but they had been destoryed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. The student referred to it as "that stupid thing" that destroyed Chinese cutlural relics and history. It was just a very interesting day for us.

Unfortunately when we arrived back to Nanjing that night we were not feeling very well. We got the flu and I spent almost all of that next week in bed. We both missed classes on Monday and Tuesday because we were too ill to do much of anything. Wednesday we went to class but I was still not feeling so well. One of our bosses came and saw me and they cancelled my Thursday classes for me. I finally taught on Friday and began to feel better.

We are both much better now. Scott has a bit of a cold but not too bad.

On Sunday (yesterday) we went to a big dinner held by the government of Jiangsu Province for all the foreign teachers. It was really nice, wonderful food and all kinds of entertainment. Some of it was a little crazy (one chinese girl sang "Complicated" by Avril Lavgine and a Hawaiian guy played a song in Chinese using a ukelele to accompany himself and his wife who danced with shakers) and some was really nice. There was a drawing and we won a little stuffed panda with bamboo in his mouth and a ugly santa doll. It was really a good time.

Our school very kindly gave us this Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off for us to celebrate Christmas. We went to Shanghai on this last Friday night and we found some great shopping. But sadly it was raining really bad on Saturday and so we came home early. We will probably head back as soon as we finish finals here at the school.

So we have a few gifts for eachother and from people at home that we will open tomorrow morning for Christmas! In the tradition of Scott's family we will be making a big breakfast for ourselves. We found REAL pancake mix and Mrs. Butterworth's syrup in Shanghai so we got some of that. We also bought bacon (kind of expensive here so this is the first time we've had it) and a grater so we would try to make hashbrowns. Maia is coming over and we are going to have wonderful food and then open our gifts for eachother and the ones from home.

So Merry Christmas to all our family and friends! We miss you all and wish we could be there but save all your joy and love so you can show it to us when we come home next July! (It'll be Christmas in July then! :))

Katie and Scott


ps - always check picasa for new pictures. we will put some up from our Christmas morning and our Christmas night party