Survival Tactics

We are having a great time teaching and building close relationships. The people have been very receptive and they have been asking very good questions. We really feel a part of a huge family with 30+ brothers and sisters. It has been really good getting away from all the busyness back home and spending lots of time in thoughts, reading, and preparing talks. It has been a very rewarding time and I can't believe it has only been almost 3 weeks!

Thing have been great but a few comforts have made things even better:

Yummy...like we said before we eat a lot of vegetables compared to back home. Snacks, vitamins, and good old whey protein keeps us a little closer to the American diet.

A nightly ritual is standing in the corner of the room and killing the mosquitoes as they fly by before bed time with the electric "tennis racquet." Also a daily coating of OFF! has helped keep the little buggers from eating us alive. We used this can from home in about 1 1/2 weeks but luckily found a store that sells it here.

On our list of favorite people are the inventors of the fan and A/C. The climate is very close to home but no central A/C. The units get turned on and off during the day.

Food

So I bet you're wondering what we eat everyday...

Breakfast consists of last night's leftovers made into fried rice. Its actually pretty good. Lunch and dinner consists of soup and 4-5 dishes. The food is REALLY spicey. One thing we miss is MEAT! We get maybe an ounce a day of meat but its often suplemented with tofu.

We had a chance to make them an American breakfast. So we made banana pancakes! It was quite interesting buying the ingredients at the supermarket. We could not find any baking powder(since most people don't have ovens) so we used yeast. After a lot of experiementing we found a recipe that worked.

Cooking pancakes in a wok is actually pretty easy. They turn out perfectly circular.

In Country

We've made it safely. Here at the camp, everyday is packed with activities and we are still recovering from jet lag. Even though we've been here before there is still some culture shock.

The dreaded toilet/shower combo. P was dreading this! I guess it wouldn't be so bad if it was just us but there are 35 people sharing two "showers".



Fresh vegetable storage



Our view from the kitchen



But in a lot of ways we feel right at home. The humidity and heat is just as high, we are sweating throughout the day, and the mosquitos are rampant but sadly the A/C doesn't work as well.

Despite these things, we are really enjoying our time here and learning to live simply. Yesterday we got to share about ourselves and why we are here. Afterwards, we got asked a lot of good questions about dating, marriage and sp life. We look forward to more conversations and teaching opportunities.

We've Landed

We landed a day ago and will be going in country today. Please think about us as we go in- so far on our trip we've taken three planes and now we'll be taking two trains to get to our destination.

Jen's last request for American food


Thank you cards written on little sleep


What we will be eating every day. Just kidding.

Here We Go

Welcome to the first entry of Chiinatown! Thanks for coming along on our journey. We would like to promise how often we will update, but we just really don't know. But we will try!

Leaving Htown has been bittersweet...we've had an awesome time hanging out with friends and family. And realizing more and more how blessed we are.

We left our first home together


Our friends threw us a nice going away party!




And now our bags are packed and we're ready to go... :) We found out we can only bring 44 pounds each so packing for 6 months was a really hard task!



It's 3:30am and we're leaving in 5 hours. So there will be more to come later...