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-Minority Village pix

As I warned previously, I’ve been quite wonderfully distracted the past couple weeks, so please forgive my lack of consistent communication!
It was amazing to have Tim here with me in Kunming!! He came to school with me the first week he was here, and the kids really loved meeting him. They each wrote him a “Kunming report,” telling him all about their city and the best things to do here. It was really cute!
The week was difficult teaching-wise. It was one of the busiest weeks yet, and I was just barely keeping up with everything day to day. It was pretty exhausting! Mr. Pye was very understanding and helped me out a lot during the week. Tim stayed at his place and he went with us on some of our excursions around the city.
The first weekend, we went to Kunming’s “Minority village” It’s the tourist spot that the city is known for and I could definitely see why. Yunnan province has 26 different minority groups and each of them were represented in the village. We were able to see how each group lives, and see their traditional dances and costumes. It was really a really colorful and interesting place. I tried to show Tim both the traditional and modern aspects of Kunming. One evening we went to Papa John’s- quite the fancy restaurant here!
The second weekend Tim was here, we went to Beijing. It was a 3 ½ hour flight and about a 40 degree temperature difference! China is so big! Beijing had a completely different feel to it and it was very interesting to see. In some ways it felt more “Chinese” than Kunming. In the 2 days we were there, we got to see a lot! Our itinerary included: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Emperor’s Summer Palace, the “Bird’s nest” Olympic stadium, and of course, the Great Wall! It was incredible to see so many famous places. The Great Wall especially blew us away- literally! I found out later that the day we were there, there was a sandstorm that hit Beijing. The Great Wall is far enough out of the city that the sand didn’t affect us much, but the wind was crazy- parts of the wall are so steep that we had to hold onto the sides to keep from falling down or being blown away!
We got to know the Beijing subway system really well as we navigated the city to all the different places we wanted to go. It was a really neat experience! I was glad to return to Kunming, though, and be back in spring again.
(Beijing pictures to come)
It was hard to say good-bye to Tim, of course. I have only a month left here, but right now that seems like a lot. Teaching so far this week has gone really well. Yesterday I had the privilege of teaching about Creation to both fifth grade classes at once. It was a little different teaching with such a big group, but for the most part they were really good and listened well. It definitely helped that I was so passionate about the subject! This is the last full teaching week for a while. Next week is “spring break” (Fri. and then Mon. off) That is just fine with me. I think teachers always appreciate a few days off!