First Day of Class!

We are in our city! For those of you who receive our emails, we let you know that we started classes today! Whew whoo! We have so been anticipating this day for several months now and it finally came. Thank you to everyone who remembered us today! Classes went GREAT! We both had just one class today. We would normally have more but all the freshmen are in orientation this week so no freshmen classes meet until next week. We both had sophomore classes today. So many students, with hopes and dreams and background stories we look forward to hearing and knowing. We have more classes all this week. Please ask that we would have wisdom as we seek to make deepen our relationship with our students- we are asking for the who, when and how specifically! We have roughly 30 students in each of our seven classes…for a total of 410 students for the semester. We know it’s important not to spread ourselves to thin so we need wisdom as we make friends and form deeper relationships. We could not be more excited to be here! We often stop and step back in just amazement that we get to be here, that we have been given this opportunity, that our school seeks to be a blessing to us. It’s so incredibly rewarding already and we cannot express how grateful we are to be doing what we’re doing.

In front of our school's main building on our first full day in our new home city.

D's shiny forehead made the first day selfie. :)

My first class' first day selfie!

Just had to share this because it blessed us so much - this is a picture our group from Knoxville sent us this morning! Their signs say "Happy first day of school!" We are so grateful for a body who actively and intentionally "holds the rope" for us on the homefront. We really could not do this without them. Love you all! Thank you for the sweet surprise!

Welcome home

Ni hao! I am so sorry it has taken us so long to update you on our arrival! I'll blame jet lag! Honestly by the time we get to our room at night, we are wiped and have been putting it off. I am so sorry! We arrived with little travel problems last Thursday afternoon, China time (we are 12 hours ahead of you, East Coast!). We were rerouted to fly out of San Francisco instead of Chicago but we were fine with that since it was an hour or so quicker. Upon landing we looked at each other and said, "Welcome home." We cannot believe our time has finally come to get to be here, in the country we have loved for so long and have hoped to be in for some time now.

Last class in Colorado! We were so pumped for China!

Send off ceremony with friends - we have been so blessed by the friendships we have already made here!

Landing in China...we were excited, I promise! :)

Since arriving we have been taking another class to finish up our training and have been doing some touristy things as a part of that class. We went to the Great Wall on Saturday, which is always a neat experience. To see history that dates back to 200 B.C. and further has always just been mind blowing to me. The Great Wall is truly amazing. What ancient China was able to accomplish at that point in history has always fascinated us both.

In Houhai- one of our favorite districts in Beijing.

Poor D...a bright sun is hard on those blue eyes.

The Great Wall

With some friends on a packed Beijing subway train- the picture does not give an accurate idea of how packed it was!

Beautiful Old Beijing

At the Summer Palace

A favorite that a friend of ours took on the Wall. Happy to be walking this journey together.

As much as it has been fun to be back in Beijing (Anna's second time, David's fourth time) and a first time as a married couple, we are so ready to be in our city. We have been living out of a suitcase and in transition mode for almost a month now and are so excited to get set up our apartment and explore our new home. Classes begin a week from Monday (WHOA!!!!!) and we absolutely cannot wait to meet our students and make friends!! Thank you to everyone who have sent encouragement and those of you who have been remembering us in this time. Please remember us as we head to our city this weekend! We will let you know once there. Can't wait to report back and finally be able to say that we are in fact into our China HOME!

Language, mountains and new friends

We cannot say enough how wonderful our time has been thus far here in Colorado! We have had extremely full days, starting at 7 am every day and ending at around 7 pm (mountain time- 2 hours behind you, eastern time zone!). Days are full of teaching training, language training, break out sessions to review the two, meetings with our company (insurance, tech stuff, on field FYIs) and training for making good relationships once in China. We asked for a wonderful team- and Dad certainly provided. We LOVE our teammates, Alisha and Travis from Saskatchewan, Canada! We instantly hit it off with them and love being around them. Oh, so grateful! We have two more teammates waiting for us on the East Side- we can't wait to meet them! We have made so many new wonderful friendships here. Grateful doesn't even begin to describe it.

Here are a few pics since we arrived....

Our home for 3 weeks in Colorado! 

This was our teammates, Travis & Alisha (on left)'s first time to go to a Walgreens. (Not that Walgreens is some great American institution, but still...I felt it needed to be documented. Also pictured: our friends Sara & Jesse Teel from Alabama.

We had one down day and we rented cars with about 20 other people and spent a day hiking in Estes Park. 

If you have to go to training, this isn't a bad place to go!!

I snuck a picture of David and his new friend- an 80 year old volunteer park ranger who he had a long conversation with on our shuttle ride down the mountain. If you know David, this will be humorous and also not surprising to you. :) 

Thank you for remembering us during this time! We feel like we are drinking from a fire hydrant with the information input, but it has been so good and we have learned a lot. We leave for Beijing one week from today, August 12! Please remember us as we travel. I will keep you updated! 26 days until classes begin in our city---we are so excited!!!