3 Weeks!

I can hardly believe it, but in 20 days I will be in Searcy, ready to take off at four in the morning for the Little Rock airport.  Then, 27 hours and 4 airports later, I'll be in Wuhan, China.  

But don't worry!  I'll have a book to read on those flights!  

Right now, I’m in the middle of three different nonfiction books, all about yup, China.  I have two more teaching books to read and one is a library book so I need to get started on it!  It's thick enough that I may just give up and buy it so I can take it with me.  

Some of the books that I'm taking.   

I am so slow at reading nonfiction books!  I can read the 7^th Harry Potter book in three days, but with nonfiction I am like a turtle, trudging through the bogs of information like it's knee-deep mud.  It’s good information – the sort that is really useful when read – but, with my turtle pace, I am going to be traveling to China with a small library in tow.  Sorry shoes and seasoning packets, you may just have to stay home.

This is completely unrelated, but check out my owl hat :) It isn't finished but I think my cat likes it anyway.  Unfortunately, it is now coated in cat fur.  

Thanks Kitters.

Woo Hoo! Wuhan (Woo-hawn)!

Wuhan is a quaint little town of about 9 million. It is divided by the Yangtze and Han Rivers and was formerly three separate cities (Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang). Wuhan’s history is old, dating back 3,500 years. Once a busy port town, and later a nucleus of revolutions and uprisings, Wuhan is now an esteemed center of technology and education in central China.

However, I was a bit concerned when I discovered that they don’t exactly speak Putong hua(“the common tongue”), in Wuhan. According to my travel book, they speak Hanqiang, or “Wuhan speak,” which is their own, slightly different dialect of mandarin. It's probably just a "pop" vs. "coke" and "shopping cart" vs. "buggy" type of thing but I hope that most of my frail attempts at learning the language(Putong hua) still apply.  We shall see. Whatever the case, I’ve been assured that I’ll be able to get by on mostly English, and, if not, well, wŏ bù míng bai nĭ shuō shén ma (I don’t understand what you’re saying)!

We're going to Wuhan!

It's official- we're going to Wuhan!  Bonnie and Tiqua are teaching at a university of technology and Laura and I will be teaching at a college specializing in education.  We'll be leaving the U.S. sometime in late August.  More details to follow.  

-Kristin

PS: We don't usually dress like this.  Can anyone guess the theme?