2007 Christmas and Reminiscing

Wow, it's hard to imagine that we have been back home in Oklahoma for five months! I had injured my back while I was in China and had suffered terribly for almost seven months. By the time Jim, Ron, and Diana had come to get me I was nearly incapacitated. After being home for a few weeks, trying to get my back in shape with chiropractic treatments, and not getting any better, an MRI revealed that I had a ruptured disc and a bulging one. I ended up having back surgery the end of August and was off work for about three weeks. The recuperation process has been phenomenal. It is so good to be without all that pain. Needless to say, Christmas sure slipped up on me.

Last year Christmas was quite different since the Chinese don't really celebrate Christmas. We had only one day off from school and a group of our international teachers went to the Indian Kitchen for a Christmas meal. It wasn't the traditional turkey meal by any stretch, but was an enjoyable time.

This year, it was so great to go to my brother's house and enjoy the meal and then play dirty Santa with all the family. Of course we had brought gifts for all the children. (At the Thanksgiving holiday we had driven to Mohall, North Dakota to visit our daughter and her family and through some unavoidable circumstances we now have our 8 year old grandson living with us and attending third grade.) Anyway, back to Christmas. My 3 brothers and their families were there. Both of my sisters and their families were able to come as well...and it was great having mom and dad too. Altogether there were about 3 dozen of us. We were so thankful that everybody was safe and had survived the ice storm although Ed, Dean, and my folks all had tremendous tree damage at their homes. Everyone had their electricity back on and all was well...however, one niece, her husband and their two children had just found out three days before that their new home had a problem with the air ducts not being sealed and the insulation in the house was being blown all throughout their home and that was what was making all of them sick so they are living in a motel room until they can get things worked out between the lawyers and the builder. All in all it was a great day just enjoying being with family.

I still miss the teachers and students at the Changzhou International School. I hope they are having a great year. It is so great to receive news from them from time to time. I sure hope we get a chance to see all of them again at some time in the future.

I thought I would just include a few pics from our school in Changzhou in this post. These are the teachers in the Marlborough Boys Collegea section. The next one is a pic of the International teachers having Chinese lessons - (May, you are still very much thought of and missed!)

This is some of the traffic at the main gate when parents come to pick up their children on Thursday of the short week.

Well enough reminiscing for tonight.

G'night until next time.

Zai Jian