Well, we’re back from our retreat into the mountains.  We had a great time in Jianzha (pronounced roughy gin-jah in Chinese) and now we’re back in Xining getting back into our language study routine…which will be interupted next week with the onset of the "October holiday".

I wish I had a lot of great photos to show you from our trip, but I am afraid we didn’t take any. I know I didn’t take any.  I feel a bit photo-challenged these days.  You know there is something wrong with you when you can’t muster the energy to turn on a digital camera, point-and-shoot!  Sadly, that’s the state of affairs with me.

Some "firsts" for me this weekend:

• On the streets of Jianzha we saw buckets full of live scorpions for sale (as pets or food I don’t know?)  I really wish I would have had the initiative to have taken a picture of my daughters hunched over that bucket of squirming scorps.  Precious and surreal.  The caption would have been:  "Buckets of Scorpions, Batman!" But alas, there is no such picture…
• On the busride back from Jianzha we witnessed a strange Tibetan religious ceremony (taking place on the bus.)  As we drove over mountain passes in this small 20-seater bus, this group of Tibetan guys near the front of the bus were throwing prayer "post-its" out the windows by the bagful.  (Looks something like what this guy is doing…except imagine it being done out the side of an opened bus window…)  While performing this form of littering as devotion they were simultaneously swigging down shots of baijiu (whiskey), chain-smoking like chimneys, and playing garbled Tibetan songs on a handheld tape player.  Here, truth is always stranger than fiction…
• We stayed at the Olympic Hotel in Jianzha.  Yes, this is a real hotel that will be used by real Chinese rowing teams preparing for the 2008 Olympics.  If you saw this town, you would realize how remarkable this is.  If you stayed at this hotel, like I did, you would realize how far out in the boondocks we really are.  This $25/night establishment sports hot water 24/7!, cable TV (the best Chinese cable money can buy), fresh–if slightly damp–towels, and bathrooms that will likely never be cleaned while you’re staying there.  It may sound as if I am complaining, but I’m not. I’ll probably stay there in the future.  I’m just saying all accommodation sensibilities are constrained by the laws of relativity (i.e. 3 stars in one country may merit only 1 star in another.)
• The bus we took back to Xining got a flat tire.  Not a big deal; we just pulled off at the nearest roadside tire repair shop.  What was amazing to me is that they changed the tire (i.e. removed the tire and replaced the inner tube inside the tire) while most of the passengers were still sitting inside the vehicle.  I guess we didn’t really need to abandon the vehicle for such a simple procedure.  They just jacked it up and we waited and then after a while they put the fixed tire back on. Simple as that!

It rained a lot this weekend and it rained quite a bit today, too.  The temperatures have dropped a bit and it is starting to feel like pre-winter.  (If you were looking for some deeper insights from the retreat, I’m sorry to disappoint.  Just wasn’t up for that kind of blog post today.)

*The only other bit of news I have to share is that today Sarah fell from a chair which she had placed on top of a coffee table (which we’ve warned her against many times now) right onto her (poor) nose.  She got a pretty nasty cut on the outside of her nose and her nose bled from the inside a bit, too, but she quickly recovered and was her typical high-wired self.  Sadly, for most of the day today she looked a lot like this kid from Mask (pictured below) with her face all swollen and disfigured.

It’s very sad.  I’m not mocking it.  That’s just how it looked.

If you could, please pray that she’ll recover quickly and that it’s just bruises and swelling she’ll be dealing with and nothing more serious.

Thanks!