We just spent four days back in our Xining apartment.  This was a planned retreat back into the city.  It was amazing how clean and tidy our luxurious city apartment felt after spending only three weeks in the country.  It’s really pathetic how "city-slicker" we really are.

It’s nice to have a home away from home away from home (home cubed) as we are living this non-traditional lifestyle in China.  Over those four days in Xining the girls had a lot of fun play-dates with expat friends, we went to the swimming pool, Christa and I actually got a date to ourselves at Xining’s newest western-friendly Italian restaurant called Casa Mia (yum!), I played some hoops, and we were able to stock up on some needed supplies we can’t get in Jianzha (i.e. butter, peanut butter, cheese, pasta noodles, snack stuff, etc.)  Most importantly we got to reconnect with many of our friends still living in Xining.  As the temperatures have been getting cooler (due to the strange lack of sunshine) we also took this opportunity to bring some of our warm clothing out here to Jianzha where we will likely be wearing it fairly soon.

As fun as it was to visit Xining is was nice to come back to Jianzha where we will be living the next 9 months.  It was nicer that the house was intact upon our return although I was a bit disappointed that no rats had found their way into the traps that I laid before we left.  Shucks. 

Today we settled back into the beginnings of our routine.  Home school in the morning, lunch, library/language learning/chores/etc in the afternoon.  I start study today with my Chinese tutor.  She hasn’t taught before but she speaks fairly standard Mandarin and hopefully we will work well together.  It’s going to be a one month trial basis.  We’ll see how it goes…

I just started a book written by an American who spent 2 years living in a rural Chinese town as he worked for the Peace Corp.  It’s called River Town by Peter Hessler and I can already tell that I will likely have many shared experiences with this guy.  So far it’s been really good even though he lived in a different part of China.  It was a New York Times bestseller; so if you’re looking for an interesting perspective/book on China you should check it out at your local library.

Today, guess what, it’s raining.  Sorry for the lack of pictures.  Mud is kind of ugly.