7 down, 6 more to go

(family in Arkansas)

The last two weeks I was blessed to be able to go home to Arkansas and visit my family and friends. It was great to be able to relax at home and enjoy American life! I am now heading off tomorrow to Thailand for a month. Our organization has a conference every year down in Northern Thailand and then I am going with some of my friends in the organization for the beach for a week to relax before classes start again in the spring. It will be nice to have a break before the craziness of classes; studying Chinese definitely is more draining than I had expected but it is great to already see the progress. My landlord came over the other day to look at my apartment (she is going to change the cabinets in my kitchen so hopefully the roaches will go away and stay away) and she could even notice the improvement in my Chinese! I appreciate your thoughts as I am traveling the next weeks on multiple planes and buses (I will have taken 13 planes by the end of the holiday). Happy New Year (Chinese new year next week!)

(after flight number 1 of the holiday season-Changchun to Beijing)