Happy Mother's Day

I hope that this email finds you all well, I am doing very well on the opposite side of the world. Today we attended the Nanjing international branch for church. The Elders Quorum President gave a very stirring lesson that was aimed at the sixteen of us who had just arrived. The message that I took away from it is that our being in China isn't a coincidence. He said that this is an epic time for China and we are epic people. He encouraged us to think past padding our resumes and figure out what lessons we are supposed to learn while in China.

I have been taking my university classes extra seriously, we are given a fair amount of reading to complete as well as projects to do. For one of our culture classes we were asked to write a paper contrasting Chinese and American culture as it stems from different environment factors including geographic, economic, and social. I put in quite a bit of time researching the paper and found out a lot of valuable information. I am constantly trying to pull myself out of the tourist mindset, but you will most-likely only be seeing touristy pictures. (pictures of me studying would be boring, and pictures of me talking to Chinese people would be awkward)

Traveling/learning together doesn't allow for much time alone. I really treasure my morning study time followed by my morning facebook time.

The food here really seems to be hit and miss, we eat out every meal and we have had some really good stuff, and some fairly bad stuff.

Yesterday morning we walked out of our hotel to find a hot air balloon parked in front, I think it was part of a promotion by Peugeot the French car company, anyway I rode my first hot air balloon and lived to tell about it.

Congrats to Megan and Sarah on their personal records at the track meet.

Happy Mothers Day Mom! You have been the best Mom I could have ever asked for.