Hey Folks,

Happy weekend! It's been an exciting one here in J-Town. On Friday after classes we went and played some b-ball. It was pretty fun. For once we didn't get fouled to death (I haven't fully explained our recent on-the-court-troubles, but I will). We split up so that Cletus was on one team, and Tim and I were on another. Cletus' team was really good because of this one kid, who was like the Chinese version of Kobe: taking every shot, hardly passing, and making a disgusting number of buckets. Then they had two big guys who kept my hands full on the boards. My team was pretty bad. We had two guys who loved to shoot threes, and hated playing defense. It made for a long night. But it's always good to get out and play. The ladies who work at the gym know us pretty well now, and usually let us rent a ball for free. It's pretty sweet.

Then after basketball, Cletus, Chris, Hannah (the Australian), Wang Peng, and myself all went out for dumplings, which were awesome. Then we all went bowling, which was a blast. It was Wang Peng's first time, but she did realy well. She looked like she was going to throw out her arm every time, but somehow the ball went straight. I bowled well the first game, but poorly the second. Cletus and I had a bet going with Hannah that we could bowl a better second game than she could. Ice cream from McDonald's was on the line; this was no time for ninnies. The funny thing was that we all spent so much energy trying to make the other person mess up, that we really didn't pay attention to our own games at all. That probably attributed to my atrocious score. But luckily for me, Mickey D's was closed by the time we were done. Crisis averted! I have a bunch of pictures from the night, but it will probably be awhile before I get them online. Sorry!

Saturday was a good day as well. We got taken out for lunch by our bosses at Beihua. The group included Cletus, Chris, Fr. Brian, Fr. John (a 74 year old Maryknoll Brother from Boston who teaches at Beihua), Fr. Sergio (a Mexican priest, non-Maryknoll, and super friendly, currently taking Chinese classes at Beihua, and teaching next semester), Zhao Yao (the man at Beihua who we have the most contact with and who pays us), Mr. Liu (Zhao Yao's supervisor, and a really nice guy, tons of fun), and Mr. Li (the man in charge of the Foriegn Affairs Department at Beihua, so the boss of Zhao Yao and Mr. Liu), and myself.

The meal had two purposes: first, just to gather us all together to see how things were going, and to enjoy some fellowship and increase relations between us and our countries; and also to announce that Mr. Li was accepting a similar post at a college in South Korea. This was very welcome news to us, because Brian had been speculating that we might be asked to move to the new housing they just finished building at the new campus. This would not have been considered acceptable to any of us. We all are very settled into our current homes, and did not want to move. But that's all water under the bridge now, since none of it came about.

Instead we had a wonderful meal. They took us to a Korean BBQ, where they have two grills in the middle of the table and cook the food right in front of you. It was awesome. We hadn't had that much meat at one time in a long time. For three hungry American boys, it was heaven on earth, at least for two hours.

After lunch, we had planned on playing basketball after a quick nap, but that ended up not happening. We were all so full of meat, that we all ended up sleeping most of the afternoon. But I think we're going to go play today.

Other than that, life continues to roll on. This coming weekend we are planning a trip to Shenyang, capital city of Liaoning Province, just south of Jilin. Cletus and I know some of the Maryknoll volunteers down there, so we are going to spend some time visiting them, and Chris will come too. It should be fun. We haven't seen them since Hong Kong.

I guess that's all for now. Kind of a boring post, but at least it's post. I have a great story about Tim's bike buying experience, but that one will have to wait for another time.

Until then, you stay classy San Diego.