I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.
Psalm 121:1-3

Just seemed like nothing else was adequate to begin this post. Look at those mountains! The views from where we live never cease to amaze us. Albert took these first two pictures on a relatively clear day from the top floor of one of the classroom buildings here on campus. The second shot shows the buildings in the "downtown" area of our city.

Every week or so Albert comes home from class with a box (or a bubble envelope containing a DVD of a Carolina football game!) from the campus post office! It's CARE PACKAGE DAY!!!!!! Do you see the smiles on those little white American faces?!? Thanks, precious friends, for showering us with such thoughtful pieces of home since we've been here. Studying our Chinese homework is never so bad when we have beef jerky, Jello pudding, Ritz crackers, peanut butter and other yummy American treats, not to mention the wonderful notes of love and encouragement sent from all the folks we miss so much! To say we appreciate you is a big understatement!

We're managing to make our newly renovated apartment into a home, slowly but surely. Here's a shot of the corner of the big rug we bought the other day for our den (this now covers the incredibly hard concrete tiles!). Look, y'all! It's an oriental rug! Are you shocked?
OK - We just thought this next picture was hilarious. It was taken during the renovation from you know where. Albert was trying to take a picture of Kendall doing something but Whitney decided to jump up in front of the camera just when the shutter was pressed. We now call this the picture of Kendall holding up a giant Whitney head. You see what I mean now, don't you?!?!? Take a moment to laugh out loud. You know you want to, and it will make you feel better.

This foam (being cut by a meat cleaver in this photo) is why we don't wake up with a stiff back every morning. We didn't fully realize until we arrived here that the term "mattress" means something different to everyone. Over here it means "piece of wood with fabric stapled on top." After a few weeks of not really wanting to get in the bed at night, we knew enough Chinese to go out and plead with these ladies to cut some pieces of foam to fit our beds. What an incredible difference this stuff has made in getting a good night's sleep. We still miss our beds at home, but we love our foam mattress pads!

What Kendall is consuming in the next photo is a freak of nature that we thought you'd be interested in. It is a "double banana." We didn't even know that there was such a thing - the conjoined twins of the banana world.

These last three photos are just various pictures of the surroundings in our city that we thought you'd like to see. The lady selling vegetables is a common sight for when we are out doing errands. These ladies have incredibly strong shoulders. You will see them carrying very large amounts of different kinds of produce all over town in these bamboo containers . We can buy a big bag of apples or mandarin oranges for less than 75 US cents. The last picture is the outside of our apartment building. Notice all the bricks and concrete that are outside waiting to be installed in our kitchen (pre-renovation)! They are sitting under our small bathroom window and the larger window is the kitchen. Y'all come see all this in person now, ya' hear?!?! We'll look forward to updating you more next week -