Yes, we are still alive....

Okay, so, just to let you know, we are still alive. We all have (or will have) Facebook accounts, so we have tended to use that for communication. It has been more than 5 months since we have blogged, so I will try and give you the condensed version of what's going on.

Mark:

• I am still working in Zhangjiagang. Work has been ramping up, and I am close to being finished with the first part of the project.
• I have continued to reach out to the locals in Jingang and it is starting to bear fruit. In the past, I spent a lot of time with the administrative assistants, but not their husbands. This has changed. I have started a PlayStation2 ministry with the guys. The couples come over for dinner, and after dinner we play Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution (I have two guitars and two dance pads so we all can compete against each other). The only rules while we are together is the primary language spoken is Chinese (the husbands don't speak a lot of English) and couples are not allowed to compete against each other.
• I continue with language lessons and have accumulated the vocabulary of a 3-year old according to my tutor. She calls it an improvement; I call it frustrating :-(
• On Tuesday nights when I am in Zhangjiagang, I have begun tutoring an 8-year old Korean girl in English before I go to my Chinese lesson. She is pretty incredible. At 8, she speaks 3 languages (Korean, English, Chinese) and constantly wants to learn more. She is sad when it is time for me to leave. The interesting thing is that when I communicate with her mother it is in Chinese. So, I tutor English to a Korean person while speaking Chinese. I'm pretty sure growing up in Sparta that was not on my radar screen.
• I now own an electric scooter. It takes me about 20 minutes to get from my apartment to work, and it is nice to be able to get to the office early and get home early. It also makes trips to the grocery store much easier. I am still trying to figure out all of the many uses for the scooter (groceries, transportation for a family of 4, get to work, make people stare...). It is fun to have and my safety philosophy is fairly simple (yes, I have a helmet): I find the oldest person I can that is riding a scooter and follow them through the town. My reasoning is this: one, they are old. Obviously they know what they are doing or they are extremely lucky. second, people look out for older people when driving, so they are safer than I am.

Jacob:

• Well my dad just handed me the computer and said type something about my life so umm... Well every morning I wake up to the bright sun at 5:30, what a joy!!, then I fall back asleep. :)
• I found out who my teacher is and found out that a few of my friends are in my class, we have decided to make a party all year long. But unfourtnaetly school starts September 1rst.
• Another thing that I do in my very exciting life is that I sit and watch t.v. and use my computer. Well since the olmpyics are on all's what I seem to be able to find is the olmypics. I find it very interesting to watch Michael Phelleps own the rest of the world. haha that is so funny.
• But mainly my life is composed of doing very few things lately eating, sleeping, watching the olympics, and playing basketball that is about alls what my life is composed of.. I KNOW exciting.

Elise:

• So, this summer, I went to Peru for a brio missions trip. The point of the trip was to evangelize to the people through drama. So every day, we would perform our drama 2 or 3 times. We also did hair washing, played with the kids and prayed with anyone who asked us to. While we were there, my cousin and I got baptized together.
• Other than that, my life has been pretty boring. Mostly I've been hanging out and eating gelato with my friends, Jenn, Dara, and Nick. yummm
• So I start school on Thursday and I'll be at a new school this year. I'm helping some of my friends organize our school's 30 Hour Famine. It should be a great year. :)

Noah:

• School ended, I'm going into 7th grade.
• We went back home for the summer, and we went to see all of our relatives. Over summer we went to our grandparents house in Midland, and our grandparents house in Grand Rapids, we also went to our Aunt and Uncles house in Indiana.
• Now I'm back in China! and I'm waiting for school to start.

Levi:

• The school year ended, and now I'm going into 7th grade (in case you didn't catch that with noah)
• We came back to the U.S. and stayed with our grandparents. (Taco Bell baby!!!!)
• Now we're back in China and I'm waiting for my friends to get here and also waiting for school to start.

Natalie:

• Well my husband says that I have to blog my boring uneventful life, so here it goes.
• I loved going back to the US this summer and hanging out with my awesome friends and family. I shopped a lot trying to get prepared for next year. We looked at two colleges with Elise which was a whole new experience for us. I spent a few days at Ed and Deb's with the kids and we spent about a week and half with Mark's family. I think we ate at almost every restaurant in Midland at least once. Phew, I managed to only gain about 3 pounds this summer but have gotten rid of them all.
• This past week, I have been watching the olympics as the rest of the world has. Just not like all of you. We don't have local cable at our house only satellite TV that comes out of the Philipines, so they have been interesting to say the least. I got tired of watching entire events like, volleyball, fencing, boxing and equestrian. So, I have been watching the olympics via slingbox. You just gotta love technology.
• We switched to a new church in April and really enjoy the smallness of it and the teaching.
• I'm not sure what this year is going to bring for me. I am going to lead another Bible study in the fall, and as much as I hate the thought of it, I know that I need to pursue my mandarin lessons again. I am also in a book club and bunco club. Other than that, I go to some grocery store almost every day and somehow try to keep myself busy.
• Right now I am patiently anticipating the return of my friends and hoping that this rainy season will soon go away.

The family (changes):

• No, we didn't add or lose any members. However, we did change one of them out. We had to fire Hang Lei (the driver). He was beginning to have issues coming to work on time and when he was working he couldn't stay awake while driving, to name a couple of reasons...Our new driver is named Mr. Cheng. He is about 45 years old, and about 4'8" of pure dynamite. He doesn't speak English, but he does know how to get us to where we want to go...


• We moved. An opportunity arose for us to move to a different compound. We now live in a house much like you would find in the United States. It allows everyone to have their own bedroom, Elise and Jacob have their own bathrooms, and we still have a study and a game room in the basement. We just bought a foosball table, so the family tournaments should be entertaining.


• Hong (ayi) took English classes while we were in the United States. She is eager to take another class, so we will probably send her to the next level this fall. She continues to keep up with the new house and amazes us with how quickly she adapts to things and trying to keep up with maintenance on the house.