Harvest Party!

On Saturday the 27th my friends threw a "Harvest" party! We ate sweets, played games and danced. It was a good night!

Arls, God Bless

Let's Do Lunch!

 My favorite restaurant in town, as dubbed by myself, Matt Gordon and John Horn is the "Lonely Lantern". It used to have Chinese lanterns outside but now they are gone.

It has been exactly the same for the last 5 years, which is good and bad. 

It's good because the food there is second to none, but bad because the building and everything just looks old and dirty, and the tables and chairs are uncomfortable. I have great plans for this restaurant; someday I'll be able to speak enough Chinese to talk with the owners, who already know what I want when I come in: Sweet and Sour Chicken!

 

In these pictures I also ordered a ganbian tudou si  (hash browns). Delicious!

-Arls, God Bless

New Pictures for October! (Just me living large!)

Here are some photos from the past couple weeks.

Coming home from the bike ride to Ta'er si Monastery I was sore and tired, but had just enough energy left in me to enjoy the experience of learning how to ride without hands!

A beautiful sunset with the view from my  

15th floor apartment!

 

Sam and I at the weekly Saturday night party we throw for our Chinese friends to come hang out

A Red Panda at the Xining Zoo. I went there 2 weeks ago and was surprised by the amount of animals they had. 

It actually wasn't a boring Zoo! With a ride through the tiger, bear, lion and coyote enclosement I felt like they had some exciting stuff going for them. The craziest part is the bus going through the predator areas has no cages or bars over windows, so if you were stupid enough, you could reach out and touch a lion or a bear! Also throwing crackers to Baboons through their cage was fun.

My best buds at the wedding in Xunhua. During my first few hours at the wedding these young fellas came over and hung out with me, talking and laughing at my broken Chinese! Throughout the rest of my time there I always got an excited Hello from them.

At a local meat market, right on the sidewalk, going through the main street in town. Might look unsanitary but at least most of them are fresh Eh! I think the Good family will especially appreciate this pic! 

When I saw the police boat, I thought of Mark and Kaiser, had to get a pic! Too bad it wasn't pocket sized or I would've sent it to ya! This is at the Yellow River where I swam in 2007 for the annual competition!! They have it every year still as far as I know, maybe I'll have to try again since last time I didn't quite make it all the way across!

A Birthday Party in Class!

During this last week, one of the students in our kou yu (spoken Chinese) class celebrated his 40th birthday! He is from Argentina, see if you can guess which guy he is?!

It was an awesome day of class with a long break of snacks, pictures and singing "Happy Birthday" in six different languages! We sang in Chinese, English, Korean, Thai, Kazakh, and Spanish! The Japanese sing in English too I guess! Ha Ha!

Our teacher, to my right in the first picture, especially loved the brownies, which I found out are called "bu lao ni" in Chinese.

My classes are going very well and I am happy to have the classmates that are here. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to reply! I love the feedback:)

God Bless
Arls,

My First Few Days in China

Still only the first week into my stay here but I must say it's lovely. I am hoping to meet up with an old friend tonight who some of you may remember me mentioning in my speech at Grace.

This morning was overcast and slightly chilly. Enough to wear a fleece! At 7:50 I got up to go meet my friend and her sons for a little excursion to the mosque. This morning is the end of Ramadan. The biggest mosque in Western China is here. Some pictures will be uploaded soon. 

As we got close to the mosque it started raining quite hard though, and as you will see in the pictures, thousands of prayer rugs were either ruined or soaked. More importantly though, thousands of people stood in the rain and got on their knees to pray to a god who isn't even real (not that they know that) and doesn't even love them. Makes me ponder how much I am willing to do and endure for Jesus. It was a great morning though, hanging out with my friend and the kids, taking pictures and meeting other friends I hadn't seen in awhile. Good times!

Some more things have come up since being here as well, one is my phone, phones do not work here! My smartphone that my good man Lucas gave me sadly doesn't have a SIM card slot so is useless besides playing games on here, and the international phone I got doesn't have Chinese characters as an option, so I can't read peoples texts!! 

So if anyone has an old iphone or smartphone that you are willing to donate to me that would be awesome! Or if anyone is willing to support me buying a used iphone also would work. I looked them up online and I can get a nice used Iphone 3Gs for $100 on Ebay and then my friend can unlock them to work here in China! I am also looking into selling my HTC evo 4g, anyone interested? It works well in the States:) For you guys I would sell it for $100, I think I could get $125 at least on Ebay for it. 

If anyone is even slightly interested in doing any of these options please promptly reply since I will be starting school in a week and a half and will need a phone then! I can use my international phone temporarily but It would be nice to have one that can use Characters as soon as possible! Thanks for considering guys! 

Xining already feels like home. It may take awhile to adjust to life in a completely different culture but since I have been here before it will be slightly smoother than you may think. For instance I can already eat just as loud as my fellow chinese without a guilty conscience! No need for manners when your not in the company of those who follow the rule of "manners".

Still waiting for my laptop parts to get in since my laptop broke last wednesday. It needs a new LCD screen cable. As you can see the computer works fine for which I am glad since I dropped it off a coffee table with the black screen as a result. All I need is a monitor to make a temporary fix as you see in the background though. Works well! 

PS I have a video of the apartment but it's taking way too long to upload so I'll try in a different email. Also I'll get pics of campus for you soon too!

God Bless,

Arls

A Time to Celebrate!

The week of Wes's wedding was chuck full of partys and playing. I don't think there was a night I got to bed earlier than 12am from Monday on. First off we had a dual Xbox/Halo/Reach all-nighter bachelor party! The 52in Tv dwarfs a usually big 36in. Staying up playing Halo is my kind of party! Loved it more than Wes, I guess cause I won more often:)

Then we had another bachelor party since the Halo night was pretty spontaneous, this one had been planned by (my sister) Tamara. We went to an awesome amusement park out in Glenwood Springs. The swing was my favorite, but not Mallo's favorite though, by the look on his face! At the end of our time there we got the chance to bless Wes one last time as a single man! Then it was on to the Golf course where we had an 18-hole round before the wedding rehearsal; never done that before! This was one of the best times of the week! I did 2 of my best hits on the 18th hole!

Then the wedding, it was beautiful and elegant just like a movie. Loved every bit of it! The dance party at the end was the best one I have ever been a part of, sorry no pictures I was dancing! Sad that the week is over. Now I am back to work!!

God Bless,
Arls

Vollyball Tournament

My brother Wes and my nephew Kaiser.

It couldn't have been more perfect volleyball conditions. Cloudy most of the day with the air dead still. The morning consisted of a 6 team pool which means we played 5 games from 9:30 till about 1pm. We won all of them, only one game against a team was close but it made it more fun having to play under the pressure of a loss looming in your sights. Then, since we were the first seed in our pool of 6 teams we got a bye or got to skip the first round of play in the tournament. How they do it in Steamboat is the top 2 teams from each pool, there were 3 pools in our division, move on to a single elimination tournament. So by about 4pm we got to play our first tournament game which was the semi-finals, since we got that bye. Then for the finals we played a tall Minnesota team, brothers just like Wes and I. They were good players but half way through our second game one of them sprained his ankle and so the rest of that game he was limping around and in doubles it makes it a piece of cake to win when one guy is handicapped. We were able to win every match without a loss! It was awesome for me to be able to play with my bro one last time before I head out to China. I am expecting to be in China a long time and don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to play with him again so that was a highlight for me to be able to do that.
 

High five!

 Now it's the wedding week. We have already had a shower for Wes and Em, and a bachelor party for Wes this last week. This week we will have another bachelor party for Wes on Thursday and then rehearsal on Friday, then Wedding. It's amazing that this weekend is their wedding already....seems like yesterday I was thinking about how far away it seemed while I was in Kyrgyzstan. Also my best friend John Horn is getting married on the same day!! It will be a long day filled with joy. After the weddings, my plans are to work for my dad as usual, and my flight to China leaves on the 13th of Aug. So I will be here for another 3 weeks after the weddings. I am stoked and slightly nervous about moving to China, different lifestyle and just a completely different life for me while I'm there. I am looking forward to it.

Mom, Dad and Kaiser came to watch.