touchdown!

Well, we have arrived safely in Sichuan's capital city, and everything has come together smoothly, as we can be sure it would under Father's hand. ^^ So many stories already, and it has only been one day! It was nice for 3 of us (BC, BP, CY) to meet up with other short-termers at the Vancouver airport. We all shared the flight to Shanghai together and then split up to our "final destinations." Of course, we took a group picture at the airport as requested ;)

At the Shanghai airport, the 3 of us made our connecting flight only by His work, we are sure!! In Canada, they had told us that we had to switch back to Air China once we got to Shanghai. So we went to line up at the Air China counter, only to be told that we weren't entered into the system properly! So we would have to line up elsewhere and pay for extra tickets. Since our flight left in under 45 minutes by that time, of course that wasn't even an option. Thankfully (perhaps this was a moving factor too), our luggage had for some reason already been conveyored through to the flight we needed to be on. Somehow, after running back and forth between counters, and thanks to BC's mandarin skills, we saw the Air China agent say something into the phone and then he looked up and gave us our boarding passes. *phew!* I still have no idea what happened. Anyways, we tore through the (big!) airport trying to find our gate, and caught one of the last busses driving out to our plane. *phew again!* ... & PTL!

Early morning devotions began the following morning, and the rest of today was spent meeting our team members (we have an awesome team!!) and doing some orientation at the house of some long termers here in Chengdu. One unexpected blssing popped up in the form of .... *drumroll* ... our very own TAs! Yesss.... we have teaching assistants for our classes! And they are just lovely people, I'm so glad they are here to help us out. They're fellow young students themselves who teach English to the Chinese here; not only that, they also teach Chinese to English people! :D Additionally, they are our dear brothers and sisters who feel the same burden to help demonstrate His love to the students at this Youth Center. It is just so cool to meet other Chinese C's who are around our age, and especially to sing praise songs with them (in English!) as we opened our orientation session. ^^ We all look forward to spending more time with them, and learning what we can from each other, including discipleship.

We got a good taste of authentic Sichuan fare too...mmm hotpot & buns & noodles & spice (well, for some of us)! Tomorrow will be spent preparing our lessons.

Please remember our time together tomorrow, that we will really be able to pool our thoughts & ideas ... not much time to organize it all! But we have lots of great material to work with, thanks to the experience of the long-termers. Also please remember CC's foot, as it is not feeling so well, and it's difficult to walk as much as we do during the day.

For now it's time to go and rest! Here's a shot of us during orientation...

and checking out the student dorms at Sichuan University. Let's not complain about the laundry being over a 2 minute walk away anymore :)

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