Final Update from China

As the blog was shut down, I sent this update out to a few people via email. I am including a few of the final pictures from China as well. Here is the email in its original:

“I guess not having a blog can be good in that, when we get back, people will sit down and look at pictures that we took, allowing us the opportunity to explain some of them a bit better. Here are a few pictures from our past week, which was a holiday week known as the Dragon Boat Festival. We had four days off of school so we did a few random activities. First we went to the countryside with a friend of Jane's, where we had a very large feast to celebrate the Dragon Boat holiday. It was a great meal and a good opportunity for the kids to see an older rural part of China. In the pictures are me with the family at the brunch, and Dan in front of a hayfield. The next day, we booked train tickets to Suzhou, a nearby city that we really enjoy. We ended up staying in a hotel that had a pool, which is pretty rare here. We swam for a few hours each day (of two), and we did a lot of shopping, getting some pretty good deals. In another picture are Jane and Etain in a restaurant called the Blue Marlin, which served Western food at decent prices (my first real hamburger in about a year). Our trip was nice but, as always, short lived, and we had to head back home. Our traveling home went very smoothly, and we got home in time to get the girls bathed before bed. The other picture is of them two enjoying some popcorn before bed. (In the picture you can maybe see how people are always confusing them as twins. The other day people even asked if our three kids were triplets.)

Well, back to work. We will be home in about 4 weeks; we are really starting to count down the days.

Zaijian.”