2008…has been an amazing and life changing year for Dong Da (our university). Every day we 

see the KING moving in the lives of our university students in our community. More than ever kids are starving to experience the KING'S love. Last semester our team built relationships with 400 kids and 165 of them heard good news.  We returned to China this past August not knowing what was in store for us, ELT Edge or the students here at Dong Da. Most of the Family was becoming seniors, which for those who do not know the school system in China, the second semester for seniors is spent off campus looking for a job. With that in mind, we knew that our family was moving on and that we needed to be looking and waiting for the opportunities to meet new people.

On December 20th we put on a Christmas Party for our campus and followed that up the next night by caroling around our campus.  We had 28 participants in the caroling and almost 100 students showed up to the Christmas party. Unfortunately we chose the coldest day of the year to date to stand outside caroling. When we arrived back home the temperature outside was -19 degrees Celsius (-1 F).  We were so proud of the students that came out to sing carols in the freezing cold.  At the Christmas Party we were able to teach some traditional carols and Mark read the Real Christmas story to the students. Christmas was great! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at a different school so that all of the teachers from ELT Edge could be together and celebrate.  We did some singing, read the Christmas story, watched some movies and played games all day.

After Christmas a few of the teachers here had their girlfriends and boyfriends come to visit. 

We became very busy trying to meet everyone and have group time with the teachers and the students before we all take off for two months for the winter holiday. Our anniversary was kind of spread out through three days. One day we went out to a nice western restaurant and the next day we went ice chairing together(ice chairing: think of a chair with runners and  you move with large ice picks in each hand that you dig into the ice to create momentum).  New Year's Eve we spend with one of our teachers who is at another School. Candice, a teachers at our school had a big New Year's party but earlier that day Sarah, who has epilepsy had a few seizures so we went and spent the evening with her just relaxing and watching TV.

Our winter holiday travels are expected to be long. We will be leaving Qinhuangdao on January 10^th for Beijing for one night and then we will be taking a plane to Qingdao. We have a friend from last semester there who we will get to spend a few days with. From there we will travel to

 Shanghai on the 13^th where we have three students that we know. We will spend about a week here where we will also go to Suzhou and Hangzhou just to visit. On the 20^th, if we are able to get a train ticket we will go south to Xiamen where Carrie’s student from last year will meet us. (For those of you who go to Fox Island “C” this is the same boy whose letter we read to you all.) He lives about two hour by bus from Xiamen and we will spend the Chinese New Year with him and his family. About 8 days or so. Then, one of Carrie’s friends, Veronica from WSU, is dating a boy who plays for the China Basketball Association (CBA) and is on a team in Guangdong. Veronica will be visiting her boyfriend and we intend to meet up with them. He has a game on the 2^nd and 4^th of February that we are going to try and attend. Then, we will travel further south to the Hainan Province and the city of Sanya, which is very similar to Hawaii. We are so excited to be in the warm weather. Also, the hostel that we will be staying at has ¥18 massages for an hour. That would equal about $2.70 an hour. After about a week or so in the sun we will head to Lijiang, Chengdu, Xian and then back to Beijing. We are planning to be back in Qinhuangdao around the 25^th of February, which will give us about a week to prepare for classes that start on the 2^nd of March.

                We will try to get on our blog and email from time to time to keep you all informed with how everything is going and where we are but we cannot guarantee anything. Most hostels though do have Internet. We are so excited about this trip and the ability to see more of this beautiful Country.

Again, we hope that you have all had an amazing holiday season. We love and miss all of you and America very much.