Jac and Rob's Excellent Adventure (posted by Rob)

Well we've finally found a way to access our blog and Facebook, it can sometimes be a long, slow, tedious project but it beats being completely in the Dark Ages. We are so glad that we've been able to talk to so many of our friends and family via email, Skype, and now Facebook. Please continue to keep us posted on everything you're doing and if you can reach us by Skype, it has become our favorite means of communication. Its a very quick and easy setup and even if you don't have a webcam it is still an excellent free service that lets us talk with you. Our Skype Name is robandjacskaggs so feel free to look us up anytime.

This first week in China has been great. Jacque and I have made a lot of friends with the fellow English teachers and even a few helpful students. We've spent the first few days getting everything situated, going to orientation meetings, and sightseeing around Wuhan. I won't begin teaching until Tuesday and I've already got a few ideas about how to make my classes effective and entertaining. I now know which classes I'll be teaching and where they are located, I'll be teaching a few post-graduate classes upper level English and one Freshman English class which will be in the Economics and Management Department. It was a little strange when I learned that I would be selecting the reading material for this class and one professor took me to the public bookstore and told me to pick out a book I'd like and he'd arrange to have all the students buy their own copy... a little different from our style in the U.S.A. but I found a good one which should help the students focus on oral business English. With the 'Where' and 'What' all covered I'm left thinking about the 'How' which seems to be left largely go my discretion, I thought I'd be a little more nervous about starting classes but I feel confident that things will go smoothly and it will be... interesting.

Jacque is doing exceptionally well adapting to life here. I had braced myself for her to undergo much more of a culture shock then she has. She has no problem walking out through the market place on her own and taking care of everyday needs using basic communicative skills. Jacque loves the children. Everywhere she goes she is mentioning how cute the babies and toddlers are and she's learned how to say hi to them and tell their parents how cute they are. People stare at us just about everywhere we go, its something that you come to accept. Its actually pretty funny and Jac and I have a fun time with it as we walk around. I am really glad we've made so many friends here so soon, the other teachers are a lot of fun and we enjoy their company. (I sent an email out to some friends telling more about them and if you'd like to read it just let me know.) Everyone here is very friendly and honest, we feel very safe. In fact, the other day we went out to the street market to find lettuce for our turtle...Franklin. We found some and the street vendor asked for "5" but didn't say a denomination, i figured it was 5 yuan (about 70 cents) which still seemed a little steep but we handed him 5 yuan anyway. This old, skinny, poor market salesman shook his head and explained it was only 5 jiao (a jiao is 1/10th of a yuan) and took that instead. He could have easily taken my 5 yuan and I would've walked away not knowing much of a difference... 70 cents wouldn't hurt me too much, but even the poor street vendor had the honesty to correct me. That is how much of our experience here has been so far.

Yesterday Jacque and I visited the Yellow Crane Tower, one of the four greatest pagodas in China. It was massive and a real site to see. We had a great time and took lots of pictures (I'll try to add some here but getting through the block isn't easy. If I fail check out my Facebook or ask for an email and I'll send you some). We also walked around the most famous backstreets in Wuhan and took a ferry across the Yangzi River to see the sights there. There were lots of public events; rows and rows of men playing Chinese Chess, people singing and dancing, and even teams of people swimming across the Yangzi itself. We had a good time seeing everything we did and we were pretty tired afterwards.

This morning we attended church via our telephone with the branch in Beijing. This was the absolute first time that they've done a teleconferenced session of Sacrament Meeting and it was a huge blessing. The familiarity of the spirit was felt even though we were sitting alone on our bedside listening to the phone. We sang, and heared prayers, and heard testimonies during fast and testimony meeting and I felt the spirit there just as much as I have in any chapel building. It truly was a great blessing, there was period where we didn't know if we'd be able to attend any kind of church during our stay here and so this will be a wonderful experience for us.

I've taken several pictures and made a few short videos and I'll do my best to post some of them here on the blog. If I can't, again check Facebook or email us and I'll try to send you what I have.

We're thinking and praying for you.