Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you weren’t hoping for a hard news story today. In a very unscientific poll, I asked my students (doctors) what they were thankful for this year. At some point during their “toast,” roughly 30% mentioned their health, 90% mentioned their family, and about 20% mentioned their co-workers. Here is a somewhat random sample: I am thankful for my parents, they gave me some money this year to buy a car. Now I don’t have to be cold going to work, so I am thankful for that. I am very thankful to my parents-in-law, this year they gave my husband and I a lot of money to buy an apartment. Now we all live together, and they help us to raise […]

I would have written this post yesterday, but some how sitting in my office all day, didn’t help me remember that it was a “holiday.” So last night I planned on taking a bunch of photos and videos for you all to enjoy, but then, nothing happened! At our school that sets of fireworks pretty much weekly, there was nothing to see. We could only just make out the rumbling in the distance. My wife was surprised that I had forgotten how unimportant it is here. So here is something a bit more fun. This is how we celebrated the New Year in Longzhou, and why I always expect New Year’s Eve in China to be crazy. Students with fireworks and massive groups of students […]

This weekend I visited the local mall, and attended a Christmas worship service. As you can see Christmas is coming in China, and will be the theme of the posts this week. I hope all of you will be spending the holidays with the ones you love. The video below was taken at a local Chinese church, with performance from choirs from both of the large local churches, and the church wind ensemble.