Sunday July 15th

Today we all went to a park. At the park was this amazing temple looking thing. Many images ran through my mind about the many things that could be inside this monumental building, but Video Arcade did not fully register until my nose was pressed up against the glass of one of those machines which swallows your coins after your false hopes of the teetering bunch (which are somehow magically suspended over the edge) pique. We took some pictures during the day and they are not uploading right now. I'm thinking about a flickr page.

The second week of language was more intense and I feel like things are leaving my brain faster than they enter. We found out that we are generally the Guizhou province group, and that many of us will go to Guiyang. I'm looking forward to this, but I'm also taking language classes one day at a time.

My family has been wonderful and helpful as ever and some nights I make real breakthroughs in communication. It is still difficult to form entire sentences, but we have some moments of real clarity.