Some pictures!

The LTS faculty milling about the courtyard of the first seminary we visited in Wuhan.

















A shot from the bus as we drove through Wuhan.

One of the many beautiful old buildings in Wuhan.




















Dinner the first night in Wuhan.

























Dinner the secind night in Wuhan.





























A view of a street in Shanghai Venice.

A sampan in a backwater canal in
Shanghai Venice.








One of the canals in Shanghai Venice (This
is why they call it the Venice of Shanghai).












A view of some of the Shanghai skyline.

the work situation

For those of you wondering about where we are in our work....

We had our graduation ceremony on June 1st, and enjoyed the experience! As faculty members, we got to robe up and process in and sit on stage- it was all very formal and official! What a treat to be marching trough the church in our gowns with all these great theologians when we are just the young English teachers!

The graduation banquet was held the next evening at a lovely hotel in Mong Kok. We had a great buffet dinner, very fancy, and were well entertained with speeches, singing, and a funny gift giving presentation where the graduating students gave individual joke gifts to every professor. Some were really cute and other hilarious, and we all had a very nice time.

The faculty 'root seeking trip' to mainland China on the occasion of the 95th Anniversary of our seminary went very well. We, the faculty, traveled to Wuhan in central China to visit the city where LTS was born (it was decided to move the school to Hong Kong after the Revolution) and to Shanghai to nurture our relations with the official representatives/leaders of 'THE Church' in PR China. Lots of nice speeches, photo ops, gift exchanges and fancy meals... and a good time was had by all.

Right now we are working on planning a summer English language and orientation program for the new international students which will start at the end of July and go on for three and a half weeks until the regular school semester begins at the end of August with orientations and the annual student/faculty 'retreat' in Cheung Chau (see the post from last summer!). We have some final lesson planning to complete and little details to work out before we head off for our vacation next week.

Speaking of that, we will leave July 3rd for a vacation through some bits of South East Asia. We will visit Cambodia and see the ruins of Angkor Wat and see old family freinds in Phnom Penh. We will fly into Bangkok and travel overland to Cambodia, and also hope to get in some beach time in Thailand! We will take a train down the peninsula and depart from Singapore, where we will see one of Katrina's cousins, Karen, who lives there, and also hope to visit the zoo or take in one of the famous 'safaris'! It's a short trip, and we have a lot planned, so it may be a bit insane, but we are excited and look forward to sharing the stories with you when we return.

We miss you all...

Katrina and Ryan

update

Dear all,

Hi! I hope this post works... I have been struggling with our Internet connection in the past weeks, and my last few attempts to post news have failed! (I am getting sick of writing blog entries and having them get erased because of my Internet failing/freezing...)

Anyways... more rain here as we have the tropical storm Fengshen off shore... as the Hong Kong Observatory reminds us:

PLEASE BE REMINDED THAT: THE TROPICAL CYCLONE SIGNAL NO. 8 HAS BEEN ISSUED. THE RED RAINSTORM WARNING SIGNAL HAS BEEN ISSUED. THE THUNDERSTORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED.IT WILL REMAIN EFFECTIVE UNTIL 9:30 A.M. TODAY. THE LANDSLIP WARNING WAS ISSUED AT 8:10 A.M.THE SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF FLOODING IN NORTHERN NEW TERRITORIES HAS BEEN ISSUED (http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/currwx/current.htm)

Between 6:45 and 7:45 am we had 29mm of rainfall in Shatin- to give you some idea of the intensity! Some areas of the region have had more! I love the details of this site, and recommend it if you are curious about the details of our weather... the humidity is always about 97-99% but other aspects do change. And you have to love the great expressions we use in Hong Kong to talk about the weather- 'red' rain is pretty bad, but 'black' rain is worse... we had that a couple weeks ago.

The past few days were even sunny-ish, amazingly, and we went to the beach on an outer island (Cheung Chau) on Saturday, but for almost a month before that it rained every day, all day, and we even have quite severe flooding and landslides. At one point the road to the airport even had to be closed because of flooding, and some people even lost their lives.

And now the rain is back! Hopefully we will have no further problems! I am sure many of you heard about the disastrous ferry sinking in the Philippines? We pray for those families affected, and hope that we won't have any similar incidents in Hong Kong. This storm has already taken enough lives.

Life in the tropics! :)

Love to all,

Katrina and Ryan