I've been trying to figure out what I am supposed to write about, and come up with very little.  There has been little activity here.  I've been doing Chinese flash cards almost every day, cooking a good deal (mostly trying to figure out how to make a cookie without an oven... I have yet to succeed... still need to find baking powder as well :D).

We had a couple speech competitions the last couple weeks at the school.  The Sophomores [the college currently is (though not for long) a 3 year community college/vocational school where typically the third year is spent on internship, leaving sophomores as the 'seniors' so to speak] host an English speech competition every semester with the freshman as participants.  Kari, Dan, and I were the judges during the preliminaries and part of a 10 judge panel in the final round.  There was a pretty large turnout, both for speaking and spectating.  The speakers' levels were rather varied, but most of them were comprehend-able.  They would make a pre-written (by themselves or the internet) speech and then answer a question posed by the judges.  The finals also included an impromptu prepared speech (they were given ~10 minutes prep time for one of five topics).  Overall it was really fun.

A couple weeks ago we also had a group from CSV come out on the annual CSV China historical tour- where they went to JiGongShan (Rooster Mountain) where missionaries had once been stationed up to 1949.  We didn't have a whole lot of time together (I had to take care of some visa stuff and still had to teach classes), but it was still great getting to meet some of the CSV leadership (the founder, his wife, and the president for instance).  I also met with John, who is in charge of the summer camp.  I got to talk with him a lot, and look forward to the summer camp where we can host a few hundred kids over a month and a half in the rural part of Henan province.