The church has around 500 members. The village doesn’t seem very big so a lot of them must come in from the rural areas. It’s very mountainous and the only transportation available outside the village is motorcycle taxi.

They prepared a wonderful lunch for us, as always, offering us their best. Very humbling. We had about 90 children, ranging in age from 3 to 13ish. I got to do sports. Recess was my best subject in school, so that’s the safest place to put me.

In the afternoon, they took us to Gary’s parents’ house for dinner. His family was very gracious. We had way too much food, but it was all very delicious.

That night at 8 o’clock, fireworks were set off in six different locations in the city. We were able to watch some from the roof of Gary’s apartment on the 33 floor.

“Hangzhou is a sub-provincial city located in the Yangtze River Delta in the People’s Republic of China, and the capital of Zhejiang province. Located 180 kilometres (112 mi) southwest of Shanghai, as of 2004 the entire Hangzhou Region (“shì”, 杭州市) or Prefecture-level city had a registered population of 6.4 million people.[1] The urban agglomeration of the Hangzhou metropolitan area (杭州市区) has a resident population of 3,931,900 as of 2003, of which 2,636,700 are permanent residents. There are 1,910,000 residents in the six urban core districts.
As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities of China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most well-known location.”

We found out about the trip on Saturday, I had to buy a ticket for Alice, and we were on our way on Tuesday. The trip was sponsored by Nongfu Springs drinking water. We saw a lot of water. The water is taken from Thousand Island Lake, a reservoir in the mountains outside of Hangzhou. It is amazingly unpolluted. We really had a great time, met some interesting people. I was the only laowai (foreigner) so I’m in a lot of photos. Look for me in the next commercial for Nongfu Springs, the water with a 7.3 ph.