“Hosting” has been a central theme for us this summer — something that never would have happened in our previous city. So far, we’ve had visitors stay for a combined 30ish days (and counting)… and we’ve loved it! Most of our guests come through for the Terracotta warriors, IKEA, or the international airport… but we’ll take what we can get 🙂

Visitors have included Elise’s Chinese uncle (a good friend from Xining), good friends who were on their way back to the U.S. to get married, and 3 friends from Switzerland just to name a few.

But the highlight of the summer was hosting Kristen’s mom and step-dad (Dianne and Mark, or “Dedi” and “Poppy” to Elise). They were only able to stay 11 days but we made the most of our time.

Elise was up with the sun, and Dedi & Poppy were up with jetlag, so they would play for hours while Kristen and I slept 🙂

Mid-morning, after Elise’s nap, our day would officially begin…

The park across the street was on our favorite spots, because “China” comes to you. Mark was a hit with the dancing ladies and Dianne got a little cardio in at the workout area.

She would have liked to do some leg-press, but they were all taken…

Of course they went to the Terracotta warriors (where they got to meet the farmer who discovered them!), we rode bikes around the ancient city wall, and ate lots of traditional foods, but we also made time for a little pampering.

I think that back massage on the park bench above cost $2.00 for close to 30 minutes!

And Kristen turned 33 during their stay!

Dianne helped make her day special by making waffles for breakfast and baking an awesome carrot cake (sorry I didn’t get a picture of the cake or Kristen blowing out the candles… my bad).

They were even able to experience a power outage of sorts… caused by our excessive use of the air conditioner. You pay in advance for electricity here but, since it’s our first summer in Xi’an, we were still getting a good gage of how fast we go through units… we learned the hard way! We used up all of our units around 7:30pm (an hour after the office closes). So we spent the evening playing cards using our cell phone flash lights and head lamps, and sweating through the night until we could go pay the next morning.

In all, we had an amazing time and wish they had been able to stay longer. Being away from family and friends is the hardest thing about living here. So when we do get these sweet opportunities, we savor them.

Until next time…