June 18-20,2006

The picture here shows a man driving his cargo through the streets of Kunming during the afternoon rush hour.

The Big Bear Team met up with the Temecula Team Sunday evening around 10:00 PM at LAX. We left for Beijing at 1:40 AM and arrived in Beijing after the twelve-hour flight at around 5:00 AM China time. It was VERY warm and humid. But the air conditioning kicked in about 6:30 and things got much better. Our connecting flight to Kunming left at 7:30 AM. We arrived in Kunming Tuesday about 11:30 AM. While the trip was long, things went very smoothly.

Steven and Dali Herr, our partners here, met us at the airport in China. We took a bus and Steven's new Toyota 4X4 to the hotel. Remember how Steven got that new car?

We are partnering with Overseas Tribal Services, headed by Steven and his staff. We are working on Community Development projects in the Wenshan area of the Yunnan province. There are three projects. One is a water sanitation training workshop for local citizens of villages outside Wenshan. The second is a team surveying those villages for possible well drilling locations. The third project involves spending several days in local schools in the Wenshan area teaching English to the Kindergarten through 8th grade students.

The entire team, along with Steven and Dali, had an amazing and spicy Thai food lunch at our hotel in Kunming before heading off to Steven's office to review our projects and the upcoming itinerary. The taxi ride was pretty amazing. I’ll never complain about drivers in the US again!

After the meeting, we headed back to our hotel for some R and R. Later, we all went to a local restaurant/dinner theater for our evening meal. For the eighteen of us it only cost about $55 US. Wow! The entertainment was a mixture of traditional songs and dance to contemporary interpretations of folk stories.

We leave tomorrow for Wenshan – an eight-hour bus trip. Tomorrow night we will be planning out our next few days of work.

I hope to post several times from Wenshan; it all depends on the availability of Internet connections.

Continue the great P.R.

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