Well, hello there!

Autumn has well and truly arrived! The warmest room of my house is usually about 18 C (65 F) and I wear a coat and scarf pretty much every day. Tops are still double digits (50s F), but that won’t last long. We’re due to get negative overnight temperatures (20s F) from this weekend. And so it begins…

I’m going to be a *little* busy over the next month. This weekend is packed cos the one after is youth camp, and then next two I’ll be in Australia for Natasha and Dante’s wedding! I was also quite busy over the past month – my parents arrived back in Canberra this week after four weeks here in China.

We had a FANTASTIC time! We spent a week in Langfang and Beijing; we hit Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Xishuangbanna, Jiuzhaigou and Chengdu in under 2 weeks; and then the parents headed off to Dunhuang in western Gansu by themselves for a week while I went back to work. Then we finished up with a weekend in Beijing and a night at my house in Swine Flu City. Yes, I smuggled them in. There will be plenty of photos and stories to come…once I have time to sort through everything!

Other cool things that have been happening lately:

• Rosie came to visit! I kinda missed telling you how cool that was in my last update.
• Pat came to visit! He didn’t stay long though so I only got to see him once :P
• Stefan became an eagle scout!! And he gave me the mentor pin which was the COOLEST THING EVER :D

Aaand that’s all for this little update! Stay tuned for pretty photos and fun stories from my travels with the parent people!

Love Tanya
PS – JASON and NICOLE both get credit for answering the bonus question from my last update correctly (less than 20 minutes after I sent the email). The lyric was from 14th and Knott by A Dream Too Late. Unfortunately, both of them looked it up on google :P

New bonus points for knowing this song I’ve been listening to all week:
“you talk too much, maybe that’s your way of breaking up the silence that fills you up”

sounds of autumn
Gomez – Bring It On
Lifehouse – No Name Face and Stanley Climbfall
30 Seconds To Mars – Beautiful Lie
Kristian Stanfill – Attention

recent reading
The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
Wheel of Time – books 1 and 2 (Robert Jordan)
Thai Horse (William Diehl)
Chameleon (William Diehl)