Thank You!

Thank you to all those who have been praying for my dad over the past days and weeks. The outcome of his surgery yesterday at Mayo Clinic was nothing short of miraculous. Even though the tumor was much larger than the doctors previously thought the whole thing was encapsulated and therefore came out much easier than they expected. They were able to take a lot less of the jaw bone than they had planned and still get clean margins. Also, we were told that he would lose the V3 branch of the trigeminal nerve on the right side which would cause him to lose feeling in a large part of his face, taste sensation from half his tongue, and also the function of the jaw muscles on that side of his face. When they opened him up however they found that the tumor had pushed the nerve to the side and they didn't have to remove it after all. They took the lymph nodes from his jaw and neck and found no signs of metastasis. Yeah!!! As planned they rebuilt the jaw with a portion of his right fibula. All in all the surgery went better than we could've thought possible, I know this is because of the many prayers that were being offered in his behalf. Thank you again for your faith, thoughts, and support during this difficult time, my dad tells us that he has felt uplifted and strengthened because of it. I'm happy to report that he is doing well and recovering quickly. The physical therapist came by today to get him back on his feet and maybe have him walk two or three steps. He walked thirty! Right now he's just here resting. We are hopeful that he can be discharged on Saturday or Sunday. For those who would like to stay updated on how he is doing his blog is vogelzoo.blogspot.com.

Welcome Dear Readers,

Well, I have successfully downloaded a free VPN that has seeped through the proverbial cracks of the great firewall of China. At long last I am now pleased to present free gratis the chronicles of my sojourn in the Far East for your reading enjoyment.

Because I've been here for almost six weeks I will not attempt to catch you up in great detail. Suffice it to say I have found an apartment, a roommate, a piece-of-junk-passing-as-a-bicycle, several classes that I find interesting, and no shortage of mediocre restaurants that make me long for Taiwanese bistro. There is good food too of course, but it has been harder to find.

We had all of last week off for Chinese national holiday. Ian, Joel, Nicole, Josef and I spent the week in Sichuan and Chongqing. For the map-deprived or otherwise geographically challenged, Sichuan is in the Chinese mid-west, it is the western border of civilized China. Further west is Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet.

I would recount our trip but Joel wrote a novella on the subject and so I'll just content myself with sharing that with you [here], and a few pictures.