The Chinese Actor and Other Random News - a podcast by Failla Family

One of ourresolutionsthis year is to teach Joshua more about cultures and race: Not long ago we were in an Indian restaurant having dinner and two guys with full, dark beards walked in. I'm not exactly sure were they were from, but I'm pretty sure they weren't from India. Joshua took a look at them and then asked me why they had mustaches. Before I could respond he answered his own question: "They have mustaches cause God made them that way. We don't have mustaches because we're humans!"

Okay, so anyways, life in China: Apart from our belovedLizaleaving us It's been a fun few weeks for us here in Xi'an. For my birthday we went toBeijingas a family along with thePetersonsand had a great time. We ate chimichangas and bacon cheeseburgers like we were coming off a forty day fast, and we brought
back a whole case of root beer. Such gluttons. It was great.

ForChristmaswe hung out with some friends here and skyped with a lot of the grandparents. Christmas is quite a different experience here, but we were glad to have friends here to celebrate with, and Skype made family feel not so far away.

One new development is that I (Chris) am officially anactor. (!) I've traveled to a few different cities, interviewed government officials, managers and CEOs and got a behind the scenes look at a Chinese pharmaceutical factory while wearing a suit that looked like I worked at the nuclear power plant with Homer Simpson. All that for a ten minute film. On top of that it was pretty much all done in Chinese so I had to act like I understood everything that was being said. It's been a very enjoyable process, surprisingly enough. Look for me on CCTV in about a month. Just kidding, it's only for internal use at thecompany, fortunately for me.

Other than that it'slife as usual- language, language, language, friends, language, soccer and language. We are all still enjoying learning Chinese and feeling very motivated, even as we wrap up another semester.

Joshua is going toschoolthree days a week and he absolutely loves it. His Chinese is progressing like crazy. Everywhere he goes he's singing Chinese songs about love. The taxi drivers especially love it!

Last thing- thanks to airline miles and a great wife, I head out next Sunday forTokyoto meet up with a snowboard team from the Denver base. I'll be with them for a week and I'm really looking forward to it!

You can go to ourwebsitefor a super embarrassing language story and some photos of our Beijing trip, including my three birthday desserts!

Much lovefrom all of us here,

Chris, Sarah, Joshua and Zac R E

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