Hi All,

We had a great camping/picnic May 10-11 in Huntsville State Park. The weather was near record on May 10, but we have a record number of campers: 31 adults and 20 children. More than one third are new faces, including Kevin, head of the famous backchina.com Chinese web site. On Sunday, we also have 10+ adults and children joined us for the picnic and boat event, and enjoyed the Mother's Day cake! We all had a good time!

In this event we tried a new way of preparing the food. Overall we spent less time on food and more time to enjoy other stuff. Everyone contributed and deserves credit, but I would specially mention Yiming Zhang couple, and Chen Yong for the barbecue (smells so good and taste even better), Liu Hong for dumpling (made of home grown Jiucai) and ribs and corn soup, Jizhong/Hai Tao's mother for Mixian, and Jiahuang for tea eggs/cooking, Xiaomei for sorting the financial things out quickly.

We have put some pictures on the web page:
http://www.hust.org/houston/
please take a look, and also contribute your pictures.

While we were sleeping on bed after our picnic/camping trip, a major disaster had fallen onto our people back in China. On May 12, 2:28pm local time, Wenchuan in Sichuan province had an earth quake on the order of 7.8, which shakened more than half of China, reaching as far as Shanghai and Taiwan. The death toll reached 12000 and is still climbing. As we are reading the news, our hearts are jumping up and down. Personally I was in tears while watching CCTV news last night. We all hope the rescue effort goes smoothly and more lives can be saved.

We know many of our alumni have family or friends in the most devastated areas. On behalf of our alumni, we wish your family and friends safe and well, wish more lives can be saved through the rescue and relief efforts. We could not be side by side with them at this moment, but surely our hearts are with them and we will contribute to the relief efforts though various channels.

Best regards,

Yidao Cai, President
Jizhong Cheng, President-Elect
Greater Houston HUST Alumni Association

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