An Unexpected Feast!

Sorry, no pictures that go along with this entry :(

This week went well at school, as the kids are becoming more comfortable with coming to school. We also started our Studies, one song study on Tuesday in which we pick a song, and read B-ble passages that relate to the song. The second study is Wednesday, and we decided to study Romans. It was so encouraging singing, studying, and praising our G-d with fellow Chinese brothers and sisters in Chr-st! They asked good questions, and we had a wide age range, from 20-50 (mostly younger college students). It was really really awesome. Ch-rch today was also great, w-rshiping together, and communing together. We have an English service and a Chinese one, so we stay for both from 8am-noon. It is fun trying to sing along during the Chinese service (it at least is in pinyin-a westernized form of Chinese written with our alphabet). Sometimes though…..like I usually do anyways with most American songs on the radio, I would just mumble random words and pretend like I knew the song haha

 Today I also pr-yed that He would open doors for me to spread the Good News, and as I was walking back from the store, a man came running after me saying “hello! Hello!” So I stopped, and we walked and talked for 5 or so minutes. He invited me to dinner, so Andrew and I are going to meet up with him tonight! G-d willing we will get to know him better, and tell him of the good news, that he is saved! Forgiven! Loved by our G-d.

 The 39 year old man, Liangjun, brought us to a nice restaurant a block from our apartment. He ordered sooo much food! A big plate of assorted sautéed mushrooms, sautéed spinach and garlic, dumplings, sweet pancakes, a big bowl of fish, and a meat and potatoe-type dish. Then, the waitress came out with 6 large beers! Andrew and I laughed at the current situation-a man we just met treating us to a huge meal. After eating and talking with him (or attempting to talk/figure out everything he was saying) we figured out a next time to meet after the fall break for dinner. He wants to learn and speak English. We also briefly talked about Chr-stianity, apparently he goes to a Chr-stian ch-rch once a year at Christmas. It’s awesome to see G-d working through us in such a way, hopefully he will come to our Studies soon.  

This week we have a Tuesday song Study, and a Wednesday Romans Study here, and then we have to teach at our schools on Saturday (for some reason…) Then on Saturday evening  we head north to Yinchuan, to ride camels in the Gobi desert, and to Xi ‘an to see the Terracotta Warriors! (It is a national holiday, 7 days long). So excited!!!!! Except we have a 6 hour train ride (standing….yes….standing the whole time!), and after that a 20ish hour train ride! Longgggggg trip, but going to be an adventure for sure J

 

 

Paparazzi!

9/15/12

Today (9/15/12) we headed out to see three of Wuhan’s most popular tourist destinations: Yellow Crane Tower, Breakfast Street, and the Yangtze River. Our first stop, the Yellow Crane Tower. We entered the gates of the park, and walked to the top of the hill, and then headed across it. Surrounded by a concrete jungle, the surrounding green trees, bushes, flowers, and old temples were nice. We climbed the bazzilion stairs to the top of Yellow Crane Tower, and soaked in a beautiful view of the Yangtze River winding through skyscrapers as far as the eye could see.

 

One hilarious thing about this day trip though, was the amount of people asking to take pictures with us! One after another, people would take a picture with us. I did an epic photo bomb of a huge group shot of about 40 older men on a tour. At first I was joking, smiling towards the camera for like 2 seconds, then I started walking away, but then they yelled “come back!” So I obliged. Every five minutes we would have people yell “Hello!” from their scooters, corner shops, and windows. So we’d say “Hello!” back and had a good laugh.

After the massive Yellow Crane Tower we walked 10 minutes to Breakfast Street, famous for its street vendors. I had a deep fat fried banana (delicious! I felt like I was at the MN State Fair or something…) a squid kabob (pretty tasty, just really really rubbery), and a chocolate fish (melted chocolate wrapped by a dough, also delicious). I was tempted to have a frog on a stick, but decided to try it another time. The roads were packed, and people, scooters, and stray dogs buzzed around. Flashing red signs with mysterious (to me) words were everywhere. Once again, I felt like I was in a movie. Last night we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In one of the opening scenes they are in the streets of Shanghai. It looked exactly like where we live! Here there are clothes hanging above the street, food vendors all around, and flashing red signs with Chinese Characters lighting up the street at night. We eventually headed another 5 minutes walk to the edge of the famed Yangtze River. It is huge! Barges and boats floated alongside the skyscraper lined river (which sadly is brown, not blue). Below and to our right, some people were actually swimming in the poo colored water! Ewwwwwwwwwwww! I’m tempted to do it sometime though, just to say I swam in the Yangtze River J We’ll see….we’ll see……     

The Midget Pagoda!

9/7/12-9/15/12

The week ended with class getting better, and less crying (Thank you G-d!) After class Friday I went over to Jess and Nicole’s and got my first EVER massage with Jess! Yes. It was awesome, but yet at the same time sooooooo painful! I had an old man as my masseuse, and as he dug into my neck, back, and leg muscles with his elbows, fingers, and fists, I couldn’t help but chuckle in pain. It was an hour long massage, and I’d say 80% was painful, and 20% was relaxing. Towards the end the old man was trying to teach me the word “tong” which means something along the lines of “pain!” So he kept pushing really hard between my thumb and pointer finger yelling “tong, tong, tong!” I finally caught on and figured out that he wanted me to say “pain!” He did some other funny things, yanking my neck, arms, and legs until they popped. I laughed quite a few times. Then we headed back, and  we watched Good Will Hunting at our place in the evening, which I’ve never seen. What a great movie!

 Saturday was quite the epic day. We decided last minute to go on a 12ish mile bike ride, to Moshan Hill! Andrew and I biked the packed roads, swerving in and out of cars to meet Nicole who joined us. After 10 minutes we were finally out of the city, biking alongside the lake, across a water-level bridge lined with green trees. This is the same route I biked a few days before. It was a perfect day as we entered the park, we biked through the woods until reaching a temple complex (they weren’t really temples, but they had the typical Chinese architecture. Apparently they belonged to a very wealthy family long ago). After chaining our bikes together we strolled around the buildings, through halls, and over winding streams lined with old white rocks, weathered smooth. Quite a cool place. Once again, there were tons of couples taking wedding/prom photos all around the park. An old raft made of bamboo drifted in the water, with a stone bridge just visible on the other side of the pond.

 

 

We eventually made it back to our bikes and headed out of that park, to head to the main temple sitting atop a big tree covered hill. We passed through an old wall with a guard house on top, walked through an old Chinese village, and to the bottom of the steps leading upwards into the trees. I have never seen so many steps in my life! It looked like a never ending staircase. So, I decided to sprint up them! That only worked about halfway until I pooped out. Eventually we made it to the temple, and walked up 5 more flights of stairs, past old relics and bells. Finally we made it to the top! Atop the hill, we could see the entire lake, city, and the green rolling hills (pollution covering the far hills). After not taking a shower in the morning, 6 miles of biking, and walking up a million stairs in the humid heat of day, I honestly haven’t felt so nasty in my life! Sweat sweat sweat. Eventually we finished exploring, biked back to Jess’ apartment and watched Mulan!  Epic. Apparently where the real Mulan lived is around 2 hours from here. All in all, it was a great bike ride.

 

Ordering food here has become a lot easier than a week ago. We point and say “I would like this” in Chinese. I also gave an English name to our local “chef” (where we get a lot of our street food). I asked in Chinese what his name was, he said something I didn’t understand. So then I just said in Chinese “Your English name is Eddie!” So now we call him Eddie J I also had to open a bank account yesterday. Let’s just say it was very confusing, and I did a lot of pointing and looking up words in my dictionary really fast. The tellers seemed to get a kick out of it though, and were laughing quite a bit. I eventually opened a basic account and got a card so my school can pay me. Win!

Lastly, Tuesday 9/11, we went to get our required physical at the hospital. A tad scary, (because I hate needles), but after giving some blood, getting a chest X-Ray, and getting hooked up with electrodes on my chest and stomach for some sort of shock x-ray thingy (I felt like Frankenstein), we were finished. We decided to check out a big temple complex about a 15 minute bike ride away. Inside were ancient temples and monks chanting with incense burning all around. Temple after temple we saw monks chanting, and people praying to the massive golden Buddas. Sad to see. At the very back of the complex was a massive Pagoda (a very tall structure). So we climbed the structure, which is 800 years older than the USA. Crazy! It must have been built for midgets because the stairways were absolutely tiny. But after squeezing our way up and up we made it to the top, where a beautiful view of the city awaited.

 

 

First Day of School!

Blog 3

Had my first day of class yesterday. In one word, I would describe it as clueless! Clueless meaning I had no clue what was going on! I am teaching 3 year olds, meaning this is literally their first time away from home, meaning they cry almost all day long (for the first month or a little less supposedly). There were 20 cute little Chinese kids and 4 Chinese teachers (and myself). The whole day the Chinese teachers did all the singing and teaching, I just smiled and played with the kids! So I was a little confused about my job specifically and what I should do/when. I wish I could just get a simple day schedule saying what we do and when. But it was still fun, and all the kids seem to like my hairy legs!

Today was my second day, and it went a lot better! I started the class by just taking the initiative to start reading a book about a monkey, and within a few minutes all of the 20 kids were sitting in chairs listening. The key to teaching Preschool is to be goofy and exaggerate everything! After the book I sang “head, shoulders, knees and toes” another song with introduction words ‘Hello, goodbye”etc…Then we had a water break, and the Chinese teacher did some Chinese teaching until outside playtime. The second half of the day consisted of 18 kids crying hysterically. At one point I had one kid sobbing into the right side of my shorts slobbering everywhere, and another on the left. The head Chinese teacher said they will most likely cry a lot for the first 3-4 weeks ish. It’s tiring, but it is nice to get off at noon and have the rest of the day to bike, relax, and to do His work.

Today I decided to bike to Moshan Hill (about 5 miles away). Two and a half miles are through the bustling streets of the city, swerving in and out of lanes, between buses, and people. Then I reached the lake. So beautiful! In the distance atop the highest hill I could see an ancient temple, waiting to be explored. Once I biked the winding wooded paths alongside East Lake (the biggest lake within a city in China) I reached a big lily pad pond (I don’t know what else to call it!). 4-5 foot lily pads covered this big lake, with pink flowers blooming atop. An old temple roof could be seen on the other side, as well as one in the middle of the lake. It was relaxing, and the smell of the water was a refreshing change from the smells of the road. While I was standing there, a Chinese family came up to me saying “picture?” I said “sure!” I thought they wanted me to take a picture for them. But the father (probably 40 years old) proceeded to interlock arms with me, and his wife took a picture! All I could think of doing was to give the peace sign and smile big! Their son then took a picture with me, putting his arm around me like I’ve known him my whole life! It was hilarious. I guess it is normal to take pictures with foreigners in Wuhan. Maybe they’ve never seen a white person before. All in all it was a great ride.   

Beautiful day, and park. My Facebook has more pictures of the bike ride if you want to see more!

 

Dinking Down the DaDou! (Avenue)

Today I had my first meeting at my school. I am teaching 3 year olds! Should be fun and a challenge, and tomorrow is my first day teaching. I’m pretty sure I’m just going to do a lot of singing and dancing. The preschool is an international education school, meaning the each class has a Chinese teacher, and an international teacher (me). The teachers consist of a Pakistani, an Australian, two Pilipino, and myself the American. After the meeting I joined the guys on the roof for a smoke (I didn’t smoke though), just to talk. Surrounding us were skyscrapers and a blue sky (surprisingly). It’s crazy being here, feels almost like I’m dreaming because everywhere I look is exactly like Shanghai Noon, or some other movie that takes place in China.

The past few days I have really done a lot of things that otherwise would be unthinkable in America. Such as dinking. Dinking is the act of jumping on the back of someone else’s bike and riding with them. Tonight we did extreme dinking (which I guess is pretty normal for locals). Zooming in and out of massive amounts of traffic, huge buses whizzing by within touching distance, and scooters and people buzzing around everywhere in between, we made our way through the city to a restaurant. It was surreal. So dangerous but I didn’t feel scared at all. In fact, I was laughing and smiling almost the whole time because it was so ridiculous! At one point, with skyscrapers lined with red Chinese characters above and bumpy road below, we were surrounded by buses on our left and scooters galore to the right, just biking in the middle of the road. Everyone else does this as well, it is the best orchestrated chaos I’ve ever seen. Today I also had to do a few simple things on my own (but not so simple when you don’t speak Chinese). I had to take out the garbage and fill up my phone with money. So I just went around saying “trash located where?” and found it pretty quick. Then the phone store went smoothly too, just said “help, this (and pointed at my phone and money)”and they showed me how to fill it up with money. It’s a lot of fun being challenged in such a way.

The street market right by our apartment.

 

After dinking and hanging out a bit, Andrew had to bike home with his new bike (which broke down) but he got it fixed by tearing off some parts that we rubbing on the tire. I had to wave down a taxi and communicate with him how to get to our apartment. Thank goodness Jess (a fellow FOC teacher) sent me our address written in Chinese to my phone. So I basically just said “here”and ‘over there’and ‘thanks.’ Made it back safe and sound.

Tomorrow is my first day of class, pr-ying it will go smoothly. Until next time, G-d bl-ss! Sorry these blogs are kind of long, I’ll try to keep them a little shorter.

 

Chopsticks Master!

Wow! Right now I’m sitting in our apartment, in China. Crazy! We had a long, 32 hour trip here. 4 hours from MN to LA, 4 hour layover, then 14 hours to Guangzhou China, then a 7 hour layover, and finally a 2ish hour flight to Wuhan and an hour car ride to our apartment.

On the car ride to our apartment I probably saw 100 things that I’ve never seen before, and this is just the first day here! Four people riding a scooter simultaneously, workers sweeping the sidewalks with brooms made of twigs, walls of skyscrapers (like on the beach in Inception towards the end), and more construction then I’ve ever seen before (even worse than Minnesota believe it or not!). There were literally 20 skyscrapers all within close proximity to each other, all covered in a mesh like material and with cranes above building away. The way in which people drive is best described as orchestrated chaos with cars swerving in an out of pedestrians, scooters, and other cars. They have bad driving down so well it almost becomes amazing driving, if you know what I mean.

After arriving we found our apartment. We are on the 7^th floor of a 7 floor apartment building, and we also have easy access to the roof. Pretty sweet! The apartment is nice as well for China standards. After unpacking a little we headed to Adam and Sherry’s apartment about half a mile down the road (the P-stor here) and they took us to our landlady’s apartment to meet. After about 35 minutes of not understanding what she was saying, we left and headed for supper.

View my my Room!

Supper was intense. Literally intense. Our table had a built in grill in the center, and a team of 4 waitresses proceeded to bring platters of veggies, meet, shrimp, dumplings, and the works. They would put the food on the built-in grill, and then everyone would start grabbing food with chopsticks. I am so glad I practiced my chopstick skills before coming here, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to eat! Grabbing food left and right, it was almost a race to see who could find the best piece of meat. Throughout dinner there were 4 year olds running around playing throughout the restaurant, one of them had split pants-shorts (they sell pants for younger kids that are literally split down the middle, this way they can go to the bathroom easier…)

Dinner was delicious, and afterwards we made a brief stop with Jess and Nicole at the market-grocery store across the street to grab a few essentials. We headed back, unpacked more, and ended the day with a d-votion with a Chinese man in his 40s, who is studying Greek here with the Wuhan p-stor (he’s staying at our place for a few more days).

What a whirlwind of a day! There are many challenges in the weeks to come, such as starting teaching in 2 days at a preschool/kindergarten, but I know that He will provide, and He is always near. Such a comfort. 

Day 2: I will try to make this brief. We had to go to our land-lady’s apartment so she could take us to register at the police station (every foreigner must register within 24 hours). So she, as well as her daughter Cindy and her cousin Lilly (junior high and college aged, they came to translate because our landlady doesn’t know any English) brought us there and we found out we have to come back Monday. Afterwards they met up with the father, and their whole family took Andrew and I out to lunch, and to buy supplies (they just brought us to the store, we weren’t planning on buying anything!). Lunch was delicious. Pizza, fishsticks, French fries, pasta, and fruit bowls, the waiter just kept brining our table food. Their family seems to be very wealthy, because they live in a nice area and a Lamborghini was parked near their car). They were very kind, and their 3 year old son was fun to play and ‘talk’ with. After lunch they dropped us off at our apartment, and we spent the afternoon unpacking and straightening out our place.

For dinner we took the bus (packed like sardines!) to Jess and Nicole’s place to meet two Chinese friends, Edward, and John Wayne! Yes you heard me right, John Wayne. Awesome English name. John is a civil engineer and his English is really really good. He spent 3 months in Brazil for work, and is my age. We all went out to dinner and “chopsticked”away! Kind of getting used to them. It’s been really fun using my limited Chinese with our landlady, and new Chinese friends. Andrew (my roommate) and I headed back after dinner (first time on our own!) on the bus after walking through a sweet street market with complementary poop gutters (aka human poop on the road…sorry I had to mention it). We made it back easily and are hitting the hay early to catch up on lost sleep from the flight.



A man welding on the street. We have seen pretty much everything you could imagine on the streets so far!