:)

It's been a while since I blogged, I realize.

It hasn't been for lack of material. If anything, I have way more material than I can use. Every time I think about blogging, my thought process goes something like this.

I said I was going to blog about my team. Hmm... I don't have picures of all of them yet.

I should blog about how we packed up and left Beijing to come to Changchun.

 

I should take pictures of my apartment and post them. (My apartment at HuaQiao is beginning to look like I actually live here, which is awesome. I've also mopped all of the floors now, which is also awesome. I'm not sure what was on the porch, but I think it was a combination of fallen plaster and mold and dust. It was pretty gross.)

I should post pictures of my campus! 

(It's beautiful.  It reminds me of XiaDa.  That is the view from my bedroom window.)

I should write about what classes I'll be teaching! (Eight classes, all sophomores, all oral English – I should have between 200 and 250 students.)

I could write about things that drive me crazy. (This idea generally gets scrapped because overall, I love China and I love being here.

I could write about things that are making me happy right now.

That is what I'm going to do, because there's a long list of them.

My entire team is here.

Everything is sunshiney and beautiful; the rain from the typhoon washed out the atmosphere quite thoroughly.

I went in one day from having no internet to having wireless internet.

My apartment is clean right now.

I turned in my first lesson plan.

I get to eat real Chinese food. All the time.

Danielle made us an incredible dinner last night.

My schedule is sort of kind of worked out.

Music. (And the fact that you can legally download music in China that you can't in the US.)

Awesome friends.

Text messaging.

2 Cor 6:3-10.

Super Foreign Affairs Officers, who help us handle everything from getting residence permits to getting water to fixing broken faucet handles. These men are amazing.

Did I mention that I'm in CHINA???

Teammates who not only put up with the quote list, but enjoy it.

Getting to ride in a bong bong che, also known as a “tricycle car” with Mel yesterday.

The abundance of patience and graciousness that's been shown by many people as we all acclimate to a new setting.

Plans to go to Walmart tomorrow.

Going to a coffee shop yesterday.

The ipod touch. It's such a useful tool.

Coatracks.

Colorful umbrellas.

Laughing about everything.

Opportunity

There are some days when the opportunity of living in China doesn't feel so much like an opportunity, when it feels more like having had too many classes and all the craziness of getting ready to leave Beijing and our group of forty-three and get ready to transition to a new city.  To a new school.  To writing lesson plans and having my own students and having to learn how to be an adult and how to be a university professor and how to live in China all at once. 

There are some days in China, like days in America or Canada or anywhere else, when life just kind of drags along.

But there are some times when the opportunity of living in China strikes me hard.

When I cannot believe that we are here and that we are getting to do all that we are doing.

Tonight we had a dance party to celebrate birthdays and the end of our TEFL certification prep classes and other good news.  As we were walking back to our hotel (two miles away, maybe) we began singing.  There were a lot of us.  Perhaps twenty.

We sang Sanctuary.  We sang Amazing Grace.  We sang I Bid You Goodnight.  We sang many other things, and it was lovely.

And it astonishes me when I think about it.

All of us.  Here.   Singing.

"Are you Chinese?" asked one of the men who crossed paths with us. 

No, but we love China.

Route-setting

In the rock climbing class that I took in my last semester at Geneva, we learned how to do route-setting.  We worked with a partner to pick a start point and an ending point on the wall, and then, piece by piece, we'd plan out a route.  We'd incorporate different moves and holds that we had been working on it into the route.  Then all of us took turns attempting to climb the routes set by the other groups; it was very enjoyable.

China is less like a bypass road (which Douglas Adams describes in Hitchhiker's Guide as being designed so that people from point A can get to point B very fast, and people from point B can get to point A very fast, and people from somewhere in the middle can wonder what is so great about point A or point B) and more like rock climbing.

Nothing goes in a straight line.

Crossing the street, getting groceries, having conversations, buying fruit at a stand, ordering a meal, catching a bus, getting through the metro station -- you name it, nothing here works in quite the logical, linear fashion that Westerners think that it should.

There is always some bump that you were not expecting.  A language barrier.  A change in plans.  Sickness. 

I am pretty certain that realizing this makes my life in China a lot easier.  When I remember that I should figure out where I'm going and not worry much at all about exactly what route I'll take to get there, there's much less stress on me and I can just enjoy the journey.  I can trust that someone else has designed and set the route for me, incorporating things that I've learned before in life with some challenges to push me to grow.

30 kuai later

Please note, 30 kuai is a little less than 5 dollars. :)

I'm calling this Chinese stromboli.  It's good!

 

 Peach  yogurt.  In a funky triangular container.  With an ad for a Snow White movie on one side.  Because I definitely want to look at her evil stepmother while eating.

 Youzi.  Aka pomello.  This is one of the first things I remember eating in HK last year, so it has a special place in my heart and stomach.  Although I am pretty sure that I got the "special foreigner" price on it... :-P

Green apple phanta!  Which. I. Love.  Thanks to Becky Vang for getting me addicted last year... now there was a legit reason to have to come back to China. 

Gifts from Beggars

I am used to people in China asking me for things -- people sitting on the sidewalk with a container in front of them, asking those who pass by to toss in change, or kids wandering through metro cars, singing and asking for a few kuai.  It's a little bit of a sticky situation -- is it better to give a few kuai?  To just ignore?  Zen me ban?  What to do?

Anyway.

I had a very new experience on Saturday.  (China is full of new experiences, as I'm sure you've noticed.)

I was given fruit.

It was like a small orange plum.  Actually, I was given two of them.

I was astonished.

It caught me from nowhere, this generosity from beggars.

It really has been something that the Father is teaching me over and over again this year... that He is generous.

Here's two quotes that it reminded me of. 

"But I got to have my rights same as you, see?"

 

"Oh no. It’s not so bad as that. I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear."

"What do you keep on arguing for? I’m only telling you the sort of chap I am. I only want my rights. I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity."

"Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought."

{CS Lewis}

No flood warnings, still the waters rise
Flowers through asphalt,

Diamonds in the pockets of your eyes
Turn your face and hide
I saw a woman with ribbons in her hair
Old and lonely, so beautiful I had to stop and stare
The well will not run dry

[Jars of Clay] 

The well of His goodness will not run dry, and I love how He reminds me of that in the most unexpected ways, like gifts from beggars.

Didn't See That One Coming

There are a lot of times in China when the only reasonable response to give is to say, "Oh China," laugh, and find someone to tell the story to.

There was definitely one of those moments in my room last night.

Here's the set up for the story:

In China, all water must be boiled before you drink it.  (When the Party really cracked down on this, it upped life expectancy something like 20 or 30 years.  Can you believe that?)  Last night, I was nearly out of water and figured I'd just boil some rather than going to buy it.  So I filled up the water boiler (which is plugged in in our bathroom) and flipped it on to boil away while I got my shower.

Also, in the interest of being as efficient as possible, I figured that my laundry could soak away in some soapy water in the sink while I showered, and then I could rinse it when I was done.  So I threw it (including a pair of my pajamas) in there, then hopped in the shower, enjoying the nice hot water.

I had set my clean pajamas out where they'd be in easy reach when I was done.

At some point during my shower, I realized that the water boiler was still boiling away, obviously having some faulty mechanism and not properly turning itself off once the water boiled.  So the room was full of steam, but I wasn't too worried about it.  I just made a mental note to myself not to turn it on again unless I was going to be around to turn it off as soon as it boiled. 

Faulty assumption number one: the water boiler will shut itself off.


As I got out of the shower, I glanced at my clean pajamas and saw that they looked a little odd.  A little discolored.  I shrugged, figuring that it was a trick of the steam in the room or that they had picked up a weird color from my laundry soap or something like that.  But on closer examination, I saw that in fact, they had become discolored.  And wet. 

While I was puzzling this over -- and trying to figure out how on earth my pajamas had gotten not only wet but also brown -- brownish water began dripping onto my head.  From a vent. 

My level of happiness, let me tell you, was low.  Especially as I realized that my other pajamas were drenched with soapy water.


Faulty assumption made months ago (or whenever I packed):  There is no possible circumstance that would cause me to need more than two sets of pajamas in Beijing.


We did get it sorted out without all that much trouble -- there was too much moisture in the air, which condensed in the vent.  The vent, being dusty, dripped gross brown water back out.  Onto my clean pajamas.  Ma fan. [lot of bother!]

I was very thankful for skype and the ability to call someone and tell the story and say OH CHINA.

I think that the moral of the story is that, no matter how well you try to prepare, sometimes life functions on the level of the improbability drive, and things will happen that you could not have foreseen.

And then it is a good idea to laugh, enjoy the story, and get on with life.

On a sidenote:  if you glance over at my sidebar, I have links to a bunch of blogs that are being kept by other teachers.  So, if you have some extra time, and would like to read their perspectives...enjoy! 

View Out My Window

Life in China is always interesting.  Honestly.

These are a few shots taken out of my window (the whole 8 inches or so that it cracks open at the bottom) yesterday in the space of a few minutes.

People carry everything on the back of their bikes.

This is the little fruit stand/drink shop across the seat.

Oh traffic.  One of these days, I'll get a more impressive picture.

A mom with a little kid on her bike.

More people on a bike.  :)

The above picture was the real surprise yesterday!  Look at the color of the sky!  IN BEIJING!!!  (I did not edit that photo.  Just fyi.)

And there ya go.  :)

The Great Wall

Yesterday we went to visit the Great Wall.  It's a pretty good metaphor for life in China (or, I would imagine, any foreign country).

The Great Wall is awesome.  I love it.

I do not love getting to it.

There are many stairs to climb.  Like, a thousand.  Literally.  That gets miserable really fast, unless you are some kind of stair-climbing-masochist, which I am most definitely not.

This is not made any more fun by it being warm and humid.

Living in China is like that.  I love China and I love getting to be here, but I don't love every single part of it all the time.  There is a lot of daily life that is just a drag, like the realization that you don't suddenly gain superpowers when you go through customs.  Or the realization that your body may take a little while to adapt to suddenly eating vast quantities of rice and no peanut butter to speak of.  It's like climbing the bazillion stairs to get to the Wall -- you know that it is going to be awesome, and you wish that every step of getting there was a great experience, but... it isn't.

Depreena with a few of the stairs that we climbed just to get to the Wall.

And sometimes there are very unexpected bumps in your journey, near-disasters that you were in no way prepared for.

So there is this alpine slide that you can ride down from the Wall, which sounded like an awesome idea (and way preferable to taking the stairs back down.)  It was a lot of fun.  Until I, going full speed, smashed into Jeannie, who was completely stopped.  That was high on my list of most terrifying moments in China because I was afraid that someone was going to die, but no one did, and the worst injuries were some bruises and scrapes.  (He's good, yeah?)  Jeannie even got it on video.

But despite the parts that are just miserable, and the parts that blindside you, being in another country (or climbing the Great Wall) is an incredible experience.  You get to see things that you never would have had you stayed at home, on the ground.

And it's not a perfect analogy, because what He has for us is way better than what you can see from on top of a man-made structure on a cloudy day, but still. It was a good reminder.

So here are a few pictures that I took the liberty of editing.

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Life in a Hotel

During August, while we're all doing training, we're living in a hotel in Beijing.  Prior to this, the longest I've lived in a single hotel at one pop was last year in Xi'an.  That was for 10 days... this is for a little over 3 weeks. 

So here are two pictures of what that looks like today.

How we do laundry (that yellow-orangish bar is bar laundry soap.  I love it.)

How said laundry dries, when I am motivated enough to go get a rack from the office.

"It's like being in night class."

And then some.

So today (Monday) was our first day that was pretty much nothing but classes, meaning that we started at 8 and got done at 4:15.  We had a break for lunch though.  :)  The classes are great; today was a lot of Classroom Dynamics, so think a crash course on lesson planning.  It's very interesting, but I think that everyone is more than ready to be done by the time 4 o'clock rolls around.

We returned from lunch to find that our hotel had provided us with ball caps (with extraordinarily long brims) and fans.  You can see Bethany modelling both above as she finished reading before a class session.

To shift gears to yesterday, here are a few pictures.

The morning:

They had these very spiffy headphone sets so that we could listen to an English translation.  So cool -- or, as they'd say in China -- 很聪明!  So bright!

In the afternoon we all hung out together and had some classes and then ate delicious Mexican food together, which I did not get any pictures of.

And then, in the evening, as we came back to our hotel (aka "Base"), we found a group of employees dancing outside of a hair salon.  This is not the first time it's happened, in fact, it seems to be a nightly occurrence.

I realize that it's a little difficult to see what's going on in this picture, but if you can see the two foreigners, those are Andrew and Hilary, who are both going to be teaching at the same school as me.  They were having a blast joining in the dancing.

And this little girl was having a blast watching it.

See the sidewalk tiles in the picture above?  There are all different types of those, all over China.  The kind pictured was also popular in Xiamen.  They're kind of fun, a little bit more interesting than concrete.

And that's about it for today, folks.  I'm still working on getting material for a post about my team.  :)  If there's other things you'd like to hear about, comment or email me and let me know.

August 4th: On this day, we had classes, talked a lot, and had a successful adventure.

I'm not sure that it would be correct, exactly, to claim that China makes more sense the second time around, but I certainly don't notice a lot of the oddities nearly so quickly. 

Here's the example from today:  as we got out of the metro on our way back from Tiananmen Square, Depreena commented on the toddler with the very bare bottom who was sitting on the park bench. 

Can't say that I had noticed.

Also, the traffic, which was a pretty big shock to my system last time -- now it just kind of is what it is.  And it's a bit difficult to remember that it freaked me out quite badly less than a year ago.  (Although I really do think it's a little less crazy in Beijing than it was in Xiamen, and there is definitely less use of horns.  Thank you, Olympics.)  Even finding things in grocery stores feels a little less foreign, maybe just because I have a better concept of what sort of food they're liable to have and what sorts of other food to find it with.

Speaking of food, my team ate an incredibly delicious lunch today.  We ordered five different dishes, I think, and they were all winners.  The restaurant also had Egyptian wall paper. 

Why?  Who knows.  It's China.

I am very grateful that I got to spend a semester here before jumping into a year -- I can't imagine doing this otherwise -- and I'm glad to have some Chinese.  I can survive, I tell people, just not have conversations. 

But I'm really excited to get the opportunity to work on learning some more.  It is exasperating to not know what's being said to me a lot of the time.  (And it's probably just as exasperating for the people who I don't understand.)

It's good to be back here.  :) 

Today, I had hot bubble milk tea.

And I was very happy.

So, where to begin? It's crazy to be back. Less than eight months ago I was leaving and thinking that I had no idea when I'd ever return to China, if I'd ever return, and figuring that it would be years at least.

Haha. As my sister Abbie would say, "Shows what you know!"

This was our second day in Beijing. We're obviously very busy – this morning we had classes and went over tons of random info, then in the afternoon we broke up into our teams and went exploring BJ. It is surreal to not only be back in China, but to be seeing places that I went with my CSP group in the fall. Such as the tiny chopstick shop which Kerby and I visited in Wangfujing. (I did not try scorpion today, either... Rachel is still beating me on the bravery scale. Maybe I'll get to it this month. Maybe.)

Relations at this point kind of feel like going on an awkward first date; everyone is trying to make a good impression on everyone else, and get to know everyone else, and so forth... all at once. When there's 43 of us coming in as new teachers, plus all of our team leaders, plus all of everyone else... that is a lot of headache.

Overall though, it is phenomenal to be back and I am so, so thankful to have this opportunity.

Coming up soon: introductions to my team. ^_^