An attempted new look

As you may have noticed already, I'm back into blogging. I've been trying to update all of my links and whatnot that I display. Well, a few days ago I got a haircut and was thinking that if I can improve my image, why not try to improve my blog's image? So I started searching for a new look for my blog and I thought I had found it. I saved my old template so I wouldn't lose anything, and put up the new one. I didn't like it. So I changed it back. Of course, most of the stuff on the sidebar of my blog was instantly lost. For example, the wicked awesome map pinpointing Shiyan's location. And now I can't find the website where I originally got those maps. I'm so upset! I'll never change my blog's appearance again! Not really, but I'll definitely be more careful next time and back up all the custom pictures.

On a side note, there are two girls coming into town tonight from Wuhan to visit Angelyn and Jessica. I haven't met them but I've heard they're crazy hilarious so there could possibly be some zany pictures on the way soon.

And now the fun story of the day. Every Friday the guys try to get together for lunch. Oddly enough, we call it Guys Lunch. Every week a different person gets to choose the restaurant so today we were eating across the street from the medical college. After lunch I was walking with John and William through town and we passed some people on the sidewalk selling various things laid out on a blanket. This is a perfectly ordinary thing to see here, especially as winter comes on and a lot of people migrate from the north and/or west to warmer regions. It's also perfectly common for people to yell the one English word they know as you walk by, trying to attract your attention. Today that word was "tiger." We were walking and this guy starts going "tigerrrrr, tiger, tiger, tigerrrrr" over and over. Sure enough, we look down and he's got a dried up tiger paw for sale on his blanket. It was pretty huge! I'm not sure where this guy was migrating from for the winter, but it must be a cool place if it has tigers. Does Tibet have tigers? I'll have to Google it. The guy also had various other pieces of wild animals like a furry goat skull. We didn't buy anything because we weren't sure if we would be supporting the poaching of endangered animals or not. As I was leaving for lunch I contemplated whether or not I should take my camera. I decided nothing fun would happen on an ordinary day like today. I will never leave my camera at home again. After we had passed by, we were standing around talking in front of the bus station and we noticed that the peddlers were now in an argument with the police. They had drawn a large crowd already so we figured we could hide in the back and catch the action. They yelled back and forth for a while and then the police left. I'm not sure what happened, maybe the police wanted them to buy a permit to sell things on the sidewalk or maybe the police just don't like nomads hanging around town. In the end the police were back in their car and the others were sitting back on the sidewalk.

A selection of quotes

Living in an English speaking environment in China can be very frustrating. At the same time, it can have some hilarious moments. Sometimes students just don't throw out the word you were expecting them to throw out, something doesn't quite translate, or people are just much more candid than you expect. Here is a selection of some things that I have heard here in China. The names with an asterisk (*) belong to Chinese people.

"You're the same as last year, cute and huge. So huge! I only come up to your lungs." - Wind*

"Man, we learned a lot of English from that movie. Like 'Kill the Japs!'" - Jakie*

"Who's under that blanket?" -David*
"Brian. Or else three Chinese people." -Angelyn

"He's so tall! He must never get cold." - Christina* talking about me

"In English, how do you say a head with no head?" - Zoe*

"U NO MISS ME?"
- text message from Happy Guy*

"Egad! His car is a very expensive sports car and yours is so ugly! I know... you pay him $5000 or........ I will beat you." - student* performing an improv skit in my class

"It's like a furnace!" - Willie* after warming her hands on the top of my head

"You're a bad boy! As your publishment, you must carry me down the hill." - Jacob* (he meant punishment)

"I'll be there on Saturday."
"Okay, so we'll stay here a few days and meet you in your hometown on Saturday."
"Okay. I still haven't bought the tickets yet. I'll be there Sunday."
"What? Is it Saturday or Sunday?"
"Sunday."
"Okay, we'll be in your hometown on Sunday."
"Okay! See you Monday!"
- Orange* trying to tell me when she could meet us

"Dude! Duderonomy! You're a crazy white dude!" - Jakie*

"Later player." - Sean*

"My name is Fish because I like Fish." - Fish*

Of course, funny quotes work in reverse. Like the morning I asked a Chinese friend if she wanted to "eat a muffin" and discovered that "mafen" in Chinese means horse poop. Or that "right turn" sounds suspiciously like "monster" and the day my friend wanted to say "I would like an iced drink" and instead said "I killed a soldier." Yay for language!

We're expanding our services

In an attempt to lead lives of more action, the Shiyan group is trying to open up new routes of ministry throughout the city. I will share with you one such endeavor today.

Many big cities around the world have famous red light districts. In some countries, prostitution is even legalized. Well, Shiyan also has a couple of large areas that we call "pink light" streets, even though it definitely isn't legalized here. Around 6 or 7 in the evening most hair salons in town flip a light switch and the ladies sit around waiting for customers. It's so blatant and out in the open for all to see that I have to wonder how much the police make under the table each year. Well, Priscilla and Jessica feel called to reach out to these pink light ladies and are in the process of talking with the Chinese Sisters and trying to draw up a plan of action.

After visiting Wuhan (capital of this province, about 7 hours away) they learned that Wuhan and Beijing already have groups doing this sort of outreach. The Family in Beijing has had success in that some of the ladies have stopped working in the pink light district, are going back to school, and are making money for themselves by selling crafts on the internet. Jessica and Priscilla took notes and asked questions in Wuhan and now are in search of a Chinese Sister here in Shiyan who has the same passion to work with these ladies. It's important that this work not just be something weird that the foreigners want to do, it needs to rely on Chinese involvement. Jessica sent out an email last week that lists their needs and concerns better than I ever could, so I'm including parts of that email here:
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Last weekend when I was in Wuhan, I had the opportunity to meet the foreign women who are leading a similar effort in Wuhan's pink light district. I got to speak with Kelli and Heather, who had begun the MNSTRY 1 year ago. The spoke to me about the logistics, how they go about each day, and the success/troubles they have been faced with. Heather shared a really encouraging story with me about a visit to the Beijing MNSTRY, where 4 women have left the pink light work and are living in a rehabilitative house. They go to night school, and support themselves by making jewelry that they sell online. Its called the starfish project, if you would like to Google it! I was also blessed to speak to two girls who had just joined the work there, and they gave me such a unique insight into what we were undertaking. I am so grateful that Abba gave me the gift of meeting with them, it really opened my eyes to what we were about it begin!

In light of lessons learned from meeting the women in Wuhan, and PRYRful consideration, Priscilla and I have a fresh outlook on the work we would like to do. First of all, the next two months will be filled with constant PRYR and careful preparation. I never want to underestimate the seriousness of what we are undertaking. There are a number of very serious things to consider, and so here is where we are in need of PRYR warriors such as yourselves! Please keep the following in your conversations with Him:

1. The LRD will raise up leadership among our Chinese sisters to take control of this mnstry, it would be impossible without them. (We are looking specifically for one sister who really has a heart for this work to join with us in leadership, but we are also searching for all others to help!)
2. The LRD will give strength, dedication, and insight to Priscilla and me as we try to be his hands and feet
3. The LRD will prepare the hearts of the women in the pink light districts to be open to our friendship
4. The power to overcome in the spiritual battle we are about to enter into
5. The pink light MNSTRYS already underway in Beijing and Wuhan

The actually logistics of the work as still very much up in the air, as we would really like to have our Chinese sisters leading in the preparation stages. There are a number of possibilities that are looking promising, such as offering free medical checks, or giving clothes or other basic necessities. There will be various roles to play in the MNSTRY; women actually going inside to talk with the pink light ladies, PRYR teams out on the side walk, and PRYR assignments throughout the city to cover us. (A great way for the men to be involved!).

~Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart. There I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor to be for her a door of hope and expectation. And she shall sing there and respond as in the days of her youth and as at the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
~And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call Me, Ishi [my Husband], and you shall no more call Me, Baali [my Baal]. For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they shall no more be mentioned or seriously remembered by their name. And in that day will I make a covenant for Israel with the living creatures of the open country and with the birds of the heavens and with the creeping things of the ground. And I will break the bow and the sword and conflict out of the land and will make you lie down safely.
~And I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will even betroth you to Me in stability and in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
(Hosea 2: 14-20)
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This is a big step that would not be possible without our Father's help, but it also needs the help of everyone in the Family. Please be Mindful of this and everyone involved, and please Ask that a native Sister can be found who will take up a leading role in this. As we've tried to become more action oriented and involved with other things such as the poor and beggars in town, some of the Family here has balked at the idea of being that close and involved with those kinds of people. But they are slowly realizing that we are called to do exactly that. Of course, it's not only the Chinese who are hesitant to make such a big change to lives of action, most of us foreigners are just as reluctant, held back by laziness or bad habits. But we're all working together so we're gaining ground bit by bit.

Wushu and Hotpot: A typical Tuesday

Today I got up and went to William's apartment at 9:30 to meet him and John for our weekly (in theory) wushu practice. In case you missed it, wushu is the general name for Chinese kungfu. Wushu is the art itself, kungfu is any wushu that focuses on fighting. There are other kinds of wushu that focus on art or health. We learn it every Saturday morning and have set aside Tuesday mornings as a practice session since all three of us are free that morning. John didn't come, and we still don't know why. I'm sure he'll give us some excuse involving butter (last time I was at his apartment, he and his wife had 31 sticks of butter in the fridge). I had fun practicing with William. He put on some traditional Chinese music, most of which was played on a pipa, a stringed instrument. At some point he decided to switch from traditional Chinese music to pop music which made for a hilarious sight. Us practicing wushu to pop music. It struck me as being so funny that I just had to video it. And here it is! Possibly the best video in the history of all videos. You be the judge...



So I left William's place just before 12 and walked to McDonalds so I could meet the girls for hotpot at 12:30. It was Angelyn, Jessica (both American), and Alice (Chinese). If you don't know, hotpot is when you get a big pot full of whatever you choose to eat for lunch, cook it over a fire in the middle of the table, and just eat straight out of the pot. It's usually a good way to die from an overdose of spicey food, but today's was mostly just hot from the fire that was in the middle of the table.

Here's the fish hotpot before we started eating.



And here it is after...



And to give you an idea of how dangerous this meal could have been, here's the pile of millions of fish bones on my plate at the end of the meal.



After lunch we headed back to school. At the bottom of our hill we stopped to pick up some milk tea to drink. Since Alice was still with us we decided to take advantage of her multilingual skills to find out exactly what all the different flavors are. She was tired or didn't want to lean through the window to read them all, so she just went in and sat down behind the counter. For some reason we found this incredibly cute so I got a picture of the booth and one of Alice taking our money like she worked there.




Every Tuesday at 3 Jessica and I go play majiang with Mike, an older man at our school, so we made our way to his apartment. Here are Mike and Jan. I'll let you guess which is which. (hint - Jan doesn't have a combover)



Jessica left at 5 to go prepare for a new class that began tonight, but I stayed for another hour so I could learn the basics of Chinese chess. I'm pretty sure that I could learn to love xiangqi (the Chinese name) more than majiang. How can you not like a game with elephants and cannons? There's even a palace and a river. Yeah, it's way cooler than normal chess.




I came back home at 6 to Study with some students, but they forgot to come so they will come over at 9 with another group that always comes on Tuesday nights. And that, after going all semester without a single class on this day, is a fairly typical Tuesday for me.

Winter holiday plans

We always look forward to the winter holiday here because instead of one week of overcrowded travel in order to get visit one city, we get 5 or 6 weeks. And only a few of those weeks have overcrowded trains and stations, so it's easier to plan around such things. Well, this year I somehow lucked out and my classes are ending around December 20th instead of sometime in January. That means that from December until the first week of March, I'm free to do whatever is within my budget. I definitely won't be traveling that entire time, but I do know what I'll be doing most of that time. Attending language school in Kunming!

What is language school, you ask? It's a place where you go to learn a language, of course. In this case it's a place in Kunming (down in the southwestern province of Yunnan) that will give me a place to live and teach me one-on-one for four weeks. It's kind of expensive but I should be able to afford it by the time the middle of January gets here. I've always toyed with the idea of going to a language school, but I never wanted to skip going home in the summer or anything like that. Most of the ones I could find online either required that I enroll for a full semester or were just too expensive. But after William hunted up this school in Kunming and he started talking about going there, I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Four weeks of one-on-one tutoring is about the same price as if I were to fly home for the holiday, but I think it will be worth it. It should really advance my level of speaking, which will be helpful for the times I want to ask people on the street why they are staring at me so intently. Is there something on my face? Do I look like your long lost brother? Not really, but I often daydream about saying things like that. I usually just smile and wave or completely ignore them. Anyhoo, back to language school. You can click here to go to the school's website. They give you great accommodations and I actually met a guy on the sleeper bus once who went to this school for three months. I noticed him in some pictures on the school's website. William and Angelyn are both planning to go, so it will probably be the three of us. Since William finishes classes later than us, we'll have to wait around until he's done.

Angelyn, Jessica, and I were thinking of going to Chengdu for a few days in a week or two. That's the panda capital of China. We'll get to pet a panda and then go across town to one of the rarest of rare things in China... a Mexican restaurant! I'm excited. Other than Chengdu and Kunming, I don't have any big plans for this winter holiday. I may go on a few other short trips, but nothing too big since language school with cost two months' salary ($950). Those two cities are pretty big names on the list of places to see while in China though, so even if I don't go anywhere else I should see plenty of cool things.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The school where I teach has the foreign English teachers give a 2 hour lecture every Friday night. Since there are 4 of us, we can rotate and do one a month. This past Friday was my turn, so I prepared a lecture on the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I figured the Chinese would love it because they always want to know how to get ahead in life, plus it's easy on my part because all I had to do was summarize something that had already been done.

I read this book in college, but I forgot that the first part of the book focuses on the difference between character and personality, and how important it is to focus on having a foundation of good character rather than focusing on skills, personality, and techniques. After I began to prepare the Powerpoint presentation for this lecture, I began to get excited about what kinds of questions might surface after I was done. In general, the Chinese don't learn any kind of ethics associated with business, so they don't see a problem with cutting a few corners here and there, pocketing a bit of money that no one will miss. Of course, those kinds of practices can come back to bite you in the end so a lot of people with common sense stay away from that sort of thing. But to have good character values plainly laid out in a presentation was something that these students hadn't had before. After finishing my lecture, I didn't really get any questions about the 7 habits. Instead, all of the questions were along the lines of "How important do you think it is to have good character?" "What kinds of traits do you consider to be good character?" "Do you really think honesty is important in business and other relationships?" "Do you think having a faith of some sort is important for success and happiness?" "Everyone has their own idea of the world and you can't force someone to follow your faith, so why do you think having a strong faith is important?" "I don't think it's possible for someone to change their mind about what they believe. Have you ever know someone who doesn't believe in religion to change their mind?"

Needless to say, I felt like the questions started some good conversations. Even though the conversations didn't last very long because we all ended up leaving soon after, the smallest seed can bear up a giant tree.