Follow along with LeighAnn as she embarks on a journey to China.
Hmmm… where should we put this telephone pole… we need to get the wires across the street right? But people need to walk on the sidewalk… and then cars need to park in the parking spaces… so that leaves well…. here.
Please note that this is a two way road, with a blind corner curve to the left of this picture…. awesome.
Lup
Let’s see… my journey to China all started with the hope of helping orphans. A lot of my work that I’ve been doing over the past year and 8 months has been about helping children in need and THUS helping to encourage people not to give up their kids for adoption. We’ve been focusing on giving parents with children in difficult situations HOPE, so that they know that dropping their kid off at the orphanage isn’t the ONLY option left. So it seemed like while my first motive was to come help orphans, instead I was doing most of my work for kids WITH parents! That is until Saturday!
I was able to go with the team down to the Wenshan orphanage! What an amazing experience! I first arrived and was led by my heart, I think, straight to the nursery area. There were a good 20 babies in that area ranging from less than a month old (with clef lips) to maybe 2 years. A lot of them were healthy girls and boys. One was basically calling out to me so I went to play with him for a bit. I was trying to stay out of the caretakers’ way as they were changing diapers and clothes, so then I went over to the younger babies. There was one who was just overfilled with joy just to have you rub his little belly. I held another for a bit. Then I saw that the older babies that were all changed were sitting sadly on a bench (some slowly slipping lower and lower into a slouch), so I went over to go hold them. I asked one if he wanted to be held and he immediately put up his arms! SO CUTE. Kids with parents that age don’t really want anyone other than mom to hold them, so sometimes it’s hard to find an opportunity to hold kids. But here, I’m pretty sure your arms will get tired before any of the kids would want you to put them down. The tough part is physically being able to put the kids down. They’ve learned pretty quick some easy ways to make it tough for you to put them down! The first kid I picked up quickly caught on to the fact that I was going to put him down, so he began to tighten his grip on my sweater, then he stiffened his legs so I couldn’t put him in a sitting position! It was pretty funny trying to get him to bend his legs! Finally I did that thing where you can tap right behind the knees to get them to bend and VOILA sitting position. Of course, then the saddest face you’d ever see appeared with the tears and sobs to follow. It breaks your heart, but is hilarious at the same time!
The “real” reason that we were there was to do some therapy for the kids that need it. There were quite a few kids there needing different types of therapy, so the team just helps those that they can. Their problems range from Cerebral Palsy to mental problems (causing the physical problems) to a girl who has ultra hyper-extended knees causing her knees to almost seem backwards. These kids really need daily rehab, but for now all we can do is make it out there on Saturdays.
Here is YuanYuan. She’s got a great smile and is a really hard worker. Kids like her make you wish you could just take them out of the orphanage and into your home so that she can get better faster! She has CP and because she hasn’t had therapy she can’t walk. It must be tough to be in an orphanage where you’re constantly surrounded by kids playing and running, but all you can do is sit there and watch. It’s extra tough because there’s no one there to play with her most of the time. With the other kids running around and the workers busy with the babies, it doesn’t leave many options for her. Still she seems to have a pretty positive attitude (at least while we’re there!).
Please pray for these kids. The orphanage at times is a very dark place (in spiritual terms). We’ve seen some pretty tough things between the way the kids treat each other (especially the way they treat the disabled kids) and we’ve seen tougher things between the way the workers treat the disabled kids. I am sure that the workers are pretty overloaded with work and so it becomes very easy to lose your patience with some of the kids, but just continue to pray that they can find compassion and patience!
I can hardly wait to go back again!
Lup
Last weekend I needed to exit China so that I could renew my visa (it’s only valid for 90 day stretches). So the closest place to do that is Vietnam or Laos. Since Wenshan is closer to Vietnam it only made sense to head down that way. But if only it was that simple. Of course nothing here is as simple as it seems…
First, to go to Vietnam you must acquire a visa. The Vietnamese embassy is in Kunming and takes 5 days to have one issued. Luckily, Pam and I were going together and she had a meeting in Kunming during the week. So she took my passport up with her on Sunday, dropped them off at the embassy and then went to her meetings. Now it would seem like it would make sense if she could come down to Vietnam from Kunming and I could come from Wenshan, meet at the border and go over together. Nope. Yeah right. The bus from Wenshan to Vietnam requires that you have your passport on you. SO…. Wednesday I went up to Kunming (I decided I could play up there for a day and also scheduled a meeting in Kunming)… then Friday we were graced with the amazing opportunity to ride a 10 hour plus over-night bus ride down to the border. The good news was that there was 4 of us going. The better news was that we got the back “seats/bed”. You’ve seen some of the pictures on the night bus before, but it’s basically a regular Greyhound size bus… but they fit bunk beds going the length of the bus 3 wide with 2 very narrow aisles. But in the back the beds are connecting. So the bad news was that there were 4 of us, and the back is supposed to fit 5 on this massive bed (essentially the 2 aisles don’t exist in the back and they make it a solid bed). We spent most of the time before the bus was set to go praying and hoping that no one else would come! Great news, no one came. Strange news? while we didn’t have anyone sleeping next to us, we did have someone staring at us! We started to notice that the girl (maybe 18ish) was stealing long glances at us as we were having conversations with each other. This in it of itself is nothing new. People like to watch us especially when we’re speaking in English. What WAS unusual was that her “glances” were minutes at a time! Also, usually when people stare at you and you start to stare back at them or smile, then they turn away. Nope, not this girl. In fact, all the beds tend to “face forward” in the sense that you put your feet towards the driver and your head is towards the back. So that made it really tough for her to stare at us all the time, that is until she figured out that if she was on her stomach then she could prop her head up and stare at us without even twisting her neck. Once she made herself comfortable, I guess we were her entertainment for the bus ride. Luckily she eventually got sleepy or bored, and rotated and was asleep the rest of the trip.
We arrived at the border around 6am but the border didn’t open until 8am. ”Luckily” one of the girls we were traveling with left her cell phone on the bus so we spent a good chunk of time trying to track down the bus and get it back. After all that we arrived at the border around 7:15 and just waited.
Vietnam was SO exciting, the WHOLE 45 minutes I spent there. We crossed, looked for coffee and chocolates that our friends had requested, then walked back to the border and crossed back.
What was pretty interesting was the sudden feeling of incompetence. All of sudden you have NO language skills and your ability to communicate even the simplest things becomes a charades show.
We made it back to the bus station in time to catch the 9:30 bus to Wenshan and arrived in Wenshan around 4 that evening. It made the whole trip about 24 hours to go from Kunming to Wenshan (direct it’s 4-5 hours!) haha.
I did get a fun picture though.
So in Vietnam (at least at the border) they have penguin trash cans. Of course everyone knows what a national symbol penguins are in Vietnam… right? Or someone just didn’t like the movie Happy Feet.
Things are going in a forward direction down here in Wenshan. We’re pretty close to getting a new office. We found a building and we’re just hashing out some of the details before we actually rent it. It has the potential to become a really amazing space. Anyone know anything about making a pulley system that could give some input?
I should be home in a month!
Lup
So this is a sign I see every time I go down to Wenshan and have never been able to get a picture of UNTIL NOW!
I’m a little bummed that there is some rain on the windshield blocking parts of the photo… but I think the picture still stands for itself.
Yes you’re looking at that right. We are on a highway, and there is a picture seemingly warning anyone in a wheelchair (with bumpy wheels) that you’ll be going downhill for the next 3 km.
Fun!
Lup
So we had the infamous “baby on the road” sticker… and while that sounded pretty dangerous, you just never know all the circumstances involved… is it a busy road? Can “baby” walk? Is it just a person named “Baby” that happens to be on the road etc… But perhaps that sticker can all be topped by this one….
I’m pretty sure that putting “baby” ON the car is NOT safe and maybe even more dangerous than putting “baby” on the road. It clearly runs great risks: 1)Putting “baby” on your car can damage your paint. With the split pants trend here you just never know when “baby” is going to unload a toxic mess on your car. You think bird poop is hard to get out… 2)Putting “baby” on your car, runs the risk that you can forget to put “baby” IN the car before you drive off. Anyone ever left that cup of coffee on the roof of your car? Not a pretty picture if you replace coffee with “baby”. 3)Putting “baby” on the car runs the risk that “baby” could be exposed to some pretty harsh weather conditions. Rain, UV rays, hail, tornadoes, you know the whole works. And if you combine all those risks together… 4)Apparently putting “baby” on the car runs the risk that “baby” will morph into that awful looking mutant on the sticker. This sticker apparently is a warning of the risks of putting “baby” ON the car instead of IN the car. So attention all parents or people taking care of “baby” heed this sticker’s warning, “baby” belongs IN the car not ON it.
(In other news back from the village, another great trip. Will post more about it later!)
Lup
Tags: Quick Pic
… that super cute quote is from my old housemate ,Lisa, last night.
So I lied when I said that the next post would come from Wenshan, because here I am in Kunming writing to all you again! It hardly seems like it’s been 3 and a half weeks since my last post! So much has happened that it could have been a year and at the same time it feels like it’s only been a week or so!
Let’s see… where to begin.
September 10th I made my move down to Wenshan. Savana (my new housemate) and I packed… more like stuffed… a van full of our stuff and made the trip down to Wenshan. We took: a piano, 2 boxes of foam flooring mats, a bike, a 5 foot tall physical therapy ladder thing, 4 very large suitcases/duffels, odds and ends and 3 passengers, all in a van smaller than a Dodge Caravan.
You can see the two boxes of floor foam things at the bottom there, the piano base on the right, the driver is pushing in the rehab ladder thing…
A view from the side door. Where you can see the bike, some of the big bags, the ladder thing again and then Savana’s seat!
Usually moving in itself is the crazy part of it all… but seriously everyday after the move was just packed with busy!
Day 1: Once in Wenshan, we unpacked our stuff and then we were rushed off to the house of one of the families from the rehab center. It was a good night of getting to see a lot of the kids and their families again, but boy it was tiring! After a full morning of packing the car, then a full afternoon in the car, it was tough to spend an evening surrounded by not only Chinese but also the Wenshan dialect! You never realize how much work it is sometimes to constantly be translating in your head or for other people until you do it when you’re already tired to begin with! I’ve found that the people that I’m used to being around, speaking and listening in Chinese is not that much work, it’s almost natural. But even after a long day, sometimes I find it hard to understand all that’s being said by my closest friends. So after this long day and being surrounded by strangers, I was exhausted. I slept that night at Pam’s since I still hadn’t bought a bed yet! I could have easily been sleeping on a cloud instead of the couch because as soon as the light was out I was asleep!
Day 2: Sunday didn’t provide much rest though, we had worship and lunch at Pam’s house. After lunch, Rachel, Savana and I went out shopping for some furniture. Savana and I needed everything for each of our rooms. I had remembered a set that I liked the last time I went shopping, so we went to check it out first. After about an hour of negotiations we finally got to a price that I could agree to. I bought a bed frame, mattress, wardrobe, dresser with mirror and two night stands. All matching. I finally feel like a real adult! Haha. It’s my first furniture SET purchase! I went for decent quality stuff so it should last awhile! We looked around afterwards for Savana’s stuff but didn’t find anything that she wanted. We were limited by time as that evening we were off to another dinner engagement, this time with one of the guys (and his family) from the water project (helping the villages dig wells and create water supplies). So day 2 was almost just as exhausting as day 1!
Day 3: Monday was a holiday here (Mid-Autumn Festival) so you think that would be a relaxing day… nope. In the morning Savana, Susanna and I went out to try to find Savana some furniture. We spent most of the morning shopping but it was a successful trip as she was able to find some stuff that was cheaply priced and not ugly! (You’d be surprised with how difficult that actually is!) After shopping it was off to more activities. The Wenshan team took the opportunity of the holiday to have an activity that we could all participate in together. We were split into 5 groups and sent out to do a photography scavenger hunt. We had a list of things that we all had to do in different pictures. Some were places in Wenshan, others were more generic things like banks, and then others were activities. It was an afternoon filled with a lot of walking but also a lot of laughing. Here are some of our shots.
We all had to be on playground thing, but then we also added in a different category of having a picture where all of our feet were off the ground. The guy on the right is Xiao Guang, he works on the water team. His son is in his lap and his wife is on the far left. Ye Jie is in the middle and is a friend from the local fellowship. She’s a great help to the Wenshan team as she’s very connected and a true local Weshan-ite so she knows a lot of the “secrets” in town.
Here we’re making a Chinese character, or rather two. 文山. That’s Wenshan! I think we did a pretty good job! In fact we won the whole competition, by 1 point! After all the running around we all went to a restaurant and shared our pictures, tallied the points and ate a great meal. It was a great day to team-build and get to know the city a little bit better but also very exhausting.
Day 4: Still no time to sleep in! Tuesday morning brought 8:30 am devotional at the office. After our hour plus meeting, Savana and I went to the apartment to be at the apartment when the furniture was delievered. So we spent most of the day cleaning and organizing the apartment. After all the furniture was brought and constructed, we went to go buy some of the other appliances that we’d need around the house (like a gas stovetop, a water dispenser). It took seemingly forever to find a good gas stove top thing! Then we went and bought some of the little things we’d need around the house like trash cans, towels, toilet paper, etc . We didn’t get home until around 5 ish! Pam, Susanna and YunFen all came over for dinner (which they brought over) and to pray over the house. Hurrah for our first dinner guests!
Here we all are! (Side note: As you can see in the corner my Doug and Karissa magnets are decorating my fridge! Nicole and family are on the other side. Any chance I can get a Bryant baby announcement??? I love the pictures on my fridge it gives the house a better home feel!)
That night Savana and I slept at the new apartment! I found out really quick that the road that we live next to is very noisy. It isn’t a very busy road, but it’s a very steep road. So that means that while the cars that use that road aren’t a lot, they still have to use a lot of gas and energy to make it up the hill. So with my bedroom window facing the street I get to hear all of the cars using all that extra effort to go up and down the street! It’s not terribly noisy but it’s not nearly as quiet as my Kunming apartment!
Day 5: After the first night in the new place, it was back to the office for 8:30 devotional. Still no time to sleep in! Savana and I decided to bike to the office. That hill was really fun to go down! It took us about 10 minutes to bike down there. So fast! Unfortunately, that day I woke up with a bit of a headache and stomach ache. But I didn’t put much thought into until later. After our meeting, Savana and I went home to be there for the rest of her furniture that was coming. I was already feeling pretty queazy and my head was pounding like crazy. I then realized that I was dehydrated! I started to think about the past 4 days and how I barely had any liquids! The bike ride home was now going to be even more interesting. I made it home just in time for me collapse on the couch and try to drink a ton of water. I was basically in and out of it for awhile. With the pounding headache and the nausea, it wasn’t the most ideal afternoon. But then around 3 I had to go back out and check out a building space for our offices. There is a really big space available so we had an appointment to go see it. So I was back out running around.
The place we looked at was great, but it’s a little expensive. So we’re right now trying to talk the guy into lowering the price. It would be place where we could put all the offices, the rehab center and the school! It would be awesome to have a sense of unity for all the different teams. So please keep this in your prayers for us!
Rachel and I bought some groceries then headed home to cook our first meal there. Too bad I was still feeling all the side effects of dehydration, so all I ate was the soup. But it was great to have our first cooked meal there together. It’s been a long time coming trying to move down to Wenshan but that really made it official!
Day 6: After drinking plenty of water, I was back to feeling better. Rachel and I took the bus into work (which only took 25 minutes door to door!) for another 8:30 devo. Afterwards I decided to head back home and try to rest! Finally rest!
Day 8: We (Pam, Susanna, Rachel, YunFen and a bunch of others) went out to one of the local villages. Feiyan’s (one of the little girls from the rehab center) family invited to celebrate their village’s “Grass and Cow Festival”. It involved meeting at the office at 9am (again no sleeping in) and then driving the 1 plus hour to get to the village. While up there we had 2 meals, saw cow fighting, danced with the villagers, and had an “award ceremony” for the rehab kids (all of the families came too!). The cow fighting was my favorite part of the day. The villagers take two cows/bulls and put them in the basketball court area (aka a flat dirt area with no walls or boundaries…)and the two bulls push each other around until one decides to run away. The one that runs away obviously is the loser. The villagers heavily bet on the game. The fun part was watching the cows run away and then watching the villagers run after them. It took them a good 20-30 minutes after the cow “lost” to finally catch them.
Day 12-14: The Wenshan team had a 3 day training/team building “retreat” scheduled. 8:30-about 8:30 we spent at a conference center doing various activities, listening to different speaking topics and just being together with each other. It was good to be able to spend time with the people who I’ll be seeing a lot more of! But they were really long days! Overall I think that it was a good experience.
Day 18: Savana and I made our journey back to Kunming. Saturday is National Day here, but it should be more like National Week. A lot of business shut down or give holiday time for the whole week next week. Schools are out too. So tomorrow I’ll be heading up to DongChuan to go visit with Ruth’s family.
As you can see it’s been quite a busy 3 weeks! But with internet now all set up at the Wenshan house and hopefully things slowing down a bit when I get back… then I REALLY can keep up with my updates!
To reward you for all your reading here are some great China Pictures!
I kinda agree with the Chinese here in thinking that it couldn’t possibly be called Winnie the POOH, cause that would be gross. It must be misspelled, but not knowing what REAL spelling must have been, replacing one of the ‘o’s with an ‘t’ only makes sense right?
So is this phone made in Chino instead of being made in China? Is it a misspelling too? Or are they so clever as to know that Chino is Spanish for China and thus it’s name becomes multicultural? So many questions so few answers!
Who’s hungry? What is it you ask? Are you sure you want to know? For those that don’t… move along to the next picture…. for those that are curious… last chance to move along. Here we have some type of hive (the brown thing) where cocoons of the white worm/larvae things (seen in the bowls above) are sold still alive and wiggling. The hives have “queen bee” like things that apparently are also sold (not so alive). Sold to do what you ask… are you sure you don’t want to move along? Lisa (from the quote above) tells me that they just stir-fry it like they would a vegetable and eat it. She said she liked it. I usually go with the theory that I would eat anything once… but this is really pushing it. Luckily I just saw it being sold in the vegetable market and didn’t have to face the decision on whether or not to eat it.
A less gross picture, but none the less fun. On the road down to Wenshan I saw this truck. It was carrying 11, yes 11 of these small mini-truck cars. The truck did not fit in one lane… and yet when I saw this truck on this trip I thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until we were behind it for awhile that I remember that this is NOT normal and thus took a picture for all of you to enjoy a little bit of the crazy stuff that they do here. Someone once told me that you know you’ve been living in China awhile when things like this stop being crazy or weird and start seeming normal.
I hope the long post made up for the lack of posts for the past 3 weeks plus!
Things overall are going great here. Winter is definitely right around the corner as it’s slowly becoming that sad time of the year when I have to put my shorts away and start wearing pants.
Please keep Lucy in your thoughts as we’re having some trouble getting her a visa for her to come visit the States in December. We still have a few more things we want to try. But it’s really becoming a tougher process than we ever expected!
I’ll be gone for the next week, but hopefully I’ll return fresh with some new pictures and good stories!
Lup
Let’s see… within the last 3 weeks I’ve been to…
DONGCHUAN- I took a trip with Ruth to visit her family. We went on Saturday morning and came back Tuesday afternoon. It was a quick trip but it was fun to get to see them all again. There wasn’t any crazy pig killings or anything, but I did get to bring little WeiWei a TON of gifts. I felt a little like Santa Claus. She got 3 new outfits, 2 Duplo sets, a wooden block set and some chalk. It was the first time since I’ve been at their house that it actually felt like a child lived in that house. We had blocks all over the floor in the living room and the ground in the “courtyard” was covered with chalk drawings.
Here is WeiWei and one of her new outfits and her new toys!
My cousin Jona made these bows and WeiWei loved them! Especially the one with the peppers.
The ride to her village was pretty exciting. Once we arrived at the bus station in DongChuan, we had to arrange transportation to her village (which is around 60 kilometers from the bus station). We found 2 motorcycle guys to take us and all our stuff. About 10 minutes from the road that goes up the mountain, my driver all of sudden kicked me hard and came to a quick halt. I had no idea what was going on, other than the fact that we basically stopped in the middle of the road. After about 2 minutes of sitting there in the middle of the road, he told me to get off the bike. After getting off the bike I discovered the problem. A flat front tire. Ruth and her driver were in front of us so when it all happened they didn’t know. We called them and they came and found us (Ruth later told me that she had to argue with her driver to let her come with him, she didn’t want me to be alone with limited language!). Now this road is kinda like a road that you’d take to go to the mountains to camp. There are a few “towns” here and there but when you’re between towns, you’re really kinda stuck. Plus there’s no AAA in China. So it was a bit of a conundrum. My driver told Ruth’s driver to take the two of us on his bike. But Ruth’s driver said that he didn’t think he was skilled enough to take 2 people on his bike plus our stuff. So my driver told Ruth’s driver, that he would take us on Ruth’s driver’s bike and that driver could help him find a place to fix his tire. I wish I could have taken a picture of all of us on the bike. The driver was practically sitting on the fuel tank and Ruth was smashed between the two of us while basically sitting on my lap because there just wasn’t enough sitting room. It would have been not that big of a problem if we didn’t have to go UP the mountain on a dirt road. So bounce bounce bounce for 30 minutes! A funny sight indeed. We all made it safe up the mountain! The driver was really really nice. He just kept on apologizing for the inconvenience!
FUN OBSERVATION #2: While at the Kunming Bus Station I saw the 6 fingered woman!! I wish it could have been convenient to take a picture of her! Or I wish I could have a camera in my eyes or something. So if anyone is looking for the 6 fingered woman who killed your father (or maybe mother)…
DALI- At one of the retreats I asked an Australian friend in passing what she’d want from America when I came back. She quickly replied that she wanted Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups! So while I was in the states I picked her up a wide variety of them,from the snack size, regulars and I threw some Reese’s Pieces too. So I made the 5 hour bus ride up there to drop them off and hang out with her a bit. I just spent Friday through Sunday up there. It was a quick trip but we had fun just talking. We did make a trip to the Dali Bird and Flower Market. She wanted to pick up some sunflowers and herbs for her garden. After arriving at the market we discovered that apparently the “Flower” part of the market means house plants and house plants only. We asked a lady where we could find what we wanted and she responded, “what?! why would we have that here? Do you know how hard it is to grow those? We don’t have that kind of thing here…” and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t understand!
CHENGDU- The capital of the Sichuan Province, mostly famous for the big earthquake quite a few years back, was my next stop. Lucy and I needed to make a stop to the US Consulate office to apply for her visa so that she might be able to come to the US this year for Christmas. We have spent the last 6 months preparing for this trip, with the last few weeks being a little stressed to make sure that we had all of our papers in order. She had her “interview” on Thursday. And after asking just 3 questions and not even looking at ANY of the documents that we had prepared, the officer person denied her request. All hope is not lost though. I was informed that I can petition on her behalf for reconsideration via email. So hopefully what couldn’t be done in person can be accomplished by email.
Most of our time in ChengDu was waiting for our appointment times and trying not to sweat too much (the humidity there equalled the humidity levels of Florida in July!). So we found whatever air conditioned places we could (which included waiting at the airport for 5 hours… simply because there was nowhere else we could think of sure to have A/C!).
Here we are wasting time playing some cards on the airport floor. Apparently this airport doesn’t have chairs for you to sit in, rather annoying.
The next trip is a big one for me! I will be moving this Thursday down to Wenshan. This will be the actual MOVING moving date. All the rest of my things (which is mostly just clothes) and I will head down a start our new life down there. There will be a lot of work to do once I’m down there, so the hope is to get a few good days of rest in before I journey down!
How about another fun picture… only this one comes from the US where apparently spelling is also a problem, unless I really ate a Sour Doug!!! Just for your information a “Sour Doug” tastes a whole lot like a Tuna Melt.
That’s all for now! Next post should be coming to you from Wenshan!!
Lup
I see stuff around here all the time that’s just worth a one-liner. So I thought I’d start just posting them!
Yesterday my waitRESS (yes not waitER) was named “Derek”… at least according to her name tag.
well maybe not quite the moon, but that could explain the long time between posts….
Coming back to China this time has been an interesting eye opening experience (for those that didn’t know, I went home for the month of July. Mainly for my cousin’s wedding, but as a bonus I got to go: camping with my family, 5 Dodger games, a trip to Arizona with my parents, and was home to be there with a good friend during his wife’s final days here on this earth). First off, I think that this is the first time that I have come to China where I really felt like I was coming “home”. The excitement of returning out weighed the disappointment of leaving all that I love in the States. But there were some things that were tougher to leave behind too. I was so happy to get to meet the three latest members of our family, Bryant and Nicole (the new babies) are going to be tough to only get to see grow through pictures and Karissa (my cousin’s wife) and I had a blast hanging out the few times before their wedding. I am definitely bummed that with them living minutes away from my parents now, that I won’t be there to get to hang out with them more.
As I came back this time to China it was strange to feel as though I never left. Everything was so much “the same” and familiar. It was like I had only been gone a weekend. But I still needed to be reminded of things, like needing to actually pay attention when crossing the street because people who drive here don’t follow the same rules we do.
It was also great to get to do things that I really missed while being in the States. Exercise being one of the best things to get back to. Today I walked 45 minutes to meet a friend. In the States I’d just hop in my car and the only exercise I’d get would come from rocking out to some music on the drive or the fist shaking at the people who drive too slow. And then there’s the seven flights of stairs. I’ve forgotten how tiring that can make you! The first two days back I went up and down the stairs three times each day!
It’s wonderful to have rice in my diet again, rice and a ton of vegetables. The other night it was awesome to see bell peppers, mushrooms, cauliflower, squash and cucumbers cover the table for our dinner. It’s so much different than in the States where meat is the main attraction. It’s also been funny to come home to the seemingly never ending comments of “you’ve gained weight” “you look fatter than before” “you’re darker than before” “did I mention that you’re fatter now?”. I’ve learned to accept them as compliments, then they just make me laugh.
Life over here is just as busy as it was while I was back in the States. A ton of lunch and dinner meetings, a trip to Dali (to deliver some of the stuff I picked up for a friend in the States), a trip to DongChuan (to visit Ruth’s family), a trip to ChengDu (to go to the US Embassy to hopefully get Lucy’s visa!) and finally move down to WenShan.
Speaking of WenShan. Things are slowly changing with the plans down there. The new idea is to start a small English school and education center. It’s still a pretty basic idea that has a lot of planning to even get to the starting stages, but it’s something that we’re getting very serious about pursuing. The hope is to start an education center that will specialize first in teaching English, then teaching others how to teach English, then teaching businesses how to use English in their businesses, and finally be able to teach team-building and character building training in businesses. The dream is there, now it’s about setting up the details and seeing if it’s all possible. More details to follow as soon as I move down there and start the actual work.
Here’s some pictures from the past few months for you to enjoy!
Before I left for the States I made sure to go see Ruth’s family. Here we are at the retirement home where they were working before I left. (They’ve since returned back home.)
The first day back to the States I got to meet Nicole and Bryant. Here’s me holding Nicole for the first time. I guess I’m a pretty comfortable 1st cousin twice removed!
I was so excited that being home in the summer meant that I could go “Camping with Warren and Doug”. It’s been a family tradition (along with people from our church) to go camping every year. Here is a picture with almost all of the years we’ve been camping represented by the shirts/sweatshirts from each year.
It was a smaller group this year, but it was a ton of fun! Here is a group shot from those left on the last day of camping.
After camping my parents and I went to Chase Field (home of the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix, AZ) to watch the Dodgers play. It was great to add another stadium to my list of stadiums visited (Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, Petco Park (Padres), SBC (Giants, booo Giants), Chase Field (Dbacks), Ballpark at Arlington (Rangers), Tropicana Field (Rays), Dolphin Stadium (Marlins), Wrigley Field (Cubs), Comisky Park (White Sox), Miller Park (Brewers), old Yankee Stadium (but not for a game and boooo Yankees), Candlestick Park (old home of the Giants, again boooo Giants). The Dodgers lost, but it was great to get to meet some of the players including Trent Oeltjen and Andre Ethier.
I was able to visit my Grandma too while I was home. It took her awhile this time to remember who I was, but I think by the end of the trip she realized who I was and could remember that I was living in China.
On a Sunday afternoon Darren and Alisha came over to our house with Bryant for a bit. It was fun to get to hold the little guy (not even 2 months old!). I guess I’m a pretty comfortable 1st cousin once removed too!
The main event was definitely the wedding. I am so excited for my new cousin! I don’t think I can express in words how happy I am for both of them.
Some artsy pictures…
Of course here’s some fun pictures too.
Some guy walking around town with a bunch of live chickens in bags…. just another day in China.
I moved a bunch of my stuff down to WenShan already. I hired some moving company. These people were crazy strong. I tried to get better pictures of them carrying ridiculous amounts of things in one load, but this is the best I’ve got. A chair apparently becomes an instrument to help you carry a lot of other things. The craziest of things was that my dining room table has a thick piece of glass that’s on the top. It’s very very heavy and awkward to carry. I had trouble even moving the piece of glass with a friend from one place to another and yet the mover guy carried it by himself up the stairs like it was as light as a feather.
Sorry about the glare, but I hope that you can make out some amazing English sentence!
Sometimes you wonder if people know what their shirt says in English. Here is a girl wearing a shirt that read “My cat is my best friend”. It could be true and she could know that’s what her shirt says… but my guess is that she has no idea.
What a great month plus!
Sorry for the long gap in-between posts. In the future the plan is to post shorter posts more often, at times maybe even just being a quick sentence or picture!
Lup
What?! Beijing?!?! And you thought I lived in Kunming. Um, well I do. I’m just visiting Beijing for a few days on a spur of the moment trip. My roommate Ruth needed a travel buddy to go to Beijing with her so she could go to a conference on creating libraries (her line of work). So I volunteered thinking that a trip could help me find the time that I’ve been searching for to finally update my blog, answer several emails, and do some other things that have been neglected far too long. So as far as Beijing goes, I could be in Mongolia for all I know, for the next few days my area of travel will probably be a two block radius (just far enough to find something to eat!).
Goodness so much has happened in the past well I guess month!
The biggest thing to have happened is that Ruth’s Mom, Dad and littlest sister, WeiWei, are now living in Kunming. Ruth’s mom and dad both have a job at the old folks home that’s run by the local fellowship. She’s helping with prepping the food for meals, tending to the field of vegetables that they have there and taking care of the 3 pig, 20 chickens, 5 rabbits and 4 ducks. He’s helping with some of these things but also helping with taking care of the residents.
It’s great to have them a little bit closer now. It still takes about an hour to get from where I live to where they live, but it sure beats the 4 hours to get to their old house. (And the 1 RMB bus fair is a whole lot cheaper than the 45 RMB!)
The greatest part is that being in the city means that WeiWei can go to preschool! As you can imagine their village of maybe 20 houses doesn’t exactly mean that there is a preschool there. With the nearest elementary school being an hour hike down the mountain, I’m not sure where the nearest preschool would be! In March WeiWei went to her first day of school!
Here she is after her first day! It was fun to pick her up from school. We were all quite proud of her, she went without complaint on the first day. The second day was a little tougher. I think that the first day was a fun new experience but that evening when she realized that she would have to go back the next day, she started to worry about it. So she announced that IF she was going to go to school the next day it wouldn’t be until AT LEAST until after lunch. She wasn’t too much of a happy camper when she found out that despite her announcement she was still going in the morning. After thinking for a little bit she figured out that there wasn’t really a way of getting out of going, so then she informed us, “Well, IF I HAVE to go tomorrow, then you tell the teacher that I do NOT need to take a nap, and that she is NOT to take my coat.” Her mom agreed to inform the teacher of these new demands so all was well. The next day upon their arrival at the school WeiWei tells her mom, “Well… bend down here.” Her mom bends down and WeiWei gives her a kiss on the cheek and walks off. What a funny kid. She treats going to school as most of us would treat going to work. It’s something that has to be done, so she does it. She can now write 0, 1, 2 and ‘m’. (Well the ‘m’ is a 3 that has kinda fallen over….).
Since they moved down here, Ruth and I try to go visit them on the weekends and on special days I’ll go pick up WeiWei from school. It’s been fun to have a little sister. It’s cute to see the smirk on her face when she sees that it’s me picking her up from school. On the walk home she’ll usually talk about something that I can’t understand but all she needs to hear are the little cues like “Uh huh… is that so… really?… where?” and she’ll keep on going. I’m not sure how long that’s going to work, but hopefully in the meantime I’ll continue to learn more and more Chinese and their local dialect. So perhaps by the time she figures out that I might not understand what she’s talking about she’ll be wrong! Haha. I can always hope right?
One weekend we went down to the park by the lake (the really really green one from last year, although this year it wasn’t green!). We spent the afternoon together just walking around the park, eating some snacks and talking. I realized that this was probably the first time that they had been to a park together or even on an outing together. It was a really pretty day and I even stood in the water (and I’m still alive with both feet to tell about it!).
WeiWei’s first shoulder ride!
First ride down a slide. She only tried it twice and wasn’t willing to try the bigger one!
I also went to the Minority Village with a few friends. My roommate was helping to take a guy from fellowship to the minority village before he moved to a different part of China. He’s blind (I think his retinas detached at age 16 or so) so he needed some friends to accompany him. It was definitely good practice for my Chinese to try to describe some of the sites that were around. The Minority Village is like the countries portion of Epcot Center but without the rides. In China there are 55 different minority/ethnic groups so the Minority Village highlights several of them with displays of traditional housing, clothing, dance, instruments, etc. It’s very educational… lots of signs to read (so really fun for those who like reading signs…).
There was at least an interesting elephant show where they get elephants to do all sorts of crazy things that I’m sure PETA wouldn’t approve of.
Here we all are at the entrance. It was a very very cold day. Brrr. I think when we took this picture I had lost all feeling in my feet and hands!
Last weekend Ruth had organized a “play date” between two 5th grade schools. She has been working at a migrant school for the past 6 months plus putting in a library for the kids so she also took that opportunity to start a pen pal things between the 5th graders at this school and 5th graders at a government school (Ruth knows a 5th grade teacher there so they were able to set it up pretty easy). So this past weekend they arranged for the other school to come to their school for a play date. The kids were pretty excited to get to actually meet their pen pal face to face. It was also a great opportunity for these kids with extremely different backgrounds to come together. The kids from this government school are on the wealthier side because it’s connected with a big university in Kunming. From an observers perspective it was very interesting to see all of the differences with the kids. You notice right away the significant height difference, the style and quality of clothes, the hairstyles… but then you also notice the similarities that seem to cross through the classes. The classes played some games together, had a basketball match and then shared a snack. Hopefully this experience will help give the kids in both classes perspective and will help them be better people for the future!
As I’m sure you’ve guessed, the kids on the left are the kids from Ruth’s school and the kids in green are from the other school. They arrived in a charter bus accompanied by most of their parents.
They played a Rock Paper Scissors game where the loser has to go behind the winner. The heads of each line battle until it’s just two lines left to battle for the championship!
The two schools competed in a friendly basketball game. The gov school has 2 basketball coaches that come from the local university to help teach them technique and skills. The gov school often competes in matches against other schools (hence the red jersey). Ruth’s school well….. plays street ball. But this kid was quite good! He kept his team fairly close. It would be really neat to see this kid’s potential if he too had a basketball coach come to his school.
The girls also played, only the girls from Ruth’s school have never played before. It was great to see the gov school girls help teach their opponents some of the rules and techniques.
Here’s the whole gang! Hopefully it was an eye opening experience for not only the kids but maybe some of the parents too!
I also went on an retreat with all the foreigners (non-Chinese) people working at the non-profit that I’ve been helping out at. There were about 50 adults or so plus tons of kids. It was definitely strange to be around so many non-Chinese people for the 4 days. I really started to miss speaking Chinese! The retreat was really good. It was nice to be able to worship in English again, plus the talks were really great! I brought my football and got to toss it around too! Finally people who knew what a football was!
I’ve been keeping up on my studies amidst all of these activities. Still studying 10 hours a week in classes and all the time at home. English is slowly vanishing from our household. I’ve noticed the need for the dictionary has significantly decreased and the few times that it’s needed is for really complicated words! I’m really excited that our conversations are starting become deeper. It’s not just surface questions anymore. So I guess language is really starting to come along!
And finally for the part you’ve all been waiting for…. funny picture of things in China…
How much is this guy willing to buy this bag of hair for? What kind of hair you ask… human hair. Ruth’s mom’s hair to be exact… when she decides to cut it she puts it in a bag. Why would you put it in a bag? Well because this bag of hair sells for 10 RMB/100 grams. So this bag went for 64 RMB. When I asked the guy what he does with the hair… he responded he sells it to someone else. When I asked what they do with it… he replied that he didn’t know. Ruth’s dad said they make shoes out of it. Not sure the accuracy of that… but next time you get a haircut maybe you should put it in a bag… you never know how much it’ll be worth!
Syl (and any other Calvin and Hobbes lovers) this one is for you. Apparently Calvin (and Hobbes) are bilingual. Guess you never thought they could speak Chinese. Does the voice in your head change for Calvin when you look at it?
When there is an emergency seek shelter in this tree? This sign is in the middle of a park. There are no “shelters” that I could see, well other than the tree.
Is that a pylon in the road? Oh nope… just a baby. I guess I would think to put my baby in my car or have my “baby on board”, but to put it on the road… seems well… irresponsible? But I guess that’s the way it goes here. At least they gave it a bottle.
Talk about losing your independence as a senior. Guess it’s rougher over here for seniors. This sign would be funny just on it’s own… but to make it even greater… it’s above an escalator to the supermarket. So seniors can’t even go down an escalator unaccompanied. Bummer. Don’t get old in China. Or count your blessings that you when you’re old in the States that at least you have the freedom to go up and down escalators unaccompanied.
Fun stuff. I really wish that there was a way to capture more of the crazy things that I see everyday, but even getting out my phone isn’t always quick enough.
That’s all for now. Hopefully there will be time to post again soon!
Lup
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