Sunshine, lilacs and more sunshhine

In the midst of -15degree F temperatures, snow, and lack of heaters, I never thought that summer would come. However, I was thankfully proven wrong. It has been absolutely beautiful here lately. Unfortunately it did take until May before it got nice. The end of April it started to be nice, but it hasn't been until recently that it has been in the upper 70's /low 80's. I do kind of think it a little odd though when I see people still wearing long sleeves and sweatshirts. I myself am still a little afraid that when I walk outside it's all of a sudden going to start snowing, but I have at least started to wear some summer clothes. An interesting observation I have made is that the girls will carry around an umbrella when it's hot and sunny. In China having white skin is the equivalent to having a tan in America and I guess they take it as far as carrying around a parasol of sorts to stay white. The campus is currently absolutely beautiful. I never realized how many flowers they have on campus. There is an extraordinary amount of lilacs and they are all in bloom right now. It smells sooo good!!

Overdue....

It has been far too long since I have given you all an update on my life here. I apologize for not keeping you all in the loop. A lot has happened since I posted last, yet at the same time nothing is terribly new. Live for me still mostly consists of studying, eating and sleeping. It's getting more difficult to come up with fun stories because I've gotten so used to everything here now. I had my spring break a couple weeks ago, and my family was able to come to China to visit me. My dad, mom, sister, grandpa and grandma all came to China to visit me. It was great to have them here, and to have them see where I have been living. It's very hard to actually explain to someone what living in China is like when they have no frame of reference for it, so I feel very blessed that my family was able to come see me.

For the first three days of my spring break my family spent time with me in Harbin, seeing where I spend my time and touring the city of Harbin. After that we all took a train to Beijing and spent another three days there. While in Beijing we went to the Great Wall, saw the Olympic center, visited Tiananmen, and did lots of shopping. On the last night that my family was in China, we all celebrated my grandpa's and my birthday, his being on the 11th and mine on the 12th of April. It was quite the blessing to have them here to celebrate my birthday.

I enjoyed having the chance to act as the tour guide of sorts for my family, having them try the good, authentic Chinese cuisine, and showing them how to travel on China's public transportation, etc. If you want to know what my family thought of their trip, you'll have to ask them about there impressions, but as for me I really enjoyed it.

It's down to almost five weeks until I head home, and I'm finding myself continually conflicted. I'm on one hand very very excited to go home after almost eight months here, but on the other hand I've spent eight months here, and I've finally gotten adjusted to living here, and I've made friends that I will be sad to say goodbye to. I am actually very happy that it will be difficult to leave because that means I enjoyed myself, and that it was a good experience. At the same time though I'm still counting down the days. :)

Oh, and spring is finally here!!!

Thoughts...

I've been living in China for more than 7 months. I go home in almost two months. I am beginning to wonder what it will be like to go back home, how my experiences will affect being back at home, how being at home will affect my experience, etc, etc. In some areas I think life will just go back to normal, but in many ways I know it will not. Living in a foreign country, especially one like China, is very difficult to explain to people to a point where they can understand what I have experienced. I can tell people stories and I can show off my skills in speaking Chinese, but much of what I have learned here and much of what has shaped me will never be able to be expressed to a point where people will understand. Only if you have lived or visited China will you ever understand what it means when people talk about the amount of people, the pollution, the standard of living, etc. Most people will not actually be able to understand both the good and the bad about this country. Before I got here and actually lived here for more than two weeks, China was just a place on a map and culture that I knew a lot of the history about. Getting here was a whole different experience. Most of what I ever studied never really had anything to do with modern China, most of it was all before Deng Xiaoping's Gaigekaifang, or Opening and Reform policy. Living here I have experienced and seen so much of what China is today. Yet at the same time it is still very illusive to me. As a foreigner there are some things that I don't get to see because we are presented with the part of China that we are wanted to see. However, it is the same China that most of the nation sees as well. Anyways, it will be difficult to tell people all of this and have them understand it on a truly understanding level. I'm afraid of getting back home and being unable to give people an accurate representation of my experience here. It is not something that can be summed up into a few sentences. I have a feeling that it will be something that will have to just come out in stories, course I'm not the best story teller at all. I'm afraid that when I go home my experience in China will be a year that just becomes missing in my life. A period of time where I will talk about every once in a while, but that is generally ignored in the large scheme of life. Which is right in it's own sense because we shouldn't be living in the past but rather in the present.

So, how will this experience affect me? I guess a better question would be, what do I want to take away from this? Well, most importantly I want to take away everything God has taught me. He has taught me a lot about living in the present, and not in the past or the future. He has taught me that the journey with Him is not easy, and just because you leave America does not mean that it is any easier to seek Him everyday. I learned how much of a blessing and how important fellowship is to your walk. I have learned that I do not have enough friendships with people who are not Christians. I have spent my life in a bubble, and I want to start taking Jesus outside of the church walls. Now, that doesn't mean that I want to abandom my morals and that I want to live a heathenistic life, but it means that I want to make relationships with those people who are lost. It means I should go to them, not expect them to come to me inside the church. Jesus did not stay inside the synagogue and did not spend his time with the religious people of his time; instead, He spent his time building relationships with those outside of the synagogue walls, those who needed saving. He never went alone though, I do not think it is in His will for any of us to go out into the field alone. When Jesus sent his disciples out to preach and heal in his name he sent them out in pairs, not by themselves. I think when missionaries go out by themselves without anyone to back them up or support them in the field it becomes a dangerous spot and they can begin to struggle (I watched this happen to two different people). I have experienced God's care as he provided kind people to take care of me during my travels. I have experienced God's divine appointments as he allowed me to encourage a brother I had never met before in my life and will probably never meet again, and by allowing me to meet some amazing Christians along my travels that were such an encouragement to me. I have learned that I can do nothing on my own, without God's help I am nothing. I realize that I need to depend on His guidance and leadership throughout my life. I have had the privilege of witness God bring people to Him and watching how he has grown a meeting of 7 foreigners and one Chinese to a meeting of about 20, being about half foreigners and half chinese. It was not a result of anything we really did, God just blessed it and brought people. He has shown me that there is a need and a thirst here. Reading the heavenly man while being here also has really changed my perceptions and attitudes towards things. It is hard for me to express what I'm really thinking when it comes to God and church. When I go back home I'm afraid that i will get caught up in religiousity and forget all that I have experienced here. Yet at the same time, I know that fellowship with the believers will help me in my walk.

What am I looking forward to at home? I'm looking forward to seeing everyone that I have missed so dearly. I'm looking forward to being home. Although I have lived here in China for many months it is still not home to me. I'm looking forward to western food, food without a ton of oil. I look forward to having space, and not continually being surrounded by people. I look forward to being able to drive my car again, fresh air being fresh, understanding a culture, being able to have friends that I can tell what is on my mind, green grass, clean streets.

“幼儿园” (you'er yuan) Kindergarten!!

Today I got the chance to go back to kindergarten! CET had all of us go visit HIT's kindergarten so that we could practice our Chinese and interview the kindergartners. I have to say it was QUITE the experience. Definitely the opposite of our visit with HIT's elderly. When I heard that we were going to visit a kindergarten I had imagined in my head visiting a class, playing with a bunch of cute kids, and easily asking them the list of questions I had for them. I expected them to be cute, adorable, quiet, and willing to answer my questions. In fact, they were actually very cute and adorable, but as for being quiet and willingly answering my questions, they were far from it.

Two classmates and I walked in a class of about 20-30 kindergartners and were immeadietly each given a group of students. I proceeded to my table of kids and sat in my chair fit for a kid 1/4 my size. At first they really didn't know what to do with me! They didn't know whether to speak English or Chinese, and when they found out they couldn't speak English to me that had no clue what to say to me. One kid just looked at me and said in Chinese "foreigner" and then put his head down unwilling to talk to me. The teacher encouraged them to say their names, etc, but they were pretty shy and needed a bit more encouragement. The teacher then decided to have them all recite the 成语 (cheng yu), or idioms, that they had been memorizing. So my table started to recite their 成语 and they gradually got louder and louder until it was practically a yelling match between tables. After that the teacher tried again to have them introduce their names, and as they introduced their names I did my best to understand what they said and repeat it back. If I said their name wrong they were definitely not afraid to tell me I was wrong. I then tried to get them to all write their names for me so that I could see their names. This got them all really excited and they started pulling out paper to write, and they were all fighting for my attention to show me their name. A couple of the kids decided to take out their books and have me read the book to them; so I ended up spended quite a bit of time reading Spongebob Squarepants to them in Chinese. I thought it was pretty funny to see how excited they were to have me reading their book. They were all crowded around me so they could see the book too (one kid was practically in my lap), and they were quick to correct my pronunciation. After an hour or so in the very noisy classroom, my time came to an end and I had to say goodbye to my new "small friends", but it was an experience that I don't think I will forget very easily. I don't know how I forgot how noisy and spirited little kids can be. I have to say though, I have no clue what I'm going to tell my teacher on Friday because I didn't get a chance to ask any of my questions...

Classes have been going well. It is weird to realize that I have been in China now for a little more than six and a half months. I'm now having to start getting things ready for next fall semester, which makes it hard to wait to go home. I've certainly been enjoying my time, and I'm slowly making more and more friends here. I have been blessed while I have been here in more ways than one. I do think I'm starting to come down with a case of senioritis though.

Oh, and it is still very much winter here. I'm watching it snow outside right now, and it started snowing five hours ago.

China Life

I realized that I never really gave a detailed description of what it is like to live in China. I've decided to describe some of the differences that I have been experiencing here and have in most cases adapted to.

Well, for starters, I have gotten accustomed to washing my face in a wash basin. Normally I would just use the warm water out of the sink and wash my face in the sink, but our sink does not have hot water and Harbin is just a little too cold to use cold water to wash my face. So every night I borrow my roommates wash basin and pour hot water into it and use it to wash my face. The lack of cold water in the sinks in our dorms (and most sinks in China) makes me very appreciative when I come across a sink that actually has hot water. Not only does hot water in a sink make it easier to wash your face, but also your hands and your dishes too.

I can officially say that I am used to using a squatty potty. Granted it's not my favorite thing in the world to use, especially when the floor is wet, there are cigarette butts in the toilet and no toilet paper, but I've definitely gotten used to it. Most of the public places here have squatty potties and you need to provide you're own toilet paper.

The Chinese kitchens are a lot different than I'm used to. I have never once seen an actual stove. I have seen a stove (with no oven) every once in a while, but most of the time people use hot plates to cook on. The kitchen in our dorm consists of a microwave, a rice cooker, an oven about the size of a toaster oven, a hot plate, and refrigerator. They also don't refrigerate their eggs here, or their milk and yogurt.

I have gotten used to using taxis and public buses as my main means of transportation. Most people do not have personal cars here. The main methods of transportation are public bus, taxi and walking. The few personal cars that people do have are generally very nice. I see a lot of Audis and BMWs.

When I take a shower, I always have the toilet and the bathroom sink for company. There is no separate partitioned area for the shower. The shower is water heater on the wall with a shower head connected to it. The shower head is just on the wall of the bathroom and the entire bathroom just looks like a shower, except that the toilet and sink are there too.

I hang dry my clothes every time I do laundry. Dryers must be a luxury or just not a cultural norm because they just don't really exist here. You always hang your clothes in the window to dry. Most apartments have a sun porch area with a shower curtain rod that you hang your clothes on. Also, if you need to hand wash your clothes, which most of the students here do anyways, you use another wash basin except bigger than the one for face washing.

When you go out to eat it is all done family style. You never order a dish for just yourself. If the group of people is big enough you will find yourself in a separate personal room and the table your sitting at has a big lazy susan in the middle of it. Then everyone share's the food in the middle. You pretty much just take what you want as you want it. There is really no dishing food onto your plate using a separate utensil and then eating what is on your plate. You just use your chopsticks to take food that you want to eat and you eat as you go. Rice is generally brought last and is meant to be eaten if you're still hungry. China also has a custom where one person treats everyone at the table to dinner, called 'qing ke' 请客; however, we often end up just splitting the bill.

These are the things I can think of right now. I know there is more, but I'm always afraid I'll just be repeating myself or that people will already know what it's like. Anyways, I've started school again. I started on Monday, and this semester is so far ten times better than last semester. My level of Chinese is a lot higher than when I first got here so the first weeks of the semester aren't miserable like they were last semester. The group of students this semester is a lot of fun. They are very social and they are generally all around the same conversation level. It is a smaller group than last semester, 20 instead of 27. I also have a new roommate this semester, and she is very sweet. Her name is Xue Yi， 薛艺。 She is a graduate student and a few years older than me. She is very talkative, but talkative in a very cute way. I enjoy that I don't really have to think of something to say, instead she'll end up saying something and then I can respond to her. All in all I'm enjoying this semester, I'm glad to be back to school, and time really has flown.

It's not the places you go, but the people you meet...

I've seen lots of cool places. Places that few people ever get to travel to and people only dream about seeing. I am grateful for the opportunity I have to travel; however, the best part of my travels is not everything I've seen, but it's all of the people I have met along the way. The opportunity to meet people from around the world and share who we are and share our culture with eachother is a once in a lifetime experience. Just the other night my friend Laura and I taught our new Dutch friends how to make s'mores, something they had never heard of before. It was a blast to be sitting at a little charcoal fire using chopsticks, fruit-flavored marshmellows, and cookie-like crackers, sharing a piece of our American culture with friends in the middle of our hostel in Chengdu. In my several weeks of travel I have already met people from Austrailia, Sweden, The Netherlands, England, South Africa, Germany, Mexico, Korea, Norway, even America, and of course China. Meeting these people from all over the world has given me a real understanding of how big and yet small the world is. Having the chance to learn about countries that my understanding of goes no further than where it is on a map, has been something I would never trade. It has made me appreciate how many countries and cultures there are in the world, and that my country is not the only one that exists and of any note.

Most all of the people I have met speak English fluently as a second language and sometimes it is their first language. Each time I meet someone and start talking with them, I discover how each culture influences language and how English can be very different even in places like England and Australia. I have begun to envy all the Europeans that can speak fluent English yet still have their own language that they can speak (and no one else can understand it). It is fun being able to sit and listen to people speak in Dutch one second and then turn to you and start speaking English again. Languages really are a beautiful and amazing thing. They are so complex yet so simple.

In short, traveling has made me appreciate meeting people, making friendships, and building those friendships that I already have, because solely traveling and sightseeing is so empty and void compared to the joy of knowing people.

On Vacation

So, I'm finally on my winter vacation. I finished my semester last week, and had my first graduation from CET. I'll graduate again next semester because they only do things by semesters which means a person graduates at the end of every semester they spend here. The graduation event was fun. They had several people speak about the semester, and they gave certain students awards. After being handed certificates for completing the semester we ate lunch and said our farewells to all out teachers. For me it was a lot different to say goodbye because I'll see them all again in two months. My roommate taught me a custom that students have with teachers to thank them and honor them for being your teacher. What you do is you take your class to your teacher and tell them that you would like to "ganxie" which means to thank, and then you thank them for being your teacher and being patient, etc, and then you "ganbei" or cheers with them. Also after we were given our certificates, we were officially allowed to speak English again. I think my roommate enjoyed finally being able to practice her English after I practiced a semester of Chinese with her. :)

After the graduation I finished packing up my meager belongings and we all got ready to take a train to Beijing. Our train arrived in the early morning, and after having some time to set stuff down I got my first look at some of the touristy stuff in Beijing. I was terribly excited when we went to Houhai, a district in Beijing, because there I got my the first Starbucks I've had in over three months. It was just nice to start seeing some more western places. I tagged along with some people and purused the touristy shopping places. I didn't buy anything because I'm living out of a backpack for two months and I don't have room to put any souveniers in it. After two days in Beijing, the evening of the second day two classmates and I got on a train and headed for Dalian. The train ride itself was quiet and uneventful. However, as we got off the train I experienced my first run in with not so wonderful part of China. It is partly my fault what happened, but it is still unfortunate that it happened at all. As we were preparing to get of the train I was fussing with all my luggage, and had taken my cellphone out of my pocket, probably to look at it, and I placed it on the bed. Then we quickly proceeded to get off the train. I was trying to be quick because people were waiting to unload there luggage. In the process of quickly leaving the train I managed to forget to grab my phone. I noticed that i didn't have it as soon as I got of the train, before we had even gone anywhere, but by the time I had gone to go grab it someone had already stolen it. My classmate called it twice and I even heard it but couldn't tell where it was coming from. Turns out it was in someone's pocket and I heard it as they were passing me. I was, as to be expected, very flustered, angry, and a bit paniced. I managed to find some train attendents and explain to them in chinese that my phone had just been stolen, and they were very helpful in helping me call my phone, then call our hotel to get the address, get us a cheap cab, and she even gave me her phone number to call her if I needed help getting a new phone. So at the same time I experience both the worst and best part of China. I experienced the common occurance of petty theivery, but also experienced the Chinese spirit of being willing to go out of their way to help.

We spent three nights in Dalian, and one of my classmates had a friend in Dalian that had formerly gone to WSU for the past two years, but transfered to the UW this year. He was very kind and took us around to all the good places to see in Dalian, helped me get a new phone and number, and invited us to his home. When we visited his home, his mother found out we planned to take the boat the next day but had yet to buy tickets. She said that we were going to have a hard time getting tickets, and quickly called a friend of hers to get tickets for us. She then arranged it so that her son, our friend, would take us the the dock in the morning, and there her friend would meet us, her friend who was a boat captain(I think) then went and found his friend which was the captain of the boat we were taking. The two friends then got us our tickets, gave us a free upgrade to 2nd class to make us more comfortable and took care of everything to get us on the boat. It was quite the fun experience to be experiencing the Chinese networking culture. In China getting things done is all about who you know. The more people you know, the more smoothly things can go for you. So, we had a nice 8 hour boat ride to Yantai, the city we're in right now. We plan to be here for another night and then we hope to head to Qingdao if we don't get stuck here because of snow.

Now for random stories. While I'm traveling I didn't bring a computer with me so in order to get online and use internet, we've been going to 'wang ba' or internet bars. These internet bars are huge rooms filled with rows of computers. You pay by the hour, and the majority of people in these internet bars are men between late twenties and maybe fourties. These people that frequent the internet bars spend HOURS sitting at the computer smoking and playing online video games. To me it's a little digusting, but I suppose a lot of people enjoy it because it's the same in every city I've been to so far. I just wish they wouldn't smoke. :(

When I was in Beijing ever small stall salesperson would try to say some English to get our attention and get us to by something. Normally it was just annoying because they are all so pushy and I just didn't want to be pressured. Sometimes it was a little entertaining. One time a lady said to me, "Hello, sir." The difference about being in cities other than Harbin is that they expect you to not speak Chinese so they try to speak English, but in Harbin it's as if you are expected to speak Chinese because no one really tries to speak English to you.

Dalian, the first city we went to after Beijing, was a very beautiful city. It seemed to be a very rich city and I think had a lot of party people living there. They had a million different squares, and the seaside was gorgeous. It is a seaside city that has mountains, course they don't compare to Washington mountains. Overall it was one of the more enjoyable cities I've been to as far as cleanliness and such go. Yantai is a very small port city, and so far it doesn't seem to have anything too interesting it, but we shall see.