Earlier this morning, as I left Chinese class from the build across the street from where I live, called the
Bai Lou, I walked into a strange site. All the employees from the two building had gathered in the street between and were playing tug-a-war against one another! These are mostly people between the ages of 25-40 and they were still all in their work uniforms, which mostly consists of suits and dress shoes. It is moments like these that make me smile, and love China. It is always such an adventure to live here! I like to think of some of these as magical moments in my days. Lately, things are really busy in
Baoding, but in many good ways and I have experienced a lot of these magical moments. I'd like to share just a few of them with you from the past few weeks....
I was standing in my porch-like area of my room the other morning getting ready for the day as the sound of a Chinese flute tingled my ears. And, as I looked out my window, it almost looked as though it was snowing, even though it was the warmest week we've had yet! There are trees here that we think are
cottenwood that filled the air with little white
fuzzes. So much so, it was hard to walk and talk without getting them in your mouth or nose. But looking out at them from my window that morning, I couldn't help but feel that I was in China.
A few weekends ago, I had the opportunity to spend some good time with my friend Jenny. She is actually a students at
Hebei Financial College where Jon and Ryan are teachers. I am blessed to know her though, and get to spend time with her as well. One of the things I we did together is visit a large park in
Baoding. It is close to where she use to work during the summer, so we had a good time letting her show me around the area. Plus, the parks in China all have exercise like machines outside, and we played on them for a long while. She had to show me how to use all of them. I must admit, one of my favorites was the machine that massaged your back! As we left the park, we came across this stand for food. This street food is bird eggs that are cooked on a stick. I had to "have a try." With a little ketchup, spice, and this brown sauce they were really quite tasty. I am just not sure what bird they came from! This is Jenny in the picture with the bird eggs.
For Easter in my classes, I really wanted my students to be able to get a real idea for the holiday. Well, honestly, I am not if they did or not, but I know they had a great time with the activity we did! Instead of having an Easter Egg hunt for my class, I decided to have a scavenger hunt for them. I divided them into teams and gave them clues, only after they told me a vocabulary word, and then sent them off. It was quite a race between the groups, and so fun to see all my students running round campus like crazy. My favorite clue I gave the students was "in the middle of the lake" because there are little stepping stones that lead out to the middle of the lake to an area with grass and trees. Luckily, none of the students fell it. This is a photo of the winning group from my Thursday afternoon class: Steven, Sasha,
Semanda, Sabrina,
Rucy, and Pasta. They are holding one American treat, a snickers, and one Chinese treat, it is like a fruit roll up only healthier and made of
hawthorn.
Tim's girlfriend, Melissa came to visit him for a week. It was so fun to get to know her spend time with her. One of the things we got to do altogether was visit a lily garden in
Baoding. Tim, Emily, and I went to this same garden when we first arrived in
Baoding, so it was fun to see it again in the Spring.
Unfortunately, the lilies will not be coming out for awhile, but the rest of the gardens were in bloom. I think what makes this place so special is it right in the middle of town, which is always crowded with people, and then you step through the door of the lily garden and suddenly you are almost alone in the middle of the city! Trust me, for China this really is rare! It was amazing just to be outside and not have anyone approaching us. The day was perfect and relaxing, what more could we ask for?
For Easter in China, the whole
IECS team headed to Lang Fang to celebrate the big holiday. While there though, we also got to celebrate even more life! Jess
Distad is pregnant and will have her baby at the end of June. So, all the girls got together to host a baby shower for Jess! It was a really sweet time to be with all the girls and just be joyful together! We, of course, had many laughs as well because we got to play many baby shower games. My personal favorite is the baby-diaper ID game. Basically what happens is someone melts candy bars in diapers so it looks like poop, and everyone tries to guess what kind of candy bar it is! It is so funny and always causes a lot of laughs! Not only were all the
IECS girls there, but three of Jess' good Chinese friends were there too. It was really a sweet thing to spend time with them, and get to share in the joy of her new baby.
Not only did we get to celebrate Easter in Lang Fang, but we also celebrated with some of our girls here in
Baoding. Emily and I asked some of the girls we are closest with, Daisy,
Jamelia, Bea, Rachel, and Ashly, to come over and "dye" Easter eggs with us. In China, we had to get a little creative here and hope for the best on our dark brown eggs :) We used dark colored drink mixes and
vinegar to dye the eggs while they boiled. When we finished we had some light blue eggs from a purple drink mix, and some red eggs from a Hawaiian punch mix. Not only did we dye eggs, but we also made sugar cookies! This may not seem like too big of deal, but people here do not have oven in their homes, so there is no baking...including cookies. If you want a cake for your birthday you have to buy it a shop. The girls loved mixing, shaping, cookie cutting, baking, and eating the cookies. Their excitement was
infectious! The best part of the whole night was getting to share with the girls what Easter is all about and just having the opportunity to love on all of them.
The last of my magical moments, or maybe they are the moments you live that are so simple at times, yet you think "I hope I remember this time, this feeling, this smell, this sight right now forever", came yesterday. Our good friend Tony came to town and had the opportunity to speak with a student and tell him about his life. By the end of the conversation, we had a new brother! It is amazing and just might have caused a
spontaneous dance party later that evening!
This is a video of our second skit at English Night. Enjoy the craziness of it all!
around me slowly began to push forward. In the first part of the race it was easy because there are so many people the energy between everyone just seems to spur you forward. We were moving forward up the small hills that come before a mountain in the Northern part of Beijing. The view might have been breath-taking, if the the wind and running hadn't already stolen all mine away. We ran six miles along a nicely wooded area, near some beautiful mountains in the distance. The start and finish line were right beside a large lake with a Chinese pagoda in the middle of the lake. My first warning of the wind being a problem for me while running came while we were waiting to go. The lake a few hundred feet below was being pushed so hard into the side of the damn we were on that every few minutes we'd get a nice spray from it! The North Face event staff even had to relocate a lot of their booths that were originally going to be close to that side of the lake, but now stood in the
mist of it all! Since the scenery was so beautiful it was a little easier to run, instead of making my way around the same track 24 times on campus. As a new runner, and someone who recognizes this is not my biggest gift, my goal for the race was just to finish. I am happy to say I finished in 1:29 and they gave us 1:30 to do it! Yes! Many of the other IECSers did very well too! Peter and his friend he brought with him, Wan Li, came in 4th and 5th place out of like 2,600 people! Shannon, Jess, and Courtney, and Ryan also all finished well. Brad, decided not to only do the 10K, but as an avid runner did the 40K. He had an amazing finishing time, especially since the race started with a 2000 step climb up a mountain! All in all in was a GREAT day and an awesome time to spend with the team.
