Just Because Beijing Isn't Cold Enough....

With our schedule here, we get three weeks on and then one week off. Usually that week comes at the end of every month, but sometimes due to scheduling, it is at the start of the month. So when one break is at the end of a month, followed by a break at the beginning of the month it is a good thing and we get 2 weeks off. Such is the case with the December/January break. We have off for 14 whole days, leaving plenty of time to relax and/or travel. Our team is split up into two different mindsets. One side wants to go down to Yunnan province which has been called the Hawaii of China. Nice, consistent temperatures around 75 this time of year, tropical vegetation, vast variety of people and food...a pretty nice break from the cold and smog of Beijing. The other group wants to travel north to Harbin, the capital of the northernmost province of China, bordering Russia. It too also has consistent temperatures, around -15 to -25 degrees in the daytime. The main attraction this time of year is the Ice Festival and the Siberian Tiger Park, where for a fee you can throw live chickens out of a moving van and watch the tigers pounce, all the while hoping that they don't decide to go for the more tasty and filling treat of what's inside the van. Apparently, that's happened before. Did I mention the cold? Right now according to WeatherChannel.com, it feels like -27 degrees farenheit. Let's think about that for a second...

that's nearly sixty degrees below freezing.

As a matter of fact, the only thing that seperates it from the region known as Siberia is an imaginary line on the nap that separates China and Russia. Half of us are not only going there, but going there in January to see the Ice Festival, while the other-perhaps more sensible-half are going to tropical Yunnan.
Of course, I'm going with the Harbin group. Why? Well for one, the Ice Festival is internationally famous and two, it boils down to bragging rights. Anyone can go to a tropical city in the middle of winter, but it takes someone special to get excited to go much farther north. But you have to admit, that's a darn good tourism board right there. Somewhere back in time, somebody asked the question "How can we make a city in northern China the most popular tourist destination...in wintertime?"

Alaska, take note.

It's Christmas Time in the City

The past two days have been amazing as far as getting one into the Christmas spirit. Last night around 9 pm we thought we would go caroling around the student dorms and just have some fun.
The student response was tremendous to say the least. I felt like I was a rock star. Nearly every student crowded around to try to take a picture and were just insanely happy that we were spending some time with them on our important holiday. To give you an idea of the rock concert like conditions here's some pictures Geoff took of them taking pictures of us...



It was crazy, we ended up singing every song we knew and then some and still they wanted more.




Then today on Christmas, we had a short Christmas skit and because of the holiday itself we were able to be a lot more bold and do the entire Christmas story as well as read some passages from Luke and Isaiah. I'm not sure how much the students got out of it but it felt really good to be able to do this and we even got it cleared by our liason, a registered Party member who insisted we tell the entire biblical story in order to give all the facts about Christmas. Amazing.

Christmas Come Early

Today our group received four boxes from a church in Texas that were absolutely filled with Christmas decorations and American food, such as Velveeta (cheesy gold!) cans of Campbell's chili, dozens of boxes of Swiss Miss hot chocolate as well as other goodies that we haven't had in month. Opening these boxes, it was the same feeling as opening presents under the tree.
Inside the first box, we found this note:

Caption Contest

Rush Hour 430 PM Zhongguancun Plaza Haidian District. I have no idea why there is all the traffic going one way, so this is where y'all come in! Give me a good caption!

I Will Never Get Christmas Materialism

All throughout the session while planning Christmas themed activities, involving lesson plans and carols and stories, we have been more than careful to keep the religious imagery well within the confines of the law and into the fuzzy "grey areas." This has provided more than one headache and a lot of frustration, but that's one of the things you deal with when you work in a country such as China. Just as I was getting used to this, I had a intense Big Mac attack and went out to McDonald's to relieve this (thank you God for sending me to a civilized city with starbucks and MickeyD's)
and as I'm in there "Joy to the World" begins to play....

In Chinese.

In case you are not quite aware of the imagery of this song, let's have a Chinese lesson...

Joy to the World, the Lord has come.
huān téng de shì jiè， shàng dì lái le。

Let Earth receive her king!
huān téng de shì jiè， shàng dì lái le。

Let every heart prepare Him room,
ràng wǒ men měi gè rén xīn zhōng tā zhǔn bèi shì，

And Heaven and nature sing
yǔ tiān dì zì rán chàng


How much profit do you have to turn before you can openly flaunt tense regulations?

Somehow "ō shèng dàn shù!" just doesn't have the same ring....

Tis' the season and nobody knows that better than....China?
Here are a few pictures of one of the dozens of Christmas Trees that are set up in metropolitan Beijing.



This one is my favorite...it's nearly six stories high.

Here's another angle of it



How many Christmas trees are in your parking lot?

New Session Update

It's a few days into the new session and I thought I would give you an update of what's going on here.Having Brandon as a co-facilitator has been a huge blessing because the past few days I have been knocked out by something I ate (to the best of my guess). So he's been able to pick up my slack and today we started our rotating teaching schedule. He teaches the main session one day, and then I teach the afternoon activity and then we switch. This gives both of us some new free time, so I have been spending mine doing some reading. Currently, I am on Paul by Walter Wangerin and is pretty much a novelization of most of the New Testament, specifically Acts. It's pretty good so far.

What Are The Odds?

At the start of each session, we hold entrance interviews for the students to determine what class level to put them in based off their English skills. Figure that this session there were about 350 students divided among 20 facilitators in three rooms holding interviews for about two and a half hours. So then, what are the odds I would get these students in this exact order? I only noticed this after interviews were concluded.

New Students Arrive Tomorrow

Another break has come and gone and another session is on the horizon.
Sunrise Sunset.

However, this time is a little different as I'm co-facilitating a class. I've never shared a class before so this will be more than a little interesting. My partner is Brandon, who has been here about half a year longer than I. We spent most of the day prepping for the session and comparing lesson plans. We'll see how it goes =)

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

From left to right, Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Barack Obama. The design is available on t-shirts as well as buttons, like this one.