Addendum to Earlier Post

This goes well with the earlier post about the Haidian church. This is the line on a rainy Sunday about a half hour before the start of church. That's right, these people have been standing in the chilly, blustery rain of a late September morning for over 30 minutes. (Some of them much longer)

National Day Invitation

In case you were not aware, the Chinese "fourth of July" is October 1st. (I'd say Independence Day, but that gets into the subject of independence from what? and there it gets very tricky so I'll stick with fourth of July)

This year marks sixty years since the founding of "New" China, and large scale preperations are well underway for a massive celebration. Think something along the lines of Olympic Opening Ceremony last year and you're getting close. Despite personal feelings on the matter, it is still quite exciting to be here during this time. It got even more exciting a few days ago when our organization was invited by the government to commemorate this event at the Great Hall of the People and be representative of all the foreign workers in China at the celebrations. This is an astounding honor and one that has all of us pretty excited. Your average Chinese citizen will never see the Great Hall (which is similar to our Capitol) in real life, let alone ever dream about being invited inside. Honor guards stand ramrod straight all along the perimeter twenty fours a day seven days a week, rain or shine. Imagine the guards at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington doing that around the US Capitol and thats what happens at the Great Hall of the People.

Haidian English Service

Today marked the first day of the English language service in the main sanctuary at Haidian Christian Church. The first English language service, the church staff were expecting around fifty people, instead 150 showed up. When they moved to the basement of the present-day church, around 4-500 people were there on average on any given Sunday. Today, in the main sanctuary over 900 people were there and there were still people standing for the whole service. This amazing church explosion has taken place in a little more than two years.

Fall in Beijing

I love this time of year here. Monsoon season is at an end and the hot days are on their way out. It has been absolutley gorgeous here with temperatures in the mid seventies all day. Beautiful weather and quite rare for Beijing, the skies have been crystal clear, providing some gorgeous sunrises/sunsets.



The entire sky looked like this from one horizon to the next

just a few minutes before sunset

New Session and Orientation

Today is the start of the new session, orientation began last night and continues this morning, but this afternoon the students will meet their class and begin TIP. The English only environment begins tomorrow. I have a rather unique role this session, in that I am assisting with a class, teaching a few clubs and then mostly working on program materials, such as our manual. Our manual is big and bloated, well over 2,000 pages if it were ever printed out and it's my job this session to index every file in it as well as receive updated files from everyone else in an attempt to streamline this sucker. In other words, I'm going to be stuck inside a lot this session!

Truth in Advertising

Today in a break between entrance interviews and orientation, I went to grab some food. On the way back I came across a street vendor selling bootleg American dvd's three for ten kwai. Pretty good deal and if a movie is no good, I'm only out roughly forty-five cents. So i bought a few I haven't seen before and the vendor said "Even though these are illegal copies, the quality is excellent!" Hey, I appreciate the honesty!

Let's Have a Staff Meeting to Plan More Staff Meetings!

So the past few days, my proxy to access blogspot has been acting up. I have great internet, just no ability to access it. Kind of like having a Ferrari with no gas.

Anyway, I would not have had time to post with all the Staff Meetings going on lately. My schedule has been full of nothing but staff meetings to finalize training for the new year longs and prepare a new schedule for a new part of campus, as well as preparations for TIP branching out. This is my seventh session, so most of the stuff covered is familiar information. However, the staff meetings march on. Yesterday, I was in meetings for seven hours, today nine and a half altogether.