Only in China...

Sometimes I forget what it was like when I first came to China. So much seems so normal to me now that I’m sure surprised me – or startled me! – the first time I encountered it. But there are two things that I have never forgotten from the brief introduction/training I received before my first trip to China. To this day, both of those things have been truer than I had ever anticipated.

Number One: “Only in China.”

Many things happen in China that could only ever happen in China. The longer I live in this country, the more of these “only in China” things I come upon. At that initial training, this point was highlighted with pictures that were just incredible to see – almost optical illusionesque. The two pictures above are my own attempts at capturing “only in China.”

As I have been wandering around this week, doing all those things that I do now while I am still on winter break, I’ve been keeping a sort of mental list of my “only in China” experiences. Although some of these could certainly have counterparts in other foreign countries, the point is clear. And besides, they’re funny.

(1.) Only in China can being a white blond-headed girl draw more stares than climbing over a wall, up onto a stairway, over the railing, and then down the steps while carrying two full bags of groceries. It might also be only in China that the security guards can stand by watching a girl climb over the wall and not offer to open the gate or stop her from climbing past the locked gate they are supposedly guarding.

(2.) Only in China can basketball and soccer be played outside all winter long, regardless of how much snow or ice have covered the ground. I’ve actually seen ice six inches thick covering the ground everywhere except for the nicely cleared off circular patch by the basketball hoop.

(3.) Only in China is ping-pong considered an intense workout. Yes, there’s a reason the Chinese are known for their ping-pong team. And there’s a reason girls in China rarely play. It’s a pretty intense game here!

(4.) Only in China can a foreigner who hardly speaks the language have to explain to a native speaker what the leader at the Sunday meeting is talking about when she wants us to tell each other “sha-lom.” (Admittedly, it took me a minute too. The native speaker and I both looked at each other and asked what we were supposed to tell each other before I realized I actually could understand the strangely Chinese-sounding Hebrew word.)

(5.) Only in China can okra-less soup be considered gumbo and Chinese chili powder be used to make “American” homestyle chili. Cooking is a whole different ballgame when you live in China! As a side note, it might also be only in China that I can get away with having 10 guys over for lunch. To be fair, one girl did show up for a few minutes…

(6.) Only in China can a Francophone African girl (who speaks only very minimal English or Chinese) feel comfortable showing up to a lunch party of 10 Anglophone African guys (none of whom speak French) hosted by the random white American girl living down the hall. Wow, that really does sound strange! To clarify, all of us attend the same Sunday fellowship. The Francophone girl always sits with a girl who translates for her. She’s one of the sweetest girls I know, even though I can hardly communicate with her. And don’t be worried by me inviting a group of only guys over for lunch… they all attend the same Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, which to be honest is a male-dominated field. It really was an open invitation to all the foreigners at that school.

(7.) Only in China can it be less than a week before the new semester is supposed to start, and none of the students have any idea when or where to be for classes. Nor what classes they will be taking. Nor how to register for them. Theoretically classes should start again on Monday the second. We’ll see if I actually have a Chinese class again before the Ides of March.

And those are only the things that have happened in the last week and come to mind immediately. The “only in China” count would probably be up to a number I don’t even know how to say if I had actually kept track of them all since I’ve been here.

But that’s just one of the two things that have proven true from my first training.

Number Two: “Be Flexible.”

No, this is not referring to maintaining an appropriate level of flexibility for those unexpected times when it becomes necessary to climb over a wall or through a window (yes, that’s been known to happen, too). Although admittedly, that’s not a bad idea either.

This is referring to the Chinese sense of planning ahead. To put it simply, there is no such thing. Let’s go back to number seven above: It is now five days before classes are supposed to start, and there is not a single foreign student here who has any idea when or where we are supposed to show up. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a single Chinese teacher who knows, either. So, we practice that whole flexibility thing. I suppose Monday morning around 8:30 a.m. I’ll show up in the foreign students’ building and just see what’s going on. I suppose I’ll bring a pencil and some paper, too, in case there happens to be a teacher around who wants to give a class, but I doubt I’ll need it.

Since arriving in Shenyang, I don’t believe I have really effectively planned anything more than about two days ahead of time. It’s nearly impossible to do so. Even traveling, you can’t buy train tickets more than 4 or 5 days in advance without paying exorbitant fees, and you can’t buy return tickets until you are at the city you’ll be leaving from without paying another extra cost. (And sometimes you just can’t do it.) While that makes for great fun for those into whimsical traveling and adventure, those who like to schedule everything in advance might not do so well in this country.

In some ways, this flexibility thing has some value. As a foreigner, I think those who actually manage to adjust themselves and embrace this sensibility learn to really live each day. Every day I wake up, not knowing what to expect, but wanting to make the most of it. There’s always a sense of possibility. But then again, there are certainly foreigners around here who didn’t get that “be flexible” lecture and have not adjusted… so they end up sitting in their dorms all the time, bored and lonely, because they don’t know how to make the most of the time at hand.

So, the moral of my stories is this: if you ever decide to travel or move to China, be flexible and learn to love the “only in China” experiences you’ll undoubtedly happen upon. And, um, if you don’t ever decide to travel or move to China… well, I hope you enjoyed the stories anyway! :)

Stories of Winter

I've done winter before. College in Michigan will do that to you. But winter is a totally different story when you do it in a foreign country, and especially when that foreign country is China. It's been a fun experience! 

I live in a small dorm room, across the hall from a public kitchen. Having a kitchen so close is superbly convenient… it means I can cook sometimes and save time & money by not eating out for every meal. However, the kitchen has no refrigerator. Neither does my room. Solution? After the first month or so of being here, the weather outside cooled down enough that my window sill served as a marvelous refrigerator. I even managed to not have anything fall from my seventh floor sill! What I didn't think through, however, was that the weather would eventually get too cold for refrigerator functions. One day in December, I went and grabbed the eggs from my window sill refrigerator and went to the kitchen to do some scrambling. You guessed it; they were frozen. If you've ever tried scrambling frozen eggs, you know it's not the easiest thing to do!

Needless to say, I stopped leaving my eggs on the windowsill. I talked with the lady I buy them from, and she said the eggs actually stay fresh for 30 days left inside at room temperature. Is that normal? It kinda creeps me out. But, as they say in Chinese, mei banfa (there's nothing I can do about it). 

In a similar vein, I also enjoyed a period of eating frozen yoghurt here in China. Not the frozen yoghurt you're all accustomed to back in the States… No, I mean literally a container of Chinese yoghurt left on my window sill until it freezes. Mmm. Tasty!

So what about the snow here in Shenyang? I was impressed for a long time at how cold it could be while being completely sunny and bright, with no precipitation whatsoever. I enjoyed that period. But eventually the snow came, too. (Thankfully, the bright sunny days are still in abundance!) I was amused, however, by how the Chinese have learned to deal with the snow. For those of you not from Michigan or other snowy areas in the U.S., salt (or sand) is often put on the roads and sidewalks after it snows to help melt it faster and to give traction for those walking/driving on it. China hasn't discovered the benefit of salt yet, apparently. Nor of having snowplows. To my great surprise and astonishment after the first heavy snowfall this season, Shenyang tried to deal with the snow on the roads by sending Chinese people, dressed in bright orange vests, onto the roads with brooms made of branches.  Yeah, that obviously did a lot of good! 

Eventually people started using shovels, too. But that was after sweeping the snow first.

What is winter other than an excuse to stay inside and drink hot chocolate? Unfortunately, Swiss Miss is the same price here in China as it is in the U.S., which means it seems ridiculously expensive. So I have discovered that buying all the ingredients to make my own hot chocolate mix is significantly cheaper… And all my friends have discovered that I know how to make homemade hot chocolate. They also know that anytime they stop by, they can have some. (One of the benefits of instant hot water!) So I've become known as the girl who has hot chocolate, and my room has become much more popular this winter. The most hilarious story surrounding this hot chocolate service I have somehow developed happened right after I served a nice steaming mug of it to one of my married (male) friends.  In front of everyone, he looked at me and said, "So I've been thinking of taking a second wife." 

I've had a number of proposals here, but only one to be a second wife! :)

This winter here in Shenyang hasn't been too terribly bad for me. Although I was warned that it might get to -40C (-40F), the worst we've had thus far was actually just -30C (-22F) or so. Sure, that's ridiculously cold, but I've at least seen those kinds of temperatures before.  Most of my foreign friends here are from parts of the world that don't get anywhere near that cold… Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, etc. I feel bad for them, experiencing this kind of winter for the first time. But since so many of them are scared of the cold, and since schools here have six weeks off for the winter holidays, the vast majority of foreign population leaves Shenyang for the winter. And that's just the foreigners.  Of course, all the Chinese students have left my campus as well, since they went home for the holidays (even if home is just down the road somewhere). So life has been pretty quiet these days. Almost nobody is around on campus, my dorm has only about 20 of us living in it anymore, and especially during the Spring Festival all the shops were even closed! 

One of the more annoying aspects of this "everybody leaves for winter except me" phenomenon is that my campus decided not to pay the security guards to stand at the smaller gates to campus. Thus, they locked all the smaller gates. Meaning the only gates that are open are the two gates located the furthest from my dormitory. There's nothing quite like having to walk all the way across campus one direction – in the freezing cold – just to walk out the gate and make my way all the way back the other direction to where the actual shops off campus are located. Again, emphasis on the freezing cold. I like walking, so in the summer I wouldn't mind it. But it's cold!

But I'm a problem solver. Okay, it's not actually my solution; most of the students do it. Instead of walking to the main gate on the other side of campus, we just jump the little gate near us. I haven't decided which is more dangerous: jumping a gate, especially when there might be ice on the ground, or spending an extra 30 minutes walking outside each time I enter or leave campus. Realistically, that would mean I would actually spend an extra 2 hours or so outside every day. That's one major case of pneumonia waiting to happen! So I usually go with the jumping. 

Since all of the friends I spent significant time with during the semester are now outside Shenyang for the winter, I've had the opportunity to spend more time with a lot of other people and make some new friends. Recently, I had a really enjoyable dinner out. There were seven of us total: four foreigners and three Chinese. But every single one of us speaks both Chinese and English, at least to some extent, so we had a blast communicating with both languages interchangeably! We were telling jokes back and forth; one would be told in English and then the next would be in Chinese. It was so fun! And of course, really good practice.

Unfortunately, after that dinner all three of the Chinese people left Shenyang for a while, too. Darn it.

A breath of fresh air

The Chinese New Year season is finally over! Yesterday (Monday the ninth) was the 15th day of the first month on the lunar calendar, so it was Yuanxiao Jie. Literally translated, that's the Sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice flour holiday, but it's usually translated as the Lantern Festival.  Why they don't call it the Lantern Festival in Chinese, I don't know. Maybe just to confuse people. 

The good news is that the fireworks of the Spring Festival are only legal through the night of the Lantern Festival.  Finally, the fireworks have stopped! Admittedly, though, last night was a lot of fun again, to see all the leftover fireworks going off. I had a perfect view from my window of some place that was lighting off huge fireworks for literally three and a half hours straight! I had no idea it was possible to buy that many fireworks!

It was actually about 5 p.m. yesterday before I remembered that it was the Lantern Festival (since it's really an after-dark sort of holiday). Unfortunately, I went out about 5 to run some errands, not realizing everything was going to be closing early. So of my five errands, I only accomplished one. Oh well. On the bright side, I had fun walking back from a large grocery store through some alleyways and housing areas. I'm probably a lot closer to deaf now because of it, but it was fun to see all the firecrackers being set off by individual families and complexes. Actually, if any of you are at all afraid of fireworks, I don't recommend walking through alleys and housing areas in China during the Spring Festival. I'm not afraid of them usually, but I was a bit nervous yesterday. I knew I should start being worried when I saw people walking around outside wearing hard hats! Not because they were construction workers; just because of the fireworks. 

At one point, I walked by two middle-aged Chinese men who were out with sparklers. Now these sparklers are not the short little sparklers we have in the U.S. No, these were more than a meter long each! The gentlemen were amazed to see a foreigner walking by, so they had me join them. I had fun playing with the sparklers! It was just a little awkward after they were all done, though, when the guys asked me to join them going home. Um, no. That didn't seem like such a good idea!

After returning home (having avoided that invitation as graciously as I could, which wasn't particularly graciously at all), I celebrated myself by making some yuanxiao (that's the sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice flour that the holiday is named for). They're really easy to make: you buy a bag of frozen ones and the grocery store and then boil them for five minutes. Then you eat them. Easy. I had fun buying them, too, because I didn't know all the terms for the different filling options. So I ended up picking up two that I knew I would like (black sesame paste filling and peanut filling), and then I asked an employee at the store which of the other two options she prefers. So I took that one. Turns out it's "kernels." I don't know what kind of kernels, but it's tasty anyway. 

So that was my Lantern Festival. I managed to celebrate the Lantern Festival without ever seeing a lantern, but that's okay. I ate the sweet dumplings and I played with sparklers with creepy middle-aged Chinese men. Hehe. (Hey, I got away as soon as it started getting sketchy.)

It's definitely been a breath of fresh air to not have fireworks and firecrackers going nonstop.  But I'm looking forward to the day I can take a real breath of fresh air… sometime after the wind blows all these gunpowder-packed air molecules away.

Pictures!

After nearly two hours spent sitting outside (in the snow) with my laptop, connected to the seemingly random wireless internet that exists in a courtyard area in the middle of campus, I have uploaded some pictures from my holidays here in China.  I won't go into details here, since there are captions with the pictures, but the series starts with American Thanksgiving and goes through what I have experienced so far of the Chinese Spring Festival/New Year.  I used to think the Thanksgiving – Christmas – New Year series of holidays in the U.S. made for a nice long holiday season; that's nothing compared to what I have celebrated this year! It's been fun, and I hope you enjoy the pictures. 

 

Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/vrieland/Holidays

 

On a completely unrelated and totally random note, I had a slight mishap with my adventurism today.  Living in a foreign country (where you only sort of know the language) is only fun if you're adventurous, I think, so I try to live by that.  Usually it's great.

 

Recently I've been having fun trying all the different kinds of milk here in China.  (Don't worry, I know there was that little milk situation a few months ago.  I'm pretty sure what I've been drinking is fine.)  Not only does China have regular milk, they have flavored milk as well.  This concept is not surprising in itself, since we have chocolate milk and can make strawberry milk in the U.S., too.  But the varieties here are beyond comparison.  My favorites so far are the walnut flavor and the coffee flavor. 

 

My least favorite? Grape. 

 

That one should never have happened.

 

And unfortunately, in my zeal for adventurism, I just picked up several new varieties I hadn't tried before without looking carefully at what flavor they were.  If I had seen "grape," I wouldn't have gotten it.  I don't even like grape flavor! But wow, grape flavored milk is especially disturbing.

 

Don't worry though; this little incident has not affected my zeal for adventurism too much.  I just bought a new round of milk (actually reading the labels this time), and I'm eager to try the new coconut flavored one. J

 

(And for those of you who think Canada is cool because milk there comes in a bag, just for your information, milk here comes in bags, too.  Individual size bags, which is superbly convenient for being adventurous and trying all sorts of different flavors.)

It's been quite a day... and it's only noon!

Even though I'm on vacation, I have great motivation to get up in the morning: hot water. The hot water hours don't change for anything… holidays, vacation, anything. If it's a weekday, the morning hours are 6:30-8:30, non negotiable. Furthermore, when they say 8:30, what they really mean is that you shouldn't plan on any hot water after 8:15, and some days you might be pleasantly surprised that it actually goes all the way until 8:30. So despite the holiday, despite staying out late at night since all my friends are also free these days, I still have motivation to be up at a reasonable hour.

Today I even planned ahead. I had to do laundry, which is something I do far too infrequently by any American standards but still more often than most Chinese people. Since my laundry facilities are my bathroom sink and the rod that runs across my bathroom for hanging things like drying laundry, it's always more pleasant to do the chore when my hands can at least enjoy some warm water. (Honestly, doing laundry by hand is ridiculously unpleasant during winter when the only water you have feels like it just melted a moment before it came out of the faucet.) So I got up plenty early today to do some laundry before 8:15.

On the bright side, the warm water lasted until 8:25 this morning, which meant I got to wash a few more pieces of long underwear than I had originally planned.

On the not-so-bright side, somehow my "wet bathroom" turned into just a "wet room." Let me explain. A "wet bathroom" is one of those bathrooms only common in Asia as far as I know, where the shower head just hangs right over the toilet and the sink, without a tub or a shower stall. So whenever one showers, the entire bathroom gets wet. (Hence the name.) Well, I've lived in China long enough to be accustomed to a wet bathroom. I know where to keep my toilet paper so it doesn't get too wet. I know not to keep my cotton balls in the bathroom at all. And I know how to hang my towel so it actually has some sort of efficacy at making me dry after I'm done.

I don't know what went wrong today.

My toilet paper got soaked and my towel was dripping by the time I was ready to use it. Even my cotton balls would have gotten wet if I didn't keep them on the complete other side of my room. Because when I opened the bathroom door, I saw water covering the floor of almost my entire dorm room. Whoa. Talk about an unpleasant surprise!

It honestly took me half an hour to clean up all the water, and even then it took a while for the floor itself to dry. And now my floor is squeaky. Not a good sign.

Makes me glad I live on the seventh floor, where no one is above me. I just hope the room beneath me wasn't unpleasantly surprised by water coming from the ceiling!

So that was my morning. I have absolutely no idea why my wet bathroom couldn't be contained today, whereas usually only the towel on the floor just outside the door gets a little wet. We'll see how tomorrow morning goes. If it's anything like today, I'll be sure to keep you all updated!

While my morning was certainly unexpected and quite an experience, it hasn't been the highlight of my day so far. The highlight came around eleven.

I seem to have made a Chinese friend. Although I have been living in China for five months now, I actually don't have many (any?) Chinese friends. Don't get me wrong, I know a ton of Chinese people. But Chinese people who have any interest in interacting with foreigners always come with some sort of ulterior motive. Most of them want to practice their English or have help getting to the U.S. Then some of the guys have other ulterior motives, if you catch my drift. (White girls in China don't have the most moral reputation.)

But I seem to have made a new friend. Certainly, I think he enjoys being able to practice his English with me and I'll admit that I helped proofread some essays he wrote for Ph.D. programs in the U.S. But all told, it's a beneficial relationship both directions.

So this friend of mine came to my dorm today to bring me a variety of traditional Chinese New Year foods. He brought me a whole bag of homemade jiaozi (dumplings), the most famous New Year food. He also brought several kinds of nuts and some other candies.

Since he came around lunchtime, he offered to teach me how to cook the dumplings. Not wanting to admit that I've actually cooked dumplings many times in the past (because really, I've never actually seen a Chinese person do it), I eagerly accepted. So we cooked up some of the dumplings and had an absolutely delicious meal. Even more exciting, though, was that while eating, he explained a whole lot about this whole New Year festival that's going on right now. I've honestly been quite confused about which days are important, why it lasts so long, etc. But with his excellent English and his inside understanding of the culture, he was able to explain it quite well.

Here's what I learned. The biggest meal of the whole thing is on the last night of the old year (this past Sunday). The meal is planned for the typical Chinese dinner hour, around 5 p.m. or so. After it's all set out and ready, the whole family first goes outside and sets off some fireworks. Then they all go in for a big meal. Starting from 8:00 p.m., there is apparently a famous program showing on TV that most Chinese families watch. (Wish I had known about that before it happened!) As they watch the program, the family sits together, chats, and wraps the dumplings for later. (No dumplings are eaten during the big meal earlier.) Just before midnight, the family eats a few dumplings and then goes outside for the biggest fireworks celebration.

On the morning of the first day of the month, more dumplings are eaten, and often some candy. Some families have the tradition that no one is allowed to talk in the morning before eating some candy. Seems a little bit strange to me, but whatever. J Then that day is designated for visiting the parents of the mother. On the second day of the month, families visit the father's parents. Today is the second day of the month, but my friend was free because his father's parents live in Dalian. Only his dad went down to visit them.

The third and fourth days just seem to be more days off to relax and enjoy family and friends, and then apparently the fifth day is another big fireworks day. He didn't really know why, so I certainly don't either, but apparently I can look forward to more fireworks on Friday.

Then you have the rest of the two weeks of the celebration, until the 15^th day of the month, known as Yuanxiao Jie. There's no good English translation of that. Yuanxiao are little round balls made from pounded sweet rice and filled with sweet peanut, black sesame, or similar fillings, usually served in a soup. I tried some when I was in China before, even though I've never been here for the holiday before. Very tasty, actually. Then Jie is just the word for "holiday" or "festival." Apparently that is the last legal day for fireworks as well. So I'm sure I can look forward to plenty more noise that day!

And that's the end of the festival.

Turns out I was wrong about something else, too, though. I had thought that Yuanxiao Jie was the day everyone gets their haircut. No, no. Apparently the superstition is that you will cause bad luck for your uncle if you get your hair cut anytime during the first month. So I guess it'll be a while before I get the haircut I'm wanting.

Happy New Year! (Chinese style...)

Turns out I'm a terrible blogger.  Somehow life has gotten in the way of my updating this blog, and many of you seem to have noticed.  Apparently people actually read this! J

 

So I'm going to try to catch you all up on the last month of my time here in China, and then stay up during the remaining several months.  However (not to make excuses, but…), I still don't have internet.  Seriously, I have not spent more than 10 minutes on the internet at one time in more than a month.  And once you add in the fact that my "brother" here who usually lets me use his internet is leaving at the end of the week, I really don't know how I'm going to stay connected.  But I promise I'll try.

 

Where to start?  I suppose I'll start with the freshest thing in my mind.  How many of you like fireworks?  Let me tell you, you have never experienced fireworks until you've experienced the biggest holiday in the country that invented fireworks! 

 

Most traditional Chinese holidays are based on the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar we're all accustomed to.  So that's where the concept of the "Chinese New Year" comes from: it's the change of the year on the lunar calendar.  And for those of you who are not up on your dates according to the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year is today (January 26).  Like celebrating the normal new year in the U.S., people stay up the night before to ring it in.  The difference? In the U.S., we nonchalantly celebrate on December 31 and January 1.  In China, they passionately celebrate the Chinese New Year for three weeks!   

 

Sunday, January 18 (the 23^rd day of the last month on the lunar calendar) was the official beginning of the holiday season.  Although there's no recognized English name for the day, the literal translation is "Little New Year."  From what I've gathered, there is nothing particularly special about the day, except that it marks the beginning of the season.  Therefore, fireworks are shot off and people start making their preparations for the main holiday, Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year). 

 

I was in Dalian on Little New Year, which is a city about 4 hours by train from where I live in Shenyang.  Since I'm not particularly in the habit of paying much attention to the lunar calendar, I actually didn't know it was a significant day.  Until, that is, I was waiting in the train station for my train back to Shenyang, and fireworks started going off all around the city.  I had a beautiful view of some from one of the windows, and actually met a Chinese girl with very good English who explained what was going on. 

 

The week between Little New Year and Spring Festival is an experience in itself.  Imagine: 1.3 billion people all trying to prepare for major celebrations, all shopping for tons of food, all stocking up because everything will be closed for three days, and all traveling back to their home cities to be with their families.  Yeah.  It was crazy.  I made the mistake of not doing my own shopping until Saturday afternoon, the last day before everything closes.  Haha. Oops.  I spent thirty minutes in line to check out of the store, not because the cashiers were slow or that there weren't enough (all 30+ lines were open), but because of all the people.  Crazy. 

 

The week was also marked by an increase in noise and a decrease in taxis.  Neither of which I was particularly fond of.  The noise was caused by all the fireworks and firecrackers people were setting off.  The decrease in taxis I suppose was caused by taxi drivers taking time off and the increase in people trying to use them, thus making it nearly impossible to grab a taxi anymore.

 

But the increase in noise and the decrease in taxis during the past week was only the tip of the iceberg.  Sunday afternoon, the equivalent of New Year's Eve, I went to my normal fellowship.  It took us a while to get a taxi, but then to our surprise, it only took us 5 minutes to drive all the way to our building! Usually it takes 15 minutes or so (more in heavy traffic), but the roads were nearly completely empty!  No cars, no taxis, no people.  It was actually quite creepy.  Coming home after fellowship was a similar experience, and our typical habit of going out for dinner afterwards was obviously interrupted because no restaurants were open.

 

So I got home, made myself some dinner (using the ingredients I had so brilliantly stocked up on Saturday), and then just hung out waiting.  I had been warned that it would be futile to try going to sleep before midnight, so I just waited around.  And that advice proved to be correct! From 6:30 p.m. when I was coming home until sometime after I fell asleep at 2:00 a.m., fireworks were going on constantly.  I'm pretty sure there was not a single 5 minute period where I didn't hear the sound of fireworks.  And the highlights?  From 11:45 – 12:15, there were solid fireworks in every direction! Anywhere you looked, all you could see were fireworks.  I stood at my window and watched fireworks literally everywhere I could see.  Wow, it was intense!

 

Seriously, any fireworks fans out there need to see the fireworks on Chinese New Year in China sometime.  Nothing compares.

 

There was just one other thought, though, that crossed my mind as I was watching the skyline disappear into the smoke of the fireworks: it's no wonder that the air pollution here is as it is.

 

An International Christmas

'Tis the season.

I remember a few years ago my family had a very international Christmas.  We had presents under the tree from the "Japanese Santa," the "Hong Kong Santa," the "Malaysian Santa," etc.  (Funny how all the Santas represented under our tree corresponded to places my dad had been that year.)  But this year I'm having another sort of international Christmas. 

Today was our Christmas service at my fellowship.  It was marvelous!  I was blessed to be able to join the choir, and have had a great time in the last three weeks going to choir practice and getting to know many others in the fellowship from the other schools.  But let me give you a picture of how international this Christmas service was...

We started with a bunch of carols.  That wasn't particularly international compared to usual here, but the praise team still consisted of people from at least 6 countries.

For the message, we had four people each speak about five minutes.  Of those four, two were American and two were African.  I was actually honored to be asked to be one of those speakers, so I talked about Luke 2:17-20.  Specifically, I talked about Mary's reaction (as compared with the shepherds') and asked if we are each pondering the meaning of this season.

After the message(s), we got into the "program" that had been put together just for today.  A Sri Lankan dance. The Sunday school choir.  A Filipino Joseph, a Nigerian Mary, and an Indian wise man.  An African dance.  And a choir full of Africans, Indians... and one white girl. 

It was marvelous! 

And I really enjoyed singing Silent Night with a beat.  I guess that's what happens when the choir director is from Guinea Bassu.

Since I'm not entirely sure what my plans are for the rest of the Christmas season (i.e. for Christmas day itself), I'll refrain from telling you about that until after the 25th.  But in the meantime, it was such a blessing to be able to celebrate the season with brothers and sisters from around the world today.