Noah's Story

 Watch Noah's Story

{Click the link to watch.  It won't let me download it.}

Maybe I love this video so much because, for some odd reason, I feel a connection to China and Chinese people.  Maybe, just maybe, it is because China and Chinese people have become part of my life.  Elder Chirstofferson says something along the lines of how the Chinese people are being prepared to receive the gospel.  I can't tell you how true that is, as I am sure the same is true with people throughout the world.  I have seen it with my own eyes with multiple people.  So, just watch the video and enjoy.  And then go out and share the gospel.  Share the gospel by just living the gospel every second of everyday.  Trust me, people will notice the light of Christ in your eyes and they will notice that you are happy.  And being happy is good. 

seven.

A couple noteworthy things happened this week...

One.  One night we found ourselves at Cat Love.  It is a little coffee shop down the street.  This coffee shop, with an English name doesn't have an English menu.  We were told that it did.  Nope.  We struggled more than we have struggled ever before ordering.  It was painful and we didn't know what we were getting.  We should have this ordering thing down since we have lived here long enough.  But apparently we don't.  Somehow we ended up with the most delicious mango smoothie so, I'd say that the struggle was worth it.

Two.  I made the poster at our school.  Not the greatest picture but I am practically famous now.  They choose the right shape of the picture.  Because, it is true, I absolutely love my students.

Three.  Thursday we were hungry for lunch and we had an hour to kill before class so we thought we would head out early and stop and grab some jiaozi on the way.  The owners of this little jiaozi hole in the wall place decided it was a good idea to not be open without even informing us.  They do know that we eat there at least three times a week and that we would probably starve to death if they didn't feed us, so I don't know why they didn't have the heart to tell us they were going on vacation or something.  (Maybe they did and it just got lost somewhere in translation.  I can't be sure.)  So while we were stopped there on the corner staring in disbelief, a group of guys were waving, saying hello, and taking pictures of us.  We were kind enough to pose for them and wave as we tried to figure out what to eat for lunch.  They kept motioning for us to come and eat with them.  So, why not?  We parked our scooter and joined this group of guys for lunch.  It was a blast and slightly awkward because we weren't really sure how to communicate with them besides playing a game of charades.  But what is new, right?  Of course they wouldn't let us pay for our portion of the meal either.  Sad is going to be the day when we don't get fed by random strangers on the street.  Also, they got our number and then proceeded to text us, in Chinese.  Did they not get it from the hour that we spent with them that we don't really understand Chinese?

Four.  I finally got to visit a Chinese hospital.  It has been on my list of things to do here before I even came to China.  As I have mentioned before, my friend, Emma, is a surgeon so she kindly took us to her hospital to show us around.  First she took us up to her floor where she works and had her nurses talk to us and show us around the floor.  The nurses at the hospital here work eight hours a day, five days a week.  We found out that there are two different types of hospitals in China.  There are tradition hospitals that use traditional Chinese medicine along with modern medicine and then there are the hospitals that just use modern medicine.  Emma works at the Chinese tradition hospital.  It was interesting to see some of the traditional medicine that they use there.  They had these long worms on sticks that they boil and make into a drink.  Worm tea.  Nasty.  We also proceeded to practically stop on almost every floor of that 19 story hospital.  The kids were getting pretty sick of it.  I don't blame them.  We stopped on the Acupuncture and Massage floor.  Best decision of my life because Shelby and I got a free massage.  The hospitals in China were not as bad as I thought they were going to be.  It was clean and nothing too weird was taking place there.  Well, that is besides the worm tea.  I still don't want to find myself as a patient inside a Chinese hospital but if by chance I had to, I wouldn't be as freaked out as I previously would have.

Five.  Saturday we were invited by a girl, Amy, who lives a few floors below us to go and get pizza with her.  We met her down in the parking garage.  I hate to admit this but we didn't exactly remember what she looked like so when we were waiting for her it was hard to spot her in the car.  Good thing she rolled her window down and motioned for us to get inside.  Her English was very limited but we had a good time anyways.  Also, who invites people to go out to lunch and then decided that they aren't hungry and that they just want to watch us eat?  I feel like that happens all the time.  After we had been home for a couple of hours, I was outside reading and Amy came and found me.  She wanted to go climb the mountain behind our apartment and look for berries.  Unfortunately, none of the berries were ripe yet but I will be going back.  After our hike we went and got BBQ fish with Amy.  Eating BBQ fish was long over due.  One problem, though.  I was still full from lunch.  At least Amy jumped in and actually helped us eat it this time.

{the chinese are master gardeners}

Six.  My students caught little frogs and brought them into class.  Let's just say that I never had control of that class.

Seven.  Yes, that is my student and yes he has a rats tail.  Gross.

 

friends.

I love how quick people are to make friends here.  Not just acquaintances but real friends.  Living here, I have come to realize that it doesn't matter how long you have known someone for.  You can meet someone one second and be their best friend the next.  It is so cool and, trust me, life is better this way.

One of our friends that we met last week at the English school, Winni, wanted to take us to the Ancient Town.  We quickly agreed and we didn't have the heart to tell her that we had already been there.  Twice.  She still doesn't know, so lets not tell her.  Even though we had already been there, it was still a blast.  We did things there that we didn't do the previous two times.  Also, to our surprise, Lily and Newbie were also along for the adventure.  Newbie is my Chinese boyfriend.  He may not know that but it doesn't matter.  So, obviously, I was happy to see they were joining us for the day.

{outside a chinese temple.}

{throwing coins into pots under the water.  if you make it inside the pot it brings good luck and happiness.  i had a few failed attempts.}

Asians are hilarious.  I think it isn't on purpose.  I think it is just their lack of English that makes them so funny.  They say things and I just die laughing and then they want to know why I am laughing.  I just can't control myself.  They also quote their articles that they read in English class all the time.  I guess that is one way to learn.

The night ended with me chasing a bus in the middle of traffic.  Everyone was just laughing at me as I am running alongside the bus in the middle lane of cars.  Thankfully we did get on that bus after realizing there was a stop just a few yards ahead.  I also may or may not have gotten caught in the door of the bus a few times before it would close.  There were that many people on it.

And the weekend ended with me getting to Skype with my cute missionary brother and the rest of my family.  It was worth getting up at 4am.  Thank you technology.

i walked

We hear that Guilin is beautiful and so much fun so we have been wanting to plan a trip there.  We have a Monday coming up that we don't have school so we are planning on venturing to Guilin then.  We looked into train and plane tickets but decided that flying is the better option.  The only problem was that the airline that we needed to book our flight on is only in Chinese.  No problem, though.  We would just ask one of our Chinese friends to help us.

We decided to go to the English school and have one of the many students there help us.  I thought for sure that they would all be dying to help us.  Which was true but it wasn't exactly going as smoothly as I was thinking that it would.  We had everything written down but the boy, Beyond (Yeah, don't ask me about his English name.  I don't know either.  You should hear some of the English names people have over here.), was struggling to find what we needed.  He kept assuring us that he knew what we needed but then he made the mistake of telling us that it was his first time booking a flight.  Side note:  I learned a while back that you never tell anyone when it is your first time doing something.  I don't care if it is your first time inserting and IV or booking a flight, once they find out it is your first time, you won't really be wanted anymore.  I know that you have to start somewhere, but I wasn't sure about Beyond helping us book our flight anymore.  We couldn't read Chinese and understand if he was booking us what we wanted.

Just then Taya, one of the English teachers, came to the rescue.  At least that is what I thought.  She got on her Ipad and was trying to help us.  She got a lot further than Beyond, which was good.  I guess she couldn't figure out how to book it online so she called the airlines company for us.  Through her translating, she informed us that we couldn't book them online and we had to do it at the airport or over the phone.  If we did it over the phone we would have to go to the bank and pay there.  She starts texting our passport information to some number but we quickly stopped her because we were confused about what was going on.  It didn't really make sense that she was wanting to text our passport information to someone and we had no idea how we were going to pay at the bank without speaking Chinese so we put an end to her helping us.  After much convincing she finally let us tell her that we would have another friend help us book the flight.  I think she felt bad because she came back with a novel written in Chinese that had exactly what we wanted on it so that we could take to the airport and show them to get our tickets purchased.

Friday rolled around and we had some free time.  After we had unsuccessfully looked for Nicole, our liaison, to see if she could help us with the ticket situation, we decided to just venture to the airport to see if we could just get them purchased ourselves.  The previous night we had seen a sign pointing us in the direction of the airport so we figured that it was close.  (We have been to the airport before but we weren't exactly sure how navigate ourselves there.)  We hopped on our trusty little scooter, got some lunch, and rode toward the sign for the airport.  Little did we know that the airport was actually about 8 miles away from that sign.  Who knows, maybe it did tell us that but if it did, it was in Chinese and we didn't know.  So we kept riding.  We rode through the longest tunnel of my entire life.  Then we realized that our trusty little scooter was going to die on us.  Call it stupidity or poor planning but we weren't going to be able to make it to the airport and back home with both of us on it.  So we ditched our scooter and decided to walk the rest of the way to the airport.  {We successfully got our plane tickets booked!  Thanks to Taya's novel that she wrote for us.}

After getting our tickets we walked back to our scooter and decided that I would walk home and Shelby would try to ride the scooter home or a least get as far as she could get.  If I got home before she did, I was going to call her on our cell phone via Skype and figure out where she was so I could help her push our scooter home.  Finally we realized the down fall of only having one cell phone so Skype was going to come to the rescue.  Shelby rode off on the scooter and I continued walking.  I walked forever.  I thought the tunnel was the longest tunnel of my life when I was on a scooter.  Well, it is even longer when you are on foot.

10 miles walking and a bus ride later, I finally made it home.  Shelby was sitting outside of our apartment because I had the key.  She successfully made it home riding the scooter except for pushing it the last 5 minutes up the hill to the school so she could plug it in for a good charge.  She may not have gone very fast but she made it home.

I had no idea that getting our tickets to Guilin was going to be this difficult but we now have our tickets and the trip better be worth it.

On my walk I had a lot of time to think.  I thought a lot about the people that I was passing, or who was passing me.  I passed a worker picking up rocks on the side of the freeway.  I saw a mom carrying a baby on her back.  I saw a few people carrying various vegetables in baskets on their backs.  I saw a man pushing his scooter up the hill.  I saw some guys swimming in a river.  I saw a few police officers (who I thought were going to stop me for walking on a freeway but I am not in America anymore so I got away with it).  I saw multiple taxi drivers and others in their own personal cars.  As I passed these people I wondered what their story was.  I don't know why but maybe because it was how bizarre mine was.  I was walking home from the airport because my scooter couldn't make it home with me and my friend both on it.  Yes, it was silly and a bit ridiculous.  But I wondered where other people were going and what kind of journey that they were on.
 
When we cross paths with someone we rarely know their story and if we do, we usually only know a little glimpse of their story.  When I finally got to the bus stop and onto the bus I was tired and I really wanted a seat.  I thought to myself about the people sitting down, "I bet they didn't just walk from the airport."  They probably didn't but what if they just spent hours on their feet at the hospital helping their patients.  Or what if they just found out that their loved one has cancer.  Or what if they only have a little shack with dirt floors to go to.  Yes, I just walked clear from the airport but I bet they deserved and needed that seat more than I did.  We never know what people are going through.  We never know what kind of battle they are facing.  Nine times out of ten they are probably having a worse day and facing a harder battle than we are.  Is it really that hard to treat everyone we cross paths with respect?  It might just be giving up the coveted seat on the bus or just a smile walking past someone but we never know, that might just be exactly what they needed to keep moving forward.  It was a long walk but I am grateful that I had the time to think.

my Chinese name

A couple of weeks ago I finally got a Chinese name.  Actually, I got two Chinese names in one week.  It was a good week.

The first was from my students.  Well, Shelby's students.  I go and sit by them during class.  One day they asked me if I had a Chinese name yet.  I told them no and they jumped on it and came up with a good name.  Or at least, I think it is a good name.  They don't really understand when I ask them what it means.  They were so cute to watch them come up with different ideas.  They were very serious about it.  My Chinese name that they gave me is, Wang Ke Yi.  Now whenever those kids see me they always say, "hello Wang Ke Yi," instead of, "hello teacher".

When I was hanging out with Charm and Lilly, they also took it upon themselves to give us Chinese names.  They named me Li Si Yi.  It means cheerful, generous, intelligent, and family girl.  Apparently they both got it with the Yi.  So that must be right.  I love that Chinese names all mean something.

(Shelby's is the top one and mine is the bottom.)

hong.kong

I had to go to Hong Kong this weekend.  My 90th day in China was approaching soon and I needed to leave to get a fancy stamp so bad things wouldn't happen to me when it comes time to officially leave.  It was the best thing I have been forced to do in a long time.

Hong Kong was wonderful.  Everything about it.  From the Mexican food to Llama Island, it was all just perfect.

We had a little bit of a rocky start.  The school's driver was taking us to the airport but someone decided that it was a good idea to leave just an hour and a half before our actual flight.  It was cutting it close, especially when you are flying from a place were very little English is spoken.  And to top it off, the school's driver dropped us off in the wrong terminal.  So after rushing through the airport and standing in a few lines, we made it with only 5 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave.  It turns out that we had no need to worry, or even rush, because they hadn't even started boarding people yet.  The airport runs on China time.  Which is, everyone and everything is late.

Hong Kong is pretty much a huge busy city on an island.  So picture New York in Hawaii.  Well, at least I think.  I have never been to New York before but I imagine that Hong Kong is what it would be like.  There are so many different cultures in Hong Kong.  It was so fun to hear all of the many different languages that everyone was speaking.  It was so cool.  Everyone knew English too, which was very convenient.

Our first night there we rushed to the temple because when I called, the lady told me that we could do baptisms at 7:30 pm.  As soon as I saw the temple I couldn't stop smiling.  It was beautiful and I was so excited to go inside of it.  Well, she was mistaken and the temple was actually closed.  I was pretty disappointed but we still had a good time taking pictures outside.

We then went on a search for Mexican food.  If there is one thing that I really miss from home, it is the variety of food.  Chinese food every day for every meal of the day gets old.  Whoever told me that you could find Mexican food on every corner was most definitely wrong about that.  It turned out to be a much more difficult quest than I thought it was going to be.  We asked so many different people where we could find just a simple taco or burrito.  We were pointed in so many different directions.  We even had to get back on the MTR and get off at a different spot where it was suppose to be common.  After searching for over an hour, we decided to give up on our search.  We sat down at a place that we passed on our search.  They handed us a menu and they had Mexican food!  I was in heaven!  A burrito had never tasted so good in my life.

We walked down the Avenue of Stars, which  is along the coast.  It was great hearing the ocean waves and feeling the ocean breeze.  Every few yards there were people playing and singing.  I loved it.  Street performers have become one of my all time favorite things.  It was a great first night in Hong Kong but things just kept getting better.

We were able to go to Hong Kong Disneyland!  It was a blast.  It is very similar to Disneyland in California but just smaller so it didn't have as many rides.  Mostly all the rides were the same ones that they have in California.  We spent all day in the park.  The last hour we were able to just walk on all of the rides because no one was there.  It was an awesome day.  Am I crazy to say that I want to go to all of the Disneyland parks in the world?  I have two down so far.

(Don't worry, I have the classic Asian pose down.)

Saturday we got up early and were able to go inside the temple and do baptisms for the dead.  It was such a special experience and one that I won't ever forget.  Of course, it was beautiful.  It was cool to hear it all taking place in Chinese too.  I loved seeing the Chinese youth there too.  You always here of members of the church all over the world trying to live the best as the can like you are trying to do.  When you actually see it in action, it is awesome.  The Hong Kong temple is beautiful.

After the temple on Saturday we took a ferry to Llama Island.  Ferries are so much fun!  I think it would be sweet if ferries were apart of my everyday life.  Llama Island is a cute little island with no cars on it.  There were fun little shops and a hike to the pier on the other side of the island where another ferry leaves from.  Of course, we did the little hike.  It was worth it.  I wish that I had worn my swimming suit but going out into the ocean to my knees had to be good enough.

 

(You know you have lived in China when you choose a squatter over a Western toilet.  Yes, that happens.)

We ended our stay in Hong Kong with sitting down by the ocean again, listening to the street performers, and enjoying a fun drink with bubble ball things in it.  (We may have gotten one of those drinks every single night while we were there.  Don't judge.)

I didn't want to leave Hong Kong and come back to reality.  Our stay in Hong Kong was way too short.  It was such a fun place to visit.  I think everyone should get the chance.  I love meeting people from all over.  I love experiencing new cultures.  I love eating new food.  Basically, I love everything that my life has in it now.  Hong Kong may be over but my reality rocks so I am happy to be back in China for just a couple more short months.