Thursday, June 25, 2009
Change of plans?
We finally found (Tuesday it was finalized) something that would work for us to do in the morning these next two weeks--teach 1st and 2nd graders at school. However, today, after dinner, we found out that we cannot teach there because it is a government run school and the government does not want any foreigners going into the schools. We do have another option, which would be to teach preschoolers at a private school. The school is a bilingual school, but the 'foreign' teachers (the ones that teach English) are on vacation this month, so they'd be excited to have us there. The only thing is that it is an hour and a half bus ride away. Also, seeing how we already told them we would be teaching at the other school, we don't know if it's still an option. I would greatly appreciate it if you could think about that. Thanks a bunch!
We've been here 2 weeks!
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Sorry about that, but life has been busy. These past two weeks we’ve had Chinese lessons every morning for 2 hours. We learned quite a bit of Chinese, but I don’t know how much we’ll actually use it. Some of the things we learned were very useful, while other stuff I feel like we’ll never use it. I guess I will find that out over the next two months. It was fun to learn Chinese! Maybe I’ll audit a Chinese class when I’m back home…
I guess I should talk about some highlights about our two weeks here so far. Last week Thursday we took the day off from Chinese lessons to go to a rural district of Beijing to visit a three-self church there. It is incredible what the pastor does there. We went there with another group from the US to learn about how the Chinese church runs. This church that we visited was considered the ‘central church’ of the district. The pastor at this church is in charge of all the churches in the district (about 50 churches). She makes an effort to make it to each church about 3-4 times a year. At all the churches, the sermons are taught by Evangelists (not what we would consider Evangelists). The Evangelists are trained to teach, but they are not ordained which means they cannot perform the sacraments.
After learning about the ‘central church’ and what the pastor does, we went to the training center. This is where they train the Evangelists and other volunteers. They go for two weeks at a time to train. The training center is an old elementary school that was no longer needed as a school. The church bought the property and the building to use as a training center. They are currently renovating the building so that it is a more suitable training center.
After the training center, we headed to a church in the mountains. Here we were welcomed with open arms by a group of 25 (or so) women from the church. They brought us into the church and fed us LOTS of fruit (watermelon, bananas, and nectarines) while they told us about their church. It is run by an Evangelist but is visited by the pastor on a regular basis. They sang “Jesus Loves Me” in Chinese. It was beautiful! Then were we asked to sing “Jesus Love Me” in English. We did and had them join in on the chorus. It was beautiful!
Let’s see, what else has happened in the last few weeks? One thing I really enjoy here is eating here. When ordering food, as a group, you order a bunch of dishes. When they come out, the food is set in the middle of the table (sometimes on a large lazy Susan). Everyone takes little portions of the dishes, eating what they want. It is very community oriented or family centered. Even though I greatly enjoy the eating here, I don’t always enjoy the food. It took some getting used to and I am enjoying it more that I did when we first got here. But occasionally I come across something I don’t like—like mushrooms that are translated as tree fungus, or freshly caught fish that are still full of bones. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it or avoid eating it. I have been trying to at least try a little of everything they give me to eat. Sometimes it’s harder than others.
Today we moved to new hotel. We were living in a hotel close to our host’s apartment. Now that we’re going to start teaching on Monday and another group of people from North America are coming today, we moved to another hotel that is closer to one of the places we will be teaching. We will be teaching for the next two weeks. In the mornings we will be teaching at a preschool. Here we will be teaching English to 1st and 2nd graders. The afternoons we will have off to prepare and rest. In the evenings we will be teaching English to adults in the church close to our hotel. I am excited to start teaching and to meet the 7 others coming today!
I guess I should talk about some highlights about our two weeks here so far. Last week Thursday we took the day off from Chinese lessons to go to a rural district of Beijing to visit a three-self church there. It is incredible what the pastor does there. We went there with another group from the US to learn about how the Chinese church runs. This church that we visited was considered the ‘central church’ of the district. The pastor at this church is in charge of all the churches in the district (about 50 churches). She makes an effort to make it to each church about 3-4 times a year. At all the churches, the sermons are taught by Evangelists (not what we would consider Evangelists). The Evangelists are trained to teach, but they are not ordained which means they cannot perform the sacraments.
After learning about the ‘central church’ and what the pastor does, we went to the training center. This is where they train the Evangelists and other volunteers. They go for two weeks at a time to train. The training center is an old elementary school that was no longer needed as a school. The church bought the property and the building to use as a training center. They are currently renovating the building so that it is a more suitable training center.
After the training center, we headed to a church in the mountains. Here we were welcomed with open arms by a group of 25 (or so) women from the church. They brought us into the church and fed us LOTS of fruit (watermelon, bananas, and nectarines) while they told us about their church. It is run by an Evangelist but is visited by the pastor on a regular basis. They sang “Jesus Loves Me” in Chinese. It was beautiful! Then were we asked to sing “Jesus Love Me” in English. We did and had them join in on the chorus. It was beautiful!
Let’s see, what else has happened in the last few weeks? One thing I really enjoy here is eating here. When ordering food, as a group, you order a bunch of dishes. When they come out, the food is set in the middle of the table (sometimes on a large lazy Susan). Everyone takes little portions of the dishes, eating what they want. It is very community oriented or family centered. Even though I greatly enjoy the eating here, I don’t always enjoy the food. It took some getting used to and I am enjoying it more that I did when we first got here. But occasionally I come across something I don’t like—like mushrooms that are translated as tree fungus, or freshly caught fish that are still full of bones. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it or avoid eating it. I have been trying to at least try a little of everything they give me to eat. Sometimes it’s harder than others.
Today we moved to new hotel. We were living in a hotel close to our host’s apartment. Now that we’re going to start teaching on Monday and another group of people from North America are coming today, we moved to another hotel that is closer to one of the places we will be teaching. We will be teaching for the next two weeks. In the mornings we will be teaching at a preschool. Here we will be teaching English to 1st and 2nd graders. The afternoons we will have off to prepare and rest. In the evenings we will be teaching English to adults in the church close to our hotel. I am excited to start teaching and to meet the 7 others coming today!
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
What a storm!!!
Today we had a very odd storm. We went to the office this morning and it was sprinkling. We knew the weather was forecasted to rain, but it turned out to be nothing like what we expected. Every morning we have a Chinese lesson at the office from 10-12. While in class, the sprinkling rain turned into a downpour. After a few minutes, the sky turned eerily greenish/yellowish. Naturally (all three of us being from Southwest Michigan), we started thinking about tornados. We told our tutor why we looked a little concerned (we were on the 7th floor surrounded by windows). She had no idea what a tornado was. We explained as best as we could—wind spinning around really, really quickly, picking things off the ground and throwing them into the air. We also drew a picture of a tornado. She agreed that it was a scary thing! But there is no such thing in Beijing.
After the sky looking the way it does before a tornado, the sky turned eerily dark. It looked like it was late evening. The rain kept coming down. The thunder was so loud it started a bunch of car alarms. People were darting the lightning bolts—not quite, but Lorraine said she was watching out for lightning while walking down the streets at this time. It was a crazy storm! I really wish I could have watched more of it, but unfortunately my back was to the window. After an hour or so, the storm started to let up.
Because of the storm, we had an unusually cool day today—maybe 65-70 degrees. Wayne told us that even though there will be many storms this summer, it is most likely we will not have another cool day like today. It was a nice change!
After the sky looking the way it does before a tornado, the sky turned eerily dark. It looked like it was late evening. The rain kept coming down. The thunder was so loud it started a bunch of car alarms. People were darting the lightning bolts—not quite, but Lorraine said she was watching out for lightning while walking down the streets at this time. It was a crazy storm! I really wish I could have watched more of it, but unfortunately my back was to the window. After an hour or so, the storm started to let up.
Because of the storm, we had an unusually cool day today—maybe 65-70 degrees. Wayne told us that even though there will be many storms this summer, it is most likely we will not have another cool day like today. It was a nice change!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Pictures!
Here is a link to a flickr account that one of my teammates, Sarah, started. We will be adding pictures fairly often and would love it if you checked it out.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarah-in-china/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarah-in-china/
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Business of Beijing
We have now been in Beijing for three very busy days. After our 30ish traveling hours, we finally arrived in Beijing. It was a loooong day of traveling—arrive at the airport in Grand Rapids at 4:40 am, sit around the airport for 2 hours, half hour flight from Grand Rapids to Chicago, sit around Chicago for 4 hours, fly from Chicago to Tokyo which was a 12 hour flight (I’m not a big fan of being on a plane that long), sit in the airport in Tokyo for 4 hours, a 4 hour flight to Beijing, close to an hour to go through quarantine tests, customs, and baggage claim, and an hour taxi ride to our hotel. It was a long day and we were all excited to go to bed shortly after arriving at the hotel. It was close to midnight on June 10 before we got to go to bed. (we left June 9).
The next day, we had breakfast at our hotel which was quite an interesting experience—we had watermelon, bread, fried rice with egg, steamed buns with seaweed inside, hot orange-aid, and very weak coffee. It was nothing like we are used to. After breakfast we started our Chinese language training. We started class at 10, which lasted for 2 hours. Our teacher is really nice and does a good job to make sure that we are pronouncing words correctly and making sure that we use the correct intonation. After class we went out for lunch. We went to a street vendor where we ate noodles and dumplings. I would have to say this is probably my favorite place to eat so far. After lunch we went back to our hotel to rest and take a nap (naps are very popular here—and I like it). After our naps we went out for dinner and got a lot of dishes to eat—they eat family-style in restaurants. (aka order different dishes, which sit in the center of the table and everyone picks out what they want). After dinner we went to our hosts’ apartment and enjoyed some fruit and random conversation.
The next day (Friday) was much the same at Thursday. The only difference was instead of taking the typical rest in the afternoon, we went to the silk market. It was very overwhelming—every person yelling at you trying to get you to buy something. It became very hard trying to ignore everyone to just walk through and look around.
Today, Saturday, we went to a middle school gym to play sports (badminton, jump rope, and volleyball with a balloon and only hitting it with your head, shoulders and chest) with some friends of our hosts. It was a lot of fun, but it was really, really hot—over a hundred degrees without any air movement. After sports, we went out for lunch and caught up with Bettina’s sister who has been living here for the past two years. With her, we went to the Beijing Zoo, Starbucks, and Papa Johns for dinner. It was nice to have some food that we recognized and was familiar. And now I sit here writing to tell you about my first few days.
A highlight—we found an English television station. The only downside is that they like to play the same news stories over and over again—we get to see the same news stories at least twice a day (depending on how often we are in the hotel).
That’s all for now. I hope you are all doing well and I’d love to hear from me. Email me at erika.colyn@gmail.com.
The next day, we had breakfast at our hotel which was quite an interesting experience—we had watermelon, bread, fried rice with egg, steamed buns with seaweed inside, hot orange-aid, and very weak coffee. It was nothing like we are used to. After breakfast we started our Chinese language training. We started class at 10, which lasted for 2 hours. Our teacher is really nice and does a good job to make sure that we are pronouncing words correctly and making sure that we use the correct intonation. After class we went out for lunch. We went to a street vendor where we ate noodles and dumplings. I would have to say this is probably my favorite place to eat so far. After lunch we went back to our hotel to rest and take a nap (naps are very popular here—and I like it). After our naps we went out for dinner and got a lot of dishes to eat—they eat family-style in restaurants. (aka order different dishes, which sit in the center of the table and everyone picks out what they want). After dinner we went to our hosts’ apartment and enjoyed some fruit and random conversation.
The next day (Friday) was much the same at Thursday. The only difference was instead of taking the typical rest in the afternoon, we went to the silk market. It was very overwhelming—every person yelling at you trying to get you to buy something. It became very hard trying to ignore everyone to just walk through and look around.
Today, Saturday, we went to a middle school gym to play sports (badminton, jump rope, and volleyball with a balloon and only hitting it with your head, shoulders and chest) with some friends of our hosts. It was a lot of fun, but it was really, really hot—over a hundred degrees without any air movement. After sports, we went out for lunch and caught up with Bettina’s sister who has been living here for the past two years. With her, we went to the Beijing Zoo, Starbucks, and Papa Johns for dinner. It was nice to have some food that we recognized and was familiar. And now I sit here writing to tell you about my first few days.
A highlight—we found an English television station. The only downside is that they like to play the same news stories over and over again—we get to see the same news stories at least twice a day (depending on how often we are in the hotel).
That’s all for now. I hope you are all doing well and I’d love to hear from me. Email me at erika.colyn@gmail.com.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Leaving in 30 hours...
This past week has been a busy one. We went to Grand Rapids for orientation. There were 13 young adults going to 4 different countries--3 to China, 2 to Guinea, 3 to Guatemala, and 5 to the Philippines. We had our days packed full of sessions about our countries, safety for traveling, and much, much more. In the evenings we hung out and got to know each other. The Philippines and Guatemala groups are heading out tomorrow morning and the China and Guinea groups are leaving Tuesday.
Due to H1N1, China is quarantining some people that are coming into China for 7 days. This means that we may be quarantined for our first week. We are hoping this does not happen, but there is no way of telling.
It is hard to believe that we are leaving in only 30 hours. Sarah, Bettina, and I are meeting at the GR airport at 4:40 am Tuesday. Our flight takes off at 6:40 and we fly to Chicago. From Chicago we will be flying to Tokyo, and from Tokyo to Beijing. It is going to take over 30 hours to get there, but I'm excited for the oppertunity we have to go to China this summer!
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