Mark's busy weekend

I had a busy weekend last week.  Turns out Lisa and I have been finding lots to do whether it's teaching, other college activities or just hanging out with friends.  The weekend began on Friday night with me giving a lecture on Canadian culture for Western appreciation night at College.  It was actually quite a lot of fun.  I talked about some of the general facts of the country, you know 10 provinces 3 territories, how big it is but how few people there are etc.  They seemed to enjoy the fact that our entire population is about equal to the size of one of their average districts!  I also talked a bit about hockey, such an odd sport to those who never see snow!  Then one of the American teachers at the school talked about American holidays once I was done.  All in all I thought it as neat evening it was cool to see a night devoted to appreciating foreign cultures.  After that I stayed up late to finish preparing a lecture on American culture for my English cultures class the next morning.  Turns out I still procrastinate even on the other side of the world.

Lisa and I at the party.

I taught my 2 and a half hour class on Saturday morning and immediately after, left for Chengdu with our host family.  Lisa and I didn't really know what to expect all we knew was that we had been invited to join our host father Zhang Jian and his 6 year old daughter Nancy to go and meet some friends from a class he attends there.  So we made the 2 and a half hour trek to Chengdu.  We hung out at one of his friend's home, had tea and visited for a bit before going out to eat hotpot.

Hop...hop....hop, hop, hop

Hotpot is a very popular meal in the Sichuan province.  You all sit down at a table and they fire up a burner in the middle under a pot of a very spicy oily mixture.  Then the bring out various raw meats, animal organs, vegetables, whole fish/eels etc. and you cook your food in the bubbling hot and spicy pot of oil in the middle of the table.  I think the flavor of the hot pot is quite good but I'm not the biggest fan of all the things we put in it.  Over all I quite enjoy the meal though it did a number on my guts the first time I ate it!  After that we went to what turned out to be a Childrens party!  Everyone dressed up and Lisa and I put on funny glasses with blinking noses.  I'm not sure what the occasion was, or if there even was one but we had a great time playing games with the kids and watching them have fun together.

Lunch with the family.

We made the trip back home and I stayed up talking with Zhang Jian as he drove. It was a pleasant ride.  We slept in the next morning before going out for lunch with the family and hanging out with Nancy at a park in the afternoon here in Nanchong.  In the evening we bussed back to the college where we were judges of what we thought was an English competition.  It turned out to be an English/talent competition including English speeches yes, but also short skits, music and other performances we couldn't understand because they were in Chinese.  It made judging a little difficult but we did our best anyways.  After that it was back home to stay up late preparing a lesson for Monday morning!

Mark

Sweet potatoes

This weekend Mark and Nate S. and I went out to Duan's family's farm to help his parents pick sweet potatoes.  It's always amazes me how many people there are everywhere in China, even in the country.  The farms are just small plots of land, one next to another all throughout the countryside.  So different than massive Manitoba farms!  Everything is done by hand.  Duan's parents have a beautiful plot of land in a little valley.  They have several gardens on different layers cut out of the hillside as well as some rice fields in the lowest part of their land.  They keep most of their produce for themselves and their animals for the year.  We spent the afternoon, digging, pulling and hauling baskets of sweet potatoes (or "Hong Shu" in Chinese!).  It was neat to think that people have probably been farming that land in the same way for thousands of years! For supper, among many other colourful and tasty dishes, we had some of the sweet potatoes we picked.  They were an unusual variety which were very bright purple.  They even dyed the rice purple.  They were such a deep shade of indigo that it was hard to believe it was naturally occurring.  It was a fun and delicious day.


 Lisa

China has been keeping us busy!  Much of our time here is filled by teaching classes, and trying to learn as much Chinese as we can.  I think that our teaching has been going fairly well so far and our students seem quite eager to learn.  Our efforts to learn Chinese on the other hand don't seem to be yielding results all to quickly.  I'm getting better at numbers, hello's, good-byes and a few other basic words and expressions, but other then the few extra words I learn every week my speaking and listening skills aren't going anywhere fast.

Me Helping Out at Firm Foundations

A side from working with language, Lisa and I have been looking for other ways to serve the Lord while were here.  One place that we are hoping to get more involved with while we are here is called Firm Foundations.  They are an organization that helps people with disabilities learn skills needed for everyday life.  Skills from cooking and cleaning to finding and keeping jobs.  It is extremely rare for people with disabilities in China to get support like this.  There is no government funding for such people here and so this organization is completely run from the support and generosity of people who care.  We heard about this organization because one of the ladies in Nate's host family works for this organization and asked us if we could help them with moving some of their furniture and equipment from an old building they were no longer using. (Nate is another member of our team in China) We got to meet a few of the people who are currently enrolled in the program and saw pictures of a few who had graduated from it.  There was one guy we saw pictures of, he had no arms but he had learned to do just about anything with his feet: chopping vegetables, writing, even playing the piano!  It was quite amazing!

Lisa and I have also started leading a weekly Bible study for several of the other foreigners (westerners) here.  I think can be hard for foreigners here to really connect with the Chinese Church due to a combination of cultural barriers and language barriers.  We do quite like the Church here but it's nice to study the Bible in our own language too!  I am quite excited for this opportunity and I pray it will be a meaningful and encouraging time for everyone involved.  Who would have thought I would come all the way to China and end up leading a Bible study for Westerners!

The Farm!

Another interesting experience was a visit we had out to a farm about 20 minutes outside our city.  We went to celebrate the birthday of Wang Ying's husband, Duan.  Wang Ying and Duan have been some of the main organizers for our stay here in Nanchong.  The farm was absolutely beautiful!  Sichuan country side is rugged, very green and speckled with little fields and farm houses everywhere.  We had a great time visiting and for the center piece of our meal we had a goat cooked over and open fire and basted in a delicious and spicy sauce.  It was a great opportunity to meet and visit with people, Chinese and foreigners alike.  We had a great time!

MMM Goat!

So, it seems the Lord has been giving us lots of opportunities.  We would appreciate your prayers that he would continue to present opportunities to serve and also that we would be good servants with the opportunities he has granted us!  Thanks!

Mark

teaching!

Well, after much preparation and anticipation, we have started teaching.  I have only had one of my three classes so far. They seem like a good group of students (most of whom are 18 and 19).  It is an oral English class.  Their writing is quite good for the most part, but their spoken English is not as good.  A lot of them are very nervous about making mistakes and so are reluctant to try speaking.  I hope I can make it a fun, productive and comfortable class.  All three of my classes have about 35 students each.  Of the students that Mark and I have met so far, most of them are very excited to meet foreigners.  It is a new experience for a lot of them.  They are all very helpful and excited to show us things around campus.  In our first classes, Mark and I had the students fill out an information form for us so that we could know more about them as well as to check the levels of their written language.  In the forms, most of the students wrote a note saying that they hope that they can get to know us on a personal level as well.  I think there will be a lot of opportunities to form good relationships, as well as practice our Chinese.  We started our Chinese classes as well this week.  We have two language courses and one Chinese culture course each week.  Not only will we be learning to speak Mandarin, we will also be learning Chinese characters.  I feel that this is a very overwhelming task.  10 months is not long enough to learn how to speak let a alone recognize and write Chinese characters.  I hope that I will have time to be studious while I am here! Things are starting to get very busy.  I will be teaching at Sea Turtle ( run by Wang Ying, a lady who is connected to Mennonite Partners in China) two evenings a week.  This will mean that Sunday is my only completely free day.  You can pray that Mark and I will have a lot of energy this year for teaching and building relationships!

Lisa

Our encounter with Lunch

Today Lisa and I had a lunch adventure.  While yes, Lisa and I have been here for a while, we have thus far found ourselves in one of two situations when it comes to getting meals: either we have been with someone who speaks Mandarin who has ordered for us, or we have gone to a western style restaurant where we can select the number of the meal we want.  Today, as we were on our own and wanting to eat, we decided to break that cycle and order from a Chinese restaurant for lunch. We armed ourselves with a list of common Sichuan dishes listed in both English and Chinese and hit the streets.  After walking for quite a while and seeing only hotpot restaurants (a restaurant where you have a basin of hot broth boiling in front of you and then you cook your ordered food in that) and deciding that they were maybe above our level of food ordering capability we started wondering where all those little restaurants we had seen everywhere had gone.  Finally we found a friendly looking place and walked in.  After quite a few minutes of frustration and having them say no to all the dishes we pointed at on our list, they finally suggested (through much pointing) that maybe we try the restaurant down the street.  After walking in the direction they had pointed for a while we decided maybe there wasn't a restaurant there waiting to serve us from our list and dejected, we headed back for home.  On the last little street of our journey home we were happily rewarded with a little restaurant that displayed all their food at the front.  We pointed at what we thought looked good.  It turned out to be a delicious meal of rice, with various vegetables, chicken and tofu.  We went home happy and refreshed.  I guess I never really appreciated the fact that I could communicate with strangers as much as I should have.  It turns out being able to understand all those pesky sales people trying to sell you stuff is a good thing. 

Mark

In The Beginning...

Well, after an arduous 26 hours of traveling, here we are in China for 10 months of volunteering teaching English and learning Mandarin.  We have been here over a week now and I have never felt so overloaded with new information.  There are a lot of new and exciting things to explore.  Our host family as well as others involved in planning our stay here have been very gracious and patient with us, taking the time to show us around the city and teaching us all sorts of things we will need to know during our time in Nanchong. Mark and I got our class schedules yesterday.  We will each be teaching two English speaking classes at North Sichuan Medical University.  As well, we will together be teaching a course on "the society and culture of English speaking countries".  That one makes me a bit nervous, as we have to lecture two and a half hours each week on things like "the Political System in New Zealand" and "Social Problems in the United States".  We were given a text book, but it will be a lot of work to put together the entire curriculum for the year.  I hope we can make it interesting.  We have almost two weeks before classes start, so we will be hard at work preparing in the next little while!

Lisa