Our winter travels

So, as second semester gets underway, it dawns on me that I haven't updated the blog in well, forever and as I wonder if anyone even checks this thing any more I realize wow time has truly been flying!  I can hardly believe that my year in China is over half done.  It seems like I'm only scratching the surface of understanding anything here from cultural and linguistics to daily life.  I made a comment about my struggles with the Chinese language to a friend who has been living in China much longer than I who reaffirmed there is no way easy way to learn the language.  As she put it "you'll sweat blood and tears for every word you learn."  The language and world here is just that different.  I was pondering this and couldn't help but feel for the millions and millions of Chinese who are currently struggling to learn English so they can have a foot up in this world.  I never realized how big a blessing my language was until I started traveling and found out, you can travel all over the world with English and only with English.  Even international business is most often done in English even if there isn't a native English speaker around.  It makes me thankful for the blessing I've been given and inspires me to do my best while I'm here to share the blessing with others.  Actually, I feel rather inadequate as a teacher.  I may speak the language well but teaching that to someone else isn't exactly easy.  So you can pray that Lisa and I will have God's grace and wisdom as we teach.

At this point I realize I have been rambling without actually letting anyone know what I've been up to in the weeks even months since I last updated the old blog.  For all those of you who have been wondering "but Mark, what did you do during your break between semesters?"  I will now enlighten.  Lisa and I finished our last teaching assignment for the semester in mid January.  We were scheduled to attend PIC (a professional improvement conference with Mennonite Partners in China) for a week in mid February.  This took place in Thailand.  So we had about three weeks to travel before ending up in Thailand for our conference.  And here's what we did...

Hong Kong Skyline.

Lisa and I began our journey by heading off to Hong Kong.  There we met up with our friends (and teammates) Nate and Nate who traveled with us for the rest of our vacation.  Wow! What a difference just over thousand kilometers can make.  I went from being one of the few foreigners around to seeing foreigners and even hearing English everywhere.  I can now understand a little bit better why people stare at us in Nanchong.  At first I found myself staring at every white person I saw and thinking "they look so familiar" only to realize they didn't actually resemble any one I had ever met.  Honk Kong is a beautiful city and we very much enjoyed taking in the sites and eating the North American style food it had to offer.

I bungee jumped of this!

Next we moved on to Macau.  Macau I found out is  "the Las Vegas of the Orient".  Actually, the amount of people who visit Casinos daily in Macau puts Las Vegas to shame.  Turns out that the billions of people who live in this part of the world like to gamble too.  While Macau is also a beautiful city our main purpose in visiting Macau was to visit some friends from home, George and Tobia.  They have lived in Macau, working with Mennonite Church Canada, for many years now and Lisa and I got to know them through a small group at our Church during a time when they were on furlough and living in Winnipeg.  It was real nice to connect with them again and really neat to visit with someone we had met on our side of the world.  My highlight in Macau which I must mention was bungee jumping.  I jumped from the AJ Hackett Macau Tower on my birthday.  Turns out it's the worlds highest bungee jump.  What a rush!

Lisa on the beach in Singapore.

Our next stop was Singapore.  We were drawn to Singapore for it's beautiful views, warm weather and the beach.  After shivering for several months in our home, which was generally around 4 degrees Celsius in the winter, the beach was a wonderfully warm and relaxing break.  We saw lots of neat sites including wild monkey's, palm trees and aquariums where we got to pet stingrays and feed a variety of tropical fish.

We got to pet tigers.

Next on our tour, we went to Thailand where we had a few days of free time before our PIC conference with Mennonite Partners in China.  Thailand is also filled with beautiful sights, warm weather, and lot's of things to see and do.  We met up with some other friends from Mennonite Partners in China and stayed with them for a few days near a beautiful beach.  We rode Elephants, zip-lined in the rain forest, petted tigers, relaxed on the beach, ate excellent food and more.  I also really appreciated the PIC conference.  It was really nice to have fellowship with other believers as well as the informative presentations on teaching.  It was a good balance between learning and relaxing during our time off.  We are really glad to be a part of Mennonite Partners in China.  We love the people involved, as well as what they stand for!

After that we were back to Nanchong.  We spent our first week preparing for another semester of classes.  And we are now getting back into the full swing of teaching.  The teaching load this semester isn't quite as heavy as last and I'm hoping this will leave more time for studying Chinese and continuing to develop relationships with the people we know here.  We appreciate all your prayers very much.  I hope you have enjoyed this rather brief overview of our holiday!

God Bless
Mark