laughing traveler

There are days when I find myself in situations where I think, I am the worst teacher ever. How have they not fired me yet? I will give you two examples: A few weeks ago on a Monday night I went to the McDonalds for dinner. As I am sitting there I notice a table of my students outside. I consider saying hello until I realize it is 5 of my boys sitting around shirtless and chasing their cheese burgers with beer! I decided the polite thing to do is keep my head down and walk by like I don’t notice. But you know as soon as I came outside the shout MISS CHRISTY! HELLO! So I have to reward their English. I say hello and point to the 5 beer bottles and ask, “Was it a hard day? Why so much beer?” Mind you they are all drinking 40s out of the bottle, and most Chinese men I know get drunk off of one beer! It is a school night and they have class at 7:30 the next morning; They are 16 years old and outside less than a block from the school! They assure me, “we are the school sports winner, a...

No one likes to be sick, but being sick in a foreign country adds a whole new level of misery. One of the first Chinese phrases I learned was “wo you laoduzi.” This was supposed to be the phrase to get out of whatever your school wanted you to do. I learned the literal meaning is “I have diarrhea.” I dread going to the doctor’s anyway, but I especially dread Chinese hospitals. They have a smell that is hard to describe. Chinese people go to the doctor for anything; a cough, a headache, whatever. There is no privacy or social norms like in the US. The doctors are not respected and often seen as money hungry or even corrupt. As soon as you sign in with a nurse, you pick which doctor you want to see and just line up outside their door. So whether you are there for a cold or for a heart attack you just stand by the door. Sometimes while you are in the room with the doctor he is doing other paper work or people will walk in and hand him things to sign. There is nothing to stop overly pus...

I had an interesting conversation with one of my friends on the metro the other day that I can’t stop thinking about. I don’t know how it started or exactly what was said but I know it ended up an hour long debate about Christianity and me at a loss for words. My friend was raised in the church as, what I would call, a C&E Catholic (Christmas and Easter). He had heard the Christian jargon year after year and was left with more questions than answers. My friend was going to a party with me and Roz that night and the 3 of us were traveling together. I think I mentioned that I wasn’t going to drink that night, because I had given up alcohol for Lent. He asked if I was Catholic, assuming that Lent was only a Catholic thing and then asked what the difference between Catholic and Methodist was. I poorly explained that the big difference is Catholic and Protestant which Roz could explain a lot better since she went to Catholic school and knew the details of both. Then expanded that we...

I went to see the countryside outside of Guilin city to spend Chinese New Years with my friend’s parents. My friend, Daniel, kept telling me - just so you know there are is not heat in my parents’ house. And I told him - no worries I lived in Ohio . He tells me his family is farmers, no problem my Granny lives on a farm. He tells me they are slaughtering a pig for the holiday and I say my dad was a pig farmer growing up. I have been on the farm, seen the animals, played on the dirt road; I was ready for anything. I was wrong. There is a huge difference between US country and the Chinese countryside. Even without snow on the ground the mountains felt like I was constantly standing in a freezer! And the worst part was that there is no escape. In the US I would run from my warm house to my warm car and then to a warm store. But in China nowhere is warm. I honestly think it was colder inside the house than outside. The walls were all mud bricks and bare concrete floors. The only sou...

This Christmas season I did a lot more to force the Christmas spirit. During Halloween some friends and I stumbled upon our greatest discovery in China! Sunggong warehouse! All the factory leftovers from the products sent to the US. I felt like I am in Wal-Mart’s holiday section, just dirtier, cheaper and a lot more crap to sift through. We came back to this gold mine around thanksgiving and it was a CHRISTMAS EXPLOSION! I am talking a full street with trees and garland covering each store front. And 2 of the buildings had 4 floors of Christmas goodness inside, mixed, of course, with the usual baby clothes, purses, plastic ware and other randomness. I couldn’t keep my legs still. They had a 10 foot plastic tree that I could comfortably live inside! Life-size Santa figures made out of glitter and gold paint (China version). As I spent every penny in my purse on lights and a wreath, I realized my apartment was too small for a tree. Since my classes are much smaller this year I can do ...

People ask me all the time why I love China. My answers never seems to be what is expected. It’s the little things that make me smile no matter how awful my day has been or the bad mood I am in. (and believe me there have been plenty of those days) My honest to God favorite part of my new town of lain tang is the crosswalk man. In China people are too detail oriented to be satisfied with the standard walk/ don’t walk flashing light. In lian tang the little man is animated and he tells you how fast you need to walk. The best is the strut setting. The little crosswalk light has the proud strut that I can’t see without standing a little taller. Everytime me and my friend see it we try to walk at the same pace as the light and say, “strut carefully!” Then when the traffic light is about to change the little man gets faster and faster and end in a panic furry to get across. The panic is justified! I literally almost got hit by a bus the other day. I was with my Italian friend and the littl...

My church in Shekou started a concert series for the Christmas season. They will have 4 concerts around Shenzhen and I was asked to be a part of the prayer team. They said that outside the church the services will be concerts but having a prayer team will insure that they are Christ-driven and become a worship service. We were asked to pray for the upcoming event during the week and arrive an hour early to pray during the rehearsal and set up. We walked through each chair and prayed that God would fill that seat and bless the person that would sit there. After the service we were to come forward and pray with anyone who came up for an alter call. I realized that I am not very good at this. My friend said how can you be bad at praying? Is there bad or good? I had trouble focusing; my mind goes wild in silence. When people came up to me to pray for them I couldn’t find the right words and stuttered and stammered all over myself. Also many of the people that wanted me to pray for them w...