Not doing so well...

...in keeping up with my blog. I do enjoy writing my blog, I just don't enjoy putting pictures on my computer and I know that blogs are much more fun with pictures :) So here is another blog with no pictures.

I've been keeping myself a bit busy the past week. So far, I only teach Tuesday and Saturday. However, Monday will start soon. My Tuesdays are quite long... 8 am until about 8:30 pm with a 2 hour break for lunch and 30 minutes for supper.

Saturday I also had a bit of a long day. I taught in the morning, ate lunch with an old co-worker, biked home, cleaned my apartment a bit, then bused (for about 1 1/2 hours) to kids' study. It's a super long bus ride and usually I curl up by the window with my music and sleep or stare outside. This week G-d had another plan for my ride. Almost as soon as I sat down, I saw someone looking at me with the intent to talk. He sat down and said, "may I sit next to you?" (there were about 20 other seats open out of about 35 at the time). I decided that it was ok to talk this trip. So, we started. Towards the beginning I asked him when he would get off (wanted to see how long I would have to drag out the conversation) He was going almost as far as me! Which meant... about a 1 hour conversation in a bus.

About 25 minutes into the conversation he asked if I was a b-liev-r. After confirming, I asked if he was. He is... and he lives near to my friends in Hankou (an area of Wuhan). Wow! what a gift! Tuesday I'm meeting him with some Hankou friends to hopefully introduce studies to him and get him in touch with people near his home. Pr-y that it goes well and we can feed his s0ul with the true WORDS of life!

First Week

It's Saturday afternoon and I just finished my first week of teaching. This year I teach Monday afternoons, Tuesday morning and afternoon, and Saturday mornings. I don't really enjoy having to get up Saturday morning for school, but it's nice that it gives me a three day weekend during the week.

Even though I don't teach little kids anymore, there are still times that funny things happen in class. My first funny happened when I was reading their reflections about their English level.

• I put Brownsville on the board, but not my name. My name was on the powerpoint. One of my students wrote in their paper to me, "Dear Browsnville, I hope you can ask me more questions..." Oh how silly she must have felt when we played a name game and she found out my name was Jessica :)
• Next thing happened today. I had "Chicken" on my powerpoint and I asked what a Chicken was. One of the boys yelled out, "it's a place where you prepare food". Hahaha! "No, that's a kitchen. This is a little different."
• Finally, towards the end of class I was walking to the back of the room and a boy put his hand to his mouth and started whispering something to me. I didn't quite get it, so he said it again, "Nature's calling" I said, "ok, go ahead" and he got up and ran out. Oh... the things that may happen this year :)

Our Theme

This morning I was reading the daily Meditations book. I was reading last Tuesday's (I started a few days late). After each Dev0ti0n there is a Bbl reading you can do. I looked up the one after the Devo and I got the chills. It was a perfect p-ssage for what I will be doing.

C-lossi-ns 4:2-6
 Devote yourselves to pr-yer, being watchful and thankful. ³ And pr-y for us, too, that G-d may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Chr-st, for which I am in chains. ⁴ Pr-y that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. ⁵ Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶ Let your conversation be always full of gr-ce, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

It's perfect. It's what we all need to hear, both me and everyone reading this. Be salt, that's what we are! We're different and thanks be to HIM for that! 

Midtown is together at last

The new teachers are finally here! I've been here about a week now chilling, finding apartments, getting ready to teach, and catching up with old friends. Today we were able to bring the final part of midtown together.

The new guys in the middle (David and Andrew) arrived this afternoon. Before we could greet them happily at the airport, we had to move from the old apartment to the new one. That meant packing everything up, carrying it down 7 flights, loading a van, unloading the van, and carrying it up 7 1/2 flights (it's not 8 stories high, so it doesn't need an elevator). After that, we rode to Hankou (part of the city over the river) and jumped in a friend's car that will take us to the airport.

In true China style, we left in just the right amount of time to get us there about 10 minutes late. Then, we had to fill up with gas... got stuck in traffic... got lost in the airport parking area... and finally found our friends about 45 min after they landed.

Nicole and I didn't want to pay for a taxi home, so we squeezed into the back seat with David and a big suitcase on our lap. It was cozy, but it was great bonding time!

We are happy to welcome the new teachers to our lovely Mid-town! There will be a lot of exploring these next few days since they are living in a new area to us and teaching at a new school (actually 2 new schools) from us. Soon I will get a picture of the four of us so you can see my new team.

Just One

When you fly from Seattle to New York what time do you take off... what time do you land? How many hours actually passed between that flight? What time is it in Alaska when this is all going on?? Time zones are amazing and also can cause quite the confusion. I enjoy traveling from one time zone to the next and knowing that the sun goes up and down at about the same time.

Not here...

I may have told you this already, but I'm not sure... In China there is one time zone. So whether you are in Beijing (far East) or Chengdu (a bit more West) it's 5 am at the exact same time. It's great for trains, planes, and buses. Doesn't matter when you leave, you know the arrival time at your destination is the same as where you left.

It also means that the sun comes up and comes down at different times. I woke up at 5am this morning (not on purpose- jet lag) and it was dark outside. I thought it was still midnight. I was hoping I could turn over and sleep for 6 more hours. Sadly, I couldn't. I laid in bed for another hour, then turned on my computer. This may be a long day... :)

Currently sunrise is at 5:57 and sunset is at 6:49.
In January sunrise will be at 7:20 and sunset at 5:30

Shopping around

Yesterday I spent the majority of my day in Hankou. For those of you that don't know where it is, it's about an hour bus ride north, or east, possibly west or south (can you tell I'm not good with directions in this city). Anyways, it's where 6 other of our FoCers live. We need to rent a new apartment, so I have joined them in the search.

After sitting in hot offices, looking at three apartments, and not really wanting any of them, we decided to go back home for supper. The last apartment was nice and the landlords really tried to talk us into getting it, but the price and location wasn't really what we wanted- still an option though.

After supper I helped Nicole move her new roommate from Hankou to Wuchang (where she and I live). Her roommate isn't the typical roommate and the first taxi didn't want his hair in his taxi (yup, it's a boy, named Rom- short for Romulus). The next taxi driver was much nicer. We helped Rom get in the back seat and off we went! After some time, the taxi driver started talking to me and asking all the typical questions: where am I from, what am I doing in China, how much money do I make, and if I am married. I told him I was not married, but that I did have a boyfriend, a foreign boyfriend- even though I am single (I've learned from past mistakes- see post entitled "Just say 有 you"), that you sort of need a boyfriend if you don't want to get set up with their son/ or grandson. After that, I ran out of vocabulary, but he didn't run out of ideas to talk about. So the next 10 minutes I spent saying, I don't understand and sorry, what does ____ mean?

We got Rom back safely, rearranged Nicole's apartment a bit so that there was room for his cage (Rom is a rabbit if you haven't discovered) and I quickly went to bed. This morning I was up at 6:30am and ready for my day! Oh, what jet-lag does to me...

Made it back

Thankfully everything went very smooth on my trip back. Best part of the trip... we all had individual tv screens in which you could choose what to watch when you wanted and pause and rewind... it was like having DVR on the plane. This was a HUGE step up from last time when we had a big screen in the front of the area so we all looked at the same tv. Not so easy when people stand up.

Nicole and I had good time amounts between flights. Never did I feel stressed that I would miss something. All of our bags came and our friend picked us up from the airport and took us home. Now I am laying in bed 10:15pm my time 9:15am my body time and I'm hoping I will get a good night's sleep.

I'm excited to explore and see what changes have happened in the past 2 1/2 months!