Miscellaneous

Man I haven't posted in a while! So much has happened in the last week and a half. That's why I titled this post "miscellaneous." It's just a collection of a TON of stuff! Starting last Saturday, I was VERY busy. A coworker (Charlie) and I went to the Temple of Heaven. To begin with, it was a gorgeous day, but then on top of that, it was just an awesome place. See how beautiful it is? And the platform I'm standing on is pretty high off the ground too, so when you're looking at it from the streets, it looks gigantic.

This is Charlie. He works with me in the WABX office.

Charlie took a great picture of me! Sure it took 10 minutes, but it was worth it in the end because it's pretty quality I think.

The next day, I went to church in the morning, taught the high school Bible study, ate lunch with the youth leaders, and then went for a run in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Park. It was so much fun to go see the place that all those great athletes competed in, and even more fun to run some of the trails that they ran for races. The Forest Park was this island in the middle of a lake with trails all over the place. It was a ton of fun!

Last week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, we did this thing called the Adventure Challenge for the elementary school kids. Grades 3-5 each had their own day to be in the gym doing these 5 obstacle courses all morning, and I got to run one of the courses. The goal was to give them a set of directions and grade them on how well they could adhere to the rules. The grade 3 kids were pretty cute, but they just....stink at doing stuff. I'm sorry. They just do. But the grade 5 kids I THINK may have been the most annoying. The obstacles were a little bigger than the other groups, but they've been doing the Adventure Challenge for 2 years before this, so they're really cocky and they just DO NOT listen to directions. So yes, they're smarter, but man they were way funnier because they had a lower completion rate than the younger grades! It was hilarious! Plus we were supposed to be a little harder on them because they're older so that was pretty fun. Here's my favorite class of the week:

I have to go to Volleyball practice now, but I'm not done, just so you know. I'll post again soon!

Real Life is Struggle

I realized I never told you all: I'm a Chinese game show legend! As of a few weeks ago, I have all the fame I could ever want. Here's what happened.

I coach volleyball here at the school. After tryouts, we got our girls and boys teams (5 altogether) and went to Chaoyang Park for some beach volleyball and teambuilding activities. When we walked in, there were these big inflatable obstacles with hoses running water over them and I thought it was maybe part of the water park, but no. As we were practicing, this Chinese guy comes and asks, "can you be on our show?" Hm. Yes. So I asked the other coaches if they could do all the work while I went and played. It was a lot of Chinese people, and myself. And more Chinese people. They had this inflatable gauntlet type thing with walls and hurdles in the middle and then a big ramp at the end of it. It's all the plastic material that inner tubes are made of. So this director asks me to hold a big plastic bat and pretty much beat the snot out of the contestants as they run. Their objective was to get a bucket full of rubber duckies from the top of this ramp, and whoever gets the bucket back to the start with the most duckies wins. So I stood and waited, and every time someone ran by me, or slipped on the plastic near me, or tried to use the wall near me for stability, I did indeed beat the snot out of them. The camera was in my face a lot of the time, so I don't know if I really gave America that great of a name, because all that they can see is this rather angry looking American boy just wailing on these Chinese men as they run by. I hit them in the face, in the legs, in the belly, and though I looked angry, I was for 30 minutes having the time of my life.

Next we had to climb this big inflatable tower made of the same plastic material, but it had like gymnastics mat material on the sides of it that we gripped onto to get to the top, touch the inflatable starfish, climb down, and tag the next climber on our team. My team won! As an award, we got bottles of water. Now, keep in mind the difference between bottles of water and "water bottles." We did not get water bottles. We got disposable bottles of water. It was kinda nice I guess. I asked them the name of the show, and I couldn't understand what they said, so I asked for the channel name, and he said "CCTV." Easy enough, I'll just go and type it in online! False. CCTV is a state-run TV station with about 40 channels, most of which have some type of game show. Nuts. So I have no idea what show I was on, if my name is in the credits ("Nate the American"), or anything. I didn't even get a cut of the profit. Urgh.

Anyway, I went to the Great Wall on Saturday!

To get there, you ride this ski lift thing. It gave a gorgeous view of the mountains and the greenery up there. As you can tell, it was a BEAUTIFUL DAY in Beijing.

To get down, you ride a Toboggan, which is "a simple slide which is a traditional form of transportation used by the Innu and Cree of northern Canada" (Wikipedia). Hm. Anyway, it's a slide with this little cart type thing that you ride on. The ones we went on had a brake thing in the middle, and when you pull it back, it goes slow, forward, it goes fast. Now here's the deal. If I pay for this, I'm going to make it worth my while. Which means that I am NOT getting stuck behind anyone. So the person ahead of me went, and I waited about a minute or more, and as soon as I was out the gate and saw the "test brakes here" sign, I slammed that sucker forward. I had my iPhone in one hand taking video until I caught up to the people in front of me (I caught them in the last minute or so of the ride! Dang!). After the video was done, I tried to get a picture of Jeremy and Aunt Liz behind me so it would show all three of us. Between trying to take the picture, having my hand on the brake so I didn't hit the people in front of me, and really just having the time of my life, this is what I got:

I know I don't look very happy. That's what happens when you try too hard on too many things. But you know what? I love this picture because too often when you look at people's Facebook pictures, they're all happy clappy and Polyanna and that isn't real life. Real life is the above picture. It's struggle. I'm not smiling because I was intent on angling that camera just right to get everyone in it (and not hitting anybody). But rest assured, I wore the biggest smile on the inside. I loved that Toboggan. I almost want to go to Northern Canada to do more of them.

So we did that after trekking up and down the wall, which was after a good workout at the school and then volleyball practice that morning, so I was pooped. We went home, watched the Great Gatsby, talked for a wee bit, and went to bed. Saturday may have been one of the best days since I've been here. The day before it was great because we talked in our Friday night small group (Crossroads is the name) about Genesis 3. We talked about why sin is what it is. It's not just breaking rules. It's doing something, anything with the motive of worshipping something other than God. You steal because you feel like God hasn't given you enough. You kill because you don't think God has the power to punish those who do wrong. You disobey your parents because you want control over your own life rather than the authorities that God has placed you under. Those are just examples and generalities. You may have different reasons for doing all those things, but those are just examples. When it clicked for them, it was awesome. You know what was even better? Seeing it click when they saw that the seed that is promised to Eve in Genesis 3 is the one who saves us: Jesus Christ. He's the seed that is on the brink of extinction with Abraham and in Genesis 38 with Judah and Tamar. He's the seed that almost dies off when Hezekiah is surrounded by Assyrians. Same guy. We talked like an hour and a half on Genesis 3, and I felt like it received due diligence, which was good. It's always a scary chapter to teach, but the kids really went with it.

Well, this is getting to be long, but I'll write soon about what I saw on Sunday. It was great.

Significant

Man, Tuesdays are my favorite days for sure. Tuesdays are my day to design the Cross Country workouts, and I just slaughter them. There's absolutely nothing that I like better than watching a bunch of skinny kids REALLY suffer. I'm kind of joking, but kind of serious. I do the workouts with them, so I take my own medicine for sure, and I suffer with them, and I get to see that the suffering is worth it to them because the smiles on their faces afterward, knowing that they did something REALLY hard is so great.

In the Friday night youth Bible Study that I lead, we're having tons of fun. Most kids don't know a ton about the Old Testament, so I'm taking them through that. Last week we studied just Genesis 1 and 2, and we're studying the OT as a story, so we're not doing historical problems or evolution or the gap theory or anything. We're just studying the big picture of redemptive history, so we'll take phrases here or there and study them, or paragraphs that are significant to the overall story, so it's fun. We have several kids there that are either non-believers, or they are very young believers. They're the ones that ask the best questions. We went over how "made in the image of God" makes man significant. It gives us purpose and meaning in the sight of God, and it makes us unique among all His creation. Then we covered how we were made out of dust, which shows how individually we are irrelevant in God's big redemptive plan, and as a group, we are born, we die, and our legacies die into the dust with us. One kid, who professes to be not a believer asked, "So if we're made out of dust, how are we significant in God's eyes? Just because we're unique compared to animals doesn't mean that we're significant." Hm. Good question. So we explored that and talked it over. Anyway, tomorrow we do Genesis 3 and 4, so it'll be very interesting for them because they're so used to the gospels and the New Testament, but the gospel is right there in Genesis 3! "As soon as God sees man fall, He offers them a way out. Why? Wait and see!" That's my opening line. Pretty fun huh? I think it'll be fun. Anyway, just things to pray for if you ever think of it!

Respect my authori-tay!

The last week or so has been super good. Cross Country practice has been going very well, and the girls I coach in volleyball had their first couple games on Saturday and they did outstanding. It was a huge encouragement seeing them having a blast together. At church, we have such a big youth group that sometimes you don't know who all was there. I found out on Sunday that one of my volleyball girls has been going to my church for years! How cool is that?

After the games on Saturday, I went home, took the subway around the city just to see new parts of it, and changed money (Finally! I've lived off of 200 RMB, which is like $35). We relaxed at home that evening, got up, went to church, and then saw the city for real. I've had this planned for weeks. I've been locked up in the part of Beijing that I live in for the whole time I've been here, and I was itching to go out, so I did! The area around the Forbidden City is packed with stuff to do and see, and I covered...oh about a sixth of it on Sunday. You can spend a ton of time there. The first place I went to was the Drum and Bell Towers, which were used to house a big bell and a bunch of big drums that were used for timekeeping in the Qing dynasty and several other periods. Here are some pictures!

This is the stairway that leads up to the drum tower. You can't tell all that well but it's VERY steep and it made for some good exercise.

This is just one drum of about 25-30. They have a mechanism inside that's on a cycle. A ball is sent through these tubes inside every 14.4 minutes and when the ball gets to the end, it hits a mechanism that hits the skin of the drum and makes a REALLY big noise. I believe that's how it works, but I just got that from reading the signs, not from an actual tour guide, so I may have misunderstood it.

The towers are so tall that you can see the entire south side of the city from the drum tower and the north/west side from the bell tower!

This is the huge copper bell that gets rung on a cycle as well. It was forged a lot of times but they kept getting it wrong! The Emperor said that if it was not forged properly within 80 days, all of the smiths in the city would be killed, so the daughter of one of the coppersmiths worked with her father to get it done. As they were about to finish casting it, she fell in and was killed, and the bell is named in her honor. Aw.

After the towers, I went to the Nanluogu Hutong, which is famous for being home to Beihai and Hohai parks. Both parks have lakes and waterways in them, and they were absolutely beautiful. There were tons of streetfood places and cool little alleyways. For everyone who's been to Israel, it's JUST LIKE the Old City of Jerusalem, just with a Chinese flavor to it, combined with the boardwalk in Eilat. It was like medicine for the soul.

Here's the entrance to the little alleyways that culminate in the lakefront.

We're almost there!

Here I am at the lake. There were all kinds of people walking around. At night it was beautiful because it was all lit up, people were dancing, the breeze was blowing, the sky was clear.

This place is gorgeous. No, it was nothing like Northern California alpine lakes, but hey, for living in a big city, I couldn't really ask for more!

I'm learning a ton about parenting. I don't watch parents do it, but I see the effects of good and bad parenting every day for sure. There are a lot of kids here that I referee in soccer who are just about the brattiest kids you could imagine. I'm sorry for making this a long blog post, but I need to tell you about one case today. We finished our games early and were just hanging out playing basketball with soccer balls, and this kid was kinda throwing balls at me every now and then, and after a little while of asking him to stop, I had to be pretty firm with him, because I'd ask him to stop and he'd just laugh it off. He kicked a ball at me when I was trying to teach another kid something, and even though I shouldn't have gotten angry, I felt that he needed to be talked to. You know how you have your "please stop" voice and then you have your big boy voice that you discipline children with? The big boy came out to recess today. The kid kicked the ball at me, I grabbed him by the shoulder, he kept smiling and laughing with his friends, and so I firmed up the hand I was holding him with, put on my big boy voice, and told him that life isn't all about you, or playing games, or beating other people. It's about respecting authority. Anyway, by about halfway through my speech, he started to look around with embarrassment because a few of his friends heard us talking too. I hope they all take it to heart. I was the same way as them and I found out the hard way that life wasn't all about me getting as much pleasure and power and comfort out of it as I could. Now, I can't tell them how the gospel fits in directly, but I figure that if you tell them that they aren't the head honchos, that there is authority over them, and therefore that they can't get away with anything, that's almost as good as you can do. I apologized to him later for embarrassing him and for getting angry, and he said the coolest thing in return: "I know exactly what you mean. I'm not my own authority. I'm sorry for trying to take your authority." Whoa. He's in about 4th grade, so maybe 9 or so. He looked like he felt terrible. I've learned my lesson not to get angry so easily, and I've learned a lot about little kids. He really taught me more than I taught him. He taught me to be humble and accept criticism. Thank you Ignus. If you ever read this, thank you.