The Last Two Weeks

Right now we're in the middle of a dance festival, and this is the one time the last two weeks that I don't have something going on. I've literally been booked pretty solid. Notice there hasn't been much on my facebook page? No time. Well, that and the Chinese government is cracking down on internet usage because they have their Party Congress going on right now in Beijing. So here's an interesting bit of information that I'm sure none of you know about me: I'm an assistant dance coach. Cool huh? I've never formally danced in my life before, and I don't plan on doing it any time soon. I mean if I get married, I'll take some couples ballroom classes with my wife, but never for competition. Here's the story. You remember how I CHAPERONED our dance team to Taipei a few weeks back? Well I got back and the dance director, Kelly asked me to help run the Asia Pacific dance festival that we're hosting. Simple enough. "Sure," I said. Lo and behold, the program got printed, and my name is listed as the Western Academy of Beijing assistant dance coach. Huh? I mean I'll take it and put it on my resume if it makes me look better, but shoot...I know nothing about dance. Interesting how things fall into your lap huh? That's sort of how international schools work though. Here's the link to the program, by the way, if you're interested. Scroll to the Western Academy of Beijing on page 27 and there it is: http://apac.wab.edu/sites/default/files/APAC_DANCE_2013_Booklet.pdf

In other news, last weekend we had our church's high school camp. We had a great time at the Duck and Goose ranch outside of Beijing. Some of the guys from my cabin and I hiked to the top of one of the mountains and we could see Mutianyu, a section of the Great Wall from it. It was quite the beautiful place. Maybe I'll post some pictures later when we get them this weekend. We weren't allowed to have technology so I didn't get any personal pictures. Great time though. The theme was media and using it for God's glory, but really the speaker took it from a heart motive perspective and explained how so many people use media to escape the reality of a broken world. Many kids struggle with their use of media because here in international schools, laptops are given to them and they're used for everything they do, EVEN PHYSICAL EDUCATION. They program workouts in their laptops and watch slideshows. Then they get home after school and get on their laptops again, all the while being on facebook, looking at pornography, etc. It's a big issue, even more so here than in the U.S. It was a much-needed camp and I think all of us, counselors and campers alike learned a lot.

The weekend before that I got to direct a volleyball tournament. The other tournaments we've done have been a smaller job for me because I've just been a site director. We have different venues that games are played at and I would just direct one venue, or site. For this last one, I directed the whole tournament, so I got to organize food catering, awards, the schedule, and contacting the teams and coaches. It was a lot of work, but man did it go well! It was great to see the kids play, some of them for their last high school games ever.

That's about all that's going on for now, but I have a feeling I will probably post again here in a few days.

You Make It Work

Since getting back from Burma, I've been pretty busy! I went to work for two days and then had Sunday off, and then the following week was pretty relaxed because most of the preparations for the end of the sports season were already done beforehand. Last weekend (Saturday) I left to Taipei with one of our teams as a chaperone, came back on Tuesday, and got asked to be a Site Director for a volleyball tournament we hosted. This tournament is the Big Mama of them all: the Asia Pacific Activities Conference Volleyball tournament. As I write this, the men's championship is about to begin! But let's cover the older stuff first.

So as soon as I got back from Burma, I coached my volleyball team and cross country teams to the end of their seasons. It was kind of a bummer, but it's also good to be done! My volleyball girls are a bunch of cuties. They're almost all ninth graders, with a couple of tens and elevens mixed in, but just watching them interact with each other (not to mention with boys) is a pretty funny sight. They're from all different cultures and none of them are catty at all, so they make it work. That's sort of a theme with international schools from what little I've seen: you make it work.

That Saturday, I left the school at 0600 for the airport with the dance team. I was looking forward to traveling somewhere else of course, but I wasn't too enthused about going with the dance team. I've never been exposed to dance culture at all. No clue about the terminology, what's considered beautiful and what's a mistake, and how to evaluate it. Now that I've done it, I appreciate dance a lot more. It's pretty fuzzy as to the evaluation of it because there's just no way to communicate something through the way you move your body. There was one girl at the school that hosted us that blew my mind. She walked up on stage, and said, "this song is about grief." That's it. I was expecting a slow, fluid dance, but what she did was so cool because it was a sad song but it was a faster pace than most slow songs. It had a beat to it and not all of her movements were fluid; they were pretty sharp at some points. I haven't had a walk in the park this past year. I'm not as well-acquainted with grief as some, but I know grief. 

A year ago from this past week I broke off an engagement to a girl from school. It was a very difficult process. I won't give the reasons for it, but it was something that I prayed over and fasted a lot. There are some wrong decisions that you can make in life and there are right ones. This one was a hard one to decide, but through a lot of counsel and prayer, I made it with this advice: "There are some choices that we will never know the right decision to. Some choices don't have a clear enough biblical basis to decide. Your task is to make a decision, and whether right or wrong, to live righteously with whatever consequences come." Isn't that beautiful? I think God expects us to make wrong decisions but what made Abraham righteous and what made David a man after God's own heart (despite their poor choices) was the fact that their lives, though tainted by sinful choices, were lived righteously in the ensuing consequences. Repentance followed for the wrong decisions, and the best was made of them. Much like an international school, you make it work, poor decisions and all. So was my decision "right"? I believe so but who really knows? What I do know is that God is pleased in the way it was done because it was made with a focus on Him at the front of it. The consequences that came from the decision were dealt with with righteousness in mind.

After that decision a year ago, life was difficult dealing with the grief. The young lady's dance that depicted grief was so beautiful because grief is not slow and fluid. The last year has been the fastest year yet because it's been filled with grief. This girl, Kimmie, danced grief so well. Fast and sharp at times, but slow and thoughtful at others. Well done, Kimmie. You made your dance work.

We saw the sights in Taipei, and they were some sights to see for sure. Taipei 101 is a 101-story building that overlooks the city. It's gorgeous up there. It was a little bit cloudy, but it sure was cool. We also went to a boardwalk along the river called Dom Xue (shway), and that was pretty beautiful too. On the flight back, I got the privilege of talking to a young lady from the team about some problems she was having, and she asked me what I believed. I basically gave her what I said in my first blog post and we talked about it for 3 and a half hours! It was a late night flight and everyone looked like they were asleep, except for one girl (who is also from my volleyball team) writing on a piece of paper presumably doing homework. When we landed, they all came over to me and asked me questions and gave some input. It was a great conversation because the full gospel was never compromised, but at the same time, the girl I was talking to never once interpreted what I said personally. There's a difference between a soft gospel and "the gospel." The gospel is offensive by nature, like most of the New Testament says. When people say Christians are judgmental, they're interpreting it as the Christian judging them, when in reality Scripture is judging them and the Christian is the deliverer of the offensive message. A good conversation is one where the non-believer understands that they are being judged but they are still on good terms with the messenger because it isn't personal at all. A conversation where the word "judgmental" comes up can also be good because seeds are planted but rarely do those conversations lead to further conversations and real relationship building. This girl and I had a good conversation, not because of the way I presented it, though I felt that it was done thoughtfully and tactfully, but rather because of the way God works. I see her everyday at school and because of how the conversation went it's totally possible for me to talk to her more. Beautiful. Oh and the girl writing in her book? She was taking 11 pages of notes. THAT tells me that the harvest is indeed ripe for picking at the Western Academy of Beijing. What a good opportunity, huh?

After I got back, I walked into the office and got asked to be a site director for APAC volleyball. What a huge honor! The tournament was from Wednesday-Saturday at 10pm and it was awesome! So much skill and practice and heart! Those kids were great. It was a very well-organized tournament on the part of our office, and I was very blessed to be a part of that.

I also got asked to be a TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR for another volleyball tournament this Saturday! That's a huge thing to put on a resume, and I'm pretty excited to do it. Planning has been a big task but things are wrapping up and now it's just the execution of it. After that, the church kids are away at camp for the weekend so I have Sunday off and I'll get to relax :)

So the moral of the blog post is: life always gets worked out. From stressing out about big decisions to working in an international school, the Lord holds everything and makes things work. He sustains, preserves, and organizes. He's a Doer. The personal moral of the story is that the gospel is spreading in China because the Lord chose to put me here. It's been an honor so far to serve him here.

Burma

Well, I haven't posted here in two weeks and some change. After a lot of big things happening, here I am in Beijing once again on a rainy Sunday afternoon. This will be a long post, so brace yourself. There is just no way to recap all that's happened in a short way. Because there's so much to say, I won't have pictures on this blog, but I'll post them on my Facebook.

Since my last post, we had a couple big tournaments at school. The first one was the big Mama of them all. WABX to the Max. The school I work at is WAB- Western Academy of Beijing. The 'X' is short for 'extracurricular,' so basically all of our season 1 stuff was going. I got to run the volleyball tournament as a site director, so that was a lot of fun! I love having stuff where you have to troubleshoot a lot and solve problems. Tournaments are like that because you've got players and teams wandering around from game to game not sure of where they're going, referees that need help calming down an angry coach, etc. It was a multi-day tournament with volleyball, rugby, tennis, and jazz. We went to the airport to pick up teams on Friday (there were several teams from Shanghai and other parts of the country), and then the games started later that day. It was hectic but very fun! The referees and scorekeepers were all Chinese, so it was pretty fun to deal with them. Funny cultural miscommunications were happening left and right. Here's a funny difference between Chinese and American thinking. If the schedule says the game starts at 2:00, we start warm-ups at 1:45 so that the game starts at 2:00. The Chinese referees thought that they should start warm-ups at 2:00. When you're running a tournament, you've got to keep stuff nice and tight so that things are seamless. Between keeping teams moving and making sure the referees were doing they're jobs properly, my hands were pretty full. It took some patience over the course of 3 days, but it was still a lot of fun.

The following week was pretty dull actually because after WABX to the Max we just took a little break. Chinese National Holiday started the following week, so everyone just wanted it to be here already because there's a work holiday for the whole week! So a few weeks ago, I bought tickets to Burma (most people call it Myanmar today). The holiday worked out to the 60-day mark since I've been here, which is when I had to renew my visa by leaving the country, so it was perfect timing! I had a couple days "off" between school getting out and leaving for Burma, so I took that time to go for a few runs, hang out with some people from church and catch up on stuff. On Thursday at 4:00am, I woke up, got ready, got a cab, went to the airport, flew to Kunming, flew to Yangon, and was in my hotel ready for some adventure by 2:00 that afternoon. 

It was such a great experience. The Burmese people are about as nice as you can imagine. They live under a military regime, and there's not much that they ALL hate other than the government. The country has only been open to tourism for a few years, and those few years, there's been sporadic violence in remote parts. It's been in the news for it's sectarian violence, and there was even a travel warning to US citizens until fairly recently I believe. I know this isn't true by any stretch, but because of all this, I really felt like a pioneer of Western civilization going into Burma. They haven't experienced much tourism and you can tell. Often, you get gawked at and everybody wants to talk to you, but it's very different than any other country I've been to or heard of. I've heard of similar countries, but Burma is just such a virgin tourist country in many ways. 8 or 9 different times, people came up and asked me questions about the English language. Most of them know a bit of it (they were colonized by Britain) but they want to know how to interact with the rise in tourism. Several of them talked to me with notepads and pens in their hands trying to write down every word that I sad. One man in particular had a full notebook of English words that he had learned. They talk to tourists and really soak it up because they're so not used to getting tourists. 

Another thing is that there's no tourist traps. Maybe this has happened to you: "Oh you want to see this historical site? Here, come with me." After the tour, which you didn't ask for, the guide says, "ok, $20 please." Huh? You volunteered your services, and I never agreed to anything. No money for you, punk. That situation NEVER ONCE happened in Burma. Ever. That was a really strange feeling. I felt like I could take people at their word. If they tried to sell me something and I said no, then they would smile and say "have a great day!" That's rare, and for those who haven't travelled much, it makes a tourist smile when they're not followed and harassed for not buying something. They're also very open to talking about religion. I started off in the former capital of Rangoon (the anglicized version of Yangon). There's a big pagoda there, which is basically a religious structure that serves as a place of worship. Hindus and Buddhists have many of them in Southeast Asia. I went to see the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, and I was waiting for the lights to turn on at night, because the pictures of the Shwedagon at night looked amazing, and this Buddhist monk came over to me. He was fairly young, and very talkative. His name was Kyuk Do, and he asked me lots of questions and answered a lot of my own. We talked about Buddhist doctrine and the certainty of salvation after death. It was good dialoguing openly about it with someone. In America, "openness" has become so desired in our relationships (particularly in our relationships with people who believe differently than we do) that it hasn't happened. Openness in America means that you talk about it as little as you can to avoid arguments and you just mentally accept what the other believes. In the East, openness means that it's up for friendly debate and discussion, and they love it. It was that way in Israel as well. 

Rangoon was a lot of pagodas, really nice people, great and easy-to-understand culture, great food, and a legitimately fun time. I got to witness of Christ to several people while I wandered the streets. The people who came to me to speak English involuntarily learned several biblical words and Christian concepts, and they loved every minute of it! They love learning and the Burmese are a very curious people. They prize wisdom, and what they lack in riches and assets they make up for in character. They had a very honest and genuine attitude and a demeanor that showed they were proud to be Burmese and confident in all that they did. That's one thing that's been key to me ever since Marine OCS the last few years: confidence is key. If you don't have confidence, everyone can tell because it comes out in the way you speak, dress, move. They have confidence. As a Christian, I've always tried to find how we can have confidence without being man-centered. If we affirm that we all are sinners in need, there's not much to confident in, let's face it. How do you do it? I think what we call a lack of confidence today in reality is a lack of knowing how to deal with the shame we all have as humans. What we call confidence in our culture is saying "I may not be perfect but I don't even care. I'll establish my own standard to live by." Biblical confidence is the ability to say "yes I am a sinner, yes I make mistakes almost by the minute, but because of Christ, I am not ashamed of those mistakes. It's not just a spiritual confidence. It goes into the confidence we have in our work, whether "spiritual" or "secular." If you have no sin to be ashamed of because Christ took your sin for you, then you are able to carry yourself confidently. Man-centered confidence is fake confidence. It's conjured up; you don't want people to see that you're ashamed of anything that you do. The Burmese people, nice as they are on the outside, struggle with this. They have a low crime rate, but that's because so little of it is reported, and those crimes that are reported are reported to government police, who do a very poor job at enforcement generally. Some of them were very honest about things that they had done in their poverty, like stealing, lying, rape, etc. They have nought and desire much.

From Rangoon I took a train to Bagan, the big temple grounds to the north. Bagan is becoming legendary as an archaeological site. Though what's there today isn't particularly old (800 A.D. is the oldest that I saw), what they're uncovering underneath it is. As we speak, they get further and further with Bagan. Within a few years, Bagan will be a very different place from a tourism perspective than it is now. It is just a little country town with old dirt roads and straw huts. Not many people live there at all. All of the hotels and stores are on a plateau, and the temple grounds are just a few hundred yards down the hill, but they sure are gorgeous. There were several times when I'd climb to the top of a temple or pagoda and there would be no one as far as the eye could see. This place as 2,000 temples and pagodas crammed into an area of just a few square miles. Some are out in the middle of nowhere, but the majority of them are very densely packed. On the train (which by the way was an amazing experience), a man sat across from me who spoke very good English. He asked to practice with me, and asked me about where I worked and what I do. When I told him I coached Cross Country, his eyebrows lifted and he asked "have you ever run a marathon?" Why yes, I have. He told me about the Bagan Temple Marathon, which I already knew about, and I was bummed that it's in November because I was there in mid-October and I'd have to miss it. Bummer. "I have good news! A guy who organizes the race is in town this week for a training run with a few others. It's at 2:00 today and it only costs $7! That includes the run, water, food afterwards, and a bike rental afterwards for a short tour after the race!" So I looked at him in awe and signed up. It was a 15-hour train ride, and Burmese trains don't allow for much sleep, but I got off at 11:00am, got my stuff to the hotel, ate, and met the group at 2:00. We ran the race through the green grass, crops, temples, and pagodas in the heat of the day, and not only did I set a new personal record by a significant amount of time, but it was also the coolest way to see this great place. A wise running sage told me once that the key to fast recovery after a marathon and avoiding joint pain was to walk a TON after the race. It's counterintuitive because you've already gone so far, but if you don't walk a lot, then your muscles and joints tighten up and the blood doesn't have a chance to cool down slowly. Keeping blood moving easily through the joints is key, he said. So going for a couple miles of bike riding and a little bit of walking and climbing the temple stairs was just what I needed. That night, I had no pain at all other than sore muscles. I'd be a little disappointed in myself if I didn't have sore muscles, so that was a good thing. I ate a 2nd dinner after the first post-race meal, drank a beer just to put me fast asleep, read some of a book and went to bed at about 8:30! 

Next morning, it rained, which was ok with me because my bus didn't leave until late that night anyway and I had all day to see the sights again. It let up around 10:30, so off I went! I met a few other travelers and walked around with them. One was from Italy, one from Spain, and another from Austria. Crazy huh? They were all great though. They had been wanderers for 2 years and had a lot of great stories to tell. Bagan, they said, was one of the more extraordinary places they had been. At the top of one of the big temples, a little Burmese boy came up to me and asked me if I wanted to buy a postcard. When I said no, he was a little bit distraught, but he asked me something that really showed true Burmese character: "can you come eat dinner with my family?" Hm....yes. Absolutely. So I took him to the store with me to get gifts for his family, went to my hotel and packed up all my stuff so I'd be ready for the bus, and went to his house. They live right next to the Irrawaddy River, so their house is built up on stilts in case the river floods. Beneath the house they have HUGE pigs with their piglets, and   a ladder that leads up to the house. Meeting this family was so cool. The father was educated in the Netherlands as a doctor, so he spoke great English, and his wife did as well. The 3 younger siblings understood it all, but they couldn't speak it just yet. We talked while I helped the mother cook dinner about politics, religion, the future of Burma in the big picture of Asia, and it was just so cool to learn about the way they all live. The two older kids go to school with the other village kids in a little schoolhouse taught by another mom, and the mom takes care of the two youngest at home. The father is a "village doctor" who doesn't make much money, but the family was a truly contented one in all areas but one: religion, oddly enough. It's always hard to distinguish between a culture and a religion, because often the two are tied. For this man and his wife, they are tied. Studying abroad and away from home, he said, opened his eyes to what Buddhism really teaches, and he said that though he has a great family and an ideal situation, he knows that the culture that he is a part of is being led astray. I was amazed at how honest he was about it. It was almost like he knew exactly what was wrong with his life because then he said "it's as if there's no certainty in Buddhism. I don't know where anybody, myself included, is going after death." Boom. He hit the nail on the head. I got to share the gospel with him and his family, and I wish I had my Bible with me or the name of a church nearby or something, but I felt that I did all I could really do. They left the conversation extremely thankful that I had come. The privilege was honestly all mine. What a hospitable thing to do. The average joe on the street would never be allowed into my house, but they took me right in and listened to all that I had to say as if it was the most valuable stuff they'd ever heard. That was a theme in Burma, not just in spiritual things, but with all things, they were so attentive and focused. At times it felt like their eyeballs were grazing my very soul. They are a very intense people, and they sure do love foreigners. For years, the West has had sanctions against doing trade with the Burmese government, so they continue in poverty because business with the world is cut off. When a white person comes, I am told, it offers the Burmese people hope that one day democracy will come and sanctions will lift. Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and Burmese icon, is their only hope. They all wear shirts with her face on them. Elections are in 2015, and they all are as antsy as can be. They all hate the government and adore her. As diverse as Burma is, they have these two things in common. 

At 7:00 on Tuesday night, I left Bagan for Rangoon again, because my flight left on Thursday morning. We arrived at 4:00am on Wednesday, and because nothing was open, I went to the independence monument in Rangoon, Mahabandoola Garden, and just sat and read and reflected. Elderly people were doing yoga and relaxing, and I got to sit there and watch Rangoon wake up. The sun came up, the breeze started blowing from the sea over the Irrawaddy delta, and it was just gorgeous. I was so thankful to be there with these people. The sights were phenomenal, don't get me wrong. The people are what make Burma; to me at least. Wednesday I met more travelers at a Singaporean coffee shop, and talked with them for a few hours and then went out on my last full day in country. There's a ferry going over the Irrawaddy from Rangoon to Dalla, so I took that and it really is a different place, though the Irrawaddy is only a few hundred yards wide. It is a majority Muslim village I believe, and my tour guides were a young Muslim girl and her two teenage male relatives (brother and cousin I think?). They took me on a motorcycle ride for an hour or so for just a couple dollars and Dalla is a very beautiful place that looks much like the Burmese countryside to the north. Even Rangoon is very green, but Dalla and the countryside both look like endless plains of grass blowing in the wind and all kinds of leafy crops. 

When I got to Burma, I logged onto the wi-fi to check something about my hotel, and realized that I had access to youtube for the first time in 2 months. A girl from our youth group sang a song a while ago called "Lord, I need you" and I really enjoyed it. I looked it up on youtube and probably played it about 20 times throughout the week. It is a modernized version of "I need thee every hour," and it was a good reminder that even in prosperous countries like China and the US, we still need God. In Burma I was reminded that I live my own life too much. I use the word "I" a lot. Sometimes that's ok. The word "I" is needed, but it doesn't have to come up that much. We think about ourselves a lot. That just was very convicting. People don't need to hear about me. They know enough about me because I'm nothing new under the sun. I'm not so different from anybody else. They need to to heard and they need to hear about Christ. Burma, godless as it is, served to make me think about God a lot. I want to go back one day, because there's so much of the country that needs to be seen. There's a lot of backwater places in Burma that would not only be interesting to see but if they are anything like the rest of the Burmese people, they would be a great target group to share the gospel with. The people in the northern Shan hills and those on the borders of India and China have been insurgents and rebels for far too long. There isn't any peace there at all because of how diverse it is, but it really is a great area that is ripe for the harvest. I'll keep my eye on Burma. Many places have caught my eye, but Burma caught it in a very special way. Go, if you can, before it gets too touristy. Observe the culture. People-watch. Go into back alleyways and buy street food. Drink hot soup for breakfast with the old men in the park or by Inya Lake. Ask them about their lives. Share the gospel with them. I'd go so far as to say that they'd like that. 

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.