Lots has been happening but as usual I don’t know how to start.  Warning: attempts at wit may follow.  Blame my parents.

 

Alors, most importantly, this month I saw (one of) the Olympic flame(s).  Actually, I saw two, ‘cos we saw two runners relay from where we were.  That was an amazingly fun morning, involving 22000 police, unknown numbers of the army, and 1860000 Nanjingers.  At 7 I went to meet my friends, and by 10:30 we were leaving the main road ‘cos it (they) had just gone past.  There was an informal uniform going on, which you may have seen on the news – everyone had bought white t-shirts with various Olympic symbols on, most had red hats, some had red trousers, and China flags were flying everywhere.  I myself had managed to find a t-shirt with my current favourite mascot on, Huanhuan, and it fitted me!  When I asked him for the kids size it was a pleasure to see the seller’s face… :)  Crazy Laowai…  To me, I really thought it was an immense privilege to be able to cry “Go China!” (or the equivalent Chinese), although I know some of my waiguoren friends wished it had more of an international feel.  Anyway, I think China is worth supporting.  Zhongguo jiayou!

            I really think Dad blessed that day – he held off the intense heat and sun for that morning, and in fact he even held back the tropical rainstorm that broke into the day at lunchtime.  At that first crash of thunder and absolute downpour (the sky turned blacky-green) it was wonderful (after all, we were inside eating lunch), but when the restaurant started flooding rather rapidly, we scarpered…  And waded home in the almost-flash-flooded roads.  An amazing day, really.  I loved it! :)

 

MCLC is as wondiferous as ever.  Last week I admit I really didn’t want to go (just one of those moments when you don’t want to put up with people), but it’s just so amazing: I soon got over it. :)  Every other week or so I lead one of the small groups, an absolute pleasure and dead easy since we’re going through Acts at the moment with the q+a book.  Next week I’m Narrator Two in a play about Saul, reading Chinese (ie embarrassing myself in front of sixty odd Chinese and the waiguoren whose Chinese beats mine by far).  Should be…fun?  Anyway, I really love talking with young siblings about Dad’s nature and character and will, and I regard it as a real privilege.  Of course, sometimes it’s a bit weird when I’m by far the youngest in the group I’m leading…

 

Actually, happily, most of the Chinese don’t know that.  The Chinese learn a lot more about different cultures than we do, it seems.  They often know that it’s rude to ask Western women how old they are, a situation that I’m perfectly happy with.  They can continue thinking I’ve already graduated – when they know my real age they tend to be a bit overbearing; making sure I know my way home, telling me to be careful altogether too much etc etc.  A few weekends ago I climbed Purple Mountain with a bunch of Chinese and the whole time I was being warned, “small heart!  Small heart!” (‘be careful’ transliterated).  Up until that point I promise I’d been really good and not done anything silly, but I had to give in to my immature self in rebellion and race a guy up some steps at some point…

            Oh, following on from that climb was the first time someone’s offered to walk me home in China.  Aww.  I declined though. :)

 

Recent trips have included: Nanjing’s Presidential Palace, an island in the Yangtze a few times, climbing Purple Mountain, roller skating rinks (yeah man!), Taiping Rebellion museum…  One coming trip that I’m kind of excited about is the possibility of going to the cinema to see a silly film.  My sister sent out some DVDs from home for me, but other than that I’ve not watched any films out here since…Christmas?  If you remember, I decided not to watch any pirate DVDs (seemingly China’s only means!), so seeing a film is rather exciting!

FRISBEE!!  I’m still hopeless, but it’s still fun.  Another concept that the Chinese are new to.  Within minutes of my teaching them how to throw it, I can guarantee that my students are better than me.  I try so hard, but when it comes flying towards me I feel compelled to close my eyes and curl up in a ball and wish myself back in Kansas….

 

Oh, can’t remember if I included this or not last time, but just in case I didn’t…  The earthquake did in fact affect Nanjing, apparently: friends on the twelfth floor felt the building wobble.  I myself was on the way to a coffee shop at the time, completely oblivious.  The thing that really brought home to me the devastation caused was when I saw footage of the three-minute-silence and saw people weeping.  In England we’re so accustomed to the fact that three-minute-silences are tedious rituals for something that happened before even parents were born, but to see real grief made me realise that it isn’t just another disaster the other side of the world in an obscure piece of history.

            But there’s one thing that I cannot stand about this.  China’s culture is very…public, and very critical still.  On the news it shows how much money organisations, companies and individuals have given, and a few are being publicly denounced for being mean.  Its really affecting things – stocks have plummeted in some businesses and websites are appealing for certain products to be boycotted.  In dorms there’s a list up of how much each member of staff has given, in rank order.  Personally, I find it abhorrent and cannot comprehend the justifications for it.  It’s very different from our ‘right hand not letting the left hand know’ attitude and I’m honestly disgusted by the judgementalism coming across.  No, I’m not going to tell you how much I’ve given.  But at the same time the UK is receiving positive media attention because of its generosity – that makes me unusually proud of my homeland.

 

This is a secret, but…I’m afraid I’ve gained weight here.  Only a little – you lot wouldn’t notice (and if you do, don’t tell me so!), but my year-long battle to find less-oily food has clearly not been as successful as I hoped.  My diet at the moment revolves around an oatmeal breakfast, steamed buns for lunch, noodles, dumplings or sometimes rice+dish for dinner, interspersed with fruit, yoghurt and not as many vegetables as I should have.  I do love Chinese food, but everyday eating out…  A lot of friends go to the university canteen (where all the Chinese always go to eat) but it’s just so greasy, I can’t stand it more than once in a while.  Cheap yes, tasty no.  Street food on the other hand is very tasty, but even more oily.

            This will sound really silly, but it’s really been striking me recently how dependent we are on such material things.  Why do we eat so much so often?  So often I eat because I like to rather than because I need to.  I feel like I want more discipline in my life right now.  Don’t worry; I’m not starving myself.  I just think we’ve lost the concept of ‘need’.  At one point this year I told a friend that I intentionally wasn’t eating breakfast or lunch that day, and she started lecturing me as if within hours I would collapse from starvation.  Needless to say I survived the experience having gained more than I lost.

            I’m aware that I shouldn’t talk about wishing to control weight and skipping meals as if they were linked, so be assured that I’m not a muppet.  I’m merely commenting on the philosophical tension between hunger and appetite, need and desire.

 

This really is a confession time.  Next one: every Sunday morning I get up and wish I didn’t have to go out.  I’m so glad there’s only one meeting here, that there’s just one waiguoren family in Nanjing, but I don’t really feel a part of it.  I don’t know them enough, I don’t spend enough time with them, and I don’t appear to have a place within the group particularly.  In that respect, I’m looking forward to returning home.  It’s especially ridiculous because every week the teaching is challenging and the singing is passionate.  Part of the issue is that this summer has been full of baby showers and bridal showers: if I go then I have to join in embarrassing games and watch others do embarrassing things (but why aren’t they embarrassed?), if I don’t go then I’m embarrassed because I’m not supporting my friends.  For some inexplicable reason the Americans seem addicted to losing face.  Je ne comprends pas, really.  Only a month of Nanjing left though.  When I come back I can have a fresh start, so I’ll look forward to then.

 

Three weeks of studying left, then famille comes out, then back in July.  Enjoy missing your beautiful dreamy perceptions of me, for soon you might have to put up with the reality again.  Aha!

May has arrived, amazingly rapidly.  It’s been beautiful here, really sunny.  At the moment it’s about 27 degrees I think, and today was oh so humid.  So, one of the joys of Spring (well, Summery really) is parks!  Nanjing has a year pass that covers the majority of its parks, and I’ve been making full use of it!  In the afternoons, when I don’t have lectures (and particularly now that I don’t have evening classes as well), I like to cycle or grab a bus to one of the many green splotches on my map.  It’s nice to go with someone, but most of the time it’s just textbooks that accompany me.  A very unChinese thing to do – to sit on the grass and study or read.  Parks are for taichi, kites, cards, chess, or dancing lessons, aren’t they?  And, it’s very hard to escape people.  Even in the most secluded of spots some bunch of rowdy students will appear, or maybe a pensioner with their radio turned on loud will saunter past.  Waiguoren can find it very hard to get used to.  I find it very hard to get used to.

            So, the May holiday.  Five-One, as it’s called (May 1^st), is a day off, and Nanda very nicely gave us the day before off as well as the country-wide day after (ie from Wednesday to Friday off).  Except, of course, you have to make up your holiday time…so Sunday morning was in classes again!

            The Wednesday was spent on a trip to General’s Mountain (overstated – really just a ridge of hillocks), just under an hour away by coach.  My friend and I ended up leaving the crowd of fellow students behind as we scarpered up the nearest paths into the depths of the forest…  So a morning of climbing hills later (all the rest of the group had been hanging out at the lake the whole time and were bored out of their minds, as I learnt afterwards), and lunch came perched in a giant statue’s lap.  Then, of course, we scrambled up the first hillock again to a slab of rock we had seen up the top, and there we dossed and dozed away a few hours (really, napping is normal!  Chinese normally have a two hour lunch break for the purpose, and friends with Korean roommates dislike certain hours of the afternoon when they have to creep around in semi-darkness).  Thankfully, by that time, the sun was not quite so blazing and a breeze had picked up.  And just as we were making our way back to the coach it began to rain – perfect!  All in all, a really lovely day out.

            The Thursday was spent in Suzhou, somewhere I’ve been before and will go to again.  It’s a city an hour or so away by train, famed for beautiful gardens and beautiful woman.  I went when it was snowing, and this trip was 30-something degrees, but each season has its advantages.  This time there were far too many people, but I was with a group who still managed to have a whale of a time (an American guy and three Chinese girls) – incredible amounts of silliness, including a very welcome brief waterfight.  It was a long day though, leaving Nanjing at 8am and getting back 11am ish.  Sadly, no naps that day.

            And the day after I…oh, we went cycling!!  My after-MCLC-supper group (2 Americans, 2 Chinese et moi) rode out over the bridge to the other side of the Yangtze and explored the countryside.  That was the first time I’ve really got out of cities here, and it was beautiful.  Very similar to France in some ways actually…  The day included bee stings, brief encounters with ‘10-step’ snakes (as opposed to 100-step snakes – ie. If they bite you’re not going to get very far…), and the most wonderful swim in a lake.  That was possibly the best bit, as forbidden as it may be!

            And that night was a wedding rehearsal (graced by the presence of a certain sun-burnt clarinettist), so another late night.  That night I asked a friend for the time, honestly expecting bedtime – turned out to be a mere 8.30…I was completely exhausted!

            So, as often follows a wedding rehearsal, the Saturday held a wedding in store.  It was loooovely!  And everyone looked beautiful, and the confetti was bubbles, and the both sets of parents managed to come over, and there were some really amazing solos (I’ve learnt here that every Philippino is naturally musical).

            So that was my May holiday.  I trust it rained on the bank holiday? :)

 

MCLC Wednesday night studies are simply wondiferous.  From now on I don’t know each week whether I’m doing any form of leading or not - I’ve now completed all the song-teachings on my rota and as of yet I haven’t been asked to do any of the passage teaching at the beginning (about 40 minutes of standing at the front going through that night’s study), but the small group leaders are decided on the night, depending on the number of waiguoren there.  Normally we split into five groups of maybe ten or so, and often there are some groups with two waiguoren, which is great.  The Chinese may be embarrassed to speak because of purely cultural reasons, or because they’re afraid they’ll get it wrong, or because they’re afraid they’ll get the English wrong, so to have an extra waiguoren who can be picked on for example answers is great.  If you’re leading then you pick on the waiguoren when starting discussion, and if you’re not leading then you volunteer hard-to-get answers or even the obvious ones that no one wants to say.

            I’ve survived each leading-songs box on my rota, so now I’m free as a bird…  But of course, despite the lack of formal involvement, I’ve been curtailed into role-plays, telling relevant stories at specific meetings, and my current homework of coming up with a list of 100 memory verses…

            I honestly love MCLC nights, mainly because the brothers and sisters have such amazing stories and faith, from all sorts of backgrounds.  There’s a really funny 81-year-old called George who always uses the English idioms he’s been learning.  Damini is my shopping buddy, a high school girl.  David is a computer programmer who is part of the after-MCLC-second-dinner bunch.  Melody is middle-aged, really quiet, but oh so wise.  Linda is the woman who emails and texts me and launches responsibility on my poor self.  They’re all wonderful!

            And every week it seems someone asks me when I’m returning to China again, and I don’t know!  I don’t want to go home!

 

At the moment my reading of books is almost daily again, which is lovely.  The reason being, I don’t have a short second-rate book to whizz through, but a whole anthology of American literature that I have temporarily stolen from a brother.  He’s done a distance-learning American literature module this year, and since he’s finished with his book now…  Shockingly, I’m enjoying the poetry, but as usual the short stories with an agenda don’t impress me so much, particularly the feminist ones.  So, authors that I might look up more of currently include: Stephen Crane, Mark Twain (I want to read his Letters From The Earth – I read a few chapters of it in the anthology and was really disappointed with such an esteemed children’s author’s outlook), Henry James, William Dean Howells, Billy Collins and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

            If you want to read a really wonderful novel though, pick up Peace Like A River.  Really, really well done: feasible characters (though implausible plotline) and great messages coming out of it.  But I cried at the end!

 

Something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about here, and been quite dissatisfied with, is friendships and how impossible it can be to spend time in groups.  Recently though it’s got a whole load better – I’m really pleased.  A bunch of Sunday crew friends went to a roller skating rink the other day, which was crazily fun!  That made me really pre-emptively-nostalgic for China though.  When I was skating alone near the beginning an unknown Chinese girl grabbed my hand and we skated together for a while.  Throughout the rest of the evening I felt really free to grab random girls who weren’t enjoying it as much as they should have been.  And the other day I had a race with a passing boy in the street…  And then I was at a concert and was dancing sillily with some little girls…  I just can’t imagine being able to get away with half the things I do here back in England.

            At the same time I’ve been looking at next year’s modules and it’s been making me really sad.  I can’t really bear the thought of staying in England, and looking at some of the university things scares me.  Like, trying to work out a feasible way of earning money to pay back student loans.  That and I’m seriously considering a Teaching Modern Languages module, to add another string to my bow, but certainly not to teach.  In worse moments I’ve envisioned myself becoming what I always hoped I wouldn’t be – teaching, just following the inevitable path of a languages student.  Makes me wish I’d done something useful at uni!

 

Oh yes, that concert.  That was wonderful – we were worried that it might be called off at the last minute.  A couple of concerts organised in the past few years have been cancelled suddenly by the authorities, but Steven Curtis Chapman continued unhindered to present a really well-done concert.  We had a university auditorium, filled with a lot of university students but also young families.  It was really wonderful – although the translator didn’t quite translate some of the stuff fully, there was a lot that was stated very clearly through translated lyrics on a projector.

 

But after all that rambling, I want to finish with: I’ve told myself some important facts of life.  Before I came away someone told me that she reckoned I smile so much so of course I would love China.  Recently internally I haven’t felt like that at all – I’ve been too worried about all sorts, but that is not the way we’re meant to live.  At the skating rink the girl who attached herself to me said I seemed peaceful (seemed ironic to me!), and the day before that another girl had told me that I’m ‘special’ because I seem happy and sing at everything.  So my conclusion is, it’s easy to fool some people all of the time…  No, seriously, we’re meant to be at peace, we are certainly not meant to worry about tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that.  It is grace that means some of the people I run across don’t see some of my silly inner turmoils, but I want to live up to that completely.  Scrap this angst lark; there are better things to live for.

I’m still alive!  It’s OK!

 

Et voila, the end of April has arrived.  Funny.  Der Stunde fliegt, or something like that.  So now I have demonstrated my woeful German, I can tell you that Chinese is not bad, French is…well, if I could remember it, it could be not bad too!  I haven’t forgotten it completely – it comes back when someone says the right word first, but conversations with Francophone buddies usually have French until I lose a word, and then Chinese comes in, and when that fails then I have to resort to English.

                  I’m going to be so sad when I can’t speak Chinese everyday.  Of course, I’m pretty rubbish still, but sometimes I can spend all day with Chinese friends and feel like I know what’s going on (though the brief conversations with shop assistants can cause that tower to topple in a matter of seconds).

 

There are only 6 weeks of studying at Nanda left, and I’m really pleased about that sometimes to be honest!  I do love Nanjing; it’s my home, and I could quite happily and enthusiastically live here a whole lot longer, but right now studying is frustrating me.  Just had mid-semesters, including the dreaded HSK, and I can now tell you that the HSK was indeed worth the dread.  The practise and the classes weren’t that bad, were even fun, but the final climax (or ‘crisis’ as in 19^th century literature, apt in more than one sense) was pretty abysmal.  I don’t have high hopes for the results, and am already considering sitting the June HSK.

                  Here’s a funny concept for you – it was also on a Sunday morning.  There you go – exams at the weekend.  Not so uncommon here.  In fact there are three holidays throughout the year, and Nanda has graciously given us a few days extra off at the beginnings so that we can make them up on the weekends.  Most attentive of them.  So this Sunday morning I’m also involuntarily engaged, making up for the May holiday.

 

I’m cemented into the Wednesday night studies (when foreigners do English studies of that permanent bestseller for Chinese) but haven’t been at the Sunday meeting in a while for various reasons that have popped up.  When I’m not there on a Sunday morning I try to get to a Chinese meeting, usually mass.

Home group last semester was big and thus ‘cosy’.  There were twenty of us in a small living room, so this semester ‘coincidence’ has led a lot of siblings to start their own, or go to baby groups.  Now at home group we can all sit on chairs!  It’s sad of course – I really miss spending time with a lot of the gang, but things do change.  Cell groups are meant to grow and split.

                  Sundays had a hard time a few months ago.  Dad and I were having a long debate about why I go to meetings.  Well, maybe it was about self-worth.  If they don’t want me to contribute anything, do I still want to be there?  It kind of turned into a very mild form of ‘how-to-cope-when-you-disagree-with-your-brother’.  So after feeling pathetically sorry for myself for a while I finally got a grip, spoke to one of the leaders and found myself feeling a lot chirpier about it all.

Have I told you about Wednesday nights?  OK, MCLC is one of the Chinese permitted groups, and on Wednesday nights they host an English study for Chinese, led by a few foreigners from the international group.  One of the foreigners teaches a hymn or two, then another will teach (at the moment we’re on Acts) for a while and then we split off into small groups and provoke discussion.  There are some really committed Chinese, some exploring, some who have been siblings for a matter of months, and some who just come curious about learning English.  Wonderful!

                  Afterwards a few Americans and Chinese head out for our second dinner (supper?) at one of the street food places.  Lovely!  Getting there is fun as well – it’s a few blocks away, so somehow we squish four or five people onto a few bikes.  I’m really going to miss perching on the back of bikes, so I think you guys should get into the habit of it for when I get back!

 

Oh, yes, that’s what you would like to know (I think).  That is, if you would like to know something that Dad has been showing me, here you go.  One of the areas that has been through an overhaul this year is the aspect of leadership.  I came out expecting to be leading things, and rapidly found myself doubting myself and what I’m doing and why, because of the lack of opportunity.  It got to the point a few months ago when I doubted woman’s ability to lead (Sunday meetings are pretty much men only).  Thus ensued lots of asking Dad, reading up on it, thinking I’d been dreadfully wrong and arrogant, and then just as suddenly I was being asked to lead things again.

                  So why did that happen?  Identity stuff (can I do on my own what I want to teach people?), and for Dad to take my assumptions and give me his gifts, I suspect.  You know, that analogy about how we can’t accept Dad’s presents if we’re already clinging on to something.

                  Although, if you check out the OT, there’s some stuff in there (3^rd book, me thinks) about not coming to Dad empty-handed.  He does have expectations of us, though they’re not in the form of slaughtered animals anymore.

 

Right at this moment I’m in a spiritual trough.  Not that I’ve given up any of my good habits, just that right now I’m not hearing from Dad so much and I’m hungry for more.  One of the better kinds of trough.

 

You have now experienced the earliest Easter you ever will.  The next time it will be that early is, I’m led to believe, in 2228.  Sadly I was almost surprised on that Sunday morning when I looked out over the family and realised that people were dressed up a bit more…oh, that’s why!  The lack of extra meetings for festivals is still the thing that throws me!

            But Easter was special for other, slightly more selfish reasons…  On Good Friday I aged dramatically, advancing by a year.  It was funny all week, when siblings were asking me how old I would be and suddenly discovering that I was much younger than they had thought!  Most of the gang here that I hang out with are somewhere between 23 and 30, so it was a bit disconcerting when the truth was revealed, that I’m a mere babe, and they treated me a bit differently.  Of course there were plus sides to it as well… “Cycle a bit slower, I’m only little!”  To be honest now I’m glad that the birthday is all out of the way so we can forget I’m younger than them again and all shall be normal.

            So, for two days I ate extraordinary amounts of cake with various friends.   A coursemate and I have a favourite ‘european cake shop’ that only does muffins and cookies really, but they’re so nice and not extravagantly priced, so a lovely a few hours was spent in there.  Friday dinner was at a favourite Xinjiang place (ie. Halal food, hand-pulled noodles, Chinese style naan bread, really really tasty tomatoey spicy sauces).  At home group on Friday night an Australian friend had made hot cross buns and stuck a candle into the pile!  Saturday night after band practise I, American brother, American couple and a Chinese sister went to an Italian restaurant together (mmm, lasagne!!) and then back to the couple’s apartment to play a board game and eat chocolate mousse and strawberries, joined by another American and a Chinese.  All beautifully wonderfully lovely.

                  And I’m so privileged in that our culture allows us to be so independent so young.  So many of my Chinese friends are older than me but still living with parents, being pressured to marry and then provide grandchildren so their then old parents will have something to do in the afternoons.  I couldn’t stand it!  There is honouring of parents, and then there’s being under their thumb…

PS. Haven't been getting some post (up to a grand total of 5 that I know about), so excuse me if I don't reply to anything. Probably is just that I'm lazy, but might just be able to blame China Post/Royal Mail.

Good evening, and I’m sorry for the long long time of no speaking.  Maybe if I grovel you could find it in your heart to forgive me?

 

Since we last spoke I’ve had two months winter holiday (from just before Christmas to just after New Year’s) and it’s been wonderful, but it’s equally wonderful to start this semester again.  Really lovely. :)  So, that means that I’ve been to Yangzhou, Qufu, Taian, Suzhou, Zhouzhuang, Hangzhou (on a Sunday club retreat), Guilin and Yangshuo, and very very briefly Shanghai.  In English, I’ve been travelling to a lot of places nearby (that’s relative – they’re still the length of England away!) and then a few places right down in the bottom left of China, near Vietnam.  They were gorgeously May/June weather (beautiful!), whilst here in Nanjing it snowed and snowed and snowed.  In fact, they claimed the most snow in fifty years.  It was a bit of a shock to the system to get on the train in the ‘summer’ and get off in winter again!

            In brief, I’ll quickly review each of the mini voyages for you so you have a vague idea of what I’ve been doing:

• Yangzhou – with Ailin, staying at the YHA, lots of gardens and part of the great canal.  Sights of interest included dogs in various forms, lots of pagodas around the beautiferous Slender West Lake, and ‘three-wheeled-vehicles’ – rickshaws – in abundance (despite the stereotypes of China, they’re in comparatively few places).  Yangzhou is actually only a few hours away from Nanjing by coach, was cold, and is famed for Yangzhou fried rice.
• Qufu + Taian – again, with Ailin, staying at the YHAs, 12-14 hours north by train.  Qufu is the home of Confucius but was gorgeously quiet since it was out of season: it was almost unChinalike it was so quiet – strange!  No horns, fewer shopowners calling to us, same amount of taxi drivers trying to get our attention though.  It has lots of boring temples, a very expansive ‘mansion’ for want of a better word, and is clean (!!!) and generally a nice place to be for a few days.  Taian, on the other hand, is a huge sprawling city that is incredibly Chinalike (lots of independent noodle/dumpling places, potholes everywhere, shops everywhere, hostel signs everywhere, very loud, but as always very safe).  Actually there is no YHA there, so we just turned up and picked a place to stay.  That was fun. :) Of course, the main attraction is not the city at all, but what’s planted next door…Taishan – the mountain, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in fact.  And we climbed up it, and that was the highlight of my whole holidays, because it was gorgeous.  And it was literally freezing – my hair froze+thawed+refroze, our water froze, we were climbing (up the typical Chinese stone staircase of course) into a snow cloud, and it was amazing!  At the top is a little village where we had (very very tasty) soup, and then we collapsed back down again, all in 7 hours.  Wonderful. :)
• Suzhou + Zhouzhuang – not with Ailin but with a Chinese friend from home group – Sam, staying at the YHA, two hours away by train, between Shanghai and Nanjing.  Suzhou is supposed to be filled with pretty gardens and pretty silk and pretty women.  I can’t comment on the women obviously, I don’t know a thing about silk, but the gardens were OK.  It was very cold though – that was the first snowfall, and it’s hard to stay warm when you’re moving between gardens+unheated food places+lakes+unheated YHA.  The museum there is great though – for one thing it’s warm!  Zhouzhuang is a mini little village in the Suzhou area, very famous within China and filled with (Chinese) tourists, and very reminiscent of some kind of mini-Venice.  It’s built on canals, and is made up of those and narrow wonky alleys alternately.
• Hangzhou - I didn’t see much of Hangzhou, but it’s got some shan (you should know that word by now – mountains) and a famous hu or two (lakes, that is).  Actually I was there on a conference and it snowed and snowed.  We and the other fellowships had a lot of trouble with transportation.  For NICF, our 4/5 hour coach trip turned into 14, but our problems were nowhere near as bad as GuangzhouICF (remember the half a million stuck in that train station?  30 of those were on the way to Hangzhou).  All of the five fellowships couldn’t convince coaches to come out as far as the hotel though, so we all got tourist boats across the lake, breaking up the ice as we went!  Dad was gracious and the five days was filled with challenges and his glory.  Hopefully I’ll stick some more up about it at some point, but in the meantime – it was brilliant.
• Guilin + Yangshou – down in Guangxi province, way way down, 26 hours by train.  I call all the other trips ‘travelling’, because this trip was the ‘holiday’ – lots of shopping and eating and dossing around!  I may have gone slightly overboard on the earrings, but I assure you that every pair is different!  And yes, we had breakfast outside of a café, French styley, in the sun.  And it was beautifully wonderful.  Yet filled with waiguoren, mostly European – that was hard to get used to.  They were balanced out by the overdose on shan. :) I went with some of the Sheffield lot and then parted from them – they went on to sunbathe on Hainan, so I went back to Guilin for a few more days, then Shanghai for a few hours, then home again.

Wow.  Have a rest, take a break.

And between each trip I was returning to my beloved Nanjing, enjoying it’s snow (feets and feets of it!) and then enjoying it’s sun (Aprilish for one whole week), clambering up shan and strolling round hu, and enjoying various festivals in various forms.

 

…but I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I was to begin lectures again!  Seriously, I was absolutely desperate to learn something towards the end of the travelling lark – my Chinese really dropped in ability and fluency, and it’s amazing how quickly you forget how to write characters (although recognising them isn’t such an issue).  So I cut my holidays short, got back a week before lectures and bought the textbooks, and then dived in!  And it’s wonderful!  I LOVE learning Chinese, as stressful as it gets sometimes, right now it’s my purpose and strangely enough, I’m well suited for it.  Funny how these things work.

            So, I was thinking loads over the holidays about what to do this semester – teach or learn even more Chinese, and the decision was made pretty easily.  The desires of my heart were definitely given to me. :)  I’m now in A3 class (levels are ‘high’, A, B, C, and D, each with two or three classes in), and next month I’m going to take on extra classes because in May I want to sit the HSK exam.  That is, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (Chinese Level Exam), a qualification set by Beijing Uni, recognised on CVs, incredibly cruelly hard, but (and this is the bit I’m really looking forward to) requires a month’s worth of two hour lessons five days a week.  Crazy?  Maybe, but I just want to devour the language right now!  Unbelievably I’m also considering doing a few extra classes (sadly Chinese History clashes, but there is an Overview of China class that I want to try out), but we’ll see if those work out or not: they’re aimed at ‘high’ students, which means a whole ton of work on my part.

            I haven’t actually lost my mind – I entirely blame whoever was bearing me in mind at the end of last semester, ‘cos right now, for once, I’m actually ahead of the classwork.  Miracles do indeed happen!

 

My daddy has been teaching me lots and lots and lots, and I can’t really remember as much of it as I should right now.  Funnily enough, most of it is about coping with people (OK, so if you know Dad at all then that’s not so surprising – he’s very fond of people, it turns out).  On the first couple of trips I was learning a lot about patience.  Specific moments of training-on-the-job included when Ailin didn’t want to climb any further on Taishan and I, feeling most unvirtuous, had to stop myself from running up without her, but my voyages were littered with moments when I realised how selfish I am and I had to put myself aside for a moment.

Other lessons I’m going through at the moment include: Getting On Your Knees For Others a whole lot more (wonderful when you actually do it!), revising all that stuff about Guys (I’d rather not, thanks, but apparently I haven’t learnt enough on that subject), How To Make A House A Home (I’ve decided I’m not going to move room/flat/house; I’m going to move home, which means: tea, books, candles, flowers, verses) and Living Life Daily (haven’t got very far into that one, but it’s very encouraging – when you’re told to stop wasting your time that must mean there’s a purpose for you, right?).

And I was wasting my time.  I felt like a waste of space, and I wasn’t doing much very well last term.  I felt a bit like I had cleared off to the desert and sat about for forty years.  Then at the retreat Dad really reminded me of the promise that there is a purpose for my life, and then just before lectures began he told me again to get off my backside and do sommat useful.  OK, so maybe those weren’t quite the words he used (I’m sorry Amy, but he just doesn’t have a northern accent), but that was his yisi.  And so I texted a few people and arranged to meet up with them, and then headed out to a Chinese (legal) Sunday meeting (I won’t confess how much I didn’t understand because I wouldn’t want to shatter your illusions of my fluency).  Since then, as a direct result of that Sunday I’ve ended up accidentally texting or meeting people at needed times, and generally finding myself in situations where now Dad is coming through and before he wasn’t.  One excellent example is that I was out a couple of days later with some Chinese girls and I got to tell the good news for the first time to non-believing Chinese.  That was a privilege that I really wasn’t expecting – we were talking about boyfriends and then the ideal boyfriend, and then whether I have to follow rules or not, and suddenly I was telling them about the beginning of time and how the rules were abolished by a deeper magic!  Again, I can only blame someone else’s pleas because I had absolutely no intention or idea of telling them until I blurted it out!  May there be many more accidental blabs.

 

So, here’s the best bit coming up.  Would you please bear in mind:

1.    Studying.  I want to learn and I want to stay wanting to learn, and I want to learn LOADS.

2.    Ailin – she can’t see Dad past all the murky and mean stuff of life, but she will never find anything good until she does.

3.    My relationships with various people around me - that I keep putting the effort into each relationship, particularly the harder ones limited by language/culture/distance.

 

Love to you all.

 

Since the New Year I’ve just been pottering around, going to museums in Nanjing, going to parks, reading loads and loads, that sort of thing.  Yesterday I got back from Yangzhou, a nearby city, where I was just spending a few days away with a Sheffield girl.  That was really good fun, although Yangzhou itself turned out to be a bit of a one-horse town.

It does have a lake, a few Chinese gardens, and part of the Grand Canal running through it, but there isn’t loads.  We stayed in a YHA, complete with bar-almost-reminscent-of-an-English-pub and a small dog running around.  The dog, it turned out, just days before had been named Rosie, and was the first dog I’ve petted since coming (as far as I know I haven’t come away from the experience with fleas, worms, ticks or rabies).

 

            On the first night my friend and I found a hotpot (huoguo, ‘fired pot’) restaurant (normally it entails choosing from a list of raw ingredients; they bring out a tray and stick a bowl of constantly-boiling water in the middle of the table, then you just dip veg, meat, doufu, whatever you’ve ordered into the water yourself and then fish it out again – it’s nice for a change, but can lack flavour) with a new kind of hotpot on offer.  The kind we chose was ganguo, ‘dry pot’, a first for both of us.  It turned out to be more like a constantly frying bowl of chopped meat-on-the-bone and vegetables, with some spicy sauce in the bottom.  We chose pork, and it really was delicious.  Honestly, it was absolutely amazing: succulent, delectable, verging on heavenly.  There was some kind of veg in it that we didn’t recognise, so I asked the waiter to write it down for me, but initially he misunderstood and wrote down the name of the dish instead.  Fortunately only I could see it – if my friend had known what she was eating she would have refused any more!

I admit that I had a brief war within myself, with thoughts like “how can you keep eating it??” and “wow, it’s absolutely amazingly delicious, how have I not eaten it before??” and “I wonder what part this bit is?”  Obviously the ‘keep-eating’ motion was passed, because it was absolutely scrumptious.  Every time my friend said how good it tasted I wondered how on earth I was going to tell her what kind of ‘pork’ it was.  There were also moments when I couldn’t eat a certain bit because I could clearly recognise where it came from – namely three smaller bones and a leathery bit of meat on the underside…  Overall though, I confess I was really enjoying it, wondering when I would next get to eat it, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation and my uncompassionate self.

All the while, my friend was saying how tasty it was.  So later on, I asked her what sorts of food she would refuse to eat, and she listed a few: dog, cat, horse etc…  And then we got back and played with Rosie a bit more…  And I began to feel worse and worse that I hadn’t told my friend before, but at some point I mustered the courage to tell her how great Rosie would taste if we stuck her in a small wok.

 

Happily, my friend did not burst into tears, faint, become hysterical, do anything overly womanly, and eventually she did begin to see the funny side.  Of course, dog tastes nothing like pork, but how many times do you question what you’re eating?  So now I know the difference and next time I’m going to really enjoy it from the beginning, and maybe even ‘accidentally’ order some!  Be warned: if you have a dog, it’s probably best not to invite me round for dinner.

Voila, the long-awaited 2007-to-2008 addition has arrived.  I know you were all looking forward to it.

 

First off, most importantly: books!  Some really good ones I first read in 2007 would be…

1.     Catch 22 Why had I put it off for so long?!  Actually, I know the answer to that – it looked scarily big and grey, but it turns out that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  It’s really witty, really ludicrous, and an excellent read. It’s about an American airforce squadron in the Second World War, made up of a bunch of men who don’t really want to be there.  Each chapter talks about a member of the squadron, telling all sorts of entirely ridiculous stories.  The main character is Yossarian, who crops up in the tall tales and whom we keep finding in the hospital due to some minor ailment and a desperation not to fly.  Definitely should be read!

2.     Salmon Fishing In The Yemen A summer read that really amused me.  It’s entirely absurd, about a fisheries scientist approached by the British government and asked to help a Yemeni sheikh introduce salmon to a river that’s dry for half the year.  It’s narrated in various ways, through emails from person to person, through diaries, through phone conversations, and is entirely absurd from start to finish (a favourite moment is the description of would-be Arab assassin pretending to be a goat herder by a Scottish loch).  The end is fantastic – one of those finales that you cannot even begin to guess at.  So, if you want to read something light-hearted and nonsensical, this is a great one!

3.     Five Quarters Of The Orange A better-than-normal novel from Joanne Harris, set in Second World War France.  It tells of a friendship between some children and a German soldier.  Although it’s clearly stolen inspiration from other books, I’m really looking forward to rereading it.

4.     North And South I really enjoyed reading this.  I admit it can be a bit ridiculously girly, like all classics from that period, but it also includes all the stuff about strikes and some Orwellian suicidal bits for good measure.  Personally I really liked it at the time, and now I’d like to reread it.  There’s something British and homely about it – reading about a girl who leaves her southern world for the northern realms of England sounds familiar (!), and I’d like to reread about her culture shock and her friends that she makes, and how gradually she falls in love more and more with Milton and its ways, defending it to her London friends.  I’d really love to discuss it with a sister I have here, so I’ll have to dig around for it here.  There’s a chance I might find it in the foreign language bookshop.

 

I guess next comes films, so here are a few I really enjoyed in this past year:

1.     Amazing Grace A really good, clear narration of how faith should affect our whole lives, even our careers.  William Wilberforce learnt from and was inspired by the people around him, and then took that into politics.  I hope that there are politicians like that at the moment, and that up-and-coming politicians are being prepared in their hearts to step forward like Wilberforce did, but we commoners should be aware that we’re meant to do the same in our own circles, as well as support friends in higher circles.

2.     The Painted Veil I really love this film!  It’s a bit too mushy at points, and I was disappointed by how vivid and vulgar it is in some places, but I still like it loads.  It’s about a loveless marriage taken into deeper China, into a cholera-infected village.  I think I appreciated it because I’ve been studying bits of that area of history, and the fact that the film uses English (obviously), Chinese (I understood some!) and French (there’s a bunch of French nuns involved, but I can’t remember whether I understood or not!).  So it’s possible that currently you guys may overlook its wonderfulness, but once you’re spent a year studying Chinese, French and Chinese history maybe you won’t take it for granted so much?  Oh, and I almost forgot to mention – the soundtrack is really gorgeous.  That makes the film ‘great’ in my rating system!

3.     Traffic To tell you the truth, I’m not sure when this film came out, but I saw it on this side of the world.  It’s about drug trafficking from Mexico to America, and it’s amazingly good.  There are moments when innocents should turn away, but each scene has a purpose.  It’s a really good film to discuss afterwards, because of how it’s cut and filmed as well as the subject matter.  There are also moments when you get incredibly confused as to whom is working for who, but that’s also intentional I think.  Well worth a look.

 

Probably the biggest difference between now and a year ago is that last year I was struggling to cope with five hundred or so pieces of Chinese vocabulary.  Now I supposedly now five times that (N.B. one word is normally made up of two characters, so that does not mean I know 2500 characters – I know 2500 combinations of fewer characters).  Either way though, that’s pretty encouraging, right?

2007 has taught me a lot about grace, and a lot about calling, and I think those are very linked.  We each have a purpose but only through grace – without grace we would all be worthless.  It is by grace and love and mercy we are chosen, reflecting that grace, love and mercy back up to Dad.  Isn’t it amazing that he chooses to use us, to act through us, to live in us?

            I think personally Dad has been giving me tasters of my future throughout 2007.  He’s been showing me titbits of all sorts of potentialities and through that I’ve seen, for example, miracles happening around me, and I’ve been able to tell friends and then acquaintances about Dad’s love for them.  I’ve seen predictions fulfilled and pointing me onwards, and I’ve met and loved and been loved by some amazing siblings from all sorts of ends of the earth.  Dad has taught me more about intercession, about discerning his voice, about being whole in all aspects, about families, about teaching others.  Dad has changed many positions of my heart as well – preconceptions about different ages, about different nationalities, about different ways to relate to them.  So now I can enter 2008 knowing I don’t have a clue about much but he knows everything!

 

This morning there have been very loud…air raid sirens??  Honestly, I really don’t know.  But they were loud and fairly persistent.  And yet everything seems intact, so we’ll assume that whatever it was, it wasn’t that important.

            Actually it turned out to be the memorial for the Rape of Nanking.  I thought that was on the 18^th December, but apparently it’s the 13^th.

 

This week I was reading a chapter of a book about talking to Dad, and something really struck me, so I’m going to assume that you would like to know.  Hao bu hao?

                  Last night I texted a friend to ask if he had already eaten.  What I meant was, “can we eat together tonight?” but I wanted him to invite me instead of vice versa.  His reply was “not yet”.  He knew exactly what I wanted him to say and was deliberately being obtuse to joke around a bit.  So me being one of those far-too-forward westerners, I replied something along the lines of “Aww, what a lovely suggestion, I would love to eat dinner with you!”

                  Let me explain where this is going.  We like it when someone invites us to spend time with him or her because it means that they like to spend time with us.  The act of spending time together improves a relationship, but so does the act of invitation.  Dad tells us to ask him for things “continually”.  “The father already knows your needs before you even ask” but when we ask him then we’re saying, “I really like spending time with you, I really like knowing that my possessions are gifts from you, and I recognise that you can and want to give.”

                  We can be entirely confident in asking because Dad has already made the first move – he wrote an entire library describing how much he loves us, before we were even born!  He’s already invited us, he anticipates our invitations and he anticipates spending time and giving gifts to us.

                  So, what have you asked for recently?

 

Ooo, a sudden flash of inspiration has just told me what to tell you.  The Chinese can’t comprehend why foreigners seem to enjoy sitting on the floor so much (if you’ve seen the amount of dust and dirt on Chinese roads then you’d understand their abhorrence of it!).  Actually we know that that’s mostly one of those baseless stereotypes, but I’m not helping dispel the myth!  Tonight I got post (woo!) and I opened it there in the lobby – my friend was loitering so I sat down next to him.  Kind of – I rejected the spare chair next to him and chose a spot just in front of a heater instead.  In stark contrast I was playing a game with the kids today which involved sitting on the floor, but they all squatted instead.  They’ve all been told off enough times in their 4 years that they know the floor is not a substitute for a chair – maybe we waiguoren (me waiguoren) should learn from their good example!

 

This week I realised that the Chinese who come to our home group will have their very first Christmas this year!  I’d really like to give them ‘stockings’, so now I wish I’d asked you guys to send me chocolate coins and other silly little Western things.  Next week I’ll have to go and see what silly little things I can find in China instead.  There are some foreign import food shops around, so I may be able to get hold of mince pies or something.  We’ll see.

 

Next week is the end of lectures, which means exams (prepared? don’t be silly!), three of them.  At the moment I’m grossly under prepared, so that should be exciting.  Also next week is the end of the teaching semester.  I understood my final class to be on Monday, but it turns out to be on Wednesday instead.  That’s unfortunate because I have an exam on Wednesday that finishes at 4, making getting to the kindergarten on time a bit tighter.  It also turns out to be a ‘parents’ meeting’, which means that all the mummies and daddies will be watching the class.  Actually I’ve been quite fortunate in that the kindergarten I work at doesn’t expect parents to sit in - I could have been assigned to a place where they would watch every lesson.  That possibility really scared me at the start of all this!  So one class with them in is comparatively good!

So anyway, exams and scary final class.  I’m sure I’ll somehow scrape through the exams, and the final class doesn’t affect anything anyway – I know that if I want to work next semester then I have a job with EWAS whatever happens.

 

China has a distinct lack of good coffee shops.  It’s frustrating me.  Basic necessities for a coffee shop are: comfortable seats, nice hot drinks, internet, and nice cake. Actually, it’s not the coffee that I’m interested in so much – it’s internet combined with the potential for dessert.  China really doesn’t do dessert and every so often it’s nice to have dessert.  So anyway, as loathe as I am to say it, Starbucks is the closest to a good coffee shop.  Unsurprisingly, Starbucks or Costa Coffee, the two Western ones here, cost the earth.  Of course, anything Western is a whole lot more expensive, so any coffee shop will be dear in comparison to, for example, Chinese food places.  Bearing in mind that for dinner I usually spend about 10kuai, supping at Starbucks is roughly 30kuai a cup.

The place that I go to normally to get online, just opposite dorms, is about 15kuai a cup, hard seats, paper cups, rubbish drinks, no sweets.  There’s a place that does good coffee a couple of blocks away with no internet and no soft seats, but I go there with a friend sometimes since the coffee is rather beautiful.

The reason why I’m thinking about coffee shops is because tonight a (different) friend and I made a significant discovery the other side of campus.  I took her to try zhou (I love it now!) and then afterwards I felt the need for dessert and together we mourned the deficiency of coffee shops, and then we found one!  And it had homemade muffins and cookies, and they were oh so good and beautiful and sumptuous and delectable, and they weren’t 20kuai (Starbucks price), 15kuai (upper end Chinese price) or even 10kuai (normal Chinese price).  Nay, they were 1.5kuai!

One of the significant differences about Chine