6 Months

Well today marks our 6th month here. I can't believe it has been 6 months since we arrived in the big chicken. At times it seems to fly by, but other times I seem to just be caught in the moment. Things have really changed a lot, and will continue to change. The Father has grown April and I in many ways. We are continuing to learn to lean on Him in all things. Many funny things have happened, many goals met, many challenges and difficulties, many successes, and we have many more opportunities in the future. Thanks for all the support and continue to keep us up to date on your lives as well.

Valentine's Day Came Early

We've never been Valentine's Day people. We've always both thought the holiday was a little silly and did our best to bypass the gift giving. Even while dating we both convinced one another it'd be best to save what little money we had as college students and just go out to eat and see a movie. So living in the 'Big Chicken' we both knew the non-gift-giving would continue, especially since this year we won't be surrounded by stuffed lips that read 'I love you', bouquets of 2 dozen roses, or the Hallmark magnetic lipped bears. We'd actually already decided weeks ago that we've got double the reason not to celebrate this year because within two days of the 'holiday' we're leaving for a neighboring country. So, this year no Valentines day for us.

.........until yesterday.

While out seeing some of the city yesterday we stumbled across a cute little flower shop. Thinking, "we've got a few weeks before we're leaving...if I get some flowers now they'll have long enough to look pretty on my kitchen table for awhile before we have to toss em out" we ventured in.

Now in America at this time of year if you were to purchase 2 dozen roses I'm guessing they'd cost at least $100...and that's probably just in an ordinary arrangement. However, when you live in the Big Chicken you can easily purchase 2 dozen roses including a glass vase without spending more than 50 kuai = $6. So we splurged. After we paid for them the shopkeeper asked us if roses were expensive where we're from. We told him how much it would be in America if we'd gotten 2 dozen roses there. I thought he was going to faint. Probably because he thought that was absurd but also because he just realized he could have charged us quite a bit more and we still would have bought them.

So, my friends, this being the first official year of us 'gift-giving' for Valentine's Day, I'd say we did pretty well with our spending limit. In return for the $6 roses Brandon splurged at Fu Mart today when he saw that they just imported some Reeses Pieces! He also reminded me that he'll probably never buy me that many roses when in America.

Times have changed...

In approximately five days we'll be celebrating our six month anniversary of living in "The Big Chicken" (look at a map and tell me if it better resembles another animal). So over the course of the next few days we're recalling back upon what we came from and what we came to. We love being here and have no doubts about this being where we're called to be, but with that calling came certain changes that are more obvious than others. I searched through our picture files on our computer for a picture of our old apartment, and the best that I could come up with mostly features Brandon's old jeep (we miss ya Ebony!) We don't usually take pictures of our cars...just so you know we're not dilusional...but this one happened to be for insurance purposes. Anyhow, in the background you can see our beautiful first home as a married couple.

That was us. Second floor on the right (we've forgotten our apt. number! how sad!) You can also see my old white truck 'Cracker' on the right. Which is a whole new topic on how things have changed.

So we left beautiful Stonebriar to come to the 'Big Chicken' where we currently reside. We may have posted this picture before but we're posting it again so you can see the dramatic difference.

We love our apartment here too. # 202 (we're the only ones with blinds up in the windows).
But you'll notice some dramatic differences between the two pictures. For instance, the mode of transportation in front of each building, the bars on the windows, etc...
Remarkably though, both apartment buildings were built in the same year, about five years ago. Seriously. Our current one may look 40 years older but that's due to the amount of pollution in the air, we think. Acid rain must be a killer on cement walls.

So, a lot of things have changed...most noticeably, our apartment. But thankfully there is one thing in our lives that "does not change like shifting shadows."

What?

In an effort to get some much needed exercise Brandon and I woke up early Tuesday morning to go up to a local hotel and use their swimming pool & sauna. It's still too cold outside to go for a jog in the park (besides getting stared at even more!) and we've yet to join a gym because we can't cope with spending money to run in place. So...we're trying swimming. Anyhow, we put on our swimsuits then bundle up with multiple layers over our suits & head out the door to flag down a taxi. This man pulls up beside us honking and pointing at us like, "Hey Hey Pick Me! Pick Me!" So we get in, tell him where we'd like to go, and...we're on our way...in 2nd gear the entire time. What might have taken 5 minutes to get there took us about 20, all the while little old ladies on bicycles were passing us. It just gave us more time to share with him really, which was pretty neat.
So we get to the place and are greeted with warm smiles when we entered the door. The lady that greeted us says to us in English, "Would you like to swim bathe?" A little confused as to her meaning I just reply in Chinese, "We'd like to swim." I think because she'd much rather practice her english with us than communicate effectively she continues to speak english to us, to which we kept replying in Chinese just to clarify what she's talking about. She takes us up to the counter and tells this other lady in a really official looking suit what we're there for and they frantically look at eachother and get on telephones to call the more important folks upstairs (we guess!) So they lady in the official looking suit hangs up the phone and we have the following conversation...she spoke english (I'm assuming for the same reason above) and we replied in Chinese (again, same reason)...but for your sake the following is all in English:

Official Looking Suit Lady: "I am embarrased. Today we have no water."
Us: "You don't have water?"
OLSL: "Correct. Right now, no water. 12 o'clock you can swim."
Us: "So you'll have water by this afternoon so we can swim?"
OLSL: "Yes."
Us: "What mornings do you not have water?" (wanting to clarify for future 20 minute cab rides)
OLSL: "We have water every day."
Us: "But not today?"
OLSL : "Not today"
Us: "So if we come tomorrow will you have water?"
OLSL: "Yes."

We're still a little confused by the conversation and if they were really out of water or if it was all part of the "Saving face" conspiracy that goes on in this country....either way, we haven't gone back yet to find out if there is, in fact, water there now. Maybe they were really out of water at 9 o'clock that morning and would actually be able to fill up the olympic size swimming pool and heat it in three hours...who really knows? We've yet to chance it again though...so if you see us in the next few years and we look a little "thicker" around the waist line just blame it on the No-Water Hotel.

Middle School

You remember middle school. Embarrassment, social confusion, trying to make the basketball team...all things most of us have probably successfully blocked out since our middle school days.
This past wednesday, Brandon and I visited a local middle school with the "principal" of foreign students from the university we attend. He set up this arrangement with the middle school his son attends so that we could get a feel of what schools are like here and also so that the students and english teachers at the school could practice their english.
It was exactly opposite of what an American middle school is like.
Middle schools here are for students ages 12-15. The majority of middle schools (and high schools for that matter) in this country are more similar to boarding schools. Over half of the students in the school live on campus in a dormitory like setting. Each student has a room (small sized bedroom) that they share with seven other students. The go home on weekends so the stuff they have with them in their dorm room is what would fit in a small duffel bag. Plus they wear windsuit uniforms, so there's no need for many clothes. They attend class from about 7:30 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, with a short lunch break in between. They learn the usual subjects, chinese, english, math, science, history, geography, but also have time for choir, dance, drawing, painting, & photography. From 5-7 p.m. they get a break for dinner and resting and then return to the classrooms or library from 7-9 p.m. for personal study time (homework!) Then it's to bed at 9:30 p.m. So as you can imagine the school we visited was more like a university campus than a one building middle school you might recall from your middle school days. The students have PE hours where they can play outside with fellow students, but they don't compete with other schools in sporting events...also different than what might have been your experience. That's a quick synopsis of obvious differences just glancing at the school...but the best part of our experience was not the difference in the school but the difference in the kids.
Imagine, if you will, an English classroom full of "only childs." (no brothers or sisters...if that didn't make sense) That would probably be a teacher's worst nightmare. But that's every classroom here. We visited an english class of about 30 students. When we entered our "principal's" son came up and gave him a big hug then returned to his seat. (right, like you would do that when you were 13). The kids sat up straight in their chair and asked us all kinds of questions that they knew in English. "What's your favorite color/animal/food/book (awesome way to share by the way)/song/country (what are gonna say!? Japan?) etc... After each response we gave in Chinglish, they said, "Thank you!" and sat back down. They were sooooo polite. For many reasons I'm sure, one of which may have been that it was the first time they'd seen a whitie in person, but also just because that's how they behave in school. Then we had a girl ask us if we like to sing. I said, "sure, but I'd like to hear you sing!" So she stands up, in front of the rest of her 13 year old peers, bursts into song, & the rest of the students all start clapping along! Now...again, return to your days as a middle schooler. If you ever had the guts to do that it'd be a sure way to get beat up behind the cafeteria during lunch. But when this girl finished (who was absolutely incredible by the way) the rest of the students clapped and cheered! One of the boys sitting at a nearby table said that she is the best singer in the school. Again, that would never happen in my middle school. They asked us to sing a song (brandon made me do it by myself), so I took the opportunity to sing an english song I grew up hearing every sunday.
All that to say...it was so different than any middle school in America might be. Some really cool differences. Some differences I wouldn't be too fond of. But the biggest difference was the kids and the respect they showed not only their teachers (many kids do that in the states) but their peers...which is a totally foreign (haha no pun intended) concept for U.S. middle schools.

Let me fill you in...

A lot has happened in the past few weeks that I'll try to recount in a not-too-long-so-that-you-just-skim-over-it post. First, I'll start with a quick story that happened this morning.
This morning we had listening class, which overall is a very good class. However, today was a little different than usual. For some reason our teacher decided to educate us on all the cities in our country that manufacture their own beer. If you know us much, you know that this isn't a topic that pertains to us at all. None the less, we let her do her thing (mostly because our fellow Korean classmates were listening intently), but also because halfway through this lecture we thought it was a good chance to learn a new word in our new language: "connoisseur." We did our best to spell it correctly in english and plug it into our little handy-dandy electronic dictionary so that as soon as she finished her beer lecture we could call her a "beer connoisseur" correctly in Chinese. So when the break in the lecture presented itself Brandon shouts out in chinese, "Teacher! You are a beer connoisseur!" I thought she might fall onto the floor laughing, but alas, she managed to stay in her chair. Meanwhile it was the first time in our Chinese learning history that we had those koreans simply stunned with our up and coming speaking abilities. (we didn't find it all that necessary to explain that we had just looked that word up.)

So over the past few weeks we've had two Christmas parties with chinese friends and neighbors, we've made dumplings with our tutor, and tallied up a few more squattie potty uses. With no class to attend & the weather being unusually cold (we got our first snow! but by morning there was nothing to show for it) we've spent a lot of time taking down Christmas decor, rearranging our apartment, and catching up on previous lessons we've since forgotten. We brought in the new year over at our friend's house watching the season finale of Amazing Race! It's the first time in a long time that I didn't get to watch the ball drop. Watching it at 1 o'clock in the afternoon the following day just wouldn't have been as cool.
I know I keep promising you pictures, and I promise this time it has nothing to do with my procrastination...our internet just still hates us too much to let us attach pictures to anything.
You better believe once it works I'm overloading the bandwidth like crazy just for you all.
For now we'll just try to go out and do some crazy things to provide good reading material.
Happy New Year!

Slow Poke

Sorry folks. due to the big earthquake in Taiwan our internet has been slower than dial up for the past few weeks. It affected all of East Asia. It's been so frustrating. We didn't realize how much we depend on the internet until we didn't have it at all! Thankfully it's back up and going a little better lately. It's still not quite up to par but at least we can actually get blogger.com to open up so we can let you know we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.
What's sad is that we've thought of so many great blog topics over the past few internet-less weeks and now that we have it up and going I can't remember any of them.
But we're still here and as soon as it's fast enough to post pictures we'll post some from Christmas and New Years!