Hiking in Taiyuan

  

picnic lunch

Jenn and her olympic
stalk torch

We went on a good half day hike into the mountains by their school. It was a strenuous climb up a few thousand steps (combo of altitude, pollution, and exercise made for quite the lung workout), followed by a casual hike through small villages (where we encountered chickens, turkeys, pheasants, dogs, the beheaded carcass of some animal and its skull across the path, and even snow – yes we even had a snowball fight…sort of) that led to a beautiful scenic view from an old pagoda of the Fen river and dam. It was definitely nothing I had expected – beautiful! And by the way, turkeys really do make the gobblegobble noise – almost like children chattering and giggling away. So fun.

we made it!

village announcement board

jenn and her many dog friends

After the hike, we headed back to the apartment and then participated in a Chinese Bible study. Twas pretty neat to meet and see these brothers reading and discussing His word, and struggle with life being a believer and a student in this world. I had so much more I wanted to say during the study but my Chinese limited me…nonetheless I was happy to be there and get to know some of the students.

forced into eating chicken's
foot. gross.

monopoly deal in taiyuan

We then had a delicious dinner – big plate chicken – basically the restaurant name describes the dish we ate. Chicken and potatos with noodles. Good stuff. Picked up some ice cream bars on the walk back to the apartment, and then played a few rounds of Monopoly Deal. I guess it’s popular everywhere nowadays. Fun times. It’s also been really good to be able to catch up on work and life and things that have unfortunately been neglected the past few weeks in the madness of our schedule.

Anyhow, today was such a blessing to be able to hang out with students, getting to know them, hearing their stories, their struggles and joys, and just “living life” with my friends and their colleagues as they serve the students and community in China.