hanging with the students

This morning we headed out to downtown Taiyuan to meet Evergreen, an organization serving the Shaanxi Province. Their organizational story is quite amazing – one of the few, if not the only, publicly Christian organization in China. They were actually invited to come back to work in China in the 90s. Anyhow, we visited their home office and chatted to better understand their work and how they operate, etc., and then had lunch together. Pretty neat org.

We also visited a Christian bookstore! I had a blast there, and spent quite a bit there. I really wanted to find a good book for my grandpa in Taiwan who is new to the faith – honestly I’m not really sure his faith right now – but I’ll be visiting him in the hospital in just a couple days. After asking the staff at the store for some suggestions in broken Chinese, was not coming across so clear, so we ended up finding C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity in Chinese. He’s a reader, even having written an autobiography, so I’m praying he’ll be willing and excited to read this. Also got Streams in the Desert devo book in Chinese, and some other things. The store was also giving away Songs of the Wanderer(?) in Chinese. Praying for the right opps to lighten my now much heavier load.

For dinner we had a local specialty – hand made and hand shaved noodles – in a restaurant that stunk of burning coal. Between Cambodia and Taiyuan and China in general, my lungs are taking a major beating, but it’s all worth it. After dinner, I jumped into some bball games with students – some girls too… thankful the ankle survived, and then sat in the class my friend was teaching. It was an audiovisual / listening class of some sorts, so he was showing Everybody Loves Raymond, and walking through some language and culture topics in the show. It was really cool to see him teach the class, and see the students think and work, and talk to them after class.

good game with the students.

street ball with students - not sure
why my tongue is sticking out.

After we walked in to class (Jenn, myself, and another friend who is teaching at that U), Frank asks the students to guess which one of us is Chinese and which one is Korean. Apparently I look more Korean than Jenn… and I heard that a few times in Beijing too that I look more Korean than Jenny! Sheesh at one point, some lady in Beijing directed her Chinese conversation to Jenny and assumed I couldn’t speak in Chinese but Jenny could!

After the school bell rang, we headed back to their apartment, and I attempted to re-stuff everything back into my bag. My bag was significantly heavier with all the books I had acquired! Shanghai tomorrow… then Taipei on Saturday.