Service

This is mostly a copy of my service journal for this month - I never recorded our Romeo and Juliet experience here, so I thought I'd do that now.

This will be my last month writing this, as I’ve already finished my 15 hours of service (although I plan on going to the YMCA a few more times in December, because we still have the end of semester presentation with our kids).

The YMCA has been the same as always – our kids are crazy, and it’s hard to keep them occupied for ten minutes in between games.  I feel like they’ve enjoyed the semester, though, and they have learned a few English words here and there.  It’s also hard when they’re at such different levels.  Kevin requires individual attention to learn even three words, when Helen has learned the entire lesson in the same amount of time, and the other three are in the middle.  I hope my kids aren’t belligerent or hard to discipline, because otherwise I’ll need a lot more patience than I have now.  It’s been a good experience, though.

Most of my service hours this month weren’t at the YMCA, however, they were spent preparing and putting on Romeo and Juliet!  Seth had the idea for all the single Flagship guys to perform Romeo and Juliet for 光棍节, or Singles Awareness Day, November 11, 2011, because it was 11/11/11.  We started at 10 am, so we were still performing at 11:11:11 on 11/11/11!  I was the Nurse and Paris, both of which were fun, but the Nurse especially, because I got to declaim in falsetto and got lots of attention from the crowd.  Ben was Juliet, and Chandler was Romeo – a more hilarious and apropos combination could not be had!  We performed in the fountain by the campus cafeteria, and there was a crowd of about 50 to 100 people that came and went.

Now as to why this was service: Seth’s roommate had the idea to use the publicity to raise money for someone in need, so we collected money and donated it to a family.  The wife has cancer, and they don’t have enough money to cover her chemotherapy treatments, even with government aid and her husband’s income.  After the play, several of us went with some reporters to their apartment and gave the husband the envelope with money in it.  It was a very emotional moment all around, and he thanked us repeatedly with tears streaming down his face.  I’m very grateful for the opportunity to bless his family through our service, and things like this remind me how much joy service can bring to us and to those we serve.

We got on TV and Seth was interviewed by reporters, so in the end I think even more money was donated to this family.  There were also several articles in the local papers, which we'll be including in the Flagship Times.  I bought Ben a wig and a mask, and one of the Chinese guys watching thought he was a 美女 (pretty girl)!  Awesome.

Count Your Many Blessings

...every doubt will fly!

This will be short, but I wanted to record my second Thanksgiving dinner experience.  Joel got invited to Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend at a family friend's house, the Butters, in Shanghai, and he brought me and Seth along.  Before we left, we ate at Carl's Jr. at the Nanjing South Railway Station!  It was great - much better than Carl's Jr. in Malaysia - and they had actual portobello mushrooms on the mushroom swiss burger.  Yum.

The high speed rail is so convenient here - I wish we had it in the States.  You go through security in seconds, get on the train, and get to your destination comfortably and quickly.  We finally arrived at the Butters' house around 10 pm, and they were putting the younger kids to bed.  They have 5 kids, and they've been in China since shortly after they were married.  They actually remind me a lot of my family - I think we would have been friends, had my parents been a bit younger and lived in China.  Friday night we stayed up late and watched Mystery Men - it was funny, but probably one of those watch-once-and-done movies.

Saturday morning, we got up and helped prepare for dinner - they had 20 or so people over (again reminding me of my family), so we helped set up tables and such.  Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.  It was fantastic!  Way better than the branch dinner, and the branch dinner was great.  We had two enormous turkeys, stuffing, yams, salad, fresh homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, jello, and homemade pumpkin pies for dessert (six of them, which Sister Butters made on Friday and warned us not to eat Friday night or face serious consequences)!  We sat outside and played with their youngest child, Dorothy (Dot) on the lawn - she made us close our eyes while she hid berries and had us look for them.  Oh to be a child again and find joy in such simple things!

After dinner, Seth and I went out looking around for apartments for his internship here in a couple months. He's working at a neuroscience research lab that focuses specifically on cancer, which is exactly what he wants to do.  I wish I were that confident in what I want to do with my life.  Anyway, we took the subway for 40 minutes or so, got off and walked around the area near his internship.  We looked for newspapers with classifieds, but didn't find any.  It's a nice area, though, and he should be able to find something when he gets there in February.  I'd really like to intern in Shanghai, but at the moment it's looking more likely that I'll be in Beijing.

Sunday, we went to church in Shanghai, but it ended up being the Asia Area broadcast that we already saw in church in Nanjing.  I learned a few new things this time, however.  After that, we headed for home.

Thanksgiving is Here!

The last few weeks have been so busy!  Actually, they haven’t been nearly as busy as my most hectic times in Provo, but my capacity for juggling a million things at once has diminished considerably since I stopped practicing the piano so much.  Well, at all, really.  I practice maybe a couple hours a week.

Where to begin?  The weather finally got colder this week (though the high tomorrow is still 17 degrees, barely an autumnal chill in Utah).  The leaves are all changing and falling; Nanjing has many wide, tree-lined streets, and lately they’ve been piling up with leaves.  The street sweepers keep them mostly under control, however.

The branch here had a Thanksgiving dinner yesterday – we had several turkeys and basically everything else you could want for Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful.  Seth and I were in the very back of the line, so we went for dessert first and then rejoined the food line.  I got a slice of cheesecake, a mint brownie, a slice of raspberry pie, a slice of pumpkin pie, and a cookie.  Overkill?  Hardly.  All 100 people there got more than enough to eat and there were leftovers, quite a feat for a potluck affair.  After dinner, there was a talent show, the highlight of which was the China Horizons girls (here with an English teaching program) strapping glow sticks all over their bodies and faces and dancing in the dark to “I’m a Believer”!  I think I’ll steal that idea for the next talent show I’m in.

Six of us went on a group date with some girls here teaching English last week; we made fajitas and went bowling.  Fajitas were incredible after months of basically only rice and noodles!  Our first game, we had a lane rivalry going; everyone was pretty terrible at bowling, though.  I won overall with 121, which I wasn’t terribly proud of.  I should go with Grandma Ida more if I ever get the chance.  The second game, we drew a random M&M every bowl and did something crazy depending on the color – eyes closed, backwards, between the legs, kick the ball (that hurt!), and using your other hand.  There were still three or four strikes, incredibly.  For the last few balls, we all got up and danced in front of the person bowling to distract them.

I’m still behind on my schoolwork; I keep meaning to catch up, but it doesn’t seem to happen.  Maybe tomorrow.  Same story with my law school applications.  I need to buckle down this week and get all those things taken care of.

I don’t really know what else to say – that’s the problem with waiting too long in between updates.  Blogs are more manageable in bite-sized pieces.  Hopefully my next post is a short update on how much homework I’ve done!  I like the sound of that.

A few thoughts

To everyone who actually reads this: I'm sorry for failing to update you on my whole life. Although I watched an episode of House a little while ago in which someone blogged about literally everything, and it pretty much ruined her life, so maybe I'll hold off on full disclosure. :)

Update #1: I think I got the job with the Beijing law firm! I don't know if I've even told you about the Beijing law firm, so here goes. Seth went to a medical conference a while ago, and he met a patent lawyer there and got his card. I emailed him my resume, and he basically offered me an internship in his reply and set up a meeting, which he then bombed because he had to get back to Beijing on business and couldn't stay in Nanjing to meet with me. However, we finally met this last Tuesday, and he offered me the job, whenever I want to start. I accepted, so he should get back to me with a contract this week and I'll work there from February to the end of May.

Update #2: I'm not going to take the job with President Yu's company. He's the branch president here, and his company, Fullshare Group, makes over a billion dollars a year and works in five or six different industries. I interviewed there a couple weeks ago, and then he had me and another flagship student come to a client meeting on Tuesday and then to dinner (I went to meet with the lawyer after dinner). It would be cool to work for him, but I think I'll have a better experience at the law office.

Update #3: It's still barely fall here, despite people wearing coats and sweaters everywhere. It's rained some over the last week, but it hasn't gotten colder than about 60 degrees, and I still wear shorts most days. All the Chinese people bundle up heavily, though - it makes you wonder what they do to stay warm when winter really hits.

Update #4: I saw an albino for the first time today. It was a baby on a guy's shoulder, and at first I thought it was a white guy out with his child for a walk, but then I realized the man was Chinese. I passed them, and the blond haired, white child had Chinese facial features! Crazy. I wonder what the social implications of that are for the kid growing up.

Update #5: Over the weekend, we went as a group to tour a town called Changshu, in eastern Jiangsu province. We left at 7:30 on Saturday morning (well, 8-something by the time the people who slept in arrived), and it took a little over three hours to get there by bus. Changshu is one of the places with the fastest-growing economy and largest amount of international investment in the country, and it has all kinds of heavy industry and technology research. We visited a commune neighborhood, a water treatment facility, and a sweater factory.

Office Rat

That's me the title is describing, because I've been in the Flagship office from 9 am to now (3:15 pm!), minus half an hour for lunch.  That being the case, I have accomplished two and a half hours of tutoring and a whole lot of catching up on schoolwork and emails, and I feel on top of the world, or at least on top of my mountainous to-do list.  The internet here is slower than in the States, and it cuts out all the time, which makes it take twice as long to get things done.  Speaking of internet, my neighbors changed their internet password again; it's a never-ending saga.

I enjoy living here a lot!  When I first got here, I thought I wouldn't want to live in China again after a year here, but now I think I could be very happy living and working here "for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die." (props for the reference!)  Okay, until the day I die is a bit of an exaggeration, but for a time, certainly.

I got a part-time job offer yesterday.  My roommate went to check out an SAT tutoring school a few days ago, and told them about me, and I went and interviewed with them yesterday.  I'll teach 10-12 hours a week, and they're going to pay me 300 kuai an hour as a base salary!  That's nearly $50 an hour, so I'll make a good $1000 every other week while I'm going to school and working minimal hours.  And I think I'll enjoy it a lot - I like teaching and helping people understand things, and part of it is editing papers, which I also like.  No downside - I think it will even help me be more responsible with the rest of my time; having too few things scheduled is generally a bad thing for me.

This has been an office rat special announcement.

Giraffes? Giraffes!

If you don't know the meaning of the above title, I am sorry.

Life since the trip has been interesting.  I'm behind on some of my schoolwork, and I think it's because I'm still in vacation mode.  Also, I'm decreasingly motivated to do well on assignments that ostensibly have nothing to do with graduation, acceptance to law school, or my future life.  I need to change my attitude, though; I'm here to improve my Chinese, and no matter how boring or unnecessary the assignments seem, they will help with that goal.

On the other hand, I'm enjoying life a lot more than I was a few weeks ago.  The weather here is beautiful, with the temperature in the high 70s every day and usually sunny with a light breeze.  We went to the Sun Yat-Sen tomb/memorial and the Ming Dynasty tombs on Saturday (every few weeks, Chen Laoshi takes us out to one of the historical sites around Nanjing).  It was fantastic!  Unlike some other historical sites, the natural setting was gorgeous - groves of plum trees on the mountainside, fields of grass (actual grass! a rare find in China), and breathtaking views from the top.  Sun Yat-Sen was the first president of China, and though he only lasted in the post for a few months before being deposed, his egalitarian ideas and foresight permanently influenced China's political ideology and development as a nation.  The Ming tombs were also cool - they're 600 years old, and remarkably well preserved.  The actual tombs are 50 meters into the hillside, but there's an enormous wall in front with a restored hall on top.  I'll definitely be going back in a couple weeks when the leaves change colors.

There are always little things that strike me as odd.  For example, over the holiday and back in Nanjing, I see flower displays on sidewalks and at memorials everywhere.  However, the flowers are always in their individual little pots instead of being planted in flowerbeds as would be usual in the States.  It's interesting to think about the thought process behind such things.  Obviously it's probably more convenient to just dispense with the pots after the flowers are past their prime, but I don't know which is more expensive, and to my eye flowerbeds would look a little nicer, although the pot arrangements have grown on me since I first saw them.

We've been spending more time with the China Horizons girls (here teaching English) - we play frisbee and volleyball with them, we had a YSA game night at the church on Saturday, and yesterday after church we had a big french toast party at their apartment.  They're all really friendly, but I don't think I'm interested in any kind of relationship right now; they're also all pretty young, maybe 19 or 20.  Although maybe I shouldn't be picky in that regard - I'm only 23, after all.  It's just that I've always kind of thought that I would marry someone who had served a mission and was about my age or even a little older.

Life without a phone for a week has also been interesting.  I'm actually kind of enjoying the irresponsibility of no one being able to contact me.  I've managed to run into people when they're going out to do things, but other than that I've been AWOL.

That's about it for now...

Sichuan Trip, Day Seven

Day 7: Today we came back to Nanjing.  The day started early: we got up at 5, checked out, and took two cabs to the airport.  Of course, Josef got a picture of himself doing a handstand in the Sheraton lobby before we left!

At the airport, the ticket counter gave Seth a little bit of a hard time, but ultimately they let him buy a ticket with his passport copy.  The security check was another story, though.  Once again, Seth was the last in line, and they took his ID and made us wait.  At first, they said there was no way he could get on the plane, but finally, after going back and forth to different managers for half an hour, they told him to go to the police station, make a new ID, and use that to get on the plane.  The final miracle of the trip!

I slept the whole plane ride, and we took a shuttle bus back to Zhonghuamen station.  I lost my cell phone on the bus, but only realized it as I left on the subway.  Now it's gone forever, and I'm looking at iPhone 4s on Ebay.  Oh well - these things happen.  And thus ends the chronicle of our trip west!