Greetings, all! I apologize that the blog is up a bit later this week! I've been on a trip to mainland China for the past few days and haven't been able to get to the blog until now. I'll describe that trip in next week's blog, but for now I'll just hit the highlights and lessons learned from last week.
1. You can't scare a lizard out of your apartment with the large wooden stick from the sliding porch doors. It just won't work. The lizard, inevitably, will fall off the wall, onto the floor, and scamper under the couch.
2. The song "Yankee Doodle" is just as entertaining in Hong Kong as it is in the US. Although we had a few technical difficulties, our first cultural class went quite well. We had about 25 girls attend, and I led a session on American folk songs, including treasures such as "Oh Susanna," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and, of course, "Yankee Doodle." We sang songs, learned about the American history surrounding them, and played a game as well. All in all—a success.
3. We attended what was essentially a True Love Waits seminar for the youth on Saturday after we led our Thai English class. God bless Deacon Gur, the young male deacon who was roped into sitting between the two American women to translate at the last minute, and managed to translate the rather sensitive (and occasionally shocking) subject matter with a completely straight face and without a hint of embarrassment.
4. Trips to China turn into an unexpected blessing when you are without water for your toilets and therefore cannot flush for several days. Our toilets went out on Saturday and weren't scheduled to be functioning again until Tuesday. (Apparently, they shut off the water on Saturday to do some work but ended up breaking the water main. Brilliant.) Fortunately, we left early Monday morning so we only had to suffer for a little while. I learned to be grateful for the McDonalds that only takes seven minutes to walk to. I don't know how the other people in my apartment building coped with the difficulty, and, frankly, I don't think I want to know.
5. We managed to go to the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware on Friday. It was small, but that was one of the reasons we went there; we went as a short break from a day of homework rather than as a day-long excursion. I can now tell you the detailed process involved in making Oolong Tea and the different tea making procedures that have been used across the centuries. Naturally, we felt an obligation to go to Starbucks after learning about the rich history surrounding tea production and consumption.
That fairly-well sums up last week! Please continue to pray for our English Sunday School class—that we will be able to speak words of depth to those who are spiritually mature and words of simplicity to those who are just beginning. Also pray for our cultural club to be an opportunity to get to know some of the girls in the younger forms, and pray that language barriers won't cause difficulties. Lastly, please pray for those in Hong Kong who have been very deeply affected by the economic crisis. The financial tsunami is constantly on the news, in the newspaper, and being discussed by the people of Hong Kong. Many people have their savings bound up in the market and have lost a lot of money in the financial tsunami as a result. Please pray that the church will know how to respond.
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