Happy Moon Cake Festival

Today marks the Chinese celebration of the mid-Autumn Festival, which includes the celebration of eating moon cakes. The festival, which is similar to our Thanksgiving and Christmas, is celebrated for a wide variety of reasons - depending on which legendary folklore you believe. Some Chinese still believe that the Festival is to celebrate a goddess, who descended to the moon and now looks down on the people bringing good luck and romance this time of year, while others believe it is just a celebration of the harvest from the year. One thing that is standard about the day is that everyone eats moon cakes in celebration of the day. There are various stories to the moon cakes as well - like during the Sung Dynasty when people were unhappy at submitting to the foreign rule, so they baked a message into each moon cake with the outline of the attack. Moon cakes are similar to a fruitcake in our culture and can be filled with a variety of things such as: bean paste, lotus seed, melon seed, minced meat and salted duck egg.



Now make sure that you don't confuse the moon cake with a moon pie, which are sold here too. They are definitely different, with very different tastes. The moon cake was not bad, but not near as good as a moon pie. Maybe part of that has to do with the fact too that I have many fond memories growing up of sitting on my grandparents porch in Georgia in the summers eating a moon pie and drinking RC Cola.

As for the rest of the happenings here in China, I have just been consistently working on my language, while also continuing to meet with my Chinese friends from last year and talking with them about various things. I have also been getting ready for my opportunity to teach English to 6-7 year old children that begins in the next week and a half, and have been preparing for my trip to Beijing for training to be able to teach The Way to Success Program.

One day last week I had a really great opportunity to work on my language when I had an issue with my bathroom light and the electricity. During the middle of the night the light fixture in the bathroom fell out of the ceiling shattering on the floor, while also causing the electrical wire to fall down 4 feet as well. The next more when I turned on the light switch on I caused the wire to pop and smoke, as well as blowing the breaker to my apartment. Having blown the breaker once before (easy to do here), I knew where to go in the hallway to reset it. My only problem now was that I figured I still had a live wire in the bathroom as well the fact that I would need a new light fixture. The maintenance men on staff here at the apartment complex will happily fix any problems that you have, including installing a new light, but you have to get the parts they will need before they will come fix the problem. So, with the help of my Chinese tutor we headed out to the store where I did the communicating to get a new light fixture, and then I went and talked to the maintenance office about sending out to someone to fix my problem. Two guys came and in no time took care of the wire as well as replaced my light fixture for me. And I was pretty excited about having done the communicating in Chinese.

It has begun to get cooler here recently and I am enjoying the nice change. I hope this finds you well and that you are enjoying the change in seasons too.

Settling Back In

I am back in Xi'an and settling back in to everyday life, as well as getting into a routine of what this year will look like.

Studying Chinese: Instead of going to a university this year, I have 2 tutors who will continue teaching me Mandarin. Rebekah (a teacher from my school last year, and one of the ladies I met without throughout the year), will tutor me 3 days a week for 2 hours each session. Victoria (who was one of my teachers last year), will tutor me 1 day a week for 2 hours, and will be focused more on speaking conversational Chinese during that time.

Teaching: So, I recently met with two teachers from the preschool to discuss logistics of teaching English at their school. Originally I was asked to teach 4-6 year olds, but due to an increase in other foreigner teachers coming to help, they now need me to teach 6-7 year olds instead. I will begin teaching either the last Saturday of September or the first Saturday of October, depending on when the school decides is the best day to start the new class. I will teach 1 class every Saturday for 90 minutes, and I have a book that I must use.

Training for The Way to Success Program: So, my friends and I, who will be working with The Way to Success program (the University program of the summer camp I worked in July) will be headed to Beijing for training for a week in October. We are scheduled to have training the week of October 11-15, and then hopefully can begin teaching in the Universities here offering the program as soon as we get back from training. This teaching is a volunteer position, but that allows for great relationships to be formed and extended beyond the classroom. Plus, I just think this is a great program that teaches students to live a life of integrity and with great character, so that is why I feel strongly about being involved with it.

Other: I did arrive back into Xi'an to find the main road that runs in front of the west gate to my apartment complex completely torn up and with barriers everywhere. The city is installing new water pipes and doing some work in preparation for the new subway line while they have the road torn up. It will be great when it is done, but has been quite the obstacle in trying to get from one place to another. You can't just cross the street to get somewhere, but rather have to go up your side of the street for a few blocks, cross the road, then go back down the other side 4-5 blocks to where you are going, and do it all over again when coming home. The plus side is that it helps with my exercise regimen!

Until next time, blessings for you.

P.S. On my way back to China from the States I had a chance to watch the new Karate Kid movie on the plane. If you were looking to get a better idea of what China is like as far as culture, experiences, and differences (ex: having to use a card for electricity), then this movie does a great job of showing it.

Sunshine Camp

It has been almost a month since I got back from Qujing where I worked at the Sunshine International Camp and I am excited to finally be telling you about my experience.

There are normally two camps (high school track and university track) being run simultaneously, but the numbers were lower this summer, so the two camps were combined into one. While the numbers were lower, there were still about 200 campers. My life group, as it is called, was made up of myself, a Chinese co-coach (English name: Champion), 5 Chinese girls (English names: Lucy, Candy, Shell, Rolina, and Alissa), 2 Chinese guys (English names: Bo and William), and 2 American guys (Blake and Carlton). The two American guys were 16 years old and the rest of the life group were between the ages of 20-23. I feel like we had a really great group that meshed really well together.

The days were long - starting at 8am and finishing at 10:30pm everyday, but it was so worth the long days for the experience I had as well as the experience the campers had too. Each morning included either a guest speaker or workshops with the topic focused on leadership and integrity followed by discussion in our life groups. The afternoons were either team building activities or the occasional lecture from a guest professional. And the evenings were more time spent in our life groups where some really exciting conversations would happen. I had three of my life group girls assigned to my room where some amazing conversations about my Friend took place. I had the ability to be open with them and really share my heart and help them in the process as they were trying to sort through some questions that they had and wanted to be answered. Another one of my life group girls, who was assigned to the room across the hall, also talked to me about wanting to know more about my Friend and how he was different from everybody else, so that was awesome.

I definitely loved working at this camp and am looking forward to working at the camp again next summer. I also enjoyed the mass amount of text messages I received the next few days after camp was over from my life group campers.

I have posted pictures from camp for you to look at. Hope you enjoy.

Leaving for Camp

Hey everyone! In about 3 1/2 hours I am headed out to Kunming to work at the Sunshine International Camp. As I mentioned in my previous blog, this is a brief description of the camp from their website: "Sunshine International Camps provide students from the English speaking world and China an opportunity to engage in a highly interactive, cross-cultural character and leadership development experience. This camp will give students confidence and the skills to succeed as leaders of integrity in today’s globalized world. The world needs leaders of integrity! Sunshine International Camps provide an exciting, high impact learning experience that will train students in excellence and integrity in every area of life."

While at camp I will be a coach of a small group of between 5-10 ladies (half foreigners and half Chinese), and I will also have a Chinese co-coach. The camp is all done in English, but there are Chinese coaches to do translation for those who have a low level understanding of English and need a little help. I am excited about the next 12 days, but to be honest don't really know what to expect other than I will be tired - I hear it's non-stop from 8am-11pm everyday. I am just being open to whatever lies in store for me, and for the opportunity to build some great relationships with these students.

As a side note, I will not have internet access for the next 12 days, so the next blog will not be until I get back and right before I head to the States.

Speaking of the States, I will be there in just a few weeks. My family has been blessed with some amazing friends who have been generous and given me a plane ticket to come home this summer. I will fly into Atlanta on July 30 and be in town for just 48 hours before driving to Florida with my parents. I will then be in Cape Coral for about 2 1/2 weeks before heading to Hawaii with my parents for 2 weeks (thanks to mom for getting us tickets with our skymiles). And then I will fly back to China from Hawaii on September 2. For those of you in Georgia, I am sorry that I will not see you on this trip, but am working on trying to come home again at Christmas, which will be spent in Georgia. I will also be sending you an email before I come home with some phone numbers that you can reach me at if you are interested in talking to me while I am stateside.

Well, I will close for now, but will be back with an update in 2 weeks. Hope each of you are doing well and enjoying the summer months. Grace to each of you.

Being a Tourist in The City I Live In

Often it is easy to distinguish when someone is a tourist in town because you see them with a camera taking pictures everywhere they go. Well, here in China, I feel like the Chinese are more tourists than even the foreigners. So, on days that I do actually take my camera out to take pictures in town, I feel like I fit right in.

Natasha has been here for a week now, and we have been busy doing a lot of things. We went to the police station to register her (which is required of any non-Chinese that stay with you in your home) and found it to be a much simpler process than when I registered the Manns - guess I got all the kinks out of the way the first time around. In the past week we have been to the Dayanta (also known as the Big Goose Pagoda), Castle Play Place, had a water fight with friends for the 4th of July, been to the Terracotta Warriors, Zhong Lou (aka the Bell Tower), Gu Lou (aka the Drum Tower), Hui Ming Jie (aka Muslim market), and biked 8.5 miles around the city wall. Biking on the city wall was an amazing thing - I just would not recommend doing it during a hot day in the summer.

So, next week I will be heading to Kunming to volunteer at a camp for High School and College students (Chinese and Other Nationalities) for 10 days. Here is a brief description of the camp from their website: "Sunshine International Camps provide students from the English speaking world and China an opportunity to engage in a highly interactive, cross-cultural character and leadership development experience. This camp will give students confidence and the skills to succeed as leaders of integrity in today’s globalized world. The world needs leaders of integrity! Sunshine International Camps provide an exciting, high impact learning experience that will train students in excellence and integrity in every area of life." I am pretty excited about this opportunity and look forward to sharing with you in two weeks my experience at camp.

Also, for those of you who maybe have not heard yet, I will be stateside for a few weeks in August as well. I will be sending an email soon with more details, as well as including them in my next blog. I am looking forward to getting to see so many of you so soon.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!