Eclipse trip, August 2008

It took me a while to get this video put together. This is from a trip we took at the beginning of August out to Gansu province to see a full solar eclipse. You can check out our google map (sidebar-->) to see where we went. I hope you like the video.

My Week Off

The office was closed last week because of the October 1st holiday, which is the Chinese national day. So in case anyone ever asks you if they have the 4th of July in China, you can say yes, but they celebrate it in October.
I spent the first part of the week being sick. Not so awesome.
I also painted a bit. I may post some pictures at some point.
The interesting thing about being in youth ministry is vacations and weekends are often the best time to hang out with youth. So on Monday I shot a Youth Camp promo video with some of the kids, and on Friday I went to ReGen (youth group). We had planned on canceling ReGen for the week, but the kids still wanted to meet. I told them that we could meet, but they would have to take care off everything.
They did, and it was really great. A couple of them lead worship, my sister Anna was sort of the MC for the night, and one of the guys gave the message. In the course of the evening Anna also sort of let it slip that she would like to have a niece or nephew (and then she looked right at Kara). It was a funny moment.
Anyway it's really cool to see the kids take more and more ownership of their youth group. We don't have many youth leaders this year, but I think it's turning out to be a good thing because it allows the students to take more leadership.

Long time, no see....

Last weekend a good friend of ours from Eau Claire, who just moved to Wuhan came and visited Kara and I. It was really fun to see her. We talked about the EC and our friends there, good reminiscing. Right now I'm listening to a Peer Validated podcast off the Volumeone website. Jon Sunde is guesting on the show so its fun to hear the voices of friends.

I've been in a place where I've felt really guilty about this blog. I haven't posted on anything in a really long time and since I last posted we've done a lot of cool things, but since I haven't written about any of those things I've felt like I can't write anything about our everyday life until I write about those things. Basically I'm saying this blog has been really boring for the past three or four months. Sorry.

So here's what's happened that we haven't written about:

April
We found an apartment. We looked at a bunch of different ones. Some were really bad, some were too expensive, but we're happy with the one we got. Two bedrooms, one of which is my studio/guest room.

May
Wrapped up ReGen for the year. Started planning for the next school year. Did a bunch of graduation stuff.

June
We said good-bye to most of the people that we had met so far. 75% of our youth volunteers left in July and June, so we are sort of starting from scratch now. Which is good and bad. Oh well. We started a summer Bible study with the few kids that were still in town for the summer. Small groups are cool. It was good to get to know some of the kids better in a smaller group setting.

July
Summer flew by all month. It was crazy. I felt like I would have a lot of time this sumer to get caught up and plan for the new year, but it turns out that there is still stuff to do during the summer. We did a lot of fun things with the youth group this summer: waterpark, frisbee in the park day, ice skating, bowling, etc.

August
Eclipse trip: we went out to the midwest (China) and to see a full solar eclipse. Honestly a solar eclipse is like nothing I've ever experienced before. The rest of the trip was "ma ma hu hu" (translation: alright but not great), but it was worth it. Kara worked on a nice full post about the trip, but then we lost it.

Olympics: Beijing was lots of fun during the the Ao yun hui (oww yun hway). There were actually a lot fewer vistitors than anyone was think there would be. It was weird because most areas of Beijing were quieter and less hectic. They took half the cars of the road and opened up two new subway lines.
We went and saw Beach Volleyball, we saw the US women win a match and the Chinese men win a match as well. The crowd was always awesome whenever China competed in anything anywhere.
We went to Athletics (twice) at the Bird's Nest. Highlights were seeing a Russian girl set the world record in pole vault, and seeing the USA team sweep the 400 meter dash.
I went to a women's soccer match and Kara went to see flatwater kyaking.

September
ReGen and Element (the new name for our Middle school ministry) started on September 5th. So we're in full swing now. We're still building our volunteer team, so we're a little short handed. It makes things busy for me.
Kara started her new job as a homeschool teacher for a family out in the Beijing suburbs. It's kind of a pain to get out there in the morning, but she likes the job.

Paralympics: When Rachel (Eau Claire friend) was here last weekend we went and saw a Murderball (wheelchair rugby) match, which was awesome. We also got to go to back to the Bird's Nest and see some wheelchair races there.

So there it is, now we're up to date. Now I can write about whatever I want. So what I want to write about is Fantasy Football:

I've decided it's a lot hard to do well in Fantasy Football if you never get see any of the teams play. I sometimes get to follow games via the internet on Sunday mornings, but they don't usually broadcast them here. Currently I'm in 9th place (out of 10) in my league, and I don't really like my team.

Bus Ride Video

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Sorry. I think I may have given up on posting a picture for each day that we're here. Maybe I haven't, but I obviously haven't done it for a while.
I'd rather write more, but things get busy around here.
I finished up this video of the bus ride on our way from our place to the office. It gives you a pretty good feel for what the streets of Beijing are like. Enjoy.

What does Kara do?

I just checked the weather. According to Accuweather.com, Beijing is currently 88°F and feels like 106°F. It's sunny, though, with shadows appearing and everything, so I'm content. Don't worry; we have air conditioning. Personally, I've decided to try the Beijingers' habit of taking umbrellas around to block a bit of that sun. I'll let you know how that goes.

Sunblock is amusingly difficult to find here, at least for decent prices; most people here just wear clothes that cover their extremities because they don't want to risk getting tan. That's actually been a treat for me: paleness is beautiful here. There are all kinds of skin-whitening creams, and every once in a while people will tell me how great I look because I'm not the slightest bit tan. It's a nice change from the tan-obsessed US, especially for someone with skin as light as mine. Maybe that's the secret to self-esteem: move to a country where they value whatever you look like currently.

People have been curious about what I do here, other than taking care of Matt's injuries. Because he has the job, I'm doing the very housewife-y thing these days, cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping every other day. All of these things take more energy here, so it's been a challenge. Cleaning is difficult because dust and grime comes through the windows and window cracks from the air outside. Cooking is a different experience because apartments rarely have ovens or more than two burners. Plus, cooking requires shopping for ingredients, which can be tough because the stores (obviously) carry very different things to some extent, and the produce must be washed properly after being bought. Those of you who know me well know that I'm not awesome at the housewife thing to begin with, so moving here has forced me out of my comfort zone in a lot of ways.

Speaking of these duties, I should probably be working on them. I hope you enjoyed a little taste into my world. As the internet allows, I will try to be more specific in my stories. Those of you in places where it feels like less than 100°F, enjoy it!

The art of tripping, falling, and landing on your jaw

Youth ministry has drawn its first blood from me now.

What happened was that last week Kara and I took a day trip "Happy Valley," which is an amusement park here in Beijing. We went with a bunch of homeschooled students from our youth group.

Towards the end of the day. I was watching something and then turned around to go the other way and didn't see the donut shaped rock outcropping that was right behind me. It was about knee level high and I tripped right over it and landed on my jaw on the opposite side of the donut. I scraped up my knee, shin, chest and hand along with getting a really good gash in the underside of my chin. (All of the other injuries are pretty minor, just scratches and bruises).
One of the families had a first aid kit with them and we bandaged up my chin as best we could and someone was able to give Kara and I a ride home.

It actually didn't seem like a very serious injury at first, it actually didn't hurt much so we didn't go to the hospital right away. Later that evening I took off the bandage to try to clean it better and bandage it up again and realized that there was a lot of dirt in there still and the gash was much deeper than I thought, so we decided we needed to get a doctor to look at it and clean it out properly or risk an infection. I actually tried cleaning it myself and almost passed out at the mirror in the bathroom.

Kara called a friend of the family who was a doctor, but he wasn't available.
We were actually in sort of a bind because the status of my insurance coverage was unsettled. The paperwork had been taking a long time to get worked out and my application form had only been sent in the day before. So we weren't sure if we would need to pay for the full cost of any treatment I received. Which led us to the next series of events.

It was about 8pm by this point. We called up a friend who spoke some Chinese and went first to a Chinese clinic near our house that someone had recommended.

When we got there it was just closing and all of the doctors had already gone home. There was one security guard wandering around, and a TV on in a little couch pit area. The place didn't seem much like a medical institution actually. Kind of dirty and old and I couldn't figure out where they did any of the treatments. It was surreal in a soap opera sort of way. We finally caught a glimpse of one person in a lab coat down a hallway, which gave it just enough credibility that we could conceivably suspend our disbelief and accept it as the clinic it claimed to be. But with no doctors we decided to move on.

The next place we went was a Chinese Hospital. As far as we could tell there was one emergency room doctor and about 10-15 people hanging around waiting to see him. The reason I saw hanging around is that you sort of have to stand by the door to his observation room to convince him that you are actually injured and hold your place in "line." After a couple minutes at the door the doc motioned me in and had me sit on a bed across the room from his desk at which he was looking at the MRI brain scans of a child who was, with his family, also in the room. The doctor motioned for me to remove the bandage that I was holding on my wound. He sort of glanced at it from about six feet away and informed me that it would be two hours before he could properly look at it. This is not an uncommonly long wait, but it was already after 9pm and I had sustained the injury at about 5pm so were ready to get it treated, so we decided to move on. Upon leaving we saw a middle-aged man stumbling around the hallway with his hand holding a bloody bandage to his left eye. There was blood all over his face and on parts of his clothes. Our friend Rich made the observation that it can always be worse.

Our final stop was Beijing United Family Hospital. An American run hospital that was in all noticeable ways the same as any small hospital you might visit in America. They brought me right in, the ER doctor looked at my wound and explained that it would definitely need some aggressive cleaning and sutures. He gave me some grief for waiting so long to come in. Some topical anesthetic, lots of water and scrubbing, four stitches, a tetanus shot and a war-hero like bandage around my head and I was done. I was very happy to be dealing with an English speaking, western doctor. Kara was happy too.

Afterward: I had a wound check two days later and the stitches taken out three days after that. I was actually the last person to be treated in that ER area and BJU was opening up a new ER ward the day I got them out. The insurance stuff worked out fine, the church will reimburse us for the cost of the treatment so its all good.

Cops, Robbers and Impersonators

Something that kind of bugs me here in Beijing, even thought it doesn't really affect me much, is the police cars. They always have their lights on. Whether they need to get someplace or they are just moseying along on a Sunday afternoon, red and blue strobes all the time. So no one pays attention to them. I don't know if it's police policy here to do that, or just that the individual officers want everyone to know who they are, but it seems very self defeating if you ask me. If they were an emergency no one would move out of the way because they always use the lights. Or if there were a crime taking place the perpetrator would likely see the cops coming and stop.
So that's bad, but what's even worse is that ordinary people install lights and sirens in their personal vehicles. Today I saw a guy in his SUV trying to make a U-turn so he turned on what sounded exactly like a police siren to get the other vehicles to make room for him. He definitely wasn't an officer because I could see he was dressed in a polo shirt and driving a luxury vehicle and he wasn't in a hurry because he was sucking on a popsicle as he made the turn.
Any way, that's my rant for the week.