Bread noodles, bowling, and the rest

OK, thoughts from the past few days… let’s see, first a recap of what I’ve done:

Saturday we made a trip out to Huijia, another CTF school to visit two teams out there--both all-girl teams. We ate at this noodle place in this little Chinese village like I haven’t seen yet—a lot more like I pictured China. Very evident poverty. In China the income gap between the urban population and the rural is 5 times the international norm, and getting worse. Even the gov't acknowledges this as the country's biggest problem. In the restaurant, there were these two little barefoot, dirty kids crawling around on this dirty floor, but the place served the most amazing bread noodles I’ve ever had (not that I've had a lot of bread noodles, but if I'd had, these would've been the best). I’ll include a picture of Morgan—I call her Morgan because it said Morgan on her pants. She was a cutey.

We spent the afternoon with the gals, played the game Spoons with chopsticks, and even went bowling, yes, real bowling… they’re lucky enough to have a bowling alley on their campus. I bowled a 130 and a 135 and reached 33 km/h on the radar gun on each lane. Sweet feature. Then we climbed “Huijia Mountain,” a hill made of moved dirt behind their school that from the top you can see Beijing and the TV tower just a couple kilometers from my school—very cool. Side note: I’m not turning metric on you over here, I realize that was my second reference in this paragraph alone, it’s just all I have to go on. Later in the evening we went out to this Russian restaurant and I got pizza--my first good pizza in China.

Sunday we went to fellowship and returned home where I began watching the first season of the TV show Lost. I am officially hooked. I’m through five episodes by now, but believe me it’d be more if the tape I borrowed wasn’t just episodes 1-5. I'd heard so much good stuff and it was all true. Reminds me so much of our own "Beastie," 404. Sunday night was also Mid-Autumn Festival Day, a holiday here in China where pretty much you go outside, look at the full moon, recite this ancient poem, think fondly of your hometown and eat a mooncake (this completely disgusting dessert). I went outside, recited a really bad paraphrase of the poem in English, thought fondly of my hometown, and went back inside. A joyous celebration indeed.

Monday I taught, fairly successfully, and caught a cold.

Tuesday I sniffled all day, took some drugs (they helped), and sat in on a 2-hour Chinese history lecture (by an ELI lady, in English) that was really fascinating. I realized how much I’m missing intellectual stimulation and this class was a big help in that regard. The Kindergarten building, while stimulating in many ways, does nothing for my brain still used to essays and lectures. I never realized how much college got into me until tonight when it felt like night class and I was on the edge of my seat. Makes me wonder if I couldn’t do grad school someday...

Other thoughts… (I realize I’m pretty much just spitting them out), China is still great and I'm learning so much about life every day... from teaching to being a stranger in a foreign place to just seeing His calling so directly lived out in my life—that he brought me to this place for a very specific purpose, one that's a joy to be living out. Keep thinking of me back home, specifically as I work to develop relationships, to love my students, and to serve him faithfully here. Lift up my daily time in the Word and in my interactions with my team, which are all going well so far. I'm eating good, need a haircut, learning a lot, and am excited about the next nine months here in Asia.

And I'm excited for my next episode of Lost. If you've watched it, please no spoilers.