Checking In

Hey everyone. Nothing too new has been happening, but I wanted to give a quick update before I head to Beijing on Tuesday. Even though it's pretty cold there, I'm pumped to see the sights, visit my high school friend Kirk, and eat at a lot of American restaurants!

About a week ago, Kirk and I went over to the school to play catch with a football I brought from America. We ended up playing outside a building where most of my classes are. We were having fun tossing it around. After a few minutes, I heard "Oooohhhhh" after Kirk threw me a long bomb. I looked up at the building and HUNDREDS of my students were watching us. Apparently, the bell had rung and all my students wanted to spend their 10-minute break watching us play a sport they knew nothing about. A few of my students came down and played with us for a few minutes. I'd say they threw like American girls (yup, I said it!), but that would be an insult to the girls! It was a lot of fun, and I hope we can teach some students how to play this year.

Earlier this week, Rebecca and I went to a small studio and had our voices recorded. Basically, we were reading off scripts that Chinese schools will use for the listening portion of their tests. It lasted for a long time (4 hours), but it paid decent, so we didn't mind! It's weird to think that somewhere in China a bunch of students will be listening to my voice as they're freaking out about whether or not they're going to pass a test!

On Thursday, I had another interesting conversation at the local coffee shop. Wendy is the mother of a 15-year autistic girl. I later found out that Rebecca had been talking to the daughter that night. The daughter is a musical genius and will be releasing a piano CD soon! Anyways, the daughter is a believer, but the mother (Wendy) is not. However, she goes to the local church with her daughter. She seemed to be confused as to what being a C is all about. She seemed to think that it's about what you do. I tried to explain to her that there's much more to it than that and tried to explain forgiveness to her. I'm not sure if I explained it well at all, but she was intrigued, and I hope to give her a Book if I run into her again. You can be thinking of her. I'm amazed at the opportunities that the Father has opened up for me to talk about Him in just a few months here!

Please be thinking of my friend Kirk (the one here in Wuhan with me). His grandfather had been in very poor health the last few weeks. Kirk was pretty close with him, so he decided to spend a lot of money to fly home and visit him once more. He made it home just in time to visit him for a day before he passed away on Friday night. While I know he's sad, he's also very happy with the timing of everything. We have this week off. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have been able to make the trip. I'm glad it worked out for him, but I'll be missing him in Beijing!

It is starting to get cold here. And for those of you who know me, you know I HATE cold weather. It's been in the 30's which may not sound terrible, but the heating in China is very poor. It's been 50 degrees or lower in my apartment this past week. I can actually see my breath as I'm writing this to you! Not fun. However, that's about my only complaint so far, so I guess that's good.

I guess that's it for now. I hope you're all rooting for the Colts tonight when they play the Patriots! I'll be able to watch it on my computer, so I'm excited.

I'll have more with pictures after Beijing!