Foreigners 2, Chinese 0

Foreigners win!

Kirk driving in for a lay-up

Hello again everyone. I hope you're all doing well. Here's what I've been up to recently.

This year, we've had a lot more opportunities to play sports with the Chinese students and teachers. Our school has 4 German exchange students studying at our school. We take Kung Fu and Chinese classes with them, so we've gotten to know them fairly well. Recently, they told us that a school team (I think it's like an intramural team) wanted to challenge us and the Germans to a soccer game. We have quite the mix of foreigners. Some of us had played soccer growing up, but most had not. However, we had to represent our countries! It was a lot of fun. We played for about an hour with no subs while the other team had a few. We were dead tired, but pulled out a 3-1 win.

A few days later, I received a call from an Chinese English teacher. He said that some of the Chinese teachers wanted to challenge us to a basketball game. My first year, I showed my students a copy of my hometown newspaper's sports section when I was on the front after a homecoming game. Ever since then, the rumors have spread around campus that I'm an amazing basketball player. Some have even asked me if I played at Duke!

I was excited for the chance to play an organized game. We played with the same group of foreigners. I think Kirk and I are the only ones who played organized basketball growing up, but some of the other foreigners are pretty athletic. I knew it would be a pretty tough game because I've played with many of the Chinese teachers, and they aren't too bad. We had our work cut out for us!

We took an early lead, but the Chinese teachers rallied back. They led by 6-12 points for most of the game. Kirk and I were the two primary scorers, and our shots just weren't falling. Finally, in the 4th quarter, I started to hit a few three's and Kirk was getting in the paint for some lay-ups. I hit a 3 to put us up 65-62, and we managed to hang on for a 1-point victory. It was a fun game, especially with quite a few teachers and students watching and cheering.

We just finished a short two day vacation to celebrate National Day. Basically, it's China's 4th of July. It was nice to have the break, but I'm ready to finally get on a regular schedule. While I've been teaching for over a month, I think I've only taught one normal week. There's been lots of short holidays and schedule changes.

Our chrch has 50-100 people from all over Wuhan, which is a very spread-out city. We don't get to see each other too much, so one person usually shares at the end of each service to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about how He has been working in their lives. I talked this past Sunday. I was a little nervous, but it seemed to go well as I talked about how I've been encouraged during my time in China by seeing some of my students become brothers and sisters.

That's pretty much all from here. Please be "thinking" of some of my teammates from other schools. Jacqueline is a teacher at a middle school on the other side of Wuhan. Her father unexpectedly passed away back in the states. Jacqueline, her husband Paul, and Jacq's younger brother are now in America for the funeral. They will coming back to China this weekend.

Also, be thinking of Melodie and her family. She is a teacher at a university here in Wuhan. Her mother has been having some health problems and had some tests run. Melodie was here yesterday, but I forgot to ask for more info! Hopefully, there has been some improvement.

Lastly, I just wanted to let you know that I added a couple of tabs to my blog. The second tab is my contact information. The third one will be a bunch of funny and/or interesting articles I've found on the internet about China.

I hope all of you are doing well! Philippians 4:6-7