Spring Festival!

Kirk, Daniel, and I in Thailand a few years ago.  I'm ready to return soon!

Hello again everyone!

This update will be very short, as not a whole lot new has happened since Christmas and New Year's.  Our Spring Festival (春节 or chun jie in Chinese) break just started yesterday!  If you don't remember me mentioning this from past years, think of it as our Christmas and New Year's holidays all merged into one big day.  They celebrate the New Year according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

My favorite part about the holiday is a REALLY long vacation.  Today is January 20th, and I'll probably start teaching again around February 25th.  I'll be hanging around Jingzhou for about a week, then head to Thailand for a week with some friends.  I am extremely ready for this break.  As I mentioned before, it's been really cold here.  I read on the news that this might be China's coldest winter over the last 20 years.  On top of that, the air pollution has been TERRIBLE the last two weeks.  You might have heard about it as it has even made the news in America.

To give you an idea on how bad it's been, I'll use an app that I have on my iPod.  It measures a few different things in the air such as sulfur dioxide and the size of the air particles.  It then averages them all out to give a number.  The higher the number the worse the pollution.  My first two years here, I got a ridiculous amount of sinus infections from the dirty air in Wuhan, especially from running outside.  When I found out about this app last year, I learned that if the number was less than 100, I would probably be okay running outside.  If it was over, I'd probably get sick.  FYI, I would guess that a town in America such as Spring Arbor would have an average number around 20 or so!  Today is the first time in two weeks it's actually been less than 100, and it's reached as high as 300 this past week!

All that mostly just to say I am ready for warm weather and clean air in Thailand!

I hope you all are doing well!  I will hopefully send an update about my trip sometime in February.

Malachi 3:10

Christmas Traditions

Hello again everyone!  The last few weeks have been pretty busy.  As usual, I wish I could update more often, but when I have the time I forget, and when I remember I don't have the time!  Anyways, here's a brief update on the past few weeks.

This is my fourth year in China, which still blows my mind.  Being here for so long has created some new Christmas traditions.  Being in a new city didn't really change any of those.

Mandi and I spent about two weeks teaching our students on Christmas.  The second week was mostly just fun and games (we played Christmas Bingo), but the first week was probably one of the most challenging and rewarding weeks teaching here.  For that lesson, our students learned to sing "Joy to the World," read the Christmas story from the Bible, learned the Xtian history of the candy cane, and also about Santa, reindeer, elves, etc.  It was A LOT to do in one class, especially when you throw in the craziness of not knowing if powerpoint and/or the speakers would work for each class.  I walked around campus every day with my computer, speakers (in case they were broken in the classroom), a bunch of papers with the Christmas story (in case powerpoint didn't work), and a Santa hat filled with candy canes.  It was a very busy week, but definitely worth it getting to share about the story of JC and the real meaning of Christmas.  Many Chinese know he was born that day, but they don't really understand the importance of his birth.

Another Christmas tradition that has seemingly happened every Christmas is performing.  Nothing says a relaxing holiday like dancing in front of a couple thousand students!  The video is above.  Mandi and I joined a few of the other younger teachers in a "street dance."

Fortunately, after the busy Christmas lessons and performance we had a few days off to celebrate the New Year.  I just stayed in Jingzhou to get caught up on some errands.  It was also nice to stay up late and watch of few games in America.  Go Colts!

The weather has been FREEZING this year.  I would say it's been an average of low 30's during the day.  It really wouldn't be all that bad if most buildings had central heating....or any kind of heating!  Because of that, the inside is usually not much warmer than outside.  While our apartments don't have central heating, they do at least have a few decent heaters, so we've been hanging out at home a lot recently!  We're looking forward to a week in sunny Thailand during the upcoming Chinese New Year in February.

That's pretty much all for now.  Happy New Year!

John 1:1