Confession

Mandi, Michelle, Melodie, Nathan T, and me enjoying the spiciest food in China: Sichuan hot pot!

Finally able to relax in our beds for the 23 hour train ride home!

The baby pandas were hilarious to watch roll around on this platform.

Hanging out in Rachel's hometown. Rachel is on the left.

A ping-pong area at a park in Guangzhou.

Joe, me, Kirk, Nathan T, and Nathan M at a historic chrch wall in Macau.

Mandi and I at the panda reserve in Chengdu.

I tend to end my blogs with something along the lines of "That's pretty much all that's been going on with me." I have to confess, for the last few updates I was lying a little.

For the past two months or so, one of my teammates (Mandi) and I have been "seeing" each other. If you're a Facebook friend you probably already know this, but we're now official. So that probably answers your question as to why so many single women around the world have been a little extra depressed these past few weeks!

There's a lot more I could write about her, but I'll just say that Mandi is incredible, and I'm really happy we're together! If you want to know more, just ask me!

Because of my month-long break for Spring Festival, I've been doing A LOT of traveling. Here's a few of the highlights from my break:

- Me, Kirk, and Nathan M (from my school) met up with Nathan T (he is with Zhong and teaches at another school in Wuhan) and Joe (my friend from high school) in Hong Kong. We had a great time. Toured the city, met up with some of our other foreign friends, and watched NFL playoff games in a western sports bar. We also went to Macau to see what that was like. We even turned $1.50 into $15.00!! That will probably be the end of gambling in my life. I like to go out on top.

- Because of so many people traveling during Spring Festival, we went to Hong Kong without knowing if/when we'd be able to get return tickets. Fortunately, Kirk was randomly talking to one of our old Chinese friends online who now lives in Guangzhou (a nearby city). He helped us buy return bus tickets so we could make it back in time to visit another friend's home for the Chinese New Year.

- A big group of us visited one of our Chinese friend's (Rachel) home for the actual day of Chinese New Year. She lives in a small city by China's standards. It was fun to get to know her family and see what an average family does for this holiday.

- After a few days at home, my last trip was to Chengdu. A large city in the west of China that is famous for its' spicy food and being the home of pandas. Chengdu is easily one of my favorite cities in China. Besides the pandas (which were entertaining to watch wrestle with each other), it has a great mix of Chinese and western culture. The people there are all very friendly as well.

- It would be impossibly long for me to completely explain our trip back from Chengdu, so I'll try to give you the main events. Due to more traffic than we expected on the way to the station, we missed our train home. That is, all of us except for Nathan T who got on the train to try to stall it for everyone else. He tried, but the train started moving and then they wouldn't let him off to come back and join the rest of us! The four of us remaining then went to a ticket exchange booth. The best option they had was for standing-room only tickets for a 23-hour ride! We knew it would be terrible, but we just wanted to get home, so we got those tickets. As we got on the train, one of the workers told us that there might be some open beds in another car on the train. However, we first had to jam ourselves and our bags into a car with almost no room for an hour. After that, the worker told us there were in fact some beds up front. We paid her the price difference for the standing tickets, and then she led us up to our beds. There's much more to the story, but hopefully that gives you at least a little bit of the craziness we experienced that day!

- A big group of friends, mostly from our Zhong team, came to my apartment to watch the Super Bowl. I wish I had remembered to get a picture of all 16 people crammed into my small living room to watch through my slingbox program. We had a blast cheering on our teams and eating the pancakes and cinnamon rolls that Rebecca and Taylor made. And as a Colts fan, I'm always happy to see the Patriots lose in Indy!

That's pretty much what I've been up to lately. This time I mean it!

Hope you're all doing well!

Psalm 91:3

Busy American Holidays...Relaxing Chinese Holiday!

Hey everyone,

Just like I'm sure you were, I have been extremely busy over the past few weeks. Here's a few pictures and videos that I thought you might enjoy with a very short summary of some of the other things I did over the holidays:


First, here's a video of the other teachers and I singing a Chinese pop song, Gai Bian Zi Ji, in Chinese!

Taylor getting ready to play Dance Dance Revolution at an arcade with all his fans!

My Christmas gift from our group. Since I'm the organizer of our group, they got me a bright green sweatshirt that says Valiant Organizer.

Skyping with family my Christmas evening and their morning.

Melodie (in this picture on the right) is from Texas. She loves riding horses. For her birthday party, we found a place (with a whopping 3 horses!!!) where we could ride.

The Wuchang part of our team on Christmas morning.

Kirk and I were baby-sitting Sophia and Elise (Adam and Becca Carpenter's daughters) for the night when Taylor and Nathan decided to drop by.



You saw one of them above, but much of our time was spent preparing and performing for different Christmas/New Year's parties. The Chinese are very interested in learning about our culture and holidays. It was a lot of fun, but also quite stressful teaching, getting ready to perform, and also trying to get our own plans for Christmas figured out. They all went well though.

A big thanks to the Carpenter's (the leaders of Zhong) and the Whincop's (an Australian couple who we go to fellowship with). They let us stay at their homes for Christmas and New Year's weekends. It was a blast eating, playing games, and watching movies with my team there.

For Christmas morning, a few of us were able to go to Chinese chrch with some of our friends who are not C's yet. It was really encouraging for us to get to go with them. You can be thinking of them as we will hopefully have more opportunities to share with them in the future.

I am done teaching for over a month! China's big holiday, Spring Festival, is on January 23rd. Our students have final exams soon. Since our classes do not have exams, the other teachers take our classes to prepare for them. I'm planning on going to Hong Kong, Chengdu, and a friend's hometown to celebrate.

I'll try to post a quick update and pictures at some point later this month. Happy New Year!

Psalm 119:37

Hospital Round 2

A wanted sign at my school of the Wuhan bomber.

Peggy helping the doctor apply Rebecca's cast.

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to a Chinese hospital a few weeks ago to get eight stitches in my lip from playing football. With this being my third year in China, and just the first visit to a hospital by anyone on our team, I was expecting us to be done with those trips for the year. I thought wrong!

We didn't have internet in our homes for much of this past week, so we've been in our offices quite a bit. This past Sunday night, Mandi and I were hanging out in my office getting caught up on e-mails when my phone rang. I answered, and it was Rebecca: "I think my ankle's broken."

"What!!??" I responded. Then she explained to me that she had been rollerblading at the school. One of her wheels got caught on a rock and twisted her ankle. She had somehow made it back to her room to call me. By the time me and Mandi made it back, her adrenaline had worn off and she could barely stand on it.

After a semi-crazy time of calling Chinese friends, getting Rebecca down the stairs, and hailing a taxi, Mandi, Rebecca, and I were off to the hospital for x-rays. Peggy (our boss/culture assistant) called and told us to pick her up along the way. As expected, the visit was different and much longer than it should have been. The hospital, which is supposed to specialize in bone injuries had no crutches or wheelchairs! I piggy-backed Rebecca from the taxi to the waiting area. The rest of the time Mandi and I pushed her around on a gurney.

The x-rays showed she had broken her ankle in 3 places. She won't have to get surgery, but she will have to be in a cast for 6-8 weeks. I know she's frustrated about it since she can't teach for awhile and it could also affect her winter break travel plans, but she has had a great attitude throughout the whole process.

If you've been following the news, you might have heard there was a small bomb that went off in Wuhan recently. It's actually very close to our house. It killed a couple people and injured a few more. I've attached some stories about it on my "China articles" page if you're interested to learn more.

For those of you who know my sports interests, you know I had a GREAT weekend recently as well as a very long night. Indiana University (my college basketball team) was playing the University of Kentucky (the evil empire of college basketball). I was planning on waking up Sunday morning my time to watch it through the internet. However, two of my teammates (Melodie and Kirk) also wanted to watch their teams play that night. Melodie's football team (Sam Houston State) was playing in the I-AA playoffs at 1am. Kirk's basketball team (Ohio State) was playing Kansas at 4am, then my game was on at 6:30am. The three of us had an all-night ESPN marathon in Mandi's office since we didn't have internet at home. Melodie's team won. Kirk's team lost, but played well without their best player. And the best part of the night, was IU's 3-pointer at the buzzer to knock of the number 1 team in the country!

Other than that, there's not a whole lot else to write about right now. As usual, we have quite a few Christmas and New Year's performances to prepare for. Fortunately, it'll be a lot less than last year!

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Matthew 1:23

Thanksgiving and Lips...

Our day of Thanksgiving meal was McDonald's. The manager didn't want us to take a picture so I'm looking out for him!

Getting my antibiotic shot after the stitches.

Fun times.

Some of my students during the Lip Dub competition.

Hanging out with friends. We got rained out of our tennis match.

Post-surgery.

Pre-surgery

Mandi, Chelsie, Sophia, Becca, and Rebecca at Aloha's Thanksgiving.

The past two weeks have had two themes. Thanksgiving and lips.

A week and a half ago (Nov 19), our fellowship celebrated an early Thanksgiving with a potluck. Everyone brought a dish or two. We had all kinds of traditional Thanksgiving foods, which is very rare in China. Thanksgiving is the only time all year I'll get anywhere close to turkey, pumpkin pie, and stuffing (my personal favorite). After the amazing meal, quite a few of us walked to a nearby field to play some touch football.

I was playing quarterback for a lot of the game. Towards the end of the game, one of our Australian friends (Dan) was rushing me for a sack. I barely avoided him and threw a long pass for a touchdown (just letting you know!!). However, when he jumped up to block the pass, he accidentally elbowed me on the right side of my lower lip. It didn't really hurt, but I could tell that it was probably bleeding. I asked Dan, and he said it was...a lot! Before I knew it, I had blood all over my clothes and hands!

There's a lady in our fellowship (Cheryl) who is a doctor, so a few people walked back with me to see her. Cheryl looked at it and said what I was expecting: I would need stitches. I had bitten my lip with my upper and lower teeth in different places. It was pretty nasty.

Stitches don't make me nervous, but going to a Chinese hospital for any reason scares me! I'd heard a few horror stories, and never wanted to visit one! Cheryl didn't have her equipment with her, so I'd have to take the risk! Rebecca, Mandi, and one of our Chinese friends (Rachel) took a taxi to the closest hospital that Cheryl recommended.

The entire experience was pretty hectic. We walked around to a few different buildings trying to find the right place to go. When we finally did find the correct, I was immediately taken in to see the doctor. Mandi was my translator while Rebecca and Rachel went off to get me registered. All three were a huge help. I felt like I had three secretaries with me!

I think the surgery took longer than the doctor expected. The anesthesia wore off before he was finished. The last few stitches felt like he was trying to rip my lip off! He told me that it was a little difficult to fix because it wasn't a normal cut. He had trouble finding parts of my lip to sew together! I ended up with 7 stitches.

After that, I was going to have to get an IV (you almost ALWAYS have to get one if you go to a hospital here) to fight off infection. I really didn't want to, but we called Cheryl and she said it would probably be a good idea. But before I could take it, I had to take a skin test to make sure I wouldn't be allergic to it. I failed the skin test, so we then had to take a taxi to another hospital to get a shot instead of the IV! We finally made it to that hospital and I got my shot (in the lower regions if you know what I mean). We were finally ready to head back. The whole experience took 3-4 hours. It was a long night! Thanks to Dan, Cheryl, Rebecca, Mandi, and Rachel for all their help that night. I got the stitches off a week later, and my lip is almost completely back to normal. The doctor did a really good job.

Earlier that week, Mandi, Rebecca, and I were the judges for (ironically) a lip dub competition. All the classes in Senior 2 played a clip of a movie and replaced the actual sound with their voices. It was live, not recorded. It was fun to be a part of, just a little long. There are 30 classes in that grade! Plus, there were about 6 groups who did the same clip from Monsters, Inc. The whole competition took about 3 hours.

We celebrated our 2nd Thanksgiving this past Saturday at Aloha (an American restaurant we frequently visit on the other side of Wuhan). It was all you could eat of turkey, stuffing, biscuits, and pie. Needless to say, I had my share of Thanksgiving food this year!

While we were over on that side of Wuhan, we had an amazing time of pryr and wrship with members of our Zhong team who live there. Paul J is very excited about the HS, and he enjoys teaching us about Him.

I've also had some great opportunities to share with my students. I gave some Books to two of them who had asked me where they could get one. Plus, another class that I teach has students who are doing an English project on the New Testament. Their teacher knows I am a C, so she asked me to meet with them once a week so they can ask me questions. Please be thinking of these students as well as me over these next few weeks!

That's all for now! Hope you're doing well!

Isaiah 49:8

2 weeks off!

High school reunion with Kirk in Beijing!

The cover of my soon to be released rap album...

This is who I was dressed up as. Unfortunately, you can't see all of Kevin's tattoos!

Nathan's first China train.

Kirk, Nathan, and I at the Great Wall.

The LSU fan club in Wuhan! Lesley and Camille are in the front wearing purple.

Hey everyone. Hope you're all doing well. My last few weeks have been great. I had two weeks off!

During the week of Oct. 24, Senior 2 students went on a field trip. They call it social practice. Basically, they go hiking, sleep in a barn, and visit different places (army base, farms, prison). I've asked some people questions about it, but I can never get too much information from them. I think it's mostly an opportunity for the students to see people who live very different lifestyles from them. They usually like doing this because they don't have homework for a week. I can't blame them!

The very next week, my students had mid-term exams. Because we have so many students (about 500), the Chinese English teachers give these to the students. While I had a lot of time off, there wasn't too much time to relax. I almost felt more busy with traveling and running errands than I usually do! However, I had a LOT of fun.

We spent both weekends hanging out with the other teachers from Huangshi. The first weekend was at their place. We had a Halloween/dance party one night. We all dressed up, learned The Wobble, and watched The Nightmare before Christmas. I dressed up as another member of our team (Kevin) who has a lot of tattoos. I still have some temporary ones that I haven't been able to get off yet!

The next weekend, the Huangshi group came to Wuhan. Two of the girls (Camille and Lesley) went to Lousiana State University and are die-hard football fans. If you don't know them, think of me with IU! They wanted to watch the LSU-Alabama game. I was excited to watch a big game with some fans, and a bunch of our other teammates joined us too. I had about 12 people crammed into my small living room cheering on the Tigers. I was mostly rooting against Nick Saban! LSU pulled it out in an exciting boring game (you know what I mean if you watched it).

During both weekends, we had a great time of fellowship. We talked, sang, pryed, and studied the Book. Our team continues to amaze me with its unity and desire to know the Father more. I've really enjoyed getting to know Him better through them.

Kirk Ransom, Nathan, and I also went to Beijing for a few days. Kirk and I have been there a few times, but Nathan had not, and we all wanted to get away from Wuhan for a few days. I think this was my 4th time to visit. I really love the capital city. It feels like my 2nd China home. We were also able to visit one of my high school friends who teaches there and who is also named Kirk (Lacy). I was able to meet some of his students and sit in one one of his classes for a little bit. When we used to play backyard football in middle school, I never imagined I'd later be sitting in on his class on the other side of the world!

My first year of teaching here, I shared an office with a Chinese English teacher named Molly. Kirk and I have gotten to know her and her family pretty well. They just moved into a new home, so they invited us over for dinner. They have a really nice house, and we had a great time eating Molly's Chinese cooking and getting to know them even more.

Honestly, there has been a lot of other stuff going on these past few weeks, but that's just a short summary. Have a great Thanksgiving!

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Bike Thief at Large!

Arianna and Nils. Two German exchange students at our school.

Our waiban (Peggy) wanted to give hamburger grilling a shot!

Hey everyone. Here's what's been going on in Wuhan lately.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, most of us teachers bought bikes a month and a half ago. Traffic in Wuhan is TERRIBLE (I can't emphasize that enough), so I was glad to get one this year. Less time spent waiting at bus stops, cramming into standing room only buses, then being stuck in traffic jams for ridiculously long periods of time.

Two Saturdays ago started out as a great day. I was already planned for the next week's lessons and had some time to kill. The weather was nice, so I decided to ride my bike to Lu Xiang (our downtown). It was a little ways away, but I had the time. I locked it up next to a bus stop hoping that having a lot of people around would deter any bike thieves. I had a great day at Lu Xiang. I studied Chinese at a coffee shop for a few hours before meeting up with friends at Papa John's for pizza. Everyone else took a bus or taxi home, but I was excited to ride home. It's quite the adrenaline rush to ride around thousands of people and swerving cars! A few weeks ago, I had Rebecca on the back of my bike and clipped a taxi's mirror.

As I was walking back, I had a bad feeling that my bike wouldn't be there. It had been parked for a few hours. Wuhan is a huge city, and I know I'm prone to be a target as a foreigner. My gut feeling was right. I walked around the area a little just to make sure the police hadn't moved my bike in case I had parked it illegally. I never found it. I'm guessing someone on the other side of the city is enjoying my wheels now. I've heard plenty of stories about people getting their bike stolen. So instead of being too angry, I just felt like it was my time to have it happen. Oh well.

Last weekend the six Zhong teachers at our school decided to have an American cook-out and invite some of the new foreign teachers at our school as well as some of our Chinese friends. Organizing something like that in China is quite the process! We had to go across town to buy the burgers and other foreign food. All in all, we had pretty big, multi-cultural barbecue with almost 30 people. Besides the Americans and Chinese, we also invited a few German exchange students who are here for the year. It was a lot of work, but I think everyone had a great time eating burgers, playing wiffle-ball, and hanging out.

As expected, it wasn't too long before I got my first sinus infection of the year. I've been trying to run fairly regularly, but the air is awful this year due to more construction close to our school. So many times, I'll be glancing at the landscape and think, "if that was fog, it would be beautiful." Unfortunately, it's smog. This infection has stuck around for about two weeks, but thankfully the worst is past. It was difficult to teach some of my classes with a bunch of crap in my throat and a faucet for a nose.

Other than that, not a lot has happened. You can be thinking of some opportunities I might have in the future to talk with some students. I am planning to give some Books to students who were asking about it at the beginning of the year. Also, one of my classes is doing an English project. Some of the students have decided to do theirs' on appreciating the New Testament. Their teacher has asked me to talk with them about it in a few weeks. I'm definitely not an expert on theology, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity.

I finally have wireless internet in my room which means I can use my iTouch to communicate more easily with all of you. Through a free app, you can text/call me just like a phone in America at 517-798-4420.

Also, I have another app called Instagram. Think of it as twitter for pictures. I'll try to post the occasional interesting China picture. You can follow me at rmathews10 if you'd like to.

Grade 2 students will be on a field trip next week, so I'm going to enjoy some time off! I hope all of you are doing great!

Matthew 6:19-21

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