Thursday, June 25, 2009
one more week!
A week from now, I'll be sitting on a plane, on my way home! I'm incredibly excited about coming home... but at the same time, I'm really sad about leaving China and the friends I've made here. My semester here had gone by really fast. Too fast, almost. But on the other hand, this next week can't go by fast enough. Such mixed emotions!! I have my final exams today and tomorrow, and then I'm flying to Beijing with a Korean friend Friday evening. I've traveled around a lot since coming to China, but somehow, none of my plans for going to Beijing ever worked out. I was starting to think I'd end up leaving China without ever having seen the Great Wall, and that just seemed somewhat unacceptable. I mean, WHO comes to China without going to the Great Wall? So I decided to squeeze in one last trip between finals and before going home. I'll be back in Wuhan Tuesday afternoon, and then I'm leaving for home bright n' early Thursday morning! I absolutely can't wait to eat some good home-cooked American food again! :)
Friday, June 5, 2009
update!
This time, I have an excuse for my lack of updates over the past month or so: "for some reason", it has been impossible to access blogspot for the past month or so. (hmmmm...?) I've been enjoying myself, doing some traveling (a weekend in Shanghai, followed by a spontaneous trip to Hangzhou, Suzhou, and BACK to Shanghai the following weekend), and now I'm focusing on my last 3 weeks of classes and finals! I went to Shanghai two weekends ago (May 21-24) with my Korean friend and classmate, Park Gyeong Eun. We met up with another Korean friend of hers (named Hanna) in Shanghai. Neither of these girls speaks much English, but we all study Chinese, so we relied on Chinese to communicate all weekend. It was kind of exciting to realize that my Chinese is now good enough to plan a trip, buy train tickets, and carry on (simple) conversations! Being forced to speak Chinese all weekend definitely helped my vocabulary a lot! (I carried around my little Chinese-English dictionary all weekend, and the Korean girls had little Korean-English dictionaries, so if we ever had trouble saying something, we'd break out the dictionaries... that earned us a few funny looks from passer-byes!) It was only my second time to Shanghai, but it was amazing how easy it was to find my way around the city this time! I honestly think I'm a lot better at finding my way around Shanghai than I am at finding my way around Wuhan! That's mostly thanks to the subway system in Shanghai. It's really fast and convenient, and all of the maps are both in English and Chinese (although by now, the English is a nice touch, but I think I could survive without it. :) ) On Sunday morning, we attended a service Shanghai Community Ch-rch. 
At first, I was impressed and encouraged that the Chri-tians in Shanghai are free to meet so openly for worship. But once the sermon started, it was clear that this ch-rch lacks g-dly guidance. The pastor preached in Chinese, and those of us who didn't understand the Chinese so well were given headphones, and we could listen to a translator, who translated (or at least, tried to) everything the preacher was saying. She (yeah, she) preached on baptism, because they were celebrating Pentecost that Sunday. I'd never heard of this practice before, but this ch-rch only allows people to be baptized on Pentecost Sunday. The whole premise of the sermon was that "they might allow you to be baptized as soon as you believe the Gosp-l in other countries, but that's not how we do it in China." I found myself taking a lot of notes during the sermon, but most of them were about things she said that I wanted to compare with what the Bi-le ACTUALLY says. Pr-y that G-d would send a g-dly man to lead that ch-rch! China has become more religiously free over the past decade or so, but the government still has control over a lot of the aspects of the ch-rch, including what is said from the pulpit. Our little international ch-rch on campus is also experiencing some difficulties. We were recently informed that we are no longer allowed to use the room in the basement to meet for Sunday services! Our pastor already had a meeting with the police and with some of the people in charge of our university, and they told him they would hold another meeting with him to make a final decision, but they haven't called him, and when he tries to contact them, they don't answer the phone. It seems more like a problem from within the university than from the police. Please pr-y that G-d would give us wisdom, and that this issue will be resolved quickly! This past weekend (May 28-30), we had Thursday and Friday off for the Dragon Boat festival, so some friends (Mei, a Thai girl who was adopted by Belgian parents and Celine, a Chinese girl who grew up in France) and I decided to travel. We made last-minute plans to go to Hangzhou and Suzhou for the weekend! They're both actually pretty big cities, but they have the feel of a small town. From Hangzhou, we visited Moganshan (Mogan Mountain) which is about an hour away from the city. In the early 1900's a lot of Americans and Europeans had built summer homes there, and now a lot of the foreigners who live in Shanghai (also very close to Moganshan) and the well-to-do Chinese like to go there for vacations. We spent an afternoon walking around there, and it was absolutely beautiful!
We took a bus back to Hangzhou from the mountain, and at the bus station, we found a bus leaving for Suzhou about 10 minutes later! Perfect timing! I absolutely LOVED Suzhou. It's called "The Venice of the East", because it has lots and lots of little canals throughout the city. It was so beautiful! 
We rented bikes and rode around the city for a few hours, exploring little alleyways, where all of the locals live, and taking pictures. (We even took a few pictures WHILE riding bikes... and somehow, none of us got hurt!):) 
(Pardon the blurriness... I was on my bike! ;)
It turned out that there wasn't a direct train from Suzhou back to Wuhan, so we had to take a train to Shanghai first (only 30 minutes on the fast train!), and then we took a train from Shanghai back to Wuhan. We only had 2 hours in Shanghai, and neither of the other two girls had been to Shanghai before, so we asked a taxi driver to drive us past the Bund and then to the famous Nanjing Road, where we stopped for a quick dinner at SUBWAY! (We don't have that in Wuhan... it was HEAVENLY!!!)
Then we had to run to the real Subway to catch a ride to the train station to catch our train back to Wuhan. We were in a sleeping car for the ride home, so we arrived in Wuhan Sunday morning with a lot more energy than you would expect after visiting 3 cities in 3 days! But it was a good thing we weren't tired--we had to go to class as soon as we got back to campus, because the university had us make up our Thursday classes on Sunday! (I guess they can't handle more than 3 days in a weekend!)
_________________________________________________________________________
RECENT PICTURES!
Shanghai with the Koreans (click here)
Hangzhou, Suzhou, and 2 hours in Shanghai! (click here)
At first, I was impressed and encouraged that the Chri-tians in Shanghai are free to meet so openly for worship. But once the sermon started, it was clear that this ch-rch lacks g-dly guidance. The pastor preached in Chinese, and those of us who didn't understand the Chinese so well were given headphones, and we could listen to a translator, who translated (or at least, tried to) everything the preacher was saying. She (yeah, she) preached on baptism, because they were celebrating Pentecost that Sunday. I'd never heard of this practice before, but this ch-rch only allows people to be baptized on Pentecost Sunday. The whole premise of the sermon was that "they might allow you to be baptized as soon as you believe the Gosp-l in other countries, but that's not how we do it in China." I found myself taking a lot of notes during the sermon, but most of them were about things she said that I wanted to compare with what the Bi-le ACTUALLY says. Pr-y that G-d would send a g-dly man to lead that ch-rch! China has become more religiously free over the past decade or so, but the government still has control over a lot of the aspects of the ch-rch, including what is said from the pulpit. Our little international ch-rch on campus is also experiencing some difficulties. We were recently informed that we are no longer allowed to use the room in the basement to meet for Sunday services! Our pastor already had a meeting with the police and with some of the people in charge of our university, and they told him they would hold another meeting with him to make a final decision, but they haven't called him, and when he tries to contact them, they don't answer the phone. It seems more like a problem from within the university than from the police. Please pr-y that G-d would give us wisdom, and that this issue will be resolved quickly! This past weekend (May 28-30), we had Thursday and Friday off for the Dragon Boat festival, so some friends (Mei, a Thai girl who was adopted by Belgian parents and Celine, a Chinese girl who grew up in France) and I decided to travel. We made last-minute plans to go to Hangzhou and Suzhou for the weekend! They're both actually pretty big cities, but they have the feel of a small town. From Hangzhou, we visited Moganshan (Mogan Mountain) which is about an hour away from the city. In the early 1900's a lot of Americans and Europeans had built summer homes there, and now a lot of the foreigners who live in Shanghai (also very close to Moganshan) and the well-to-do Chinese like to go there for vacations. We spent an afternoon walking around there, and it was absolutely beautiful!
We took a bus back to Hangzhou from the mountain, and at the bus station, we found a bus leaving for Suzhou about 10 minutes later! Perfect timing! I absolutely LOVED Suzhou. It's called "The Venice of the East", because it has lots and lots of little canals throughout the city. It was so beautiful! 
We rented bikes and rode around the city for a few hours, exploring little alleyways, where all of the locals live, and taking pictures. (We even took a few pictures WHILE riding bikes... and somehow, none of us got hurt!):) 
(Pardon the blurriness... I was on my bike! ;)
Then we had to run to the real Subway to catch a ride to the train station to catch our train back to Wuhan. We were in a sleeping car for the ride home, so we arrived in Wuhan Sunday morning with a lot more energy than you would expect after visiting 3 cities in 3 days! But it was a good thing we weren't tired--we had to go to class as soon as we got back to campus, because the university had us make up our Thursday classes on Sunday! (I guess they can't handle more than 3 days in a weekend!)_________________________________________________________________________
RECENT PICTURES!
Shanghai with the Koreans (click here)
Hangzhou, Suzhou, and 2 hours in Shanghai! (click here)
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