Belated October post

Time to backtrack and make some updates!

I'm really sorry this is so late...

Ann and I teach at a high school in our city (XinXing), and our friends, Brandon and Caroline (married, May ’07 WLC grads), teach at the middle school equivalent of our school. The four of us travelled to Hong Kong by bus (about 5 hours) for the Chinese National Day holiday in early October. Rob and Mark are our bosses who live in HK but visit us and our fellow teachers elsewhere in China at least monthly. Ann and I & Brandon and Caroline stayed at their homes, respectively, so we got to meet their wonderful wives too. :) We are very grateful to them for allowing us to stay with them.

One of our first orders of business was to eat Western food! It’s a nice change of pace after eating rice nearly every day with random cooked veggies or tofu or other unidentifiable things! In China, they believe that the best meat is closest to the bone…so they serve it with chunks of bone and fat that you have to eat around. Mmm! As you might imagine, then, McDonald’s is a treat. They served dipped ice cream cones there, as you can see from a photo with Brandon and Caroline.

During our time there, we navigated the city by underground subway. It was convenient and quite easy. We did some shopping that involved bartering. The outdoor vendors wanted us to buy anything we even glanced at, so they kept trying to negotiate even if we weren’t interested. Ann and I bought knock-off purses that look like Gucci and Burberry. It wasn’t long before they were falling apart. :) Ann’s pink Gucci purse is all frayed, and the zipper on mine broke almost immediately. One handle has since broken and the other is about to give way. Well, what do you expect for paying less than $4 US money?? They were really cute while they lasted!

I will try to link my two Hong Kong photo albums - you don't need a Snapfish account to view them:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21008&l=82726&id=501254814

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21112&l=60a91&id=501254814


Regarding these photos from the trip:

-As you can see, I have a gone a bit crazy taking pictures of amusing signs. Some of my favorites involve “no spitting.”

-We visited the HK zoo/botanical gardens one day. The most prevalent animal was the lemur (although different types), which seem similar to monkeys.

-The panda TV picture is from the panda channel on Hong Kong TV, devoted entirely to nonstop footage of pandas doing…whatever.

-Ann and I visited Ocean Park, which seems to double as a theme park a la Six Flags and a home for aquatic wildlife, but then they throw in some pandas too. Two new pandas arrived in summer of ’07 as a gift from China to HK to celebrate 10 years of union between the countries. We took the cable car lift from one side of the park to the other, and had a gorgeous view of the bay.

-Rob took us to Victoria’s Peak the night before we left. We got there by ferry and then a trolley to the top, where Ann took the incredible photos of Hong Kong at night.

Rob and his wife, Judy, made us a wonderful dinner with kabobs and real ice cream! It was great. We were also blessed with the opportunity to have a “service” with Mr. and Mrs. Karl Gurgel, and vicar Adam Gawel provided the message. We had that “Supper” with readings and singing too.

My birthday is in mid-October, and I was very excited to have a cake! It came in a huge box with a handle for carrying it. The cake was beautiful, covered with all kinds of interesting fruits. My favorite part was the white chocolate figurine on top. It was very obviously supposed to be Snow White, but she wore a hot pink dress and had yellow-blond hair. :)

That's all for now; I'll include more about my teaching soon.

Email blog entry (from 9-18-07)

Dear family and friends,

My apologies in my delay of communicating and/or blogging - we have had some Internet difficulties that are preventing us from accessing certain sites including Facebook, Snapfish (where I have my pictures uploaded), and my blog page (please see www.slenser.blogspot.com for my first- and only- entry so far. :) Please bear with me in including you in a mass email rather than writing a blog entry.

Ann and I began teaching in China a week ago Monday. I had three classes that day for Senior 2 (we each teach sections of Senior 1 and Senior 2; there are three total levels of high school here) beginning at 7:40 in the morning. The students have very long days. They all get up at 6 am. (We hear their music playing at that time as most of them live on campus. They students hear the Chinese national anthem every morning.) Although they get a break from 11:40am to 2:30PM for lunch and resting, classes go until 5PM every day. If they live on campus, they have a mandatory study period from 7:30 PM until at least 10:30PM. We were told that they need to have monitored study or they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. The students are assigned seats in pairs of desks. The classrooms have windows without screens and it is very hot in the classrooms, even with fans blowing. The temperature has constantly been above 90 degrees. My face seems to sweat more than anyone here, (I have that problem back in the States, too) so one sweet little girl handed me a fan and another one gave me some tissues to wipe my face with during the morning. (I had trouble trying to buy cotton balls as they have no idea what cotton balls are when some Chinese friends took me shopping. )

I was very nervous for that first class; I'm sure I talked too fast. My mom had sent along some visual aids and I am so glad that I had them. The first one was a map of the world. I was able to point out where I was from and where I went to the "university." It seems to me that the words college and university are interchangeable to them. Because I went to college in Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Bucks recently drafted a player from their province in China, my mom sent along a Milwaukee Bucks flag/banner. Some of the boys knew about this basketball player, Yi Jianlian. They helped me pronounce his name the Chinese way. They liked the fact that I was asking them how to pronounce something. There were some boys who wanted to buy the flag/banner from me. They had no idea about American football, so the Brett Favre poster did not mean too much. They didn't seem to understand baseball at first, but they liked the Minnesota Twins jersey that Ann brought along for her classes. They loved the Michelle Kwan poster that I used to have hanging in my bedroom. I was able to explain that she is American but her parents were from China. None of them have ever seen snow and when I held up my hand to show how deep it sometimes gets, they couldn't believe it. I told them that my college was a Lutheran College and I explained that it was a type of Chris**an college. I am not sure if they knew what that meant. I've been drawing a cross since then with the prayer that it connects with them. One girl came up to me to shake my hand and told me that she wants to be my friend. They have been hesitant to raise their hands in class, but sometimes they will chime in with spoken language.

There is a chalkboard in the classroom and I stand on a platform slightly higher than the students. The students stay in the same class (about 54 in a class) and the teachers are the ones that change classrooms.There are 36 or 38 Chinese teachers who teach the written language at this school!!! I was able to write some of the words down as I was describing things. I realized that they are much more comfortable with written English words and found most of them reluctant to speak, at least at this point. They keep telling me that I am "beautiful", as well as my immediate family, but I think it might only be one of the only English adjectives that they know!! I explained that I have 5 members of my family and when I showed them a photo, the girls in my class (15 and 16 year olds) were fawning all over my "handsome" 16 year old brother. One boy seemed disappointed to find out that my sister is "too old' for him. Ann said the boys showed interest in her youngest sister when she showed them a photo with her. I was able to use a toothbrush and toothpaste (they knew about those) and explained that my sister is at a university studying to be a dentist, or "doctor for your teeth."

The Chinese English teachers wanted Ann and me to learn a song with English words to sing with them. They had one all picked out and had the singing version ready to download on my computer and an instrumental version too. It was a song that referred to waking up with no thoughts in your head, and later in the song there were words about a smiling sun. (Apparently it was translated from Chinese, which is why some of it seems so odd to us.) Seven of the teachers came over to our apartment to practice this song with us. I am already tired of this song, and never really liked it to begin with, but I am doing my best to go along with them. J

The people have been wonderful. They seem to appreciate that we are here and want everything to go well for us. God is good, and we continue to experience His gifts every day. We hope to seek out more opportunities to socialize and befriend our fellow teachers, but they are much busier than we are. Please ask Him to bless our efforts.

My prayers are that all is well with you! Best wishes on the rest of your week.

Sara

We're here!

Ni hao from China!

I hope this message finds you well! Ann and I spent last week going through orientation in the lovely city of Hangzhou. We got to meet with fellow English teachers recruited by the same organization as ours and have lots of fun and fellowship. We went out to dinner and did a bit of shopping. We also read and discussed necessary preparations for teaching and being in China, and had "study sessions" with our "favorite book." Some of us with no Mandarin language experience began studying pinyin as a first step. We visited the beautiful West Lake and took lots of pictures. Aside from Ann (my roommate and friend, for those of you who don't know) and myself and two others, these individuals will be teaching in either Hangzhou at the university or in Wenling at schools or a learning center.

I'm very excited at the moment because I'm in Ann's and my new apartment in XinXing writing to you; the especially exciting part is that the Internet is working better. :) Our apartment is *beautiful*. They went all out decorating it and the lady in charge of it must have asked us about 5 times if we like it. We kept assuring her that we do. They bought a whole bunch of things we thought we were going to need, including our bedding, dishes and utensils, toothbrushes and toothpaste (Colgate for both, I believe), shampoo, shower flip flops, a tv, DVD player, a plug-in tea kettle, a rice cooker, bottled water dispenser, and a huge gift basket with fresh fruit and chocolate in it. Apparently our go-between, Mark, told our school what had been done before at Brandon and Caroline's school (they are a married couple at the middle school equivalent of our school) for the girls they are replacing, but I couldn't believe how awesome it is.

We've been having dinners with the higher-ups from the schools. They've taken us for "Western" food; it's so funny because it's like the Chinese version of "Western" (much like we Americanize Chinese food). "Western" food means things like beefsteak or chicken, but we still have Chinese vegetables and sauces. It has been good, and we're all finding things that we like.

Ann and I were still waiting on one suitcase each...until this morning! Ann says it's like Christmas in September because of the luggage arriving; we also each got a bike this morning to ride around town. We each received a cell phone from day 1. The problem is that we cannont read the Chinese characters to use the phones beyond the basics (and multiple people have tried to play with it to change it, to no avail). We keep mixing them up because they look exactly alike and have the same strange Chinese song playing when the phone rings.

We're hoping to observe some Chinese English classes to see what our students already know and their skill level. We have received a very warm welcome and been introduced to many individuals in the English department. One newly married couple, Lily and her husband Colline, went to dinner with us last night. They all seem so grateful that we are here to help them and the students, and are wanting to help us learn Mandarin as well. Although the locals speak Cantonese, those in our school setting speak Mandarin which is wonderful as it's more useful in the rest of China. The students began classes on Monday, and we were introduced at the opening ceremony. They can't fit all the students in the hall, but I'm guessing there were close to 2,000 of them in there. They introduced all the higher-ups first, who were met with applause, and then the new teachers. I was introduced before Ann, so picture me getting teary-eyed as I stood up onstage and the place erupted in cheers! I will never, ever forget that feeling. I will consider that my celebrity moment.

Please pray for us as we continue this journey here! We hope and pray to be able to reach out to others and share the most important Message during our time here. Blessings to you all!