This week has been insane.  I honestly don't think i've been able to breath since  last saturday morning.  It has been constant craziness.  I have gone from one thing to the next.  For example all week we've been having reharsals for a performance that happened today with us and some primary school students for the whole school and the kindergarten.  We even sang in chinese.  THen there has been multiple parties we've had to attend and it is only THursday night.  If i can just make it to Sunday evening after the christmas play is done i'll be thrilled.  Another bonus is my theatre students will now not have to perform until next semester, which makes my life a TON easier. 

 

This week I also visited an orphanage which was AMAZING.  Talk about a great experience.  THis one is outside of town and recieves help from an american foundation, and they are doing such a good job.  THey take in all sorts of disabled kids and babies who need major surgeries and then raise money to help them and find adoptive parents.  I helped out with giving tree at our fellowship so we were then able to deliver presents to them.  The kids were so cute!  They are great about putting them into a home type of setting, and the two new buildings they've built are seriously like American homes.  They are chinese but it looks like Pottery Barn and Ikea combined with Chinese style.  It was beautiful.  The kids were so smily too!  I'll post some of these pictures as well.  I hope to go back in the future if possible.  Holding babies just made me long to someday have some of my own.  Maybe the Father will put the right person in my life someday so that will be possible.  In the meantime I can go on loving kids who don't have a family of their own, or their families leave them at school. 

 

A friend who teaches in another city is also coming to visit this weekend, which I am really excited for!  Yea for visiting!  ALso I got a webcam last weekend, so if you have skype look me up and we can have a chat!  Yea for free calling!  Fam-I'm looking forward to chatting this weekend! 

Last weekend I was one of three hundred people or so that attended a small concert of the Newsboys in Beijing!  They were awesome, and it was great to hear a famous likeminded group being able to sing praise to the Father.  Not to mention the tickets were dirt cheap in comparison to what they'd be in America.  I was standing in a very good spot, middle front up against a cat walk which they paraded about on.  There were a ton of people I knew there (youth group, fellowship, and co-workers), and a friend Ben and his family actually were the opening act! It was crazy to think that I started listening to them when I was in Jr. High, and now some of my jr. high youth group students are now the ones going crazy for them.  It made me feel old...anyways, pictures soon to come!  Oh and I would definitely go hear them if you ever get the chance.  Way different in person, especially Paul Coleman.

 

The last month has been crazy in cookie making.  Thank goodness for the cookie press my family sent me.  Without it I don't know how i would have made the hundreds of cookies i have.  Last night and tonight I made over three hundred which our teachers will now recieve as gifts.  Hopefully they like cookies.  A chinese friend came over tonight for the baking festivities.  During which while baking we had a deep discussion about why it is better to not live with someone before marriage, and why the Father asks this of us.  I hope she left feeling encouraged even though I know it is a hard question to struggle with.  Please lift her up if you get the chance. 

A recent experience that was funny, and yet WAY too telling about the situation here.  A couple of weeks ago I tried to buy a nativity scene here at one of our markets.  It was really pretty, not gaudy or anything.  Only one problem.  I looked a bit closer and asked the sales person... where's baby jesus?  "mei you baby" was the reply.  In other words "no have baby".  She then tried to convince me that the joseph figure was jesus.  I tried to explain to her that at Christmas jesus is the baby...and without the baby, why would i want to buy the nativity scene?  He is kind of the whole point of having one.  She was very dismayed that I no longer wanted to buy it.  Really, it is all too telling that the only evidence I've found of the Son in the general markets turns out to remove him completely.  Maybe he didn't make it through customs.  Only in China can you buy the nativity scene but without the central character.  Aren't practically all the nativity scenes sold in America made in China anyway?!? 

Last week Thursday we went to a friends house for dinner, and we were fed large crabs for dinner among other things.  I don't know about you, but I am not one for looking at my food with eyes and claws and such intact before i eat it.  Really they creep me out when they are dead.  Alive, I can handle, dead not so much.  What else can I say, I know the picture is not flattering, but a picture is worth a thousand words.  And this is how I felt.

 

Another week is upon us.  Life has been insane here.  Last week was really full with activity...Ballet is totally kicking my butt.  I dont' think I realized how out of shape I was until I started taking lessons.  I should have been doing pilates these last couple of years.  I suppose this will be good for me though...The dance teacher and I were able to get together to practice her English which was really fun.  Before she left she said that she felt at home in my house and that she felt really happy.  I had a lot of fun, and it filled my heart with joy to be able to open my home to someone. 

 

On Friday after school a few of us  went and got massages from the neighborhood medical massage clinic.  I don't know why my body is so out of whack...maybe it is all the stretching I've been doing. 

 

Saturday a few kids from youth group came over and we baked all afternoon.  I have realized I love to bake, I just don't love to cook.  So now my freezer is filled with cookies to eat this coming weekend when we are decended upon before 20 of us head out to the newsboys concert.  It is exciting to have a like minded group visit Beijing to play.  They have a new cd out so it should be interesting to see if it is any good. 

 

I still have piles of Christmas cards to write. I was sick all day today, so sadly that didn't really happen.  Mostly I just laid around in my bed or on my couch. Maybe tomorrow.  It would be nice if I could mail them out by midweek. 

 

A shout out to the family--Thanks so much for the thanksgiving dvd, I loved watching you guys, and it made me miss you so much!  I could picture myself in there hanging out with you all.  Sigh.  The only bad thing about being in China is that I can't have you here with me.  Sigh.  I know I'm doing what the Father wants me to do, but there are brief moments when I just want to hug you all and be with you and not let go.  Then His voice reminds me that He has me here for a plan and a Purpose.  I love you all. and i miss you.

 

So today I began the season of Christmas baking.  My wonderful family sent me sprinkles and our family's cookie press when a friend visited from the states a week ago.  I cannot accurately describe how excited I am that they did this.  Granted I was the only one at home that used the cookie press, but really, it just makes the holidays seem more like home.  Somehow sprinkles just make everything more christmasy.  I know christmasy is not a word, but hey it works.  Anyways, so I made cookies for our youth group's christmas party tomorrow.  Should be a good time.  We will be doing a white elephant gift exchange which is always fun.  I know that this is fun in the states, but you've never seen one of these exchanges until you've done on in China.  Chinese markets are home to a plethera of items that are perfect as white elephant gifts, and usually somehow we end up with these odd things just laying about.  My teamate Tamah had one such item that she was willing to part with so I could generously give it to someone else tomorrow.  I'll post a picture of it later.  I'm looking forward to giving it away :).  Anyways, I'm off to hear the Messiah with our team at the Forbidden City concert hall. 

 

 

 

Interestingly, construction in China is an on-going thing.  I don't exactly know how it works, but for some reason it is a perpetual thing.  Take for example the construction going on behind our building.  For some reason this is the third time they've had to dig up the large water pipes in three places on our campus.  they are all in the vicinity of our building, and thankfully the last two times it hasn't been in our garden.  I don't know why they keep digging things up at all hours of the day and night, but they do.  Maybe every month or so they just decide hey --you need a job, so why don't you dig over there.  It is always in the same spots too.  If I could read the chinese signs posted on our campus, maybe I'd know why.  Ah, the joy of never knowing the "why" things happen.