Saturday – Badminton and Yak Pie

It is hard to believe that we have only been here one week! We have seen and done so much!

Teaching gives you an insight into the life of a Chinese young person. Yesterday’s lesson topic was school and university. The students explained their education system too us, they work so hard! Their school day starts at 7am and ends at 9:30pm. I felt like such a slacker! We need to pray that they come to understand that knowledge and learning does not provide true fulfilment. I do not understand how teachers find enough things to teach them about! Relationships between team members and students are beginning to be established. I played badminton with an 18 year old girl yesterday afternoon. Her father arrived after five minutes and she introduced me as her ‘teacher and good friend’. I am praying that I will have opportunities to explain the important things to her through our relationship. I ended up playing her father at badminton and he beat me!

Today a group of us visited the Tibetan area of town. We had lunch in a restaurant there. We had yak pie with noodles and rice. It seemed to be a hit – it was a nice change. The yak butter tea did not seem to be as popular!

We wandered around the shops – it was strange seeing so many Buddhist monks wandering the streets. There were lots of beggars and it was difficult to know what to do. We bought a few of them a bottle of juice but they kept following us. It is so hard to know how to respond to their plea of money when you cannot communicate with them.

The first week has been amazing – so much to see and take in. I still cannot get over how many people there are everywhere! It’s mad! It is quite overwhelming to think that many of them may never have heard of Jesus before – the harvest is great!

Tuesday – Marriage and Britney

A challenging week in China so far. Yet packed with excitement and activity. Yesterday some of us visited Jackie who founded an organisation called “Strong Beginnings” which is a charity that reaches out to disabled child beggars by training them at residential courses, teaching basic skills to achieve independence and escape from their desperate lives. It is an amazing and groundbreaking scheme because China’s attitude to people with disabilities tends to marginalise them from society rather than seeking to address their equal rights as an individual, so an inspiring evening.

Today our teaching team taught the class about families in which there was some discussion work about issues such as ‘what makes an ideal husband or wife’ and what makes a successful marriage. So this encouraged the students to voice their opinions. It was also activities day in which afternoons are spent with the students playing games and sports, which is a great opportunity to meet students from other classes and use their English in an enjoyable and informal setting. A drama show was the first game in which students are to create a play using a random object a phrase and to perform in a certain style; such as horror, romance etc. Then students did very well and everyone enjoyed the shows which were all comical. At the end, a pop song was taught Britney Spears classic tune “Hit me, baby” which went down very well!

Thursday – Death, Sex and Frisbee in the Rain

Tammy and I taught the lesson entitled ‘Births, Deaths and Marriages’ in our class today. Although teaching is becoming easier and more enjoyable each day at the moment, today’s topic was particularly good. We split our class into boys and girls and got them discussing sex before marriage. What a privilege to be people who break the sadly familiar stereotype of westerners being ‘liberalised’ and to be role models for those students. They are living in a changing China trying to figure out what that means in terms of sex. And how fantastic to be able to show our students how our faith impacts our lives in such a practical sense!

The most amazing thing about the lessons in the past few days is the way that we’re hearing students repeat outside class things Tammy and I have mentioned in the lessons. For example, we asked the students if they were afraid of dying or what they’d like to be remembered by. These topics came up in later conversations with other team members who’ve got to know our class.

The afternoon sports were a storming success, very literally as the basketball, badminton, frisbee and volleyball players were forced indoors by torrential rain the like of which you’ve never seen in the UK! It ended up being a very wet, hot and sweaty hour and a half of non-stop table tennis and improvised catching games. But despite all that the students revelled in playing games with the foreign teachers and again it’s another way bridges are being built.