Take time to laugh: China! Hello from the Asian land.

China! Hello from the Asian land. Well, I arrived here in Beijing on Wednesday night. I flew in at about 10 PM, got off the plane and took a good whiff of that Chinese air. Oh how I have missed you. Haha, yep, that’s just slightly sarcastic. There is something about the smell here that you just can’t explain to anyone; you just have to experience it to know what it smells like. Basically it’s a mixture of Chinese food that was dumped into a trashcan to rot, sewer, and well, I can’t make out the other smells. It’s quite exciting. But actually as you walk down the street you do get good whiffs of yummy noodle shops and restaurant tasty smells.

Ok, so besides that, China is actually really cool, especially Beijing. These last five days have been amazing! School hasn’t started yet, it starts Tuesday. So we have just been hanging out in the city, taking the awesome subway, walking like five miles every day, eating delicious food, and Chinese delicacies (read further for details), getting settled in and getting things ready for school. We went to Tiananmen Square, where the natives asked to take many pictures with us. My wonderful roommate Kayli has blonde hair and blue eyes, which means that the Chinese love to ask to take pictures with her. She is so nice and we are going to be best friends. All of the 27 people in the group are amazing people and we have already begun to bond. There are 3 married couples, and 2 people that got engaged right before coming to China. There are also only two people from Utah in the group.

Saturday we went to the Great Wall of China, the Mitayanyu section. It was amazing! Last time I was here we went to a different part so it was neat to see this part. Josh, Adam, Brett, and I somehow went on an adventure on the part that hadn’t been restored. There was a sign that said, “Not open to people,” or something like that. But some people still go past. So we made friends with some natives and bushwhacked through that part because there was a bunch of overgrown plants covering the original rocks of the wall. It was awesome. The natives were telling us that they were certain there were no poisonous plants, and they were right because none of us walked away with weird rashes or anything. We got some awesome pictures though on top of the old towers of the wall. On the way back down, we rode an alpine slide from the top of the wall back to the parking area.

We went to an awesome night market the other night that sold many Chinese delicacies. We took turns buying crazy foods and shared them. These are the things I ate that night…

Water snake (I almost barfed)

Starfish (kind of strange)

Stinky tofu (gagged)

Centipede (tasted like burnt nasty chips)

Shark (not bad, kind of tasted like halibut)

Scorpion (tasted like the centipede)

Hawthorn berries (eh, not bad)

Oh yeah, and at the restaurant the night before I ate a fish eye. So food has been exciting here, I’ve eaten really good stuff too.

We went to the Beijing branch yesterday! It was so exciting! It took us about an hour and a half to get there by walking and taking the subway, about half of that time is walking. But picture this sight…20 Americans walking through a crowded Asian subway station on a Sunday morning, dressed up, with Asians starring at them. Yep, it’s pretty cool. We meet on the forth floor of an office building. There were so many people there. Normally they get anywhere from 120 to 150 people but there was well over 150 on Sunday and they said it was the largest they have ever seen the meeting. We are so blessed to be meeting here. The church is true wherever you go, even if you’re halfway across the world.

So, Iam really excited to start classes tomorrow. This is such a neat opportunity to be studying the language in the country because I can go out and practice what I am learning with the native speakers. We have been able to take the subway all over the city, and I have to say it’s like one of my favorite parts of our days so far. Crowded subways are the best places to start up conversations. With my little vocabulary I can’t have an intellectual conversation with anyone, but I can have chats about simple things. Mostly, we’ve had fun starting conversations by asking random questions like, “Do you like Popsicles?” or “Have you ever met superman?” It’s really funny to see how they respond. Like, when I asked this one guy about Popsicles. I had to ask him like 3 times, before he understood what I was saying, and then all of the sudden his face lit up and he told me that he used to eat them when he was a kid but he hadn’t had one in a really long time. Questions like that just make people’s day, and we both leave with a smile on our face.

Other cool things about china so far…I sleep on a hard mattress at night. When we walk through the park on the way to the subway station, there are huge groups of people doing tai chi, dancing, and even giant group singing lessons. Bartering, even if your not going to buy something, it’s fun to see how low you can talk the price down to. Asking the vendor selling food on the side of the road where the garbage can is for a wrapper from a Popsicle you just purchased and having him point to the ground. “what?” Then he tells you that the people will just come by and sweep it up. “Ok?” And yep, you throw it on the ground. This is China.

People! There are so many people! Beijing is a giant city!! You feel really small in a big world, but it’s amazing to me, to know that Heavenly Father knows each one of these people individually. I look around on a crowded street and feel so much love for all the people and want them to know that they are all children of a loving Heavenly Father. There is so much purpose in this life and we have so much joy that is waiting to jump at us if we will let it. Ah, life is so beautiful. I am so ready to embrace this challenging and amazing opportunity that this semester will be as I try my best to learn the language and put to the test every day.

我爱中国!

In front of our University

Tiananmen Square

Hiking the Great Wall

This was the part of the wall where it said not to go past the sign because it was the non restored section not open to the public, but it was so worth it.