Primary

This semester I have had the wonderful opportunity of working in the primary as the sunbeam teacher. Funny story…

(during sharing time)

Sister Hoskin: How can we keep in touch with family that we may have back in America or other places?

(so she is looking for the answer “sending letters” for an object lesson)

Little girl: The internet!

Little boy: I like to skype my grandma.

Little boy: We can send them an email.

Sister Hoskin: But what else can we do?

Little girl: We can call them on the phone.

Sister Hoskin: But what can we send them?

…

Sister Hoskin: Letters! We can send them letters.

Kids: Oh.

Haha, it was so funny. Sending letters is like a foreign concept to kids now days.

One cool thing about being in primary in China is how instead of welcoming new kids with the song that goes, “hello, hello, hello, hello, we welcome you today, hello.” You know that one? We sing, “Ni hao, ni hao, ni hao, ni hao, we welcome you today, ni hao.” It’s great.

Today was the primary program and it was so beautiful and tender, and of course you have the kids that talk really loudly into the mic like they are going to eat it, and then you have the ones that stand there smiling for 1 minute before saying anything, and then you have the ones that stand there and don’t say anything. But the program was so sincere as the it was all centered around the scriptures and the kids bore a powerful testimony that they know the scriptures are true. After the program we went back to the primary room and each person in the primary got to stand up and bear their testimony and/or their favorite thing about the program. This little 4 year old boy with red hair in my class stands up at the front and says boldly,

“One day I’m going to be sealed in the temple with my future wife!”

In a City of 20 million People

It’s been so interesting living in a city of 20 million people. I guess, with three weeks left, I’ve just been doing some reflection on funny things that happen frequently but seem so normal. For instance, there’s this outdoor noodle shop down the street on the corner that we like to go to, we call it, “the boa zi place on the corner by wu mei.” Bao zi = dumpling type thing. Wu mei = wu mart/the closest market. So this bao zi place on the corner by wu mei is owned by this husband and wife, and there’s four tiny little tables set up under this tent. The grounds dirty (what’s new in China), they have this dog that’s constantly running around down by your feet, the owner always has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and you never know if your going to get a piece of ash that’s fallen into your soup. Any place like this in America (there is no place like this in America), you would think was like the sketchiest thing ever. Here in China, places like this is what make noodle shops unique, the food is great and convenient, and it’s completely normal.

Other interesting things…

-Going to a little restaurant and ordering rice. The lady’s all out, so she just runs to the little restaurant next door and borrows a bowl of rice from them and brings it to you.

-Sitting in class, and hearing the Italian and Arabic speakers use Chinglish (Chinese and English) to talk to each other.

-A guy from Dubai walking into Chinese class late, wearing sunglasses, holding a sandwich and some expensive energy drink that no one has ever even heard of.

-Talking to my Taxi driver about Thanksgiving and eating turkey, and come to find out that he randomly owns a turkey farm. When asking him about eating dog, he responds that he prepares his own dog and fries the leg, and smothers it in garlic.

-There’s so much pollution sometimes that blocks the sun rays that you look in the sky and see the sun, you wonder if it’s actually the moon.

-Finding out that the Chinese government doesn’t tell their people what the pollution level is, but the US embassy keeps track of it. The other day the pollution level was hazardous.

-Realizing how used to city life you’ve become. I was on the subway the other day, and did something totally Chinese and didn’t even realize it till I thought about it after. I needed to get off and there were people standing in front of the door, so I just pushed my way through them without even saying excuse me. It’s totally normal, not rude, and no one thinks anything of it. I’ve also realized how much more aggressive I am at things like getting taxi’s. You have to be. There are also no such things as lines in China. You kind of just push your way to things. No one draws any huge attention to themselves when doing anything. That’s just the Beijing city life for ya.

-Buying food from street vendors. Technically they are actually illegal, but no one really does anything about it and they are all over the city.

-One thing that is cool about being in a huge city is just how convenient public transportation is. I love how much more familiar I have gotten with the subway lines and all of the different bus routes.

The Story of Room 420

SDkhfasujhf,sZgvilysGZDfuiwlg!! :) :) tear of happiness. Ok so I actually wrote that almost two weeks ago, because “sadfkjablwerkuhyvdilbjaw!!” was the only way to write the happiness I was feeling. Let’s back up a few months and I will tell you a little story, the story of room 420.

So, we arrived in China one late evening. After checking in and some struggles with getting our luggage into the elevator, my roommate and I got into our dorm room at about 1 AM. The fourth floor.

Room 420.

Life was good,

Things were swell

The only thing that wasn’t

Was the smell

The smell of smoke

That makes you want to choke

Coming from our bathroom

Almost everyday…

Ok. So basically the fourth floor seems to be where a bunch of smokers live. Our room happened to be in the middle of where all the intense Korean smokers lived. I find it ironic, because I guess that 4.20 is national get high day (at least that’s what some of my friends told me) and we lived in 420. Our next-door neighbors especially loved to smoke in their room all the time, and once every so often, they held drinking parties where they would invite over the entire Korean population and they would smoke. They were really nice people, but because our bathrooms were connected by a false ceiling, the result was our room smelling of smoke. Most of the time I would keep the bathroom door closed, to lock in the thick fog, but after a while we had to open it up to air it out, so we would open up our room door and windows as well. This somewhat worked until it started to freeze outside, and opening the windows for long periods of time wasn’t an option.

I tried everything I could. Several times, I went down to the front desk and explained the problem to see if we could switch to another room. They always said that they never had any open rooms and their solution was to just talk to my next door neighbors about it and tell them to smoke outside. I did. In fact, I talked to them about it quite often. We became great friends, but the smoke and me didn’t. I tried everything I could: taping the vent closed in our bathroom, putting the ash tray that came with our room over the drain of the shower, stuffing cut up towels up the holes under the sink that connected our bathrooms. Taping around the holes of the ceiling – that’s when I realized that the panels on the bathroom ceiling lifted up and our bathrooms were completely connected. So I would just have to convince them to stop. I even tried bribing them with American pizza, and when they were good about not smoking in the room, they would be rewarded with some. Then every time they or any of their friends would see me, they would either say like 10 times in a row, “Duibuqi (sorry) and kind of do like a Korean bow to me. Or they would say with a really excited smile, “Pizzaaaaa!” Oh great. And then, I would firmly tell them that they weren’t going to get pizza if they smoked in the room.

AND THEN, out of no where, an entire week went by without the bathroom smelling of smoke. I thought for sure they had gotten rid of their habit. I saw my Korean next door neighbor by the classrooms one day and he asked me if my room had smelled like smoke lately. I said, “No you guys have been great!” “I changed rooms,” he replied. What the?! Really!? He then told me that it was just him that switched with one of his friends, and that the other roommate was still their but had a new roommate. So I skipped back to my room, completely content with life, thinking all was well….

AND THEN!!! A few days later, the smoke was back, this time, the most intense it had ever been! I opened up the bathroom door and the thick fog went swarming out with an alarming stench that followed. I wasn’t even going to try to talk to my next door neighbors about this one. I was done. I was going straight down to the front desk and was going to face them like a Chinese person.

I called up my good friend Sam, from Iraq, who is in his fifth year studying here. He’s working on his masters in Chinese, so he is pretty fluent, and he accompanied me down to the front desk. I knew if I was going to do some serious persuading, I was going to need a translator to help get my point across! My basic conversational Chinese skills were not going to cut it. Basically it went down like this. “Listen, I need to change rooms, today! No matter what.” And after some 30 minutes of us arguing, I wasn’t going to give up, because I knew that they have rooms open, they just don’t usually let one person switch to another room, in fear that word might get around and they may have a lot of people coming to the front desk and wanting to switch rooms for this and that reason and causing huge fiascos.

AND THEN, I finally heard these glorious words come out of one of the worker’s mouths, “Ming tian zao shang ni ke yi huan fang jian.” (Tomorrow morning you can change rooms!!) Sam and I had convinced them that they did have a room open. The next morning, Kayli and I were able to change to another floor and another room and it has been such a huge blessing!! Now you can see why the only thing I was able to type a couple weeks ago was, “SDkhfasujhf,sZgvilysGZDfuiwlg!! :) :) tear of happiness. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Sometimes, I used to dread coming home to my dorm because I hated the smell and I just never knew when the thick fog of smoke was going to attack. Now, I love coming home, and feeling safe and happy. These last two weeks have been a breath of fresh air, literally. (well, kind of, just because living in one of the most polluted cities in the world isn’t a really a breath of fresh air haha but that’s another story) But, this experience definitely has made me more grateful for home and it’s taken on a whole new meaning.

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m grateful to be living in China. Living in a foreign country sure makes you appreciate everything you’ve been given. Although there have been hard times, I have seen so many tender mercies, met incredible people, and have experienced things I never would have thought I would experience. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to learn such a beautiful language, and to also share my native language with so many people.

I’m grateful for America and for the freedoms that we are able to enjoy there. Being in another country on a holiday especially makes me realize all the little blessings that I take for granted. I’m grateful for my family, friends, and loved ones. I’m grateful to have been born of goodly parents. My whole life I have been surrounded by the most amazing, talented, giving people in the world. I’m so grateful for all the people in my life. Heavenly Father loves each of us, and his hand is in each of our lives, every day. If there is a day that I am feeling ungrateful, all I have to do is pray to God and ask him to show me His hand in my life, and he does. I realize that every person, every experience, every gift, every feeling, and everything is evidence of His endless, selfless, perfect love. And for that, I have so much need to give back.

I am grateful for this Thanksgiving day. Although it hasn’t felt like it does normally back in the states, because we’ve still had school and haven’t had our Thanksgiving dinner, (we will be having our Thanksgiving dinner with the branch on Saturday!) I am still happy that today is Thanksgiving. 

Life is about the journey, not the destination.

A little laugh for today

So, I haven't posted in a while, and I have some good stories to tell, but in the mean time, I thought I would give you readers a little laugh for today. The following is actually a post from my friend Adam's blog, but I happened to be there when it happened. He tells it great and his post is entitled, "I Thought it was a Good Idea at the Time."

"The subways here in Beijing are almost always packed. In the short moments that the doors are open, hundreds of passengers push their way on and off the subway. Today though, it was even more crowded than usual. As we stopped at more and more stations on our way to the silk market, we found ourselves blocked in on all sides by what must have been over a hundred people jammed into our little subway car alone. There was no room to move in any direction. Our arms were pinned to our sides, and there was little room for our legs to move. Having lived here in Beijing these past couple of months, I’ve began to realize that I no longer have a personal bubble. Personal space is a luxury you can’t afford here.

                Arriving at our stop, we realized that we were locked towards the center of the subway car, far from the exit doors on either end. Leading the way, I tried to push through the throngs of people blocking our way, but no one was getting out of the way. The bells began ringing, signifying that the doors would soon be closing. Realizing that unless something changed, none of us would be getting off this subway before the doors slammed shut, I did what any mature, sensible twenty two year old young man would have done; I began frantically shouting “laduzi, laduzi” (diarrhea). It caused quite the commotion as everyone was trying to scramble out of our way, but the sea of people parted allowing the four of us to escape through the door just in time. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I was even amazed at how well it worked. When I regained my composure, I realized that I probably shouldn’t attempt to create any more mass panics on public transportation."

 

May I add to this that after we got off the subway, I could not stop laughing for like 5 minutes. 

Dog

If you would like to read about our eating dog experience, Tina wrote a great blog about it on her blog:  neonjoggingsocks.blogspot.com She also says some great perspectives on China on there.

No, I did not feed the dog to the dog.

Universal Language

Friday night, one of the coolest things happened. So, we were walking around downtown Beijing…It’s a hoppin place. There are big squares and sidewalks where people are having dance parties/competitions, roller blading, using huge paintbrushes and water writing characters on the sidewalk, and of course there are some musicians. There was this one guy playing the guitar and singing with his mic and amp. I approached him and asked if I might be able to play and sing a song, and he let me! After the first one, “Olly Olly Oxen Free,” he asked me to play another one, “Happy to Be Here.” Boy was I happy to be there, to be singing to a crowd of Chinese people on a Friday night in downtown Beijing! Although there were a lot of people standing around and stopping by to see what was happening, I felt as if I had connected with each individual person whose eyes I made contact with. And although, many may not have understood the words I was using, I know the language barrier did not keep them from feeling the spirit. Music is the universal language. It carries the vibration of love. It’s the frequency of love. One day, those Chinese people who heard the music that night are going to be blessed to hear the gospel message, and the feeling that they felt that night is going to be familiar. They are going to remember. It was such a great experience and it also was my first time introducing myself in Chinese in front of a crowd of mandarin speakers. That night was definitely a highlight. 

Eating Dog

So here’s the updates as of late. I’ve got a few cool stories…

-The other night, I decided that I really needed to do something about our smoky bathroom. Our Korean next door neighbors smoke all the time in their room, and since our bathroom vents are connected, the result is the bathroom randomly smelling of smoke. So, I went to the supermarket in search of duck tape. I looked up how to say duck tape using Pleco, on Tina’s I touch, but it wasn’t in there, so I tried explaining it to the workers. Basically it went like this, “um…really strong tape…black…big.” Yeah, in short, let’s just say they didn’t have it, so I came home with clear scotch tape. I spent part of the evening standing on top of the toilet, taping the bathroom fan vent shut with layers of scotch tape. I realized that the white panels along the ceiling lifted up, making our bathroom and our next door neighbors completely connected. No wonder!…the smoke had just been coming through the cracks. So I decided to tape around the molding and some of the cracks as well. It was better for a few days, but since then, the stench has progressively come back. I’m still looking for a solution to this problem.

I try to stay on the good side of my neighbors in hopes that I can convince them to smoke outside or even stop smoking and just the fact that I want to be friends with them. The other day I went by their apartment to say hi, and I happened to show up during one of their drinking parties. Who would have thought? (I’m pretty sure they have drinking parties every night) They invited me in to have some pi jiu (beer) but I kindly declined. But we talked for a bit and we are becoming great friends. I especially love to hear there laugh attacks every night through the wall. Seriously one of the guys has the funniest loudest laugh I have ever heard in my life! All of my Korean friends seem to have loud interesting laughs. I've come to the conclusion that Koreans just really like to laugh.

Update on the smoky bathroom situation. (I wrote the previous two paragraphs a couple days ago) I think I have finally found the solution!! I tried putting a bowl (actually it’s the ash tray that our apartment came with) on top of the drain and our bathroom hasn’t smelled for a little while. We will just have to move it every time we shower. It totally makes sense though, because I think our drains are connected as well, and humidity would totally soak up a smoke stench. Yay!

-We had the opportunity to go to the annual branch party at the great wall! Every year they take buses up there on a Saturday, spend the night and have church on the great wall Sunday morning. Definitely a highlight and I love the branch.

-I ate dog… A Chinese delicacy. For more information about this experience, ask me personally.

-Silk market (bartering market) experience. So you always know you’ve gotten a good deal on something if the people you are bartering with are slightly mad at you when you agree on a price and buy something from them. At the silk market (bartering market) last week, this is about how my conversation with a lady went down…(we will call the lady: Pam)

Me: How much is this?

Pam: 200 kuai

Me: What?! That’s way to expensive.

Pam: You want. How much?

Me: 20 kuai

Pam: ?! YOU look like 20 kuai!

The funny part is that Mandarin was used for all that, except for the last line she used Chinglish: YOU look like er shi kuai! Good one Pam.

-Sunday, I was riding the subway home and I started talking to a Chinese couple. They saw that I was dressed up and asked me if I was coming from Church. They were nice and gave me their email/phone number and invited me to their Protestant church, which is actually kind of funny because actually they are not really supposed to do that because of Chinese law. I wish I could have invited them to church as well, but I decided to abide by the law. Darn. 

-Tonight, I was sitting in my room working on some homework and I heard beautiful singing coming from down the hall. So I went and found where it was coming from. I knocked on the door and some Koreans welcomed me in. They were practicing an awesome 5 part harmony gospel song that they are singing in their church in a couple weeks. We immediately became friends and they let me sing it with them once. I’ve never heard the song before but it had some tight harmony.