Category: China

This is a blog entry about the trip to our school in Huayuan. For interest of the readers sake, I have split this into two part because it is another 1,000+ word entry. Enjoy! This is part one.

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So to preface this entry, I must explain about where we are heading. If you followed this blog back in January, you will have noticed that I posted a whole entry explain about the town we were going to be assigned to, Hengyang. Well, on Saturday night while we were in our training session, Jacob (our leader) pulled us out of the conference room.

Jacob explained that the school in Hengyang called him earlier that day to say that they were no longer going to use our program for their foreign teacher placement. Jacob told us that he got a hold of a friend that he had in China and was able to place us in a town called Huayuan in the very western area of the Hunan province. Jacob didn’t know many detail but said that we at least have a place to teach at.

So on Monday, February 14^th, we got up bright and early to leave the hotel. Haha, it was a bit hard waking up to leave at 5:30 am but after moving around I was surprisingly awake for the early in the morning. We jumped on our bus and headed for the airport. The interesting part about the airport was that we took a bus from the ticket gate to the bus that was just sitting out in the middle of the tarmac. Haha, it was interesting because I have never done that before.

Then we got on the airplane. It kind of reminded me like a really badly maintained Delta flight. 🙂 The cool thing was that the safety video was in both English and Chinese and quite entertaining as well. One thing I noticed was that turns, descents and ascents are definitely not graceful there. It seem like when the plane was going up, it was going straight up and straight down when we were reaching the destination.

When we arrived in Changsha, we said our final goodbyes to the rest of the group and met up with our ride. They took us to breakfast at a little noodle restaurant which comprised of a noodle soup with a friend egg in it was well as pork. Jordan and I attempted to use our chopstick but the English-speaking local that was giving us the ride just laughed at us and went to get the forks. It sure did help a lot.

We then got in a van and headed to the bus station. It was another fun time experiencing the driving over here. The English speaking lady that was with us here name was Star. We thought she was about 18 or 19 but it turned out she was 26. I don’t know why but it seems the Chinese age very well. Unlike us Americans; she thought we were about 4 years older than we really are.

This is the entry explaining the Church is mainland China. I apologize but this entry will not make sense to those who aren’t members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

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Our very first Sunday was held in Shenzhen on the 13^th. It was a very unique experience because it was all held over the phone. I will try my best to explain.

As we well know, there are no missionaries in China. The restrictions are quite tight as to what foreign passport holding members of the church can and can’t do. Before I headed out to China I was under the impression that while we couldn’t actively proselyte, we could at least do it passively. Unfortunately I was wrong. We can’t do either.

I will attach some documents at the end of this post that explain more about this but I will do my best to give a summary of it. As foreign passport holding members of the Church in China we cannot talk to any locals about ANYTHING religious (Christianity-wise). If they ask us, we just have to politely decline to talk about it. We also can’t direct them to sites like lds.org or Mormon.org. We are allowed to freely talk to foreigners about our beliefs.

For church, Chinese locals are not allowed to attend the church meetings of foreign passport holding church members. They cannot be invited at all. Fortunately they are allowed to hold their own worship service but only Chinese nationals are allowed to attend.

So it seems that Church in China is largely a matter of secrecy. We know that there are members in China who converted while they were overseas (which is allowed for them to do). When we asked the president how many Chinese members were in China he said that he did not know. “Truth is I don’t want to know,” said President Lewis. “That way if the Chinese government ever does question me about it, I can honestly say that I do not know.” Peculiar, huh?

While the Church Almanac is rich in details about the history of Church in the area, it is scant on the details of present-day Chinese members of the church in that area. The almanac did note that the branches are found in Beijing, Cuangzhou, Shanghai, Xi’an and Tianjin with smaller group found elsewhere in the country. President Lewis did mention that there are two foreign branches in Beijing with about 200 members each.

For the rest of the foreign members in China there is the virtual branch. How it works is the various members from around China dial a toll-free number and enter a pin code. From that point they will be entered into the call and member of the branch presidency will preside.

When we were at the hotel, we all dressed up in Sunday clothes and met in the conference room. President Lewis set up the conference call and we began. The meeting started out with a seemingly mandatory explanation of the rules. For sacrament we were lucky to have enough priesthood to have it blessed and passed in a traditional fashion. Normally the conference call will be placed on hold and members in their individual area will perform the sacrament. After that, some members gave talks over phone. At the end of sacrament meeting, there was a roll call and Sunday school began.

It was a cool experience to see this happen. As President Lewis stated, it is a really great spiritual experience because of the focus of the members and I would have to agree. It is amazing how being away from the church seems to increase someone love for it. I am looking forward to this experience and how much it will build my testimony.

Below is a link to the newsletter explain the branch and how it works.

Chinese Virtual branch welcome newsletter

Another post about our time in Shenzhen for our TESOL training. Gallery is posted after the break!

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So on day five we started our classes. These classes are meant to teach us how we can better teach the student that we are going to have.

Thinking about the classes I am having a difficult time thinking of how I am going to explain it but I will try our best. Our teacher was Gail Chou and, despite the last name, she is about as Texan as Texan come. She was the best. Really kind hearted and you could tell how much she loved what she was doing. It was really cool.

Things that we talked about were what we should expect, classroom environment, discipline and teaching ideas. Most importantly we talked about how we can suit our lessons to the needs of our students. I learned a lot from that and the training that we received was very valuable. I apologize that I don’t have any other details. I guess if I had written on the day that we had classes it would have been better. What I will do is attach the power points of the lessons that she taught us. It is all very interesting.

The surroundings of the hotel were very interesting. Outside our window you have a pretty poor looking neighborhood right below us and then further out you have a bunch of industrial building. Jordan and I had a pretty awesome set up for our food. On one side of hotel was a small bunch of shops. There was a bunch of food stalls next that area that was cooking food.

Jordan and I became fans of this one stall that cooked the best noodles we had ever tasted. They were simple noodles fried with sauces, egg and some vegetables. It was amazing. And cheap. It cost 5 Yuan which would be less than a dollar. I got addicted to it. Another food item that we got addicted to was found inside the super market nearby. It was the most delicious bread ever. It almost tasted just like Hawaiian sweet rolls. It was soo good and Jordan and I ate a lot of them.

On Saturday we ate dinner with the president of the virtual church branch that covers China. In another post I will talk about how this works but for now I am just going to focus on the restaurant that we ate at. The place was really cool. The president got us three private booths for the whole group. There was also a lot of different food. To be honest, only pictures do it justice so look at them. The most interesting dish that I would say that we had was a mushroom (fungus) dish. It tasted like beef jerkey. Unfortunately for one guy in our group, Richard, he has like a bajillion food allegories and so he left the table early because he was having troubles breathing.

As we were leaving the restaurant, it was awesome to see how happy people were when they saw us. Everybody would stare, smile and wave. They would also laugh at us when we would try to speak Chinese to them. After eating we went over to the other side of the hotel that had the food stalls. Group dancing (pretty much just line dancing) apparently is pretty common in China and by this particular area there would be dancing every night. Jordan and I joined the party and it was a ton of fun. To say the least, we sucked at it (especially me 🙂 ). I was told that they do the same songs every night so the local have had a lot of time to get very good at it. It was fun to see a crowd a gather to watch to the group of Americans trying to dance.

I have really come to love the uniqueness of each area we get to. It definitely has broadened my perspective on the world.

Here is the entry for our trip into Shenzhen, or mainland China. I am going to stop posting days because the next few days I can mush into on entry. Thanks for reading!

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So early Friday morning was our day to leave Hong Kong. And 7:30 a.m. we surely did leave. I really did enjoy that place and really want to come back some day. I don’t know what it was but I loved it there. Maybe it was the nostalgic factor of it feeling a bit like England. Oh well. All I know is that I going back. 🙂

So at 7:30 in the morning, we walked down to the light rail station and caught a train to Lo Wu, where the border crossing is. The Chinese town of Shenzhen was on the other side. When we got there we could definitely tell that we were leaving the comfort of modern China that is Hong Kong. The passport area was dark and dingy and in certain areas falling into disrepair.

We got through customs and headed down to where our bus was going to meet us. A funny thing that happened had to deal with the stair. Once leaving the Chinese side of the station, we noticed that there were no escalators. The stair had a smooth ramp in the middle of them that you could wheel your luggage down. One lady in group tried to walk down the ramp while guiding her luggage down, lost control and collided with another bunch of people in our group. We all had a good laugh from that.

We then walked to hotel where our bus was going to pick us up to take us to our hotel. Unfortunately they only brought one small bus with them. That was a problem because, while would have fit everyone in the group, our luggage wouldn’t have been able to fit on board. Jacob wasn’t very happy about that and asked them to send another bus.

Once the bus came we all got on board and headed for our hotel. That was our first experience with Chinese driving. The driver accidentally took us to the wrong hotel and in the process there were several parts where they were driving into oncoming traffic. It was good fun and it reminded me of the hectic driving of England.

We finally made it to the hotel. Jacob gave us our room keys in exchange for our passports which the hotel needed to scan. Jordan and I headed up to our room and were amazed. We were amazed at how nice the rooms were. Except for the faint smell of cigarette smoke, the room was quite fancy. We had touch controls for turning on the lights, a flat screen TV and two queen sized beds. It was really nice. Oh, and there was a western toilet. 🙂

Of note, the showers that we have had here in China have been amazing. The shower that we had at the hotel had one of those massive ‘rain’ style shower heads and was consistently warm. Both the showers in Hong Kong and Shenzhen had great water pressure as well.

Later that day we all meet up for our TESOL training in the hotel conference room.

This is the entry for day four. It involves my trip to a giant Buddha, an awesome light show and a night market. Since this entry is over 1,000 words long, I have inserted a break. After the jump you will find the rest of the entry and a picture gallery.

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Thursday, February 17, 2011, was meant to be our last full day in Hong Kong and it was going to be a full one.

We start out the morning by going to the temple. Because we hadn’t done two ordinances the day before, Jacob (our fearless leader) asked us to do two sessions that morning. So we did. After the temple we had time to eat lunch and I used that time to work on fixing my computer.

The problem with my computer is that the hard drive is starting to fail. When we got to Korea, I tried connecting to the internet and I was unable to. I found a solution for it online but the conclusion that I came to with that was that I just needed to reinstall Windows. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to do that, I managed to get windows reinstalled. Basically the hard drive is having trouble writing data to the hard drive and I will need to have it replace before it fails fully.

Anyway, after lunch we left for another awesome place called Ngong Ping. We were told that it was a really cool cable car ride up to the top of this (sort-of) mountain that had a giant Buddha and a beautiful monastery. We jumped on a couple different subway trains to where the tram began.

Since this was an optional trip and thus had to pay for it ourselves, we had the option of a regular cable car (with windows on all sides) or a crystal cabin with a glass floor that you could see stuff that was underneath. Being cheap, I chose the cheaper regular car.

But the good thing was that it didn’t disappoint at all. There were a lot of really cool views from that cabin during the ride. For example, you could see all of the Hong Kong International Airport. In addition, part of the ride took right over the Tung Chung bay. Some of the pictures of it are in the gallery below.

Once at the top, there was a short hike to different attracts, after you walked through all the tourist shops of course. One the way there is a walk way that has statues on both sides. An interesting thing that we saw was these dogs. And there were quite a few of them. On the small patches of grass they were just sleeping. Some of them even looked like they were dead. It was a very interesting site to see.

Continue reading “Day 4 – Buddha, Buddha, Buddha Rockin’ Everywhere”

This is my blog entry for day three. It involves the temple again, some museums, Victoria Peak and an attempt to eat Chinese dumplings. Plus, I figured out how to add a picture gallery.

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So in the morning we got up early and went to the temple. This time I did a session and once again was amazed by the use of space. The celestial room was actually surprisingly big and really nice. It was different not having a tall ceiling in there though.

After that we had lunch (PB&J) and then headed off to the Hong Kong history museum. The journey out there was a lot of fun because it was our first time using there public transport rail system. Cool fact: Hong Kong has the most use public transport system in the world. After we got off the train, we walked quite a long ways to get the museum. One thing that I noticed about Hong Kong while walking that day was that there are quite a few 7-Elevens in that town. They did have Slurpee’s but we didn’t notice that until it was too late.

When we got to the museum, we found out that it was free admission day which meant that the adjoining science museum was free as well.

The history museum was quite interesting. They had a lot of exhibits detailing the history of the area and how it became was it is today. As is quite common with me, I found the modern history to be the most interesting. We wanted to split the time we had evenly with the two museums so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to see everything. I am one of those people that could read everything in the museum if I had the time too.

The science museum was cool too. Imagine a Discovery Center on an overdose of steroids. One exhibit that I liked was one where they had small streams of falling water with a very quickly flashing strobe light in front of it. The effect was that it looked like the water droplets were just floating there and sometimes they looked like they were moving upwards. Another display that I like was a cut out of a diesel engine.

After that we caught another subway to Victoria Peak. Victoria Peak is the point from which almost every picture of the downtown of Hong Kong is taken from. To get to the top of it you have to take a tram up there (which was a tourist trap of course). That ride was a fun one because it was super steep and I was standing up in a kind of awkward position so it was a bit intense at times.

Once we got to the top, we then had to take about five flights of escalaters to get to the viewing platform. Once there we had a really awesome view of the city. From one side you had a view of the downtown and then from the other you had a view of a harbor and a beautiful sunset. On the top they had a display thing that you could hang a love note on. That was pretty cool. There was also a dragon dancer that showed up on top as well. On the way down from the top we had a pretty cool view of the city and the lights.

The lights are a pretty cool part of the town. Almost all of the tall buildings in central Hong Kong are lit up in some fashion. I believe it is part of a tourism initiative to attract people to the town. It was really cool to see it all from the ground as we were making our way to restaurant that we were going to eat at.

This place was our first experience of Chinese food. Here we had what they call dumplings. I was expecting something like what we call dumplings in the western world but they were more like pot stickers. The food was fried in oil so it was quite greasy and if you weren’t careful, the hot oil inside the dumpling would explode in your mouth or on your hand. Sometimes even your neighbor. Haha, but the food was really good and a fun experience.

After that we went back to the housing. With my feet sore and still a bit swollen, I laid down and accidentally fell asleep again.

So here is the second part of my last entry. Hope you enjoy. The first picture is of a ice skating rink inside the mall and the other is of my swollen foot from traveling.

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The bus ride was kind of fun. It afforded us a lot of really good views of the city and all the sky scrapers. Everyone on the bus (including me) was stuck in “ooooo/aaawwww” mode for the duration of the trip. It was a lot of fun.

We then finally arrived at the temple housing. We were all amazing at the warmth and people started shedding layers. Unfortunately our room keys were not ready yet and so we had to stand around and wait. Finally we were able to get it to the rooms.

The temple housing was a new experience for me. I knew that the housing was tight but I didn’t realize that it would be this tight. In the room that we were in it was about 12 feet wide by 25 feet long. Inside that room there were four bunk beds packed into there. That left about three feet in between the bed. It made for an interesting time trying to navigate around the room and led to some good laughs while doing it. Luckily we were spared the squatter for now as our room has a western toilet and a really nice shower.

After that, the whole group headed down to this massive mall located probably half a mile from the housing. The mall was seven stories tall and featured some very well-known and expensive western brands. There we got our food for the stay as we were not going to be able to eat out for every meal. Our diet was quite simple; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The cool thing was that they had quite a few western brands. For example we had Smucker’s strawberry jelly. 🙂

After we were done with that, we went to the temple. One thing that the temple housing asks of people that stay there is that they perform at least two ordinances a day at the temple. I did baptisms and did confirmations. It was amazing how small the temple was but how they used the space to good use. I had a good time trying to pronounce those Chinese name. 🙂

After that, Jordan and I went back to the housing and I feel asleep accidentally. I woke up to Jordan laughing at me. Haha, and then I crawled up to my bed and went to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I am just going to post part of our first day in Hong Kong. Sorry to say but our time on the internet is up and I was trying my hardest to upload a video but no long.  Other parts will continue. Sorry again.

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So I guess that the title for this one is a little interesting. I will attempt to explain why.

                Part of the reason I say that is because we technically never experienced Monday properly. We boarded our flight to Seoul, Korea at 11:50 p.m. on Sunday evening. We then arrived in Incheon International Airport at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. So even though the flight ended up being about 13 hours, we were in the air for all of Monday technically. Very strange indeed.

                Anyway, like I mentioned in my previous entry for the previous day, our flight landed safe and sound at Hong Kong international airport. We picked up our stuff and went through customs. The first thing that we noticed when we arrived in that airport was how hot and humid that it was. When we finally picked up our luggage, I noticed that mine smelt very … fragrant. Something white had exploded in my luggage and upon futher inspection we noticed that it was everywhere and leaking out of the bag. Jordan and I decided that was a problem for another day and started making our way out of the airport.

                We next then exchanged our money and left the airport. We then caught our bus for Kowloon Tong, where the temple is located. The cool thing about the bus was that we were on a double decker bus. I noticed the most amazing thing after we started moving. That was how much the place resembled England.

                You see, up until 1997 (I believe that is the right year) Hong Kong was under British control. So it seems that when the area was undergoing its modernization phase, the area for inspiration was the green and pleasant land. Everything from the cross signals to the paint on roads. That was pretty cool because it reminded me a lot of England.

 

So I am so sorry that I have not been updating this blog. I have had a lot of computer troubles over the past while and internet has been sketchy at best. This is an update of the first day of my China Adventure. I will upload more pics when internet is more reliable. IF ANYONE IS VIEWING THIS FROM A LINK OFF FACEBOOK, I BEG OF YOU TO LEAVE A COMMENT SO I CAN KNOW THIS WORKS.

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Day 1 – The flight

The last Sunday in the states was a pretty good one. I would say that the day’s adventures started in Ashley’s ward. One of the last Sundays that I was in England, my companion and I went to a Pentecostal church because our local ward started later in the day. I thought that it was interesting there that random people would get up and start speaking from where stood.

One thing that I never expected was to see that in a Mormon church. Well, they did in Ashley ward. Not that it was weird or anything, it was just different. But I suppose that it was good because that would encourage people that wouldn’t normally bear their testimony.

After that we were taken to the airport for our flight. Everything went well and there were no hassles with that. We pretty much went in security and came out the other side. Once we got in to the other side, we went straight to our gate.

While we were there, we met up with most of the group. There were about 19 (I believe) people that met us there. Jacob met up with us while we were in Salt Lake City and he informed us that we would meeting up with some in Los Angeles, one in Korea and a family that would meet up later in Hong Kong.

The flight out was kind of obnoxious because we sat on the ground for about an hour because, as the captain explained, they were unable to get an engine starter. After that there wasn’t anything available to push us away from the gate. I was a bit bummed about getting out of the gate on time because I hoping to get there early enough that I could make sure that I could get Jordan and I an exit row seat but that didn’t happening.

One funny thing happened while we were in Los Angeles happened as we were going through the International flight checkpoint. With all the increased security at the airports, the have introduced the use of the full body scanners. The stance that they require you to take is legs spread with your hands together directly over your head. Well, I did just that and glanced over at the black lady that was manning the station. She wouldn’t crack a smile so I started doing a little dance during the scanning and I finally managed to get her to laugh.

The long flight wasn’t that bad. Thankfully dad was able to get me a Lunesta for the flight. While the pill didn’t knock me out, I was able to fall asleep for about six hours straight, which was good for me. We had a guy from that Philippians that was next to us, but he didn’t say much.

We had about an hour layover when we were in Seoul, Korea. I was a little hungry so I decided to go to a Burger King there. The burger tasted great, just as it should as it cost me 7 US dollars.

The flight to Hong Kong was actually pretty good. Obviously this is relative but surprising we were in a 747 for the flight. The nice thing about Korean air is that there was quite a bit more leg room than Delta provided for their international flight. If we were to move our backpack out from under our seat and recline the seat, we were about to stretch out fully. It was nice.

So that is all that I am going to do for tonight. My computer hard drive is broken so I have spent a long time trying to fix it but to no avail. Plus it is late at night and I am tired. I hope you enjoyed this and I will try to update more often. As well, sorry for the errors. I couldn’t install Office. 🙂

So I haven’t been on here for about a week and I got have a week to go before I ship out of here. So I thought that the title was appropriate. 🙂

But the reason that I haven’t posted on here in a while: it get’s hard to think of things to post about. Truth be told, I do think of things to write about but when it comes time to actually sit down and start typing, poof! It’s gone. It truly is a sad thing that has happens.

So anyway, like I mentioned, I have about one week before I leave. Unfortunately for me, I am getting more worried as the days go on. When I tell people that, they usually mentioned the phrase culture shock. Thankfully that isn’t the case in my scenario. I have lived though culture shock with many different nationalities and races before when I was on my mission in England.

Nah, that is not what I am worried about. What I am worried about is the teaching situation. The honest truth that scares me is that I don’t have a flippin’ clue of what to do while I am teaching. The China Horizon program that I am using for all of this has told all of us that we need to be preparing lesson plans but they haven’t told what exactly were are teaching!

But hey, on the flip side, I do make looking like a dork a graceful thing. So does one have any ideas? All that they have told us is that we are going to be teaching kids that have decent English skills ‘conversational English.’ What that means, I don’t have a clue but from what I have read on other’s blogs who have done the program teaching them songs and phrases. Activities and games seem to be a popular method for this.

So… if you have any ideas, please let me know. I’ll bake you a cookie. 🙂