Moped

We are in China:) It's cold, its huge and its amazing. The internet here at the hostel is a little bit of a challenge but we'll try to post more later. We are going to head down to the Forbidden City and Tian' amen Square this morning. Tomorrow morning we will be going to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs...should be a cold and fun day.

This morning in the middle of receiving our breakfast of toast, egg and coffee our train tickets for our trip to Xi'an arrived. We had not been able to get to the bank so I still had a pocket full of Jap. Yen. After a confusing "conversation" between the delivery guy, the hostel worker and myself I finally just flashed my wad of Yen and told the delivery guy that I had the money, I just needed to change it. His eyes got really big and he offered to take me to the bank on his moped. Maybe I should have been nervous but I wasn't...I dont know if I'm adventurous or stupid:) We dodged through the narrow streets of old Beijing and finally burst out onto a six-lane street full of buses, bikes and delivery men. It was pretty exciting to experience early morning Beijing from the back of a moped.

Well, that's all for now, hope to get some pics on here soon.

Snowflakes and Silence

Yesterday we had quite a snow, as you can see from Jeff's early morning photos. There's something so cozy about a snowy day. Even the Japanese streets were hushed with the snow.

This week was our last week of classes before holiday here at the English school. In the sprint to finish I didn't realize how it would feel when it was all over. This evening, as I was finishing my last class, I looked up at the snowflakes I"ve been making with my students all week. The classroom was quiet and I couldn't hear any students clamboring over each other upstairs in the lobby. Another silence had fallen.

So feeling a bit nostaligic about each-student-represented-by-a-snowflake and other silly things, I ran and grabbed my camera. My last student, a very cool teenager, was thrilled by the photoshoot. Unfortunately we weren't very good photographers and left half of our heads out of the picture.



I think winter is peaceful only because you know there will be spring. My classroom would feel so lonely right now if I didn't know that each of my students will be back to tear down the snowflakes and utterly destroy my nostolgic momentos. With that chaotic vision firmly in my mind, I turn my back and close the door--on to Christmas Break!

Winter Wonderland

Here is what I saw when I took our trash out this morning at 630. Notice the poor little schoolboy's shorts. Those are the winter uniform.

Beauty

Last Friday a group of us visited a garden in Kagoshima. It is on the grounds of the Satsuma family's residence. They are the ones who started the Meiji Restoration. If you have seen the movie "The Last Samurai" it was set in that time period and the samurai leader in the movie was inspired by the Satsuma family's retainer, Saigo Takamori. Ok, I'm done being a history nerd, or writing about it at least.

The garden contains a very old shrine dedicated to some goddess of beauty or something like that. Legend has it that if a woman visits this shrine her beauty will increase, or she will become beautiful if she is more on the ugly side of things. We gave it a shot and as you can see it works very well, the before and after pictures should prove this. (Note: The comparison would have been more drastic if I could have got the Japanese girls to stop smiling, they couldn't stop laughing.)


Us men even felt more manly upon entering the grounds.

Amazing isn't it?!

Smells Like America

Many American companies have made successful forays into the Japanese market. Costco, or Costico, as the Japanese unwittingly call it, is not one of them. They have a store about four hours from here near a much larger city however they reach only a very limited section of the Japanese population; Japanese who have lived in America, or Americans living in Japan. The Americans love it for the not-surprising fact that they can purchase American products. The Japanese like it because it smells like America. I am still very interested to visit the store and find out what America smells like. The few countries I have visited do have distinct smells, most are not so pleasant, but I couldn't tell you what America smells like.

I have a student who works for Sony. He was able to work in San Antonio for three years and loved the experience. He still misses Mexican food, Mt. Dew, NBA games, his "big" three-bedroom house, and that American smell. He is able to find most of those things at Costico. Two weeks ago he and his family made the eight-hour round trip to Costico in one day and he brought back pure gold for me; a monstrous bottle of Pace Salsa and a bag of Tostitos Tortilla Chips. The labels were even in English! The simple pleasures of life. We have been enjoying the salsa. However I still don't know what America smells like.

Semi-Creative

When Mary Ellen and I read "semi-tropical" in the description of our placement in Japan we really didn't understand "semi". That word means, now that we are out of the tropical and into the semi, that if I venture more than a foot or two away from our space heater, which I affectionatally call the guitar amp, my metabolism begins to slow and my body begins the slow process of death. Ok, maybe that was a little melodramatic, but that is how I feel. So I spend my time cuddling with the space heater. That is, until it runs out of kerosene and we have no one to take us to the gas station. We ran out this morning. I was ok, with my three layers of clothes and hot coffee, for a while. But then I got cold. I tried to convince myself that I was being a baby, that it was way colder in Nebraska and that I should just deal with it. But I've found that no matter how much colder it is other places in the world right now it doesn't change the fact that I am shivering.

This reminds me of a story that is completely unrelated but humorous none the less. This story involves my cousin named Greg, but I wont say that to protect this person. He was in class at Union College on a ridiculously cold Nebraska winter day. I think it was a science lab. He was quietly going about his task when he overheard a student walk into the room and exclaim "ahhh, It's freezing!" Another student immediately looked up from his work and responded "It's not that cold, look, I'm not even wearing a coat." This brave young chap, from the land of southern Canada, or as some call it, Minnesota, was wearing only a t-shirt. He was obviously very proud of this fact. My cousin, or, I mean, the nameless protagonist of this story, looked up and said what everyone in the room was thinking but not willing to say, "I'm sorry that you're stupid!" and he went back to his task. So maybe that does fit, once you're cold, you're cold. The fact that someone somewhere else is dealing with colder weather doesn't make you warm. I still laugh when I think of that story.

The problem is not that it's really that cold here, it's that they don't have central heating here in any of the buildings. It just doesn't exist. So we go outside to warm up sometimes. Today, sometime after the heater burned up the last drop of kerosene, putting a piece of toast in the toaster oven and beginning to shiver, I had an idea. The hair dryer blows hot air! I immediately ran into the bathroom and stuck the blow dryer under my shirt and had an uncontrollable smile light my face. After a few minutes of this bliss I remembered my toast. My Toast! I rushed out to save it from destruction but found that it was already black, and now cold. I needed it to be warm so that my cream cheese wouldn't tear the bread asunder when I tried to spread it. Ah, another idea. I couldn't put the toast in the toaster for more time or it would be even blacker, but if the hair dryer could warm me up couldn't it warm up the toast?

One Bad Ass!

Highlight the link below, right click and choose "go to address" and you will understand the title. I found the link of one of my friend's blogs and thought it was too good not to take and share...thanks seth:)

http://community-2.webtv.net/granniehug/ThisMayBeAFirst/

Peace on Earth for History Nerds

The following is a talk I will be giving at the end of a Christmas concert this Saturday Morning. There will probably be a fair amount of non-Christians present so I'm very excited to get to share! Anyway, I hope you are as blessed by this story as I am every time I tell it.

The First World War is arguably one of the most brutal wars in history. For the first time, armies used machine guns, armored tanks, and chemical warfare. Even though the weapons had become so powerful and lethal, both armies continued to use outdated tactics which resulted in enormous casualties.

When the war started in 1914, both the Germans and the Allied forces thought the war would be over by Christmas. Both sides thought that the other would easily give in. Both sides were wrong.

It was a cold and wet winter on the front lines in France. Because of the rain, the soldiers on both sides were standing in freezing cold mud up to their knees with no way to get warm. If they lit a fire or even smoked a cigarette, they would be easily seen and shot by the enemy. They also lived with the constant fear of the poisonous gas that could come at any time with no warning. Thousands of soldiers on both sides died every day. In the middle of all the death and fear, Christmas Eve came and silently settled on the battlefields of France. Germany and England were both Christian countries, both prayed to the same God, and both celebrated Christmas. And, according to journal entries, both dreamed of home that Christmas Eve.

That night something amazing happened. The British soldiers began noticing something strange as darkness fell. They saw lights in the German trenches. This, as you remember, was a sight out of place on the battlefield since it made an easy target of the soldier who held the light. Then they heard a sound that was, if possible, more out of place than light in the mud-filled trenches. It was a song. Though they didn’t know the language they recognized the melody. Many German soldiers were singing “Silent Night” and holding up lit candles on the end of their bayonets or on small Christmas trees. The English soldiers could have easily shot them, but they didn’t. Instead, many English soldiers began singing along. These soldiers, who only moments before had been mortal enemies, were now singing together from across the bloodstained fields.

Somewhere along the line a German soldier shouted, “You no shoot we no shoot!” The English soldiers, still fearful that it might be a trap, began walking out of the realative safety of their trenches and onto the fields. This time they didn’t meet with guns and knives but with outstretched hands and gifts. The commanders on both sides were frantic to stop this unexpected Christmas party; but it happened so fast and was so widespread that they could do little more than yell. The most amazing thing about it all is that though the truce happened in many places along the hundreds of miles of trenches, it was completly unplanned. Sadly, It did not happen everywhere. One place, the soldiers would be talking and eating together and over the next hill the armies would be shooting.

The German soldiers were eager to get the beef and cigarettes that the English soldiers posessed and the English soldiers, in turn, were eager to acquire the famous helmets, belt buckles and cigars from the German Soldiers. There are picture of English and German soldiers standing together with big smiles, holding the things they had just traded with each other. In some places the soldiers even played games of soccer. Though historians still argue about the validity of this, soldiers from both sides recorded the event in their journals. It is even recorded that the Germans won a particular match by a score of 3 to 2. The soldiers were happy to compete in a way that left no one dead.

Because soldiers wrote down conversations from that night we know some of what was said between them. One German shared that he had lived in London before the war and was engaged to a girl there. They were forced to wait for marriage because of the war. The English soldiers jokingly replied, “Well, we will have you beat soon. Then you can come back and marry your Girl.” Another German soldier pulled a family picture out of his dirty pocket. A British soldier exclaimed, “Your sister is beautiful!” The German soldier excitedly said that after the war the man should come to his home and meet his sister. He then proceeded to give the English soldier his address, in hope that he would survive the fighting and then come marry his sister.

The soldiers from both sides had dead friends in the fields whom they had not been able to bury because of the fighting. Hours earlier they would have died standing out in this field. Now, in many places, they gathered the dead together and buried them together.

The unplanned Christmas truce ended at various times in different places. In some areas it lasted close to a week. Other places it lasted only as long as Christmas day. However long it lasted, in many places, it ended the same: The solders from both sides intentionally shot high over the heads of the enemy that no longer seemed so evil. Because of this, any soldiers who had taken part in the Christmas truce were quickly replaced with soldiers from other places.

That night, because some nameless soldiers were willing to take a risk and walk onto the battlefield, peace broke out on the battlefields of France. Two Thousand years earlier God took a similar risk. He made Himself into two cells (during this time God had no brain-think about that for a while (thanks for that idea Seth!) that would grow into a baby named Jesus. God walked out onto this battlefield of earth, that had known only death and grief, for one reason only. He did it so that He could bring peace to this war-torn world. That’s what Christmas is all about: "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men"! If we are willing to take the risk and go out and meet Him, just like on the battlefields of France, peace will break out in our hearts. Peace that won’t last just one night, but for all eternity.

“Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men."

Luke 2.13-14