Holiday Season

For most of my friends, what we know as the holiday season starts in November with Thanksgiving, continues through to Black Friday until Christmas and New Year's top it off. Most of it is based on shopping and family, but mostly shopping, since that's what TV has conditioned us to frenzy over at this time. And of course food, where we gorge ourselves on Turkey, Ham, dressing, and whatever fast food is at mall food courts.

This year it feels a bit like the holiday season, just drastically different. Though Spring Festival is the biggest holiday here and not until February, two other major holidays are happening now in our midst here. ZhongQiuJie (Mid-Autumn Festival) was last week and is akin to Thanksgiving. A short 2 day holiday weekend that is mostly about food (gross moon cakes, filled with ham, fruit, egg or tofu) and a tradition of looking at the moon at night to remember family that can't be present as they are also most likely staring at the moon remembering you. It's a nice, quaint tradition.

Today is GuoQingJie. Otherwise known as "New China Day" or "Chinese Independence from the Capitalist Roaders of the Kuomingtang and the Counter-Revolutionary, Chiang Kai-Chek, and the Harmonious Opening of the People's Republic of China." So the last one I made up, but it is essentially our July 4th. Students get from October 1st-October 7th off to celebrate. I am celebrating by doing some traveling and remembering why America is so great. This year, I'm skipping a lot of the Mao-love and taking it as an opportunity to study for language class and relax a bit as many students will be at home with their families (maybe looking at the moon together this time).

One of the interesting parts about this holiday (and every other holiday here) is that students have to "BuKe." Literally, we all have to make up classes that we miss for, you guessed it, the holidays that we are given off. This often means going to class on Saturdays and Sundays before and after the holidays. This has yet to make sense to me.

If there's one way to get people to hate you it's to make them work on holidays. Look at every Christmas movie. The reason a main character is either the miser or the victim, its because they have to work on Christmas Eve. Scrooge, Elf's real dad, Jimmy Stewart, (not to mention when Lumburgh makes Peter work on Saturday and Sunday in Office Space...yeeeeaaaah...) they all are shown to be cruel/be down on their luck because of this holiday work clause (no pun intended). And yet, my neighbors here haven't seemed to learn this lesson yet. Why not just not have a holiday and let people keep their weekends? Wouldn't it cause less resentment for 8 hour class days on Sunday weren't happening? Wouldn't it make you dread the holiday season knowing that you'd have to cram in more class soon after? You'd think it'd be better to align everyone with New China to have them look forward to the opportunity to play Warcraft 24 hours in a row at the net bars instead of studying beginner's English during that time.

But what do I know? They've done it this way for a long time and I'm not about to go changing everyone's paradigms of what's normal. This is definitely a case of "It's not wrong, just different" that I keep having to get used to.

Acquiring Normalcy

One of the major things I've learned in about 2 years in Asia so far is that "Normal" is elastic. In America, "Normal" for me is burgers and spaghetti, not rice noodles and kung pao chicken. It's driving around in my 2000 Saturn SL (RIP) on highways and lined roads, not zipping around on a moped, praying I don't get hit by an overloaded dump truck (don't worry, it hasn't happened yet, and I've gotta be one of the top moped drivers in all of China...so no worries there). "Normal" is watching football on Saturdays at noon, not midnight. "Normal" in America is living in the suburbs with my mom around to help give me old furniture they don't have room for anymore, not coming into a shell of an apartment and having to furnish it myself, with my severe lack of interior design skills (I had to ask someone for the term of arranging furniture and knowing what matches and what doesn't).

Since being back this time, some normalcies I had in America have vanished, some have been adapted and contextualized, and some I have dragged over in an overweight carry-on bag on the plane. However, one of those things that was impossible to adapt (see the previous post about the pretty pretty princess light fixtures...) or maintained was how our apartment here feels and my lack of having to do things like pick out fabrics for a couch or how to arrange furniture in an aesthetically pleasing way which is welcoming to visitors.

When I was here my first year, I had a bad experience. And when I say a bad experience, I mean like one rivaling the time I got judo-chopped by an Amazon of a 10 year old girl during a school project, which caused a neck spasm that left me with my head leaning to one side the rest of the day.

Yes, I'm talking about my first time in IKEA here in China

. That time, I was going in out of curiosity (mainly from Fight Club where Brad Pitt calls Edward Norton "IKEA-boy"), not to buy anything. And it felt like Dante's description of the 3rd of hell. Yuppies were everywhere. The place is built like the Labyrinth (1st every David Bowie reference in a blog!). And the hotdogs they sold made me sick to my stomach while I was waiting for the girls to saunter through admiring every thing. I'm pretty sure we were only there for 2 hours, but it felt like 2 weeks. I had lost my mind and had pretty much become ferrel, ready to do whatever it took to survive in that island of trendiness.

This time, it wasn't IKEA, but it was an IKEA knockoff. As in, they stole the floor plan, furniture setup, uniforms, colors, and snack restaurant from IKEA. If it was in America, where intellectual property laws actually exist, it would've been burned to the ground by repo men and the owners of Furniture 11 (at least they changed the name significantly) would be locked in jail next to Bernie Madoff and become the Carlos Mencia of yuppie furniture retailers. But this is China, and knockoffs are everywhere.

When I went, Jarred and Shelley played the role of my mom (though I really tried hard to make them think I knew what I was talking about) and helped Adam and I pick out some really good stuff. A man-sized couch I can completely stretch out on (unlike beds here, unless you count when you sleep diagonally on the mattress), a two seater, an alpha-dog single seater and an accompanying ottoman longer than any I've ever seen. I paid for it and then waited over a week for it to be delivered to our place out in the sticks. Below is how it arrived upon delivery...in course rice bags that that were kinda dirty and impossible to open with human strength.

Then, much to my chagrin, I realized there was no fabric on them...which made me think, as often happens, the delivery men forgot something or were misinformed by 12 layers of middlemen who were supposed to deliver the simple message. Thankfully another commonality of communism factored in. The fabric covers arrived 20 minutes later by separate delivery men in a trashbag. Disaster averted. Though my roommate Harrison probably wouldn't have noticed, we would've been stuck trying to convince ourselves that this is how all furniture in China is set up (though surprisingly, without the standard plastic wrap left on it for years).Then the gentlemen assembled the furniture, after I asked them not to smoke their cheap cigarettes in my house. This caused lots of whispering in their local dialect which most Mandarin speakers cant understand either. I'm pretty sure

they resented me for not letting me smoke on the job.

I tried to make conversation and offer them some drinks, but I REALLY wasn't able to buy them off for being their human nicotine patch. They grew more shady by the minute, especially when they went into separate rooms to assemble stuff. So far I have yet to notice anything broken or missing or any cigarette burns on the walls thankfully.

Finally, this is what it looks like set up. I know this ha

s been a bit of a Martha Stewart journey and many of you have given up on this blog because of this not-so-manly, domestic entry. But I promise the next one will be about arm wrestling or eating spicy stuff or Oklahoma State football coach, Mike Gundy (I'M A MAN! I'M 40!).

Daniel

King of the Castle

With apologies to Seinfeld, the past two weeks have been filled with me feeling like royalty. People here in my new home treat me, their token, tall white friend they can practice their English phrases with in passing, as if I am some sort of king, smiling widely and graciously welcoming me into whatever home or restaurant or business they happen to be associated with.

So far I've met a few neighbors in my building. One elderly woman called me a "zhongguotong," or literally "a China hand." It's like what we'd call someone like Steve Nash, who is really Canadian, but we like him so much and hes funny, so we try to claim him as our own, since after all he is now an expert of US culture after living there so many years. I think she went a little overboard, but hey, I guess I'll take all of the praises I can get for having barely passable Mandarin language skills.

Many children have also come running out of their parents laps to say hello to the new "laowai," ("old foreigner" literally...its not really a cut down, but it kinda is). I politely keep my cool and am still pretty good at responding to them kindly. Hopefully I can keep that up for a long time.

But the thing that makes me feel most like a king here is my apartment. And when I say kind, I mean like a really manly princess. Thanks, landlord. Not only is it plenty big enough for me and my 2 roommates, especially compared to student dorms which often fit 4 sets of bunk beds in a single room, but the decor is set for royalty. However, I think our landlord didn't get the memo that American men aren't keen on having an apartment full of glittering things, especially like the light fixtures posted above. Yes, those are hearts and stars and crystal disco ball looking things that refract all sorts of harsh light all over my room when I turn it on. Additionally, there is a faux Victorian Era chandelier that was incorrectly installed in our living room and we fear that at any moment it could come crashing down like in an Indiana Jones film.

Overall though, I love this place. The location isn't really close to school, unfortunately, so its a nice 20 minute moped ride to class and to meet friends there. But right now, its a very sufficient castle, where we can relax and watch (legal...) DVD's, eat meals (sometimes...you know, if there's food here), and sleep soundly.

The last month with accompanying pictures

So now that it's football season, it means two things.

1. Turkey Bowl game planning against the SEC squad in November has started (as well as the obvious start to Turkey Bowl beard growth)

and

2. You get daily 50 person news crews at every football game reporting every minutiae of detail about every game from the NFL all the way down to Snoop Dogg's son's Pop Warner squad.

"Ryan Grant has a torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament and is lost for the season"

"His backup is Brandon Jackson and he went to Nebraska for college."

"His Uncle Jim taught him to play football when he was 8 in a cow pasture"

"Breaking news, Jackson's yards-per-carry average may be stunted because his left leg is .25 inches longer than his right leg."

Way too much information really. What happened to the good ol' days when you just pulled for a team and didnt know when star players and even key reserves were going to the bathroom or what they were eating for breakfast?

Anyways, with all the reporters writing during the middle of the week, a whole genre of lazy "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" styles of columns have been birthed. And since it's been a month since I've been able to blog (they are all blocked over here in Asia most of the time) and feel like there is much to say, I figured I'd do this and post some pictures of key moments in the last month.

Thumbs up: Our fantasy football draft with friends from high school. This is the draft board from that night. Toward the end, there was an actual trade announced "I trade Hines Ward for a 14th rounder and a 6-pack (of dr. pepper I think...) to be named later."

Thumbs down: Shooting at the gun range with my dad. I seriously could not hit anything that day, until we came to using the M1 Garand from World War 2 fame. I credit getting pretty good at Call of Duty on this one. Seriously, it came out of nowhere.

Thumbs up: Goodbye party from my friends in Durham. It was Settlers of Catan themed. The shirt was a gift from Josh/Jodes and the cupcakes were courtesy of Lindsay, Sarah, Melissa, et al. I promise I'm not that nerdy. It was a joke. Seriously, guys.

Thumbs down: not getting to pack my dog. She tried to hop in my suitcase, but unfortunately made it over the weight limit. If it wasn't down to her or winter clothes, she definitely would've made the cut. Also, I dont want her getting stolen here. Or worse...

Thumbs up: Getting to go to the LSU game in Atlanta before I left. Though we lost, it was a moral victory without most of our starting defense and first two RB's on the depth chart suspended or withheld. None of the LSU fans could gloat or even look us in the eye after narrowly escaping. And yes, they really do smell like corndogs.

Thumbs down: This picture found in Cary Towne Center the night before I left. So much to say, so few words to describe it.

Reading CS Lewis, Flossing and Blogging...

The great philosopher of our age, Mitch Hedberg once commented that his smoker of a friend told him that he didn't understand how hard it was to quit smoking. "Yes I do," said Hedberg defiantly, "it's as hard as it is to start flossing."

To me, reading is my flossing. To be specific, reading heady books by Christian authors in Mensa is my flossing. And actually, flossing is also my flossing, because its true that its difficult to begin doing and continue to do with the regularity needed for it take effect. In this analogy, flossing and reading CS Lewis are connected because they are things that I know I should do. Things that benefit me, improve my quality of life, keep my mind sharp (or teeth strong), and that ultimately I know will prevent laziness and the consequences of not doing such.

I have literally started "The Abolition of Man" no less than 4 times. And every time I read 2 pages at the most before thinking, "What in the name of Narnia does this mean?!" and then losing my place, re-reading the same sentence 4 times and then moving on without much of an understanding of what he is trying to prove. I really have no idea how people have picked out such profound quotes from his works because I always get lost and end up glazing over all the good stuff.

To extend Mitch's parallel of flossing/smoking, I normally start feeling very confident that my life will be better after reading 3 hours prior to when I plan to do so. But slowly, as the time I have blocked off approaches, I start to get jumpy and nervous. I look for other things to do. I think, "One game on the PS3, then I'll do it," only to become too tired to put in the effort. Now that I think of it, its the same feeling I have prior to making phone calls about support. It's nerve-racking and awkward, and guilt-inducing all at the same time. It's easy to think of strong gingivitis-free gums and a sharpened, worshipful heart hours prior, but then the moment comes and all that fills my head is how much it hurts, how no one else is doing it either and how I can get by with just brushing, watching the History Channel, or texting supporters.

And now that I think of it, blogging is the same way for me. So this is good. I started out just ranting about CS Lewis and his overly British, stream-of-consciousness writing style in certain works and am ending up vowing to at least blog more, even if it means it'll be shorter. Starting today. I can practically feel my gums getting nervous now.

Transition Offense

In my quest to relate everything into a sports metaphor, I've decided to return to my main M.O. and ponder some thoughts about some things I'm learning here at X-Track, our training out west that lasts most of this month and deals largely with transitioning to an overseas lifestyle, etc.

Most of our mornings are pretty packed, which is unfortunate now, because since most of us are more "international" than the rest of America and therefore find a lot of enjoyment watching the World Cup. Even if soccer isn't that interesting to us normally, the World Cup has brought large groups together just simply out of the fascination of what the enormous hornet horns are, the unison-jumping supporters of each country, and just how cultural differences can both be seen on the field and in the stands (also, in the local medias, as Slovene newspapers are ludicrously adamant that the US's third goal was actually a foul...) seem so different than our own.

Unfortunately, morning classes keep us from most of the games since that's when they are shown on TV here, but it does make you wonder about transitioning in what is now a "global community."

On one hand, you can make the case that cross-cultural stress and transitioning pain is almost non-existant these days. We grew up in diverse schools, often have ethnic friends, and many of us have already been overseas more times during college than some of our parents will in their entire lifetimes. Add to the fact that we have Vonage, Skype, email, twitter, facebook, and cheaper travel options for family and friends and you might be led to believe that going to Estonia today is like going to Texas 20 years ago (bad example, Texas is also a foreign country).

But there is something deeper going on that moves beyond technological advances and our teenaged environments that still makes a transition like moving overseas difficult.

As I watched a soccer match recently, I noticed that the British announcers would use different verbiage than their American counterparts who are used to commentating on other sports. Soccer analysis includes players "having conviction," (playing hard) "using good pace," (instead of "running fast"), "dribbling with ambition," (shooting, trying to score), and my favorite, "that keeper's all 6's and 7's!" (made that last one up, but hoping it will be said during one of these games).

But one commonality between Jeff van Gundy and Martin Tyler as they announce their respective matches is the importance of "transition offense and defense." The concept that you must succeed when the ball is turned over. You must keep the opponent from scoring on you after it appeared you had the advantage and you must also successfully score when given the advantage.

During another soccer match I saw, analysists noted that an entire team was built upon the idea of "counterattacking." It's counter intuitive really. Your whole team, even your goal scorers are reliant upon the opportunity of a turnover. You run the risk of stalling completely if the game flow is normal and there arent many transition opportunities.

The UNC basketball team has actually been built like this the last couple years where if we weren't able to get out in transition, we probably wouldn't be scoring a whole lot and might even lose. Ty Lawson went down and were were screwed.

Basically my whole point is that its a transitional time in life for me and my friends here. Where we live, who were are close to in proximity, what we eat, the language we speak, and the friends we make will all be new. God often disperses his people in the Bible. Which is why there are more Jewish people in New York than in Jerusalem today. In Jeremiah he tells the people not to put all their efforts into reclaiming their original homes in Israel after the Diaspora(s), but instead to lay down roots, build homes, start families, plant fields in foreign lands.

If I were one of the Israelites, it would be easy to see why this would be frustrating. Being an agrarian society, people were more tied to the land back then. You had more family farms for generations, and they were always inherited by sons and daughters. Really these people had their whole lives changed and that is always a difficult thing.

But the harder to notice side of this, and one that I doubt Israel understood and believed was that there was also opportunity in this transition. Opportunity to grow, to investigate their own sin, to grow closer to God, and to ultimately be a "light to the Nations" by actually residing IN the Nations.

Now clearly, both sides are not equal. One is more comfortable than the other. But you also have to wonder how the Jewish people profited from that 1st generation who left their hometowns and put down roots in Assyria and Persia. Would they have been moved to repentance otherwise? Would their children know God? Would they be lazier or overly content with the status quo?

Prayer Illuminated

As some of you may know, I recently arrived in Fort Collins, Colorado for training before I leave for Asia. Yes, I'll have about a month between the time I return from Colorado to the time I get on a plane for the Far East. But even after two days here, I'm realizing that these weeks in the Rockies may be the most restful time I'll have in the next year.

This morning all of us here at "X-Track" (the name of our training conference...also the most hardcore sounding name that could be thought of), went on a prayer journey. I know many Christians have been run through one of these in the past. Like a lineman high-stepping through tires at two-a-days or a freshly-enlisted recruit at basic training, we are spiritually run through different stations intended to focus our hearts on the right things and purge ourselves of the wrong things.

Love Jesus, don't love the world. Listen to praise music, don't listen to secular music. Confess your sin, don't keep it hidden. That type of thing. Often times I must admit, I more or less go through the motions, bowing my head at the right times, praying for a portion of the time, before I get distracted by whatever is consuming my thoughts that week. Things like this also normally have several stations that include reading passages several times over and and over, artistic expressions of worship and clever anecdotes of life, sin, forgiveness, redemption, etc.

If you can sense the pessimism in my tone it's because it's normally very present when I try to spend extended time in prayer. I think today was pretty good though.

One of the stations today I thought was particularly helpful. It was something about being washed of sin, made clean before God and realizing His desire to do both of these things for us. There was a bucket of water and a towel on the table with some passages to read through. Because there was something in one of the passages about being a fragrant offering to the LORD, someone had put some sort of fragrant mixture in the water that made it smell like red Kool-Aid, which I thought smelled great.

Unfortunately when I looked down at my hands before immersing them in the basin, I realized how poorly they looked. I bite my nails constantly and have done so since I was a teenager, so they were all uneven, jagged in some places. The palms were cracked as a result of the changes in weather and elevation. Plus, throw in the fact that I had just noticed the pen I was using to journal had exploded and I had unwittingly been smearing ink on my fingers. It was a Crescent State Bank pen, in case you were wondering and were worried about the same thing happening to you.

Anyways, I did as the instructions told me, dipped both hands in the water, rubbed them together a little and then dried them off. Not surprisingly, my fingernails were the same bitten down ones as before, and almost none of the ink had come off.

I certainly didn't look clean. If I was 5 or 6 years old, I wouldn't be allowed to eat dinner like that. But somehow, beyond the ugly appearances, I did feel a new sensation of cleanliness when I dried my hands and rubbed them together. They had been cleansed, even though I knew that it might take a day or two at least for my nails to grow back to a decent length and for the ink to disappear. I could eat fried chicken with hands. I could wash dishes with them. They were once again useful in a way that wouldn't spread an excess of germs.

I think often my life is the opposite. I worry about what I am displaying to people around me rather than if my heart is clean, my motives pure. I am very good at being presentable, but rarely am in a position where people around me see me in a mess, when actually I am clean and pure before God. But its a refreshing feeling.

Jesus explains this situation through the example of a cup that is dirty on the inside, but sparkling on the outside. It is useless for drinking or washing and is relegated as a trophy. He also speaks of tombs that look very nice and are whitewashed, but are containers of death.

I am hoping these questions will be something I can meditate on for a while. Would I be OK if I didn't have it altogether on the outside, but did have a deep relationship with Jesus? Would I want to trade intimacy with Christ for acceptance or honor from men and women? Would it feel like I was dying if I temporarily ignored God's grace and a relationship with Him?