Patterns and Colors

One day not too long ago I walked into the school wearing a new scarf  I picked up when shopping with some friends at a minority village outside the city. It was a steal. I just couldn't resist.

"You have so many scarves," was the first thing Bear said when seeing me. 

Guilty.

I have a weakness for beautiful textiles that I can tie in my hair or wear around my neck. People randomly started giving them to me for various reasons several years ago, and as I travel, I always pick up one or two. They're light and inexpensive, a wearable way to remember the places I've visited. By now I've accumulated quite the collection, and apparently my Chinese friends have noticed. 

I have a bit of a bohemian streak, and when it comes to fashion in China everything goes. I love it. I even saw a woman on the street one day wearing pajamas with high heals, her face and hair made up like she was going somewhere important. 

In China I feel no need to be matchy, and today on my way to yoga class I realized I was wearing a bandana, scarf and satchel which were all clashing colors with busy patterns. I just couldn't get away with that in the States. 

Tuesday is my favorite day of the week because neither my friends nor I have to work. This allows time to hang out longer and do things that are harder to make happen when we have to teach at night. Today we went to an Indian shop down the road from my apartment, which had been recommended by another foreign teacher for Aston. 

As we perused this eclectic little nook, Bear grabbed a bandana off the shelf and said, "Lauren, this looks like you." I admit, it was beautiful. My others friends agreed, and laughing at how I made them promise to not let me buy anything, continued to try them on. I'm happy to announce each of my Chinese friends bought an Indian bandana today.

I don't think I talk enough about my Guiyang friends in this blog. I just really love them, and I can't imagine how hard the transition to China would be if not for their friendships. In the last week, I've noticed how much of their mannerisms I've picked up. We have inside jokes and conversation comes easily. In some ways I feel myself becoming more and more Chinese as absurd as that statement may sound. My interests and preferences are evolving as a result of my time with them.

And as little a thing as it may seem, my heart really melted today as my friends tried on the bandanas and talked about how much these simple accessories reminded them of me. I realized then that I am not only learning from them, but they are learning from me. It's cool to observe this reciprocity. I can't wait to see my friends fashion their bandanas in the weeks to come. I'll give you a sneak peak. 

Fruit and Rain and A Bird Cage Home

After a month now in China, I finally bought some hua long gua. I had seen this fruit at the grocery, but I could never figure out how to weigh my produce. I've learned that when everything you do requires more energy that you are accustomed to expending on such tasks, it's easy to put certain ones off, hoping that you will come upon a day when you have inspiration to figure it out. 

Today was that day. Hua long gua is translated fire-dragon fruit in English, and who doesn't want to eat fruit with a name like that. I always forget how heavy produce is until I'm lugging it home from the store, and today I barely beat the rain. 

I can't seem to move away from places where the weather is unpredictable. On Monday I was wearing a skirt with sandals; today I wore my heavy coat with thick tights and boots. But with the cold weather and rain has come a quieted spirit. 

When living in Xiamen, my roommate Simone and I walked by a certain apartment complex everyday, which we affectionately called the bird cage homes. These apartments had intricately designed iron bars, reminiscent of a bird cage, outside the windows to protect the residents from falling out when hanging their laundry. 

These days I live in a bird cage home. I was taking some photos of the rain tonight and smirked at how life has brought me full circle. I haven't consciously thought about fire-dragon fruit or the bird cage homes for several years now, or at least the last time I was in China. Yet here I am, eating hua long guo and leaning outside my bird cage window while Belle and Sebastian join the rain in serenading me.  

It's The Small, Treasured Things

We talked about families today in my C3 class. I love my C3 kiddos. They haven't yet reached the age where they're too cool to run up to me before class and give me hugs. 

"Miss Lauren, Miss Lauren, how are you," they always ask while wrapping their arms around my waist and squeezing me tightly. If I responded with any other words except "fine, thanks," they would have no idea what I was talking about.

C3 is a great class because at this stage the students have developed a foundational vocabulary and are finally beginning to construct sentences on their own, as opposed to reciting parroted lines they learn in earlier classes. It's fun to teach, and they're so cute and entertaining to watch.

We learned the word house today and reviewed terms like mother, brother, father, sister, grandma and grandpa. I decided I was long overdue for an art project in this class, so I asked the students to draw me a picture of their house and label it. They were to then draw and label their family members standing next to their house.

I confess, I have a huge soft spot for children's artwork, even if they are simple sketches drawn on scratch paper. My journal is full of drawings by the Kenyan children I sat next to in church the Sunday I visited Nairobi. And I love them. 

Today was no different. I probably should have let my students keep their drawings, but I couldn't resist collecting them and taking them home with me where they have been thoughtfully stashed away.

I smiled as I walked around the class and studied the pictures of my students' families, feeling as though I could enjoy my own, if only vicariously, during this simple lesson. I had given a sample of what I wanted from my students by drawing my own house on the chalk board and myself next to it. One of the boys, Winston, I think was a bit confused and when collecting his artwork, I realized that he had included me in his drawing. Perhaps he didn't quite grasp the concept, but it warmed my heart to see a stick figure with my name on it next to Winston's family. 

As I've eluded to so many times in these posts, life in Guiyang is pretty simple. I have two suitcases of belongings to call my own, a handful of Chinese friends and my students. That's all. But I don't need much else, and one day when I'm really missing my luxurious American life, I'm going to pull out these pictures and remember how much joy I received the day my students drew sketches of their families for me. I'm going to remember this object lesson and that the small things in life are often the most treasured. 

I hope you won't be too harsh a copy editor. We're still working on our spelling...

Muslim Noodle Friends

One of my greatest desires as I prepared to make my China move was to build community with the people who lived and worked around me. This hope has been harder to accomplish than I imagined. 

Forget the language barrier, many people in this town treat me like I'm other worldly. I'm getting better at not letting this annoyance get under my skin, but it's hard to want to return to a restaurant, for example, when the wait staff all comes out and standing about 10 feet away from you snickers and stares the entire time you eat your meal. 

I just want to be treated normally while having healthy interactions with my neighbors. I was beginning to believe this was too much to ask for.

I'd been looking for a good Muslim noodle house since I got to Guiyang. While I'm generally a rice and veggies sort of girl, Muslim noodles are the exception to the rule. You just can't get this stuff anywhere in the States. I know. I've looked. The cook stretches out the dough as far as their arms span and divide it in half. This action rapidly occurs over and over until they have long, stringy noodles.

My favorite Muslim noodle dish is called "da shao mian," where the cook takes a large slab of dough, and with a knife, slices pieces right off into a pot of boiling water. It's then served with a broth — so good. 

It occurred to me ridiculously late into my time in China that I could probably find a pretty good noodle place in the Muslim quarter that is right across the street from my apartment. Brilliant, I know. 

Guiyang's Muslim quarter is tiny in comparison to many big cities like Xian, but I quite like it. Several weeks ago as I was wandering around, I noticed a man making da shao mian outside his restaurant, so of course I wandered inside.

The noodles were great, and the company was even better. The owners didn't treat me like a foreigner but rather like a friend. They even helped me with the correct pronunciation of the dish I was ordering. 

I've kind of fallen in love with the family that owns this place and find myself there at least once every other day. If noodles were more nutritious, I would eat there every meal without hesitation. I appreciate the generosity of my Muslim noodle friends toward me and look forward to learning more about them in the months to come. 

It's nice to feel that if anything were to happen to me I could run across the street and my Muslim noodle friends would help me out, and it's encouraging to believe that maybe this community thing is possible after all. 

I asked my Muslim noodle friends if I could take some photos of them, and they said that I could. They also kept trying to smile for all of my shots, but I managed to steal a few candid photos. I hope their kindness is as evident in these images as it is in their restaurant. 

Tears Producing Growth

As a little girl, one of the saddest sights I can recall was watching my parents cry. An image of strength and stability, I never knew how to react when these two "rocks" in my life felt too weak to hold it together. These moments weren't often but they left me with a painful feeling of desperation, knowing I could do nothing to remedy their heartache.

I've had my fair share of tearful moments, but in the last year I realize I had been responding to hard times less with tears and more with gritted teeth. I think a lot of this shift has to do with the fact that many of the frustrating experiences I've had in this season have occurred in solitude, when I was away and didn't have my community around to fall back on. I had been fighting tears rather than permitting them because I feared breaking down and being unable to pull myself back up.

My friend Kelli from Abilene, an amazing girl with an amazing mind, made the comment once that she believed tears were a spiritual gift, and while I always thought that was a beautiful idea, I never really could understand what she meant.

I think of my friend Peggy. Peggy is, with the exception of my mom, my Happy and my Auntie Em, the woman who I would like my life to most resemble. I can't count the number of times during my four years in Abilene that I dropped by Peggy and her husband James's house unannounced to steal a little time with these two amazing individuals. I enjoyed nothing more than to sit at Peggy's breakfast-room table or to lie in her hammock while catching up on the week.

Peggy has a beautifully sensitive spirit, and so many times during our chats I'd watch her eyes well up with tears as we talked. It didn't matter the topic of conversation, I never ceased to be impressed by this friend of mine who allowed the Spirit to affect her in such a way that she couldn't help but cry.

Maybe this is the response of which Kelli was speaking.

Since arriving in China, I find myself crying more often than is normal for me. Not a despairing sort of crying, but rather of acceptance and gratitude. I see now how backwards my mindset has been as I have found great healing in this action.

I've been working my way through the book of Esther in the last month, and I can't seem to make it through a chapter without finding myself on my knees, my face wet with tears. I receive e-mails from friends back home and my eyes well up, silently rejoicing over their existence. I walk through the streets of this city and become overwhelmed at the stories that surround me, stories of joy and of trials in the faces of people in my Chinese world. And all at once I am once again in tears.

The other night when I arrived at work, a Chinese co-worker came up to me and wiping remnants of mascara off my cheek asked, "Lauren, why is your face so dirty?" Apparently, I need to do a better job cleaning myself up.

The province of Guizhou is known for its rain. It rains a lot here, but yesterday as I was on a bus headed toward the countryside for an afternoon of bike riding with friends, I sat silently in amazement at how lush everything had become. The mountains here are vibrantly green and the strawberry fields stretch out for miles and miles.

I relished in thoughts of how God has set life into motion, how we have seasons and how the earth experiences drought and death and nurishment and life just like humans.

And I thought of what Don Miller said in one of his books about how he wants to keep his soul fertile so that things can keep getting born in him and so that they can die when it is time for them to die.

Perhaps tears, like rain to the dry earth, are the means by which we keep our souls fertile so that growth can at last take place. Perhaps this process really is more spiritual than we can understand.

Journeys and Luggage

I first read The Great Divorce on my high school senior trip to Fort Lauderdale; C.S. Lewis and I hung out at the beach a lot that week.

At a different stage of life, I'm happy to announce this book is just a great the second time around. Honestly, it's taken me several days to work through the preface, trying to wrap my head around all that Lewis is proposing and taking to heart the words of this brilliant mind. 

You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from bad but other good...

I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries.' In that sense it will be true that those who have completed this journey to say that good is everything and heaven is everywhere...

But what, you ask of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region of hell: and earth, if put second to heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of heaven itself.

-C.S. Lewis

"Is it a Dragon?"

Wednesday nights I teach a C2 class (six and seven year olds).  Meet Juliet, Kevin, Dennis and Liam. I'm actually pretty crazy about them.

While I'm fond of all my students, I absolutely delight in these four. It is one of those classes teachers dream about. Besides coming to two hours of English class after being at school all day Wednesday, they are polite, they are energetic and they do a great job following instructions. 

Tonight we talked about animals — a thrilling topic if I do say so myself. I was so impressed by each student's participation and excitement about the topic.

"What is it?"

"It's a dragon."

"Is it a rabbit?"

"No, it's a dragon."

"Is it a bird?"

"No, it's a dragon"

"Is it a dragon?"

"Yes, it's a dragon."

And on and on we went. 

I think highly of my students who are not afraid to make speaking mistakes, and at the same time are correctable. They listen rather than making the same errors over and over. These four are all great at this. I wish I had their boldness and teachability when practicing my Mandarin. 

Take Liam for example. He is by far the youngest in the class and really struggles with his reading. He could so easily tune out of the class and passively participate. But he works hard and contributes great things to our class time. I see him each week get a little more comfortable with his speaking. It's fun to watch this growth. 

Juliet on the other is ahead of the game. She has the answer before I finish asking the question. And yet she doesn't have to be the one who always answers the questions. She's a team player, and she has the most welcoming spirit.

I love only having to teach one class on Wednesday because it's fun to pour all my energy and efforts into one class. Especially this class.