The Tale of the White Ping Pong Player

Well this time it hasn't been too long friends. I bet your happy you get the pleasure of reading another one of my amazing blog posts, that always seems to brighten your day, ;).  This is a fun story of me going out to visit some of my Chinese friends.  Who go to a university that is like forty five min. out of town.  I hope you enjoy it. I sure did.

So I leave my house at 8:10, really early in the morning, not really.  If you know me, you know that I always plan for detours and bad things to happen when I plan how much time I will need to get somewhere.  In China that is pretty difficult, at least for an ignorant foreigner, who doesn't know the ways of the land.  So to get to the New campus, which is where I need to be, I first need to get to the old campus that is in the city of Xi'an.  I know before hand that I have to take the 106 bus, and let me tell you, this bus is no fun.  Guaranteed  every time this bus will be packed to the limit.  The China limit is about 50% higher than what westerners would have in mind.

This is the infamous 106 bus,  I don't lie friends.

I get to the bus stop, and wait for about ten min.  I realize once I get on the bus that yet again it is packed, but not full, haha.  So I am thinking that this bus is full, but at every stop a herd of Chinese are chasing the bus down to get on, and Chinese don't mess around when getting on a bus.  The will do whatever it takes to get on a bus, especially in the morning.  I once saw a guy who shouldn't have ever fit on the bus, I mean he was being pinched by the door.  This man stood there for like 5 min, while the doors tried to shut, on him, for five min, then finally they closed.  That story really happened.  So I stood on the amazingly comfortable 106, that was sarcasm, for about 45 min feeling like a livestock animal in a semi trailer, I am just guessing that the animals feel pretty uncomfortable, so did I.

I make it out to the university safe and sound.  My friend Pei Hao, that is pronounced pay how, who's English name is Paul, met me when I got off.  When I first met Paul I gave him that English name, and he thought I said poor.  He told me he didn't like the name poor, I said no no, it is Paul, it is a good name.  That was amusing.  After getting off the bus we walked to the gymnasium to watch some ping pong matches.  My other friend Nai Fan was reffing one match.  The matches going on when we got there weren't to exciting, so we decided to go get some hitting in ourselves.  I have fallen in love with ping pong since being in China, and rightfully so, being as big as it is here.  I actually am not too bad, for a white guy, I take that back, Germans are really good, for an American.

A more competitive match. good stuff. 

After lunch we went back to the gym to watch some semi-pro players!  There was doubles going on when I got there.  For those of you who don't know, doubles is just two on two.  It was very entertaining to watch, these players were so good.  After watching the matches for an hour or so, Paul and I went back up to pong some more.  While we were playing, these two girls started watching us.  I am not for sure if that was because we were so pathetic or because I was white, haha, but really.  One of the girls builds up the courage to ask Paul if she can play with me, and he says yes, he should have thought twice about that.  I just think that we are going to gently hit the ball around, I thought wrong.  I hit one back to this girl that was just a little too high, and she murders it, I peed my pants a little. This girl ends up being ridiculously good, and half crazy.  Every time I hit one back a little high she would make me pay, and if it hit me, it hurt physically and emotionally.

By the end of the day I had played four plus hours of ping pong, but it was so much fun.  Hanging out with Paul and my other friend Nai Fan was a blast.  I met Paul and Nai Fan during the Sunshine Camp that I did this last summer.  The relationships we have are truly the most important parts of our lives.  We must never take anyone for granted.  Relationships are gifts, and they must be our top priority.  Live life in the moments that you have friends, we never know when it all will end for us or them.   I hope you enjoyed my story, I enjoyed writing it.  Until next time.

This is Nai Fan about to smash a back hand shot. 

This Nai Fan's teammate on the ping pong team. He was amazing too!

This is another friend and Me ponging it up on the official courts, oh yeah!

Living out of Abundance+Funny China Story!

Hello everyone, it has been a while.  Like we say in China long time no see, and that saying did come from China,  no jokes.  To start off I hope everyone is doing well, living out of the abundance of your heart, easier said than done though.  Life is such an interesting thing.  How it circles around us and so often feels like the same situations happen over and over again.  Even though time is moving and everything around us is changing, it feels the same things happen over and over.  It is coming to a close, my first year in China.  It has been amazing, challenging, joyful, growing, testing, it has been real life.

I first want to tell a short story about my new found obsession.  I would guess most of you know that ping pong is huge in China, but it is probably bigger than you would imagine.  So since being in China I have started playing ping pong and loving it.  The other day I wanted to get out, so I went to the ping pong shop to look around and maybe play some pong.  I started to hit with the owner of the store, and after ten min or so an older Chinese man came in.  The owner said something in Chinese that I didn't understand.  I was guessing that he said this guy was a coach.  So I was like nice, I will hit with him.  He started to give me advice that I only understood by his hand motions and facial expressions.  Then this 80 year old Chinese man came over and started grabbing my arm and yelling at me, again I didn't understand.  I knew he was telling me to relax my arm, because he was grabbing it and shaking it violently.  By the end the coach had stood behind me and grabbed both my arms to help me understand the technique, he needed to do this because I was a not so smart white skinned non-ping pong playing foreigner, I didn't hold it against him, no matter how uncomfortable it was.  He helped me for about an hour and a half. It was a lot of fun, and he really helped my technique.  Ping pong is so much more technical than it looks.

Recently, for many reasons, I have been thinking about life and how we were meant to live.  Not just breathe and go through the motions, but to thrive.  The word thrive might throw you off, I don't mean thrive by the world's standard. I am talking about thriving in the way that we were meant to.  I recently have been wrestling with thoughts about giving and sacrifice.  I sometimes feel sick inside and don't know why.  Maybe it is because I half know what to do, but the thought of it scares me half to death.  Looking around at the world and understanding that there are so many who have nothing.  I have soooo much, yet what do I give up so that someone else can live.  I recently watched a video that talked about living with abundance, not scarcity.  Not abundance in what we have, but abundance in how we give.  It doesn't say in the Book, "it is more blessed to give than to receive" for nothing. It is a revolutionary truth, that I don't fully live.

I don't write this to make people feel guilty.   I hope it opens my eyes a little more to what true life is.  To understand the reality that the life He meant for us is often not realized, because of different reasons.  Fear is a huge one, I believe, especially in  my life.  We must live out of His love, grace and provision, not our strength and wisdom.  Unless we fully surrender to His love and live out of his hands, we will never thrive in the blessed life He has for us.  Because when we let go of control and fear, He moves in ways we wouldn't imagine.  This is when, I believe, we truly live like He meant us to, out of the abundance of our hearts.  I am sorry that I have not put up pictures in awhile, I think I need to hire a photographer.  Please comment if you have thoughts on this post. I appreciate your thoughts.  Until next time.

Downtown fun with Ryan & Yamid!

After last night I was thinking that I had better post something. Because I don't too often just post stories. One, because I am not a creative story teller, and two, because funny stories don't happen to me too often.  This will be short and sweet, hopefully with some smiles in between.

Last night, Friday, Yamid, Ryan and I decide to head downtown to the market which we go to usually every Friday or Saturday night.  A ritual has developed since the recent opening of the new Xi'an Subway system.  That ritual being this; when Yamid and I take the subway and we have to swipe our cards to get through the little gate, instead of just swiping it where we know every other person with a brain swipes it, we pull out our license or a business card and try to swipe it in really odd places.   When the workers, who are there to help helpless people like us, come over to help us we start talking in a fake Russian language. Yamid actually speaks spanish, I speak in Russian. We swipe our cards in the end like smart people would, not until we have created a reputation of being the dumbest foreigners to pass through the subway.  Please don't judge me, it is just a little comedic relief.

Once we got to the market, we headed to our friends booth to sit and chat a bit.  So we all sit down in this little  hallway of a store.  We all are sitting on stools that are for toddlers, so we all look like giants, as out of place as we could get, but we love it!  One of our friends' five year old son, who is the cutest little boy, was going around making sure everyone had a little stool.  All I am thinking is I hope my son is that polite.  I am pretty sure I tried something like this as a child, but compared to him I failed miserably.  Hospitality is a very important thing in China, and the Chinese are very good at it.  So after we have talked for awhile they offer us each a moon cake. Which are from the moon festival, that ended one month ago. During that time I didn't eat one moon cake, because I had heard that they have really strange things in them, and they do. I have a weaker stomach than a newborn baby, not really, but it is a good analogy.  So we take the cakes with gracious smiles and thank you's, none of us intending to eat them.  So we all set them strategically by our stools, hopefully out of site out of mind.  One major gag scene was avoided, but I wasn't off the hook yet.

Ten minutes later our little friend brings out little tomato looking things.  I really don't eat tomato's, I know I am pretty pathetic.  All of our Chinese friends were saying, oh they are so good to eat, in Chinese of course.  I have lived here enough to know when someone tells me it's delicious, it's not true.  I have been tricked many a time. I wasn't going to be fooled this time, haha.  Ryan and Yamid are true men, and they ate them with no complaint.  In the meantime they were all still trying to get me to eat my mystery fruit/vegetable, with no avail.   Finally I said to them using Chinese, I am not accustomed to eating them, that usually does the trick.  They let me set it aside, close call.  It wasn't over yet.  The grandpa, the father of the whole family got up and grabbed the thing and gave it to me again, and said, try try try it is very good.  This time I didn't have a choice.  My good friend Ryan was telling me, don't eat it man, you can't handle it.  While Yamid was saying, just eat it!  I was torn, but I had to do it.  I started to peel it, it started to bleed.  I was scared.  My stomach was already turning the wrong way.  I thought I better just lick the juicy cream it had produced, before I take a bite.  Oh man, I licked that stuff, instant gag reflex. No joke, I almost threw up.  Ryan said told you, Yamid just laughed.  In the end I got off the hook.

When we were leaving Yamid put his moon cake in his djembe case in a sly kind of way. The little boy saw him and called him out, saying to Yamid, hey don't you want to eat it?  All the boy knew was the moon cakes were delicious. Yamid just patted him on the head with a big smile, trying to say with his smile, I will save it for later.   Ryan whispers to me, "why didn't he just hide it away". I said to Ryan, "why didn't you hide yours", the cake was at his feet.  Ryan said, "that's not mine, mine is in my pocket". So he picked the one up off the floor.  Big mistake Ryan, the lady then gave Ryan that one too, when Ryan just wanted to point out it wasn't his, haha, it's yours now, sucker.  I made it out unscathed from the exotic foods of China, but was blessed with some awesome time talking with my friends. Practicing my poor Chinese.  Thanks for reading.  Until next time!

Kingdom Logic

Hello everyone, I hope your week has been going well. I am sure some of you have had a bad week, maybe a bad month. Just remember, He works out everything for the good of those who love Him.  I have been doing well recently. I have been on vacation this week, because of the Chinese National Day.  I have just been relaxing a lot, when the fire works war isn't going on right outside my window at twelve at night. I have studied a little. I know I am a terrible student, this is why I didn't choose to go to college.  I have felt really good with my Chinese lately. I have been able to go out on the street and have conversations using Chinese, it has been really good. We say something in Chinese, man man lai, it means it takes time.  I try to live by that. It has been really good living with Ryan and Yamid. Thay are both really awesome roommates.  Don't you love how detailed I am, it is a gift of mine, ;)  Here are some pictures for your entertainment. Enjoy!

This is a friend who Yamid and I usually see once a week. She writes using calligraphy .

This is on a street after a billion black cats were set off. Pretty intense! 

This is Yamid in the new Xi'an Subway. 

Living in a foreign country will test you and make you grow.  Going through things that frustrate you and test your patience everyday is not fun, but it builds on the foundation that you hopefully already had.  So for me this process has been good, I have seen change in my life. I don't see it clearly but I know it has happened.  So I will give you a little personal background of who I am.  Some see life through relationship, some see it through adventure and challenge, some see it through education and knowledge, and many other ways. I on the other hand, see a lot of life through numbers. I constantly think of the time, and how much time it would take to do something, or if I have enough time to do a specific thing with the time I have. I am late maybe once a year. I also do the same with money.  I am careful with money, a gift I received from my father.  I always look at what the outcome might be, which stops me from doing a lot things.  A gift? maybe, a curse? maybe.

So recently I have been tested in the area of giving and trusting. Because I am living on just enough to eat and live, nothing else.  So I need to be extra careful right? I can't afford to give to anything to anyone, because I barely have enough for myself.  I am afraid I have missed something huge in how we are called to live.  I can't be used as a blessing to others if I live with a death grip on the little I have.  I believe if we open our hands and trust Him with the rest, He will do more than we could ever imagine.  If we would live in the promise of His provision, He could do such amazing things through us. I believe we have been brought up in a society that teaches us to live using logic, and if it isn't logical don't do it.  I believe logic is for this world, not for Kingdom living. If I used logic for all my decisions I sure wouldn't be where I am today. I believe logic cripples what He wants to do through us. It is our big security net, one of them at least. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about being financially irresponsible.  I am talking about living in a way that shows that what we have is not ours, but His. Living a life of out pouring, more than just what we logically can, but pouring out what hurts so that others may live. When we choose to live with open hands, I believe that He will do amazing things through us. Not because of logic, but because of love. This is something that I have been growing in, I am a failure in this area. With His grace hopefully someday I can live fully abandoned to this world and the stuff that doesn't really matter. Thank you for reading. I challenge you to set logic aside and live with open hands. Live using kingdom logic.

Moving, School, and More

Hello everyone, it has been awhile since I have had the motivation to write a post, if you love reading my writing, sorry. If you think my posts are boring, your welcome.  If you are on the fence, hopefully this post will kick you off, haha, just kidding.  I hope everyone is doing well with getting started with the new school year. I am sure it is really crazy for some of you. If you ever need a vacation just come on out to China.  

This last week was my first week of the new semester as well.  Back into the books, studying hard.  I am really thankful for some scheduled things again.  I think I was going a little crazy.  I also just moved into a new apartment with my good friend Yamid, he is a schoolmate of mine, and Ryan Clancy. Ryan was a friend of mine from Rapid City, he is a good friend of the family as well.  He flew in Wednesday morning, luckily all his luggage came in. I believe it is like a 5o% chance your luggage won't show up when you fly into Xi'an.  I say that because I lost my luggage when I flew in.  Matt's mom just flew in to Xi'an, she also lost her luggage for the second time.  They lost it when she flew in two years ago, that would be so frustrating to me. Hopefully she gets it quickly.

 Me and Ryan have been making daily run's to the imports store or ren ren le, it is a Chinese super market, it means, people people happy.  Doesn't that make you want to shop there, oh yeah.  I will give you one funny story about shopping in China.  So recently, thanks to me, my brother-in-law Matt Peterson bought a electric moped. They are like the SUV's or trucks of China, no joke.  I am guessing, by the way the Chinese use them, there load capacity is roughly around two tons.  Ryan and I had to go to the super market and look for some household stuff.  We knew we both needed a fan, and we knew they would be a little big. But we took matt's dian dong che, that is Chinese for electric bike, anyways.  So Ryan and I are cruising down a little side road, that has about a thousand Chinese walking, riding bikes, driving cars, and walking dogs.  Basically a recipe for disaster. Whenever Ryan would get nervous that we were going to crash he would move a little bit, and that mixed with my inexperienced driving skills would almost result in a dead dog or an injured pedestrian, YIKES!  Anyways, we made it to the market alive. We bought our fans successfully. Now we just had to figure out how to put them on the bike with two full grown men.  I am sure the Chinese were thinking we were incompetent fools. They could get three people and grip of other stuff on these bikes. Here were we, trying to think hard, all we had was one rubber bike tube, and two incompetent foreigners, no offense Ryan.  So in the end we put both fans on one side and strapped them down with the tube. Ryan had to sit side saddle, which is the way all the girls sit when they ride these bikes, haha, sorry Ryan that was the last Joke.  We made it back to our place, with a million funny looks and a couple damaged vehicle side mirrors, just kidding. It was a fun adventure for us, I am sure Ryan will remember it for years to come.

School started this last monday for me and Yamid, my Colombian roommate.  I was really excited to get started again.  Like the terrible student I am I didn't study much in the Summer, so my Chinese is a bit rusty.  The first day our new teacher tested our Chinese to see where we were. This teacher has taught a ton of famous foreigners who I know.  Just to mention a few Matt and Jeremy Peterson, and Chris Failla.  All of whom I am really close friends with.  So I am really excited to have this teacher, because she is very good at what she does.  We have class for three hours a day, and we talk in Chinese for the whole three hours when she is teaching. Impressed? well you should be, haha.  So I have been really busy lately, but it has been really good.  I will do my best to put some pictures up next post.  Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Until next time.