More South Asia Trip

So, I have been super busy this summer! Since we got back from South Asia we have enjoyed attending a friend's sweet wedding, going to the beach with my family, helping my parents pack to move, and now we're visiting Lud's brother in Texas. Plus I'm taking a class in July! Whew! Anyway, so that's why I haven't updated, but I really want to share our story so I'm going to keep posting my journal.

Here's Day 4:

On Sunday we slept in late again. We had our bible study and since we had no plans with anyone we went to eat lunch at the restaurant where Lud kind of knows the owner. She remembers Lud from past trips and helps him when he is ordering. It was raining so we came back to the apartments and rested/watched a movie the rest of the afternoon.

At dinnertime, Nemo and Jerbon came to help us find some rice noodles. We had a very interesting conversation and felt our father’s presence there. Nemo and Jerbon had friends from Kunming still in town so they went back to hang out with them. I thought it was very sweet they interrupted their evening to help us. I told Lud that they probably thought we would starve without them! We played another game of cards and went to bed.

AND

Day 5:

Monday was our first day of class, so we woke up early and hiked over the hill to our classroom. Natalie arrived as our teacher and we immediately began sounding out letters. There are some letters in the Chinese language that sound the same to us! And they especially do not sound like the letters we have! She also taught us the four tones they use in Chinese to make words sound different. It is so hard to hear the differences! We finished the lesson in our book fairly quickly during the 3 hours and after the book lesson, Natalie offered to teach us words we wanted to know. She taught us many food words and how to ask for them.

After class, we piled in her car to go to the cafeteria. She helped communicate with the cafeteria ladies that we needed meal cards. However, we just got one meal card for all of us and found that to be very hard when picking out our meals because we all needed to use it at the same time.

We ran into Vivian and Oscar who were both headed back to their dorms, so we sat by ourselves and tried to make eye contact with some other students to see if they would talk to us. Nobody came up to us, but we did get some girls to help us communicate with the cafeteria ladies that we wanted four more cards. It was not easy at first, because she was like “I already gave y’all a card!”, but after a few minutes she understood.

We went back to our room and had our bible study. We really prayed that God would use this Chinese class to help us communicate. Exhausted from our class, we took a little nap and then Nemo and Jerbon joined us to throw around a Frisbee. Even though they don’t really have Frisbees here, both of them were really good throwers! Because the sun was out, we got hot pretty quick, and Jerbon decided we should go finish our Phase 10 game. There are tables and benches in the shade all over campus, so we played the rest of our game outside in the shade. It felt wonderful out there! Although I got better this time, I still did not make it to Phase 10. Kayla won! We had a great time, and then Nemo and Jerbon had to leave to go out to eat with their friends.

Luckily, we had made plans with Vivian and Christina for dinner. They also brought along a sweet girl named Lilia. They had appointments later so we ate near the school. We actually ate a restaurant we had not eaten at before, and it was so good! We had some barbequed mint beef, awesome spring rolls, spicy potatoes, sour pork, and boiled potatoes and corn. We made plans to go to a lake on Saturday with them.

Oh….Did I mention we had been without electricity this whole day? Well, when we got back every other building’s electricity was turned back on except for ours. So, we went to another department’s end of the year performance for a little while. It was funny because the auditorium was super crowded, and the program attendee made some girls get out of their seats on the second row for us! We were so embarrassed. The performance was pretty good with a skit/dance from High School Musical, a short ancient Greek play that we had no idea what was going on, and some Chinese pop songs with interesting choreography. We left before it was over, hoping that our electricity would be back on. Everyone else’s electricity in the building but ours was back on, so we went to inquire our neighbors about it. Kayla and I bothered a poor boy who looked like he was ready for bed, and he told us we needed to pay our bill! We tried to tell him that we were just visiting. Luckily, he kind of understood and got some other students to call our teacher. She said that it was too late for that night, so we might just want to stay with someone. Ha! We just decided to sit on the porch until we were tired and then went to bed. Thank God (really!) that the electricity was turned on later on in the night so we could take showers and dry our hair the next day.