Forging Destiny

Being a Grown up

2011-05-17T23:42:00.001-07:00

So something happened last week for the first time in my life that really startled me.

I felt like a grown up.

I hesitate to admit this, but I've kind of felt like a little kid pretending to be a grownup for a long time. I paid my bills and I went to work and I bought a few pieces of furniture, but I felt like it was a big trick. I walked and talked like a grownup but I was conning most people and they didn't realize i was just a punk kid.

I attribute feeling like a kid to a lot of reasons, but I want to talk more about why that changed. Now, I don't mean to minimize my life so far. I've seen a lot of things and I've had a lot of pretty unique experiences. However, I think for the first time in my life I am totally responsible for who I am and what I become, and I'm fully responsible for the maintenance of my own life. I've realized that in college or even in other places, if I didn't do something, it would often still get taken care of. Like the utility bill for instance. In college, if I didn't pay it, someone else in my apartment would and they would come collect money from me later. This is a good example of a lot of things in my life. I was never a terribly irresponsible person, but I've entered this new phase in my life where if I don't do something, it doesn't get done.

I've been telling people lately that my job has been kind of stressful and that I've had to work some extra hours. A lot of them have an interesting response. They say something to the effect of, "Oh don't worry, you're a great guy, I'm sure you'll be fine." It's interesting because I've realized that my job has nothing to do with how great a guy I am. My job involves a certain amount of work every week that needs to get done and needs to get done well. If I can't do it, I probably won't be able to keep my job. I can actually be a great guy and still be terrible at my job.
It's been a really stunning realization. There are a lot of places where we say do your best and things will work out, but suddenly I'm in a situation where my best has nothing to do with it. I either complete what I need to, or I don't, and if I can't do my job, they shouldn't keep me when there's other people who can.

Something has dawned on me and it's this attitude of: This is what the situation requires, so this is what I'll do. Best has nothing to do with it. It's like a young mother who wakes up in the morning to take care of her kids after staying up all night with a crying child. She doesn't think to herself, I did my best, the kids can take care of themselves for the next few days, I'm going to Cancun.

My dad worked a fair amount of hours for a large part of my life and I attribute a lot of it to three things.

1) He wanted a good future for our family
2) He had a good name to uphold
3) He did whatever was necessary to do his job well

Now I'm not trying to knock anyone who feels like they're doing their best and life isn't working out for them. Few things annoy me like someone who yells try harder when I'm giving it all I've got. I also don't want to make it sound like you shouldn't do your best. I believe that things work out for people who try to live their values and principles. But, I've found that I'm capable of a lot more than I ever gave myself credit for, especially in situations that demand a lot when I'm willing to do what it takes. My dad did it. He still does, and I've watched countless other people do it in my life, but I didn't really understand. Even now it's only really just dawning on me.

For the last couple weeks I've thrown work-life balance out. I think work-life balance is a good thing to aim for, but it's more important for me to be on top of my job. I need to leave work knowing that I'm doing at least good enough that I'll keep my job. I want my company to be glad I work for them than for me to leave because the clock struck five pm, or because I didn't put in the necessary time to become at least a decent employee. Once I'm actually good at what I do and I can do my work in the time it's supposed to take me, then I'll try to do all my work for the week in fourty hours, but until then I'll do what the situation requires.

Overall this feeling of 'Here's life. If this is what you want, this is what it takes.' Has really hit me. I'm realizing that if I want to be good at the Chinese, or the guitar, or be ready when an opportunity comes, it's all me. If I'm not ready when opportunity knocks at this point, it will be entirely my fault. The charted monorail that was the public education system is gone. I'm no longer driving one of those little cars at disneyland with a bar between the wheels keeping me on the track. I can go anywhere, but there is a price to pay.

I can hear the call of adulthood. I always thought it would be the sound of a bell tower ticking away at life, but I'm surprised because it sounds a lot more like the ocean with constant waves of opportunity.

Birthdays again

2011-01-18T23:45:00.000-08:00

I reckon something about birthdays makes it easier to blog. Been a while I know. I still have about 10 posts that I need to write about the stuff I did in China before I came home. But, that is not what today is about. Today is about me. It's my birthday, for another 26 minutes at least. Ok, so this day is also about David Terrazas, he has the same birthday, but still, it felt like it was about me, and you know what? It was great. I didn't do anything too crazy. As a matter of fact, I didn't really do that much at all. I went to work, got sushi for lunch, went to the temple, and then went home. But it was great. Here's why.

I tried something new this year. A social experiment if you will. Due to not enjoying being the center of attention for extended periods of time I've never been one to broadcast my birthday. Actually in China last year, I didn't really tell anyone. A teacher at my school found out a week later and was pretty mad, but I feel a little embarrassed when people spend too much time on me. Wierd I know. Anyways, this year I thought, what the heck, let's shake it up and I started just telling people. I told some people today, and some other people last week. Not everyone, but still a decent amount of people (probably 5 or 10, it spreads from there). Turns out a bunch of people wished me happy birthday today, (Probably half would have anyways, old/good friends) and I ended up with a few gifts on my door step tonight. Not only that, there's a party in my honor on Saturday night that I'm not responsible for. This is especially surprising considering how terrible I am at remembering other people's birthdays.

I doubt this will happen every year, but I'm surprised at how a lot of people are excited for reasons to be nice. Days where I realize I may not have given mankind enough credit are great days. Anyways, not only that, but I didn't have to be the center of attention for an extended period of time today. Don't get me wrong, I like attention, but a lot more one on one than in groups. Anyways, I'm now not only more excited about my birthday, but more excited about making a big deal out of other people's birthdays too.

That's enough time in my brain for you guys today. More blogs soon.

Oh ya, I'm 27, and I'm actually excited about it. 3 cubed = great year.

Ideas For Teaching

2010-06-18T05:09:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of this semester I had the idea to ask my classes what they wanted to learn. I don't give grades, and I don't really have curriculum, so I can teach pretty much whatever I want. So I passed around a paper and asked my students for ideas in the hopes that it might get a better response teaching lessons that they requested then ones they didn't. Here are some of the ideas they requested. Keep in mind these are transcribed directly from where they were written. Enjoy.

1. I want to learn about American Girls.
2. Your's secret girlfriend.
3. I like movie, movie.
4. Let us study English in play sports like basketball and others.
5. We need something more about English Songs Starcraft and Warcraft.
6. Computer games.
7. Who you lovest in our class?
8. How to make head bigger. (I don't understand this one. This might be how to get smart or something)
9. If American Girls beautiful?
10. I want to know some skills, for example, How do you make girlfriends?
11. I want to watch English films.
12. I miss you. (???)
13. Eat food, and sleep, and play computer games.
14. I want to know my boyfriend what he think? (ha ha)
15. I want to know about my girlfriend, what time can I marry him? (they get he and she mixed up a lot)
16. I want to sleeping.
17. I need much snacks in every class.
18. I need to study China Konfu.
19. I want all the comic, <<Naruto>> is the best! (She actually wrote those symbols)
20. Surfer the internet.
21. eat glass
22. play gun
23. teach songs
24. miss a girl...
25. Something about lady gaga
26. How to play human in warcraft II
27. Black people in America. (They don't see any foreigners here. They can probably count the amount of white or black people they've seen in person on both hands)
28. Everything (This one is kind of difficult)
29. Can you show us some photos and bring your guitar?
30. Lady Gaga
31. I want to know whether America has race discrimination
32. songs (x10 on one piece of paper)

I do love my students. I didn't use all these ideas, but it's amazing how well some of the ideas I did use worked.

Bragging rights-

2010-06-10T06:23:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say that I went to Taiwan today and it was ridiculously awesome. I was a little scared, just because I've never been to Taiwan and Taiwan-Chinese relations aren't fantastic right now, but it was amazing. Everything totally worked out well even with my terrible Chinese and I got another stamp in my passport, which may seem like it's not a good reason, but it led to a great adventure. I'll write more later.

Normal

2010-06-09T01:35:00.001-07:00

For some time I've wanted to write this blog post.

When I was on my mission for the lds church in Australia, I came across a lot of things I had never seen before. Ridiculously large spiders, really large or colorful birds, wallabies, Koalas. It was the same with people. I met people from all over the world that I had never had any contact with before. It was really an enlightening experience in a lot of different ways. I remember specifically walking with my missionary companion one day and I saw an ibis bird for the first time. It looked a lot like the bird in the attached picture except it didn't have any color on the back of his head and the body was whiter than this one. Also the beak curved more sharply. Anyways, I saw this bird and it just blew me away.

I thought to myself, 'Wow, that bird is totally crazy looking."

I watched for a few minutes and was disappointed to see him doing the same things any other bird would do. I then said to my missionary companion, "Elder -- look at that bird. It's totally crazy and it has no idea that it's totally crazy. It's just walking around like it's a normal bird!"

At which point he said, "I've always wanted to grab one of those birds by the beak and shake it around." (Which he never actually did, so don't think he was a bad person...)

It was boring and fascinating all at the same time. After that point on my mission I looked at all the crazy animals in a different way. Ya, they were crazy, but for Australia, they were totally normal.

Fast Forward six years.

Sam is no longer in Australia (I'm Sam), he's finished his masters degree and moved to the Hunan Province in China. He walks down the street and people shout "HELLO" to him in broken English. Wherever he goes out he can hear people talking about him in Chinese and lots of people shamelessly stare at him. When he travels outside of his town people ask him if they can take pictures with him, and I mean, like several pictures within a single day for days in a row anytime he's on vacation. In random cities he visits people ask him to help judge competitions, and people try to get him to hold their children.

After about 4 months of living in China it dawned on me. I was the ibis. Those same words that had sounded in my head at seeing such an exotic bird now echoed in the minds of all the Chinese people I came in contact with. I could almost hear it. 'Look at that foreigner. He's walking around just like a normal person. It's like he doesn't even know he's totally crazy different!!!!'

All I have to do is say 'Ni Hao' to people and some of them bust up laughing. I'm not sure whether this realization was a blessing or a curse. I love China. I have to say this first. This place has become dear to me. I plan on coming back and I hope to become much more proficient in the language. A lot of people have done really nice things for me here and there are days where I feel like I have a family in this country... But, I'm am going to be SOOO HAPPY to go back to America and not have people shamelessly staring at me or talking about me where ever I go. Sometimes it's like being famous for something you did that was REALLY really bad.

So, this brings us to Lessons Learned. (I always like stories with morals)
1. Be nice to the ibis. He really is just a normal bird, or at least he thinks so. There's no good reason to give him a hard time about it.

2. Any attention is not necessarily good attention. There are some people who dream about being famous. I think they're crazy. I've signed enough books and been in enough pictures at this point to know. I would rather spend 15 minutes with someone who cares about me and understands me than 10 or even 1000 days with people flashing their cameras and staring at me slack jawed. Those 15 minutes would do more for me than any other type of attention would. I think the distinction between types of attention is a problem with a lot of people in America, especially younger women and teenage girls. Some of them want attention so bad that they're willing to settle for the wrong kind of attention. I personally think it's better not to do this.

3. Be nice to people who may bet the Ibis. This isn't a huge problem in America. If we see someone who is different, we usually wait till afterward to talk about it, or we at least pretend like we're not talking about it. However, the last thing we want to do is alienate people. Life is hard enough as it is without feeling like an outcast.

4. This story hits at the core of a problem I've seen everywhere. It's really easy to make assumptions about people based on how we were raised or our culture. One time I was on a sleeper train and I was sitting on the top bunk with my feet out. I heard someone say something in Chinese and by the time I knew something was wrong, some one was walking by and giving me the bird. It turns out that showing Chinese people the bottom of your feet is really disrespectful. I had no idea, but the guy thought I was intentionally trying to offend him. It wasn't until I chased him down afterwards that he realized I didn't know squat about his culture and he explained it to me. At that point he was no longer offended because he knew it wasn't intentional at all. It's just so easy to judge people based off of our own standards that don't account for cultural differences.
Even within American culture we do this, but it's more like, "Well in my family we communicate like this, and this is the right way." One of the things I've been working on is not reacting instantly when someone does something offensive, because I often find out, especially in China, that they didn't mean anything by it at all. And for their culture, it's no big deal. I'm not saying it's ok to treat people poorly, I am saying that we have a much greater ability to give someone the benefit of the doubt than we realize. I also think it's ok to ask why people do or did things. Not accusatory, but for the sake of understanding. If they did it to be rude, you'll know pretty quickly, but if there is a cultural reason behind it, I think there is a lot to be learned, and understanding will come. Ultimately I think we need to make sure we communicate our expectations clearly and that we need to focus more on what people mean and intend then what they actually do. It's been said often that 'Anyone who takes offense when none is intended is a fool.' To which I've qualified a lot in my life.

5. This point is totally unrelated. I just wanted to rejoice in the fact that I can switch from 1st to 3rd to 1st person in a single blog entry and violate all other sorts of literary rules at will since it's my blog.

Li Mei Hua

2010-05-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

So, when I first came to China, my diet was pretty pathetic. I was too new to this place to know what to buy. For the first few days it was instant noodles and crackers. the crackers stuck, cause I didn't know what else to do for munchies. Other than that we ate outside. Within a few weeks we found a place that makes hand pulled noodles and fried dumplings. We had this amazing food place literally 20 steps from the bottom of our stairs, but about 2 weeks into the semester they moved and someone else came in who made yuck food. So I was a little discouraged, until I found Li Mei Hua.

Li Mei Hua makes the best fried rice I have ever heard of. First off, we have to realize, that I can't read Chinese and I did not know what to eat in this country when I first got here. So any type of food I found that was safe, tasted good, and was easy to find again, was an instant success. Right outside the back gate of our school is this alley that has all these ghetto food places. It's actually really cool, partially because they're super poor and they're really nice. Anyways, I tried to eat at a lot of these places and it was good, but it was so different that I felt like lunch every day was a gamble. Until I found Li Mei Hua. When most people make fried rice in Hunan they do two things. Usually it's spicy, which is REALLY good and usually they put in these pickled beans, which I think taste like unhappiness. So one day, (there's about 6 or 7 food places) I went to this random place in the alley with this random lady and I asked for fried rice. She cooked it and gave it to me, and I partook.

Spicy - Check
No ugly pickled beans - Check
Good price - Check (4 yuan, which translates to about 60 cents)
Vegetables - Check (This is important cause we didn't have a working kitchen and you can't eat veggies raw here or you get parasites so they have to be cooked in your food)

Delicious - Double Check

It was love. Not with Li Mei Hua, she's married and I can't understand her Chinese anyways, well I can now, but I couldn't then. It was the fried rice! I think almost every day for the next 2-3 months I had fried rice for lunch (Don't worry mom, fried rice here is way healthier than in America). Every time she saw me she would start laughing and shout out "Ji dan chou fan" (Fried Rice), because she knew that's what I was going to order. Anyways, it's weird how you can be friends with people even though you can't speak the same language. I actually think she was usually pretty happy to see me despite the huge communication barriers. After a month or two, once I figured out how to ask questions in Chinese, she would teach me the names of all the foods she cooked with. Which was super cool, because, most of the words I know for food came from her. Anyways, the first couple months of this semester I didn't go out there as much cause I started eating fruit in the mornings and oatmeal for lunch. Plus lunchtime was a good time to study, so if I ate alone i usually got more done. Anyways, I went out there last week for the first time in a little while and I think it totally made her day. It made mine too. It's weird how we're friends due to all the times I ate there. Especially because my Chinese wasn't good enough that I could understand her and have conversations until recently. (Which by the way, having a conversation in Chinese doesn't mean I'm good at it. Just want to point that out.)

Anyways, she's my hero. I'm not really attracted to Chinese girls in general, but I always thought if she was about 30 years younger, not married, and a member, those things with her food would be enough for me to consider a marriage proposal.

So I've attached some pictures of her here and where she cooks and lives. It's basically a two room place. One room opens to the street where people can sit and she cooks. and the other is her bedroom which also has a table for eating. And that's it. That's her house. For a woman with no money, she seems really happy. Basically, I think she's the bomb and she's one of the things I'll miss the most about China.

The first picture is her bedroom pretty small. The second and third pictures are her cooking in her front room for students at lunch. The last picture is the view of the Alley just outside her place.

It kind of makes me grateful for how much stuff we have in America. Like places to live that aren't totally open to the elements. Air conditioning and heat. A clean work place. A computer. A car. The list goes on....

Things I miss about America

2010-05-25T09:05:00.001-07:00

These are in no particular order. So don't be offended family, you would be at the top of the list.

1. People who come to my door and knock less than thirty times
2. Eating Raw Vegetables
3. Eating Raw Fruit
4. Being able to see the sun more than once every 2-3 weeks due to pollution or rain
5. People who don't stare at me
6. Being able to walk up to someone and know they'll understand me (English)
7. My family
8. Girls I'm attracted to that speak English
9. Driving
10. Having a dog that I know no one will eat
11. Food products that are filled with things that match the description on the container
12. Peanut Butter
13. Steak
14. Food in the grocery store that expired less then 3-6 months ago
15. My sister's wedding (I'm still really sorry about that Ami...)
16. Smash Brothers
17. Going to church in a Church Building
18. Having a priesthood leader that lived less than 1500 miles away
19. Signs on the street that I can read
20. Public trash cans people actually use
21. Bath tubs (oh how I miss a good bath)
22. De-oderant
23. Guaranteed seats when I travel (although 2-12 hour standing tickets are an adventure...)
24. Set Prices
25. Living in or next to the same time zone as most of my friends and family
26. Juice that's actually 100%
27. Meeting someone and not having every person ask me
A. What country am I from?
B. How much do I make?
C. Do I have a Chinese girl friend?
D. Why not?
28. Kitchens that work (China has kitchens that work, mine just doesn't happen to be one of them)
29. Toilets outside of my house
30. Toilets that I can put the toilet paper in (disgusting I know, but Chinese toilets clog if you put the toilet paper inside)
31. Hospitals that don't scare me (I'm sure there are some of these out of Hunan, but I picked a poorer province to live in)
32. Swimming
33. Home teachers that live less than 2 hours away
34. Knowing I won't get in trouble with the government if I talk about the gospel
35. Watching movies without Chinese subtitles
36. Not having to say Ting Bu Dong every 5 minutes (Chinese for "I don't understand," my chinese is way better and this is still one of my most common phrases)
37. Not sounding like an idiot to native English speakers due to speaking at half or a quarter speed too often and not being able to switch out
38. People who don't try to take my picture while I'm not looking
39. My old room mates
40. Watching General Conference live
41. Cities where people don't burn their trash every day
42. Not being expected to always have my own toilet paper when I use the bathroom any where other then my house
43. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away under the assumption i don't know what they're saying
44. People who don't talk about me less than 4 feet away
45. People who don't say I'm fat
46. Dryers
47. English I can understand (on T-shirts, notebooks, etc)
48. Waffles and Chocolate pancakes
49. Group video games
50. Ferris Wheels that let you go more than one time before they charge you again

Now, I want you to know a list of things I'll miss in China is coming out soon. Just cause I miss a lot of things about America doesn't mean I haven't been extremely happy here. More to come!!!!

(If you vote on your favorite ones I'll try to do a blog post on it, it may not be long, but it'll come)

Hong Kong 2: New Teachers

2010-05-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

Around January, my good friend Jacob Harlan asked me a favor. He's the guy that runs China Horizons. China Horizons is the program that got me here. Anyways, Jacob asked me to help him help the new teachers sight see in Hong Kong and make their way to their respective schools. So we hung out in Hong Kong for a few days. We went to the temple a lot which was awesome, because that's the first time I had gone to the temple since I had come to China. (LDS Temple, not bhuddist, although I saw a lot of those, and they were really cool)

We also saw a lot of other cool stuff. We went to this place called Ngong Ping village on Lantau Island (other side of the island from the Campbells) where they have this huge bhudda statue and a cool bhuddist temple. Overall, really awesome place. I went twice. Once before the teachers came and once with the new teachers. The first time was awesome, becuase I had all the time in the world. That day I hiked to the peak of the island by myself in this killer awesome fog and I think I can understand why historically amazing religious things happen on the tops of mountains. It was an amazing experience. About half a mile from the top there was a white out. It was like I was hiking through a really windy cloud. My hair was wet even though it was warm outside. (I think that's what happens when you walk through clouds.) The second time the whole place was under fog (all my pictures are from the second time), and it was just as much as an adventure even though I had already seen it. On top of the awesome Bhuddist temple and the Cool Giant Bhudda Statue (Yes, that's a proper noun, maybe not accurate, but deal with it), they had this really awesome place called The Path of Wisdom. It's a figure eight path you walk, probably only about 80 meters total and as you walk the path they have these giant trees cut in half along the path with writing on them. The writing is the Heart Sutra, which apparently is used by Taoists, Bhuddists, and Confucianists alike. I may not believe what it says, but it's still pretty cool. And it was fun to walk along the path and not read it (I can't read Chinese yet....). I did read it after on a plaque for Americans who can't read Chinese.

Other than that I went to church in a real church building for the first time in a few months. Man is that something I've taken for granted in my life. I'll write a post about how we meet for church in China soon too...

The new teachers were not what I thought they would be. I don't even know what I expected, it's just hard to imagine up a new personality. When I finally met them it was fun to watch all the new social dynamics come together and especially fun to watch people bond because they had no one else. I love all the new teachers. They're fun, they adventurous (they came to China, that would be enough for me to know they were adventurous), and they know how to have a good time.

We also went ice skating, but somehow I didn't document that. Sorry. It was also awesome.

After Hong Kong we went to Shenzhen for a couple days to train the new teachers. We really didn't do anything, we just sat through good trainings on how to teach, but I do have some pictures of us on the town at night playing pool. Sorry you only get to see one.

And Erica, thanks for the note. I will keep writing!

Hong Kong 1 more pics

2010-05-20T07:41:00.001-07:00

Enjoy!

Hong Kong Part 1: The Campbells

2010-05-20T07:39:00.001-07:00

You guys, as many of you know I'm WAY BEHIND in my blog. This entry is about February, and it's uhhh, May. Yep, It's May. So this is my time to recommit. I'm going to try to bust out a lot of entries in the next month. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping that if I don't people will start emailing me about being lazy. Also, I love your comments. I can't really respond because of the filtering system here, but I will in a couple months when I return to the states.

So! After Xia'men the time came for my final destination in my wondrous winter holiday backpacking extravaganza: Hong Kong. This is another one of those places that shows up in the movies sometimes and I just can't even comprehend how different it must be. Well, it was was pretty different, but ridiculously awesome. When I got to Hong Kong I headed for Lantau island where my good friend Sarah Campbell lives. I arrived at her apartment at 9pm and had one of those late night conversations with her and her husband that just make you glad you're alive. Little did I know I would have those multiple times a day for the next week. It's amazing how you run into people you know you were supposed to be friends with. Well the week was pretty fun. Sarah and her husband Eric can't have kids, so they adopted. As of now they have two awesome kids who speak fluent Cantonese and English. They were kind enough to let me sleep on their floor for a week before I helped the new teachers in my program find their way around Hong Kong. Sara showed me around for a week and helped me see some of the sights. She took me to the beach with her kids and overall it was awesome.

My students had told me that Hong Kong was too crowded. I expected to go there and find a huge city with out space. Which was sort of true. I found a big city, with a lot people, but I also found some of the coolest abandoned trails and beaches. It wasn't what I expected at all. It was clean, beautiful, huge, but it still had everything that I would want in a place to live. I probably won't live there, but I have tossed around the idea....

The pictures are of Sarah, her husband Eric, and their kids Cooper and Anderson. Totally awesome family.

Xia'men

2010-04-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

So, as my time in Chawaii came to an end I started to wonder what the heck I should do next. I had no where to go and everyone I wanted to travel with during the break had dropped out. Matt and Kristal Carter had been awesome, but they were going to go to Beijing after Hainan (Chawaii) and I sure as heck didn't want to go to frozen over Beijing. So I opened my lonely planet the night before my train left Sanya and found Xia'men. I thought to myself, 'Self, that looks nice. You should go to Xia'men' So I told Matt and Kristal who told me Xia'men was a random place to go, but it just seemed like a good idea. It wasn't too far from Hong Kong, which is where I was ending my winter holiday and I knew I had enough Chinese down by this point to get there and to Hong Kong on my own. It still seemed a little daunting, but I figured things would work out.

The next night we went to the train station destined for Guangzhou where I knew I would split paths with the Carters. When we got there we met two foreigners. One was a Chinese guy with an Australian accent, and the other was this nice little white girl with a French accent. We struck up a conversation. They were really nice. The Chinese guy was born in china and raised here until he was about 12, then he moved to Australia. Then he moved to Canada and met this nice girl from Quebec and they were traveling together. Really cool people, turns out he was teaching her English/Chinese and she was teaching him French. When he first asked her out she couldn't speak English and he couldn't speak French. Kind of cool. Anyways, turns out, you guessed it, they're going from Sanya to Xia'men. They totally helped me get a sleeper bus, which I took the night we got to Guangzhou, and then when we arrived in Xia'men his Aunt dropped me off at my hostel. Talk about awesome. I spent a week in Xia'men visiting with some members of my branch and seeing the sights.

A few days into my time in Xia'men I decided that I should buy my ticket to Hong Kong, I was hoping for another sleeper bus, but all I could find was a day bus. It left at 8:30 in the morning and I had to be at the small office where I got my bus ticket at 7:40am for the bus to pick me up. This isn't easy since I'm kind of a night owl. I only get up early when I have to, but it's not a serious issue. The night before I set my phone to go off at 6:30am so I could take a shower and take my time. I'm still not sure what happened, but I do know that my alarm either didn't go off, or I slept through it. Having gone to sleep at 1:30pm the night before this could be potentially scary, but luckily I woke up at 7. I realized that my alarm hadn't gone off and that by all accounts I still should be asleep with how tired i was the night before. Pretty awesome. I caught my bus, and all was well.

Things I learned on my trip to Xia'men.

1. Traveling alone is bitter sweet. I've never had SO MUCH FREEDOM! It was awesome. I went where I wanted, when I wanted, with who I wanted. It's really satisfying for me to follow where the wind blows. I loved it, but it came at a price. I understand more and more what the Lord means when he says men and women aren't meant to be alone. I think that's something a lot of people with significant other's take for granted. As for me I'm sure a lot of the things I saw would have been significantly better had I had someone to share it with. So it goes. I'm still happy and I'm sure the Lord will remedy that in his tme.

2. The Lord is TOTALLY still looking out for me. I see it all the time, in big and little things, but I see it most clearly here in China because I'm so clearly on my own. It's funny, because the Lord's been there the whole time even though I haven't always recognized it.

3. I can speak good enough chinese to do things on my own. Who'd a thought. Don't get me wrong, my chinese is still bad, but it's improved a lot considering I knew zip when I got here.

Pictures / Things I found in Xia'men

1. A really cool Bhuddist temple. It's called the Nanputou temple. It's huge, there are supposed to be monks everywhere, but it's hard to see them because they're living quarters aren't open to the public, and for good reason, I would go crazy if my apartment was open to the public. Oh wait, It is. I'm so glad I live in a school. (Slight Sarcasm)

2. Some new friends. This is Yelena and her brother _____ from Switzerland. Ya, I couldn't even pronounce his name, let alone remember it, but they were both really nice. They hung out with me for a day or two. The second picture is Morein from Holland. He came with me to see Avatar in 3D. You don't even notice the Chinese subtitles after a few minutes. I'm surprised at how nice strangers are here. Most Chinese people and Foreign travelers I run into are really nice people.

3. The Road less traveled by. You know that famous poem where someone decides to take the road less traveled by? I took it, and it was awesome.

4. Nemo. He was here the whole time. Poor guy is trapped in a really low budget public aquarium, but he seems like he's gotten used to it.

Little More Wuzhishan

2010-03-15T09:17:00.001-07:00

The first two are Wuzhishan. The third is Matt and Kristal Carter at a house in Shuiman where we stopped for a drink. They tried to give us tea, but we settled for boiled water.
ps Matt and Kristal are basically some of the best traveling companions around. They take great pictures, they never complain, and they're always willing to take the road less traveled by.

Fwd: Chawaii Round 2 - Wuzhishan

2010-03-15T07:22:00.001-07:00

I know I haven't written for a while, and that I've written other entries since I left of with my winter holiday, but I'm still going to finish writing blog entries for all the places I went that haven't been written yet.

So after a few days in Sanya, we headed up into the mountains a few hours away to Wuzhishan (pronounced Woojurshean). This was really nice. Sanya was awesome, but it was REALLY touristy. It's that way for a reason, good fruit, beautiful beaches, but sometimes it's nice to go back to normal China. So we took off into the mountains to this small town of Wuzhishan. There were some Chinese tourists, but we were the only white people we saw once we left Sanya. Wuzhishan was also where I got the cheapest bed of the trip. Our three bed room was 120 yuan which is about 17$ US. We stayed there for a two nights and it was awesome.

Wuzhishan means five finger mountain. The city is up in the central highlands of Hainan and the mountain is within an hour of the city. Just like the name, the mountain has five points are meant to represent the five most powerful gods in local lore. My students also tell me that this is where Sun Wukong lives. Sun Wukong is the from monkey king in Chinese mythology, I didn't see him...but, it was still a really cool area. It felt like a pretty normal chinese city except there were a lot of excellent parks and hikes close by.

Upon arriving we decided to take a bus ride to the local city of Shuiman (pronounced shwaymahn). This is the way to get to the five fingered mountain hike and this bus ride is supposed to be one of the most beautiful bus rides in all of China, and it totally was. There were a lot of waterfalls just on the side of the road and miles of lush green rice paddies. There weren't that many people there, but the one's we met were really nice and tried to feed us. Once we got to Shuiman we hiked out to the national park where the five finger mountain was, but after getting to the entrance and being told by the gaurds that the base of the hike was still a ways away and that there were no taxis for a long while, we started to hike back (we'd only been hiking for an hour). Luckily on the way back, some random chinese family picked us up and took us all the way back to out hotel. Chinese hospitality is legendary sometimes.

The pictures are as follows

1. Picture of me and Matt talking to some Chinese tourists.

2-3. Pictures around Wuzhishan

4. This was on the road we hiked in Shuiman. It's a native who runs their own honey business. The yellow stuff on the ground is a sweet pollen type substance that you eat. It was pretty good.

Les Miserables

2010-03-03T10:58:00.001-08:00

Ok, I'm trying to find a way to convey how I feel right now without typing in all caps because I'm so excited. I just finished Les Miserables and it's easily (Setting aside the standard works) the best book I've ever read. Granted it's huge, but it had to be that way. To convey the ideas that he did about the world and about virtue, I just don't think anyone could have done it in a smaller book. Even the Bible and the Book of Mormon aren't really appreciated until time, reflection, and experience have been paid by the reader. I'm going to jump around a fair bit, but bear with me.

This is a spoiler, so if you hate knowing endings you can stop now. Victor Hugo creates this character who is literally beaten down over and over again through life and yet buds and blossoms into one of the clearest pictures of virtue I have ever seen. I saw the musical as a kid and again about a year and a half ago, but it's not the same. It's still great, but the power of the main character isn't explored as deeply due to time constraints. The Character of Jean Valjean wasn't just a great guy. He was consistently stretched through out the story. Given choices between doing what was right or doing what was selfish. Not only did these choices present themselves to him consistently, but they increased in difficulty with time. The fact that the story is fiction is no subtraction from it's power. I feel the same way about Job. I don't know if he was a real guy or not, I think he was. However, he reminds me that I awe at people who were dealt horribly their hand at life and still stood for what was right and true, people who underwent any pain necessary to stand at the end of the day validated by their conscience, free of rebuke from God, and deserving of every respect from man. Obviously the foremost of these being our Saviour. The other thing that basically thrills my soul is that I see this man as an archetype for our lives. He starts out as a common thief, despised by man and rejected from society. Basically a common sinner. Sound familiar? (You and me). Then at a pivotal moment, the Lord stepped in and showed him a better way, challenged him to live it and helped him see life more clearly for what it really is. This process that Jean Valjean goes through of consistent challenges interspersed with moments of happiness is a key characteristic of life. Being single I can't help but notice that single people have this idea that the end of trouble comes at finding that 'special person.' I think I remember feeling this same way (the end of trouble) about graduating high school and coming home from my mission. A sort of "everything is easy from this point on". Needless to say that idea is totally wrong. I don't think there is a point in life where suddenly it's smooth sailing till the end. Here are some examples that things don't get easier. I stayed with some friends in Hong kong who were devastated when they learned they couldn't have kids. I've stayed with other friends who both came from abusive homes and literally took 20 years to get to a healthy point in their marriage. I've seen people in retirement homes who no longer have purpose and are simply trying to not let their spirits whither away with their bodies. I've watched a grown man who I respected all my life cry before my father because he didn't have enough money to buy food for his family. I learn two big things from these experiences that stand out to me now and that I see clearly in this book.

1.No matter how far we've come in life, we are usually presented challenges that push us out of our comfort zone and challenge us to be more than we were before. Intense challenges. It seems to always be the case. It's not that we're doomed to always be going through greater sorrow, so much as that we are constantly presented with greater struggles that can uncover more of what we can become. I think this is the pathway to ultimate happiness. Jeffrey R. Holland once said that our experiencing greater sorrow creates a greater ability to experience and understand joy. It's part of life. It's the path that leads to us attaining the farthest reaches of our potential. These challenges aren't a curse, even though they usually feel that way, but they're the hacksaw cutting at our chains that hold us down to a lower plane. The fact that these trials often approach us even as we approach the dusk of our lives leads me to the next point.

2.This life is not the end. If these trials kept coming through our entire lives and we only met a cold dark grave at it's end, then our existence would be something to mourn about. But I can feel it. I know there is more after this life. I know that great joy is waiting for those who fight through hard trials. I don't understand why those trials are so severe sometimes, but I do know that all things will be mended and all wrongs will be set right at some point in the future. In this life there are days where the only reward is standing clean before your conscience. This is an amazing thing, but sadly not always paired with happiness in this life. The happy ending is not fully present until later. We catch glimpses of it, and we experience parts of it, but the full reward comes after this life. I'm sure there is a supreme happiness that awaits those who have spent their time loving others. I wish I could explain that joy, but I don't even fully understand it, and even if I did I don't think the power to explain it would be given to me.

I see these things in this story. It's kind of amazing. Victor Hugo walks us through the entire lifetime of Jean Valjean who faces problem, after problem, with happiness almost always followed by more struggles and more danger. These things plague Jean and follow him all the way to his death. It sounds tragic, but his death was painted as something beautiful. We often shrink a little at the idea of death, but I think that's mostly because we haven't died before. I think for people who have tried to live their lives in line with their conscience, it's an amazing and happy thing.
Anyways, Really good book. I think this counts as one of the 'best books' we're counseled to study from in Doctrine and Covenants 88.

Chawaii Round 1 - Sanya

2010-02-07T06:30:00.001-08:00

What is Chawaii you may ask? It's Hainan! The beautiful Southern Island province of China! I've so often told people it's like a Chinese version of Hawaii that we just started calling it Chawaii after a while. This is were I went after Guangzhou.

We hopped on an overnight sleeper train that took us straight there. What I didn't realize is that the train didn't take us all the way there. I had looked on google maps and saw that the train route went over the water so I assumed that they had built a bridge for the train. Wrong. During the night, I wake up to these huge "KACHUNK KACHUNK" noises.
It's like someone is unhooking the train cars. It's 2 or 3 in the morning, so all I can think is 'Keep it down man! I'm trying to sleep! Insensitive punks...'
The next morning I didn't really think about it, but when we got off the train, my friend Matt said,
"Did you hear them unhooking the train cars last night?"
"What? No way. Why would they do that?"
"I'm pretty sure they put the train cars on a ferry and hooked them back together on the other side."
"But that's crazy!"
"I'm pretty sure. I looked out the window and there were train cars NEXT to us. Like inches away."
"Whoa!..."

So I went on to google maps later and switched it to satellite images. Ya, there's no bridge. And I never got off the train until I was in Sanya. Talk about awesome. I was in a train ON A FERRY! (this was confirmed on the train ride back)
Now that I've exercised my bragging rights....

Sanya is a city in Hainan on the south east coast. It's a big tourist spot for Russians. Talk about weird. Everything was written in Chinese and Russian instead of Chinese and English. All I could think was, 'Where's Mark Caldwell when you need him...'

So, the pictures. Here's the Lowdown.
1st pic
Sanya is beautiful. Nice beaches. Good weather. It was awesome to walk around in Shorts after freezing my buns off at home in Lingling. The Fauna was AWESOME and beaches even more so. This picture is a building right outside the Hostel that was run down and hasn't been used for a while (That happens a lot in China) and had some really amazing plants and vines growing up it.

2nd pic
These ladies were EVERYWHERE. Just hoping you'll buy some fruit from them. Obviously they make enough money to subsist or they wouldn't be there. The wierd thing is that sometimes they would assume we were Russian tourists and try to use the small Russian they knew to get us to buy stuff. Ya, that's gonna work. Most of them were pretty well humored and really nice, but ya, lots of people selling things on the side of the street. It's pretty common everywhere in China except for the big cities.

3rd pic
So I have these jeans I love that tore on the knee a while ago, but It's hard to find good jeans here so I keep wearing them. Plus I hate shopping, and I don't have loads of money and these still work, even if they're a little run down. It's funny because I think most Chinese people think I am or am trying to be fashionable for wearing them. Almost like I bought them with the tears in them or added them there myself, but they're legitimately old. My favorite line from one of my students in Lingling goes like this.
"Oh! Mr. Sam! Your pants are very cool! They are so fashion!"
I don't know what I'll do when I go back to America and being white isn't enough to make me 'cool'. (I'm not being racist, that's actually how China works. Weird I know...)
Also, I've shaved my Goatee since then, but i like the look.

Pics 4 and 5.
Love the beach.

Guangzhou Bhuddist Temple

2010-02-03T05:18:00.001-08:00

Guangzhou Ancestry Hall

2010-02-03T05:11:00.001-08:00

Guangzhou

2010-02-03T05:03:00.001-08:00

As some of you know, I was recently released into the wild. My first semester of teaching ended around the 22nd of January and I've been on rampaging around Southern China ever since. Although this is definitely one of the more rugged vacations I've ever taken. I took a shower for the first time in about 3 days tonight and it was legitimately just because I haven't been able to. (Scoff if you want, but let it be known I love showers. At a scout camp I obtained the nick name "Mr. Clean." Not because of my ridiculously muscular body, but because I often took two or three showers a day. It just feels nice. Anyways...)

So, I got to Guangzhou on the 23rd of January with my friends, Matt and Kristal Carter, and spent about three days there. The pictures above will let you know that this place is awesome. Sorry mom, couldn't find a zoo, but don't worry, I'm pretty most Chinese zoo's are similar to what you remember. We did have church in our hostile, (online) and we basically wandered the city for a few days. Guangzhou kind of reminds me of Seattle. It was overcast, green, slightly humid, and beautiful. It was the kind of city you're happy to just wander around in for a few days. Which we did.

The first few pictures are of a huge city park we played in. It had a lake, with boats. We rented one and much joy followed. It had a lot of gardens, which were splendid. It had a tower with cannnons (cannons are cooler than towers, hence the picture of the cannon and not the tower), and it had places to exercise. In one of these we found this man, probably in his 60's, doing gymnastics, I wonder if he realizes he's not a teenager. At this point I want to talk about old people in China for a minute. They are amazing. They're happy, strong, spry and alert. I could be wrong, but from what I can guess, the grandparents stay in good shape because they usually have a strong hand in the raising of grandchildren. In America our kids see their grand parents occasionally, in China, I think some kids see their parents occasionally. I think this sense of purpose helps Chinese people stay stronger longer. That and some other things, which maybe I'll write a blog about later...

(The pictures described after this will be in one or two more posts)
Anyways, we also went to some awesome ancestral Hall that was just cool to walk around in. You'll notice two things. One there is a guy in a black leather vest in one or two pictures. His name is Simon, he just kind of tagged along with us for a day or two. He's from Switzerland and he's a really nice guy, and that's not just cause he gave us some Swiss chocolate. Two in one of the pictures we're in a nice garden and there is a really run down apartment in the background. This is kind of normal in China.

Lastly we randomly found a huge bhuddist temple and spent a minute talking to the Monks. That's Matt and Simon in the picture talking to them.

The verdict is Guangzhou rocks. I'll make another post just of a few more pictures of stuff we found.

Beards, Birthdays, and Consolations

2010-01-25T05:20:00.001-08:00

So, about 2 or 3 weeks ago, I wrote some sad sappy email about how I'm basically devoid of human contact and happiness for the month of January. This has turned out to be totally false. And I'll tell you why.

1. I grew a Beard and it was awesome.
I have never grown out a beard. Before my mission, I didn't have enough facial hair power points. I tried to grow one, but failed dismally. During my mission, I had to be clean cut and clean shaven, so even if I could have grown a beard, It wouldn't have mattered. It was the same at BYU. Then I came to China. Where not only was it ok, but the other teachers encouraged me to have a beard. So I tried it out. I basically didn't shave for the month of December and I loved it. I really don't know if it looked presentable, but it was really fun. It was mostly blond and red and it was surprisingly comfortable.

Don't worry Mom/girls in general. I doubt I'll ever let my beard just grow like this ever again. Since I took these pictures I've trimmed it up quite a bit, and I'll shave all of it off completely when I go to the temple in Hong Kong in a few weeks, but it made me really happy to try it out for a short time. Plus Luke Liu says it makes me look more manly and my students said I looked very "fashion". I love China.

2. I had a Birthday.
I've never needed big birthdays. All I need is to see a few friends and have some time to think and I'm happy. Which is what I had. The random picture of the guy with the card is Matt Carter. I spent the day before my birthday with him, his wife, and the Rygg family in Dong'an (a local city) and it was really fun. We didn't even do a whole lot, but they're good friends and it was a great day to spend a birthday.

3. I got some love in the mail.
My family sent me hot chocolate (and other things), which a couple weeks ago was exactly what I needed. During December and January, it was really cold in my Lingling (my city). Not just cold, I mean really cold.
Here are some ways you can know I'm not being a sissy-
   A. I got used to not being able to feel my feet.
   B. I couldn't sleep in my bed, cause the heater in my bedroom didn't work to well. (slept on the couch in the front room, I don't trust the floor in China)
   C. China doesn't have insulation. So if it's cold outside, it's cold inside. So instead of going from a warm apartment to a warm car, to a warm classroom like I did in college. Here I go from a cold apartment, to a cold class room. I honestly don't know how my students handle it.

This sounds like a horrible winter, and it was. But for me it was fine, because I had hot chocolate. =) Thanks mom.

4. I learned a lot of Chinese
I got a lot of studying done the last few weeks. Not nearly as much as I'd like to, but I'm still improving so I'm happy.

Now, I'm 26. I finished my last month of classes before the winter holidays, and it was great. Onward with Vacation. Hoorah.

Kiss Loneliness Goodbye

2010-01-18T22:44:00.001-08:00

Well, to be honest, I haven't kissed anything goodbye lately, or anything at all, but that's not the point! The point is, I wrote some long whiney email about how January was going to stink because the other foreign teachers left and because I'd be alone at my school. That was true for about 1 week. Which really wasn't that bad because my students visited me a lot and I learned loads of Chinese. After that week. The Rygg family moved in with me! Talk about killing loneliness. The Rygg's had some troubles with their school and all parties thought it best to change the year long contract into a one semester contract, which meant the Rygg's were heading back to America. The problem with this was they had 2 weeks down time from when the contract was changed, to when their plane flight left China. Answer? Move in with Sam! So I had Jon and Deborah Rygg, and their two children. This = 1 week of pure happiness. (With lots of children crying mixed in.)

After some stressful times at their last school, it was nice for them to just come chill for a week. And it was nice to me because I always came home to a house with people at the end of my day of teaching. Overall great arrangement. The Rygg's headed to Hong Kong on Sunday night, which is perfect, because today I started teaching my last week of classes. Now I'm just cleaning up and getting ready to go on my winter vacation. Rough life I know.

Anyways, I added some pictures of John and Deborah and their kids Alice (Blonde) and Lilian (Baby). We joked that Alice (2yrold) was just a continuation of my dating life in America because sometimes she would run to me and hug me she was so happy to see me, but more often she would tell me to go away. Like literally, those are some of the few words she can pronounce correctly. Lilian(6 mo.) is probably the best baby in the world, she only cries when things are wrong, and she always wanted to hang out with me. John and Deborah have turned into really good friends. I think it's amazing. No matter how good your friends are, it seems like the Lord always has one or two more in store just around the corner.

Last Thing, I got a new Camera, and I've been playing with the settings. Hence the pictures with only one color in them. I'm pretty happy with the camera to say the least. The one with just Deborah Lilian, I call, "Mother Contemplating Remaining Nap Time"

So basically, I take the Lonely blogpost back, and will replace it with one another blog post tomorrow about how much I loved and still love this month in China.

Shel Silverstien

2010-01-10T01:06:00.001-08:00

Apparently he also wrote the words to the famous Johnny Cash song, 'A Boy Named Sue.'
I just think he had some awesome ideas.

Also, I'll have a good post on Chinese culture coming up soon. I promise.
--
Samuel Griffiths
BYU MISM Grad

C/O Mr. Zhou Zhixi
Foreign Affairs Office of No. 1 Middle School of Yongzhou City
Hunan Province, P. R. China
Post Code: 425006

Gadiandi@gmail.com

Epiphany

2010-01-06T01:16:00.001-08:00

Today, I had a marvelous Epiphany.

I was talking to one of my friends this morning and she made a comment about how I didn't seem my normal happy self. I realized she was right, but I couldn't pin why. I thought about how I've tried to use my time wisely lately. The other foreign teachers have gone back to America so I'm a little lonely, but I figured this was my time to buckle down and study Chinese for the next few weeks until the semester ends. I had kind of a "Let's just get through this" attitude. After I talked to my friend, I decided to go work on my lesson plans for today. I only teach one lesson a week. I just teach it 20 times. I thought the lesson I had made for this week was good, it went well Monday, but pretty poorly yesterday (Tuesday) So I decided to take some time to think of how I could improve it and tried to brainstorm some ideas for new lessons. Then I went and taught three classes, and they went phenomenally. Much better than yesterday. Not only did the lessons go well, but I had a lot of fun with my students and they learned English. When I walked out of my last class I realized that my happiness is tied to how much I give of myself to other people. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's still true. I walked out of that class and it dawned on me that the reason I was happy today was cause I had given part of myself to my students. I also realized that if I don't give myself to my students, and try to be as a good a teacher as i can be. I won't be happy while I'm in China.

Kind of a strange realization. It made me happy to understand this, but it made me sad to think of some of the teachers I had who didn't give themselves to their students more and how unhappy some of them probably were.
When I say give myself, I guess what I mean is that I have to care about my students. If I don't care and I'm just trying to make them learn, it's not really fun, but if I do care, then I try to make good lessons for them, and I think they can kind of feel it, maybe not consciously, but my attitude makes such a big difference in how they behave, it's kind of amazing sometimes.

Anyways, I may be cold, but I'm not lonely. I may have no other foreign teachers or Americans close by, but I have a lot of Rockin' Chinese students, so I'm not really worried about the next few weeks.

1 is the loneliest number....

2010-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

There's two types of teachers in the program that got me to China. Those who stay for a month, and those who stay for a year. At my school in Lingling there were two teachers. One was staying for a year and one was staying for a month. The one staying for a year(Jason) got deported in November (Long story for another blog, but don't worry he's fine and coming back soon) and the other teacher(Brooke) left 10 days ago. Not only did they leave, but 8 other teachers left too. Leaving me alone in my city, the Rygg family alone in their's (One hour away), and the Carters in their's (2 hours away).
So yep, it's just me, hanging out in Lingling. Yay....

Admittedly I did decide to come to China by myself without friends, so technically, I have no one to blame but myself. But the prospect of a month with out other foreign teachers sounds a lot to me like solitary confinement, or something of that nature. However, I shouldn't complain. I can still go to church, I can still see my friends on the weekends (the one's remaining) and I suddenly have much more time to exercise. (Dad, I'm down to 160 lb, how you doin?)

On a more optimistic note there are three things that make me think it will be fine for the next few weeks:

1. This is probably the best opportunity to study Chinese I'll ever have. I have a great program on my laptop and a lot of time without distractions, so I may not do much else for the next few weeks. Next semester(March-June) more teachers will return, and I bet I'll find myself distracted again from my studies. In other words, this is my time to crack down. If I play my cards right I think I can get a lot of book knowledge for the next few weeks, and then for the last 5-6 months I'm here, I'll know enough that I can actually practice speaking to people, we'll see how it goes.

2. I have skype. Skype is a wonderous program that helps me stay connected to people who can actually speak English. This is a blessing to someone who lives by them self and still craves intelligent human interaction, which I can only get here from Chinese people with good English, since my Chinese stinks.

3. Purpose. I do feel like I'm supposed to be here. So I'll do the best with the time I have and hopefully it will turn to someone's good some day.

We'll see how it goes. If you get a tear stained blog entry in two weeks, you'll know I'm not feeling as good about it then as I am now. At that point, feel free to send me money, candy, classic literature, or expensive electronics....
Here's to Adventure.

Wall of Fame

2009-12-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

K guys, this is my wall of fame. I say fame because at my school, if you're white, you're famous. So, I realize that this collage is a little dismal right now, but that's no big deal, because all you have to do if you want your picture up here is mail one to me. =)
So far I have, Dave and Abby's wedding photo, Emili and her family, Mom and Dad, and a picture that Keely has sent me from her mission. So, if you want me to have your picture. Send it on over. The mail usually takes about 2-3 weeks. So send it soon because I'll be on vacation once February starts, hopefully earlier. (We never know when holidays are in China until the day before or week of at best.... chinese culture...)

So, here's my address.

Samuel Griffiths
C/O Mr. Zhou Zhixi
Foreign Affairs Office of No. 1 Middle School of Yongzhou City
Hunan Province, P. R. China
Post Code: 425006

Love you guys

(In case you were wondering, I don't have a printer)
(Also, if you don't send one, don't think that I'll think you don't love me, I know you do)

The Evidence of Christmas

2009-12-24T21:16:00.001-08:00

Seeing as how it's Christmas day, I thought I'd write about Christmas. Now in our culture (western Culture) Once Christmas day comes and goes we don't say anything about Christmas again until next November at the earliest. But, seeing as how I live in China, and there's not much evidence of Christmas anywhere anyways, I figure I can do pretty much what ever I want, which includes writing about Christmas even when the Christmas Season is practically over.

I've been listening to Christmas music all month, hoping that I could at least feel like it was Christmas. It hasn't really worked. Part of that is because there's no christmas lights, christmas trees, wossail, family, friends, mistletoe (I really miss this one), change in shopping habits for locals, or corner Santa Clauses.

To tell you the truth, it didn't feel like Christmas at all until I was wrapping a couple presents yesterday for school leaders. Christmas eve wasn't all that special. I basically sat in my apartment and read my scriptures and played video games, which I guess is what every LDS kid would want to do on the holidays anyways... Although, I did get some phone calls and emails from my family, which made all the difference in the world.

But I've a lot of time and opportunity to look at Christmas from a pretty different perspective. People here don't celebrate it, and in truth, they know about it, but they know about it the way I knew about Hanukkah when I was a kid, which is basically squat. It's one of those things I think you have to experience to understand. The joy that I've had from Christmas's past has carried me through this one in such a way that even though I had nothing of the things I loved around me, like family and friends, I've been fine. I could go on for ages about how much I love Christmas with my family, and how much happiness it's brought me in my life, but you would already understand and probably find it boring, but I think it's a point worth making and here's why.

When there's no evidence of Christmas, at least no visible evidence - mistletoe, Christmas trees, presents, stockings, tinsel you can see things a little more clearly. By you I mean the general you, not you the reader specifically. I mean to say that with out all the physical things, I've thought a lot more about all the things that really matter, the things we celebrate at Christmas. Our friends, our family, the spirit of giving and love, and our savior are the things that I celebrate at Christmas. Those are the things that really matter to me, and something dawned on me in the last 24 hours. Those things don't go away when the new year comes around. We may put away our Christmas decorations, take down our Christmas tree, and watch the reds and greens fade away from city centers, but all the things that I really love are still around. Maybe I don't have vacation time anymore to see them, but my family is still there. They still love me. The Savior is always there, and he always watches out for me. He doesn't care if it's Christmas, even in this remote part of the world where I'm farther away then ever before from everything I have known. I know He is mindful of me and has helped shape the experiences around me so they could be for my good. He was there for me before, and will be there for me after.

Now, my readers need not think that I'm not a fan of gifts, stockings, wossail, or mistletoe. I'm actually a big fan of all of the above, BUT thank goodness that family and all the other things that really matter are around more than once a year.

Attention span issues: Myself vs The Average Chinese Teenager

2009-12-21T20:57:00.001-08:00

I've noticed a disturbing trend among my students. A lot of my kids just can't focus on some one talking. They can't really do it that well. The interesting thing is that it seems to be wholly independent of whatever the person is talking about. I had a lesson on dating this week. Now this may seem like a boring subject to some people, but I assure you to Chinese high school kids, it doesn't get any better than this.
My understanding is that most Chinese high schools tell their students they're not allowed to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. The first day I got here, when I was new and interesting to the students (which now I don't think I am...) They wanted to know if I had a girlfriend and when I said that I didn't literally, I had everyone's undivided attention. It was kind of awesome.

But now, I the second class starts some kids shut off before I can even say what the lesson is on. I think that most of this is due to technology. It's not all kids, but it's a fair few. Most kids don't do it in my classes because they know I'll take their phones if they're caught (of which I've already taken 2 today and I've only taught two classes so far). Now here's the thing that scares me. Is as a business student at BYU I was the same way. I still paid attention in most of my classes. I got good grades and I knew what the teacher had talked about. But I had played games on my laptop too and I'm definitely guilty of checking my email in class and reading the news too.

So what is it? Why is it so hard to at least listen to somebody for two or three minutes before we shut off in a lecture setting and decide that they're not worth listening too when we can hook up to our ipod or our cell phone. Luckily they're no laptops in church. But at the same time, I'm still guilty in that setting to.

Elder Hales used to seem so boring to me when I was a kid. He's not a flash speaker and I don't remember him ever having my full attention before I was 19. Lame I know. Anyways, as I got older and a little more mature I started going back to read the conference talks within a month of two of watching conference. I remember one specific time where I went back and read his talks and it blew my socks off. It was amazing. I thought 'how could this be? He's the boring one!'... nope, he sure isn't. I just didn't have the patience to sit and listen to him. Now he's one of my favorites. His talks never cease to have an impact on me.

I think 100 or 200 years ago this wasn't the case. There were no distractions and listening was easy. You went to a church and all you did was listen. You had things to talk about, but it was never so serious you talked about it IN a church meeting. Especially not for the whole meeting. Now things are different. In a classroom we have so many gadgets that I think it's legitimately hard to give you're attention to a teacher. We're too used to 15-25 second commercials and fast changes in what we're paying attention too that it's hard to sit and listen to someone for a half hour. I think listening is a form of work for our generation. Wierd I know. Maybe it's always been true, but it's totally true for us. We live in such a time of information that is so readily available that we don't realize how much it's worth. Some people do, and those people are my heroes. One of them is Mike Wilson. I've never known someone who was a doctor that taught political philosophy on the side. That alone is a testament to his love of knowledge. For a guy that practically has ADHD (me), I can't help but admire someone who has that much focus. Another one is my uncle Gary. He's really good at keeping up on technology. He know's a lot and he makes it his business to understand what's going on in the world. I think if I had half the discipline either of them have, I'd be set.

I watched part of a conservative rally outside the capital building in DC. This was right after the health bill had passed in the house of representatives. I can understand why conservatives didn't like the health bill, but it was funny. As I listened to this man I heard him say that this (the new health bill he held in his hands) is 2,000 pages of crap. Now it may have been crap. But it was funny because he didn't say why, he just ripped on democrats. I don't think a single person walked away from that meeting understand more about life or government, but I think they did all leave more angry then they had come. Productive? I don't really think so.

I think had people really been listening, it might have made a big difference. Not in the sense that they would have changed their minds, but that a person who has an opinion ought to be able to defend himself and ought to be able to listen to the opinion of someone else even if they don't agree. At least it promotes education and progress. I think it would even lead to a solution if we gave it a chance.

I really believe that listening is a gift. It's a talent that people don't think about often, but it's worth gold if we can develop it. I think one of the problems with politics today is that people have forgotten how to listen. I realize these are all random stories, but they all point to the fact that if people can listen, it could make a world of difference.
In conclusion I think listening would bless America, Chinese teenagers, and me.

And it's cool that I have a blog, cause than I can write about whatever I want. But this for me is a forum too. I love people's comments and I'll always listen. Or at least try to.

Demographic Winter

2009-12-17T03:15:00.001-08:00

The decline of the human family.

http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

If you have a few minutes, go to this website, and on the right hand side, there's a tab that says trailers.
I just watched the trailer for the movie "Demographic Winter"
And it's pretty intense. These people predicted our financial crisis before it happened, and they did well.
Let me know what you think.

Popcorn

2009-12-07T09:29:00.001-08:00

So, tonight I made popcorn in a wok. Well Brooke(friend) helped me so I guess it's we, but ya, we made popcorn. Popcorn and a movie right? Sounds fun. It was. When we first started cooking the popcorn Brooke asked if we should keep a lid on the wok. I said no. Why would we. We want to know when it's going to burn, so lets keep the lid off and we can keep a better eye on it. What a foolish idea that was. I went to load up the movie and I heard screaming and laughing from the kitchen. I ran back and found Brooke (the other foreign teacher) laughing loud about 3 feet away from the wok while popcorn was exploding and kernals were literally shooting across the kitchen. After getting pelted a few times I managed to successfully navigate the war zone and get a lid onto the popcorn. Made for an interesting night. It also only took about 5 minutes to clean the popcorn off of the walls, and popcorn made in a wok tastes super good. Who knew?

Next time I'll keep a lid on it.

Random Awesome

2009-12-02T05:04:00.001-08:00

I thought this was cool.
It's how to wash your car with a single bucket.
I'd say it's clean.

Expectations

2009-12-02T04:04:00.001-08:00

Dear Blog Readers,

This blog post may not be for you if you have sensitive eyes or ears, I'm warning you there is short quote that contains mild foul language in this blogentry . The next entries you won't have worry about that, but I have to let you know. I never want someone to be mad that they read this blog.

With that out of the way I want to write about expectations.
I've been struggling a lot with teaching lately. Here are the reasons why teaching English here (China) is difficult
1. My classes have at least 60 kids, sometimes upwards of 70 or 80.
2. I can't give my students a grade.
3. Some of my kids won't try becuase they don't understand any English
4. Kids think I'll be easier on them then their normal teachers, so often they'll do things the wouldn't normally do like
   A. Listen to headphones in class
   B. Read News in Chinese on their phones
   C. Play video games on phones or dictionaries in class

It's been really hard some days to do anything. Sometimes class goes really well, but often, kids have a bad day, or kids are trying to get away with stuff they know they shouldn't do. The other foreign teacher at my school actually caught a kid smoking in a closet during her class a few weeks ago.

So I've been thinking a lot about it and talking a lot about it. Cause it can be pretty frustrating some days. Especially since a lot of my classes were changed lately and I have different kids who are trying to push the limits.

Three things came together to help me understand I'm not the worst teacher in the world. They are listed as follows:

1. Another teacher who helps us out a lot (Luke Liu, a Chines guy with really good English, and a great friend) said that I have to accept the fact that some kids aren't going to listen. He said we act like communists as teachers (hear this out), we teach like every child is the same even though we know in our hearts that they're all at different levels. We try to make a lesson that will help every child improve, which is impossible since every child is in a different place, but we still try. However, to think that you can get every child to choose to learn every class is not going to happen. Kids have their agency. It made me feel a lot better. I always thought the kids were perfect for their Chinese teachers, but I realized that even the super strict mean chinese teachers still have kids who are oblivious or who are causing commotion.

2. I was talking to my sister last night. I realize that even though I can't see everything inside her life and all the things she struggles with, she's totally my hero. I've always thought she did way more than she gave herself credit for. I was telling her about how it's hard to motivate my self to learn Chinese when there's no due date and I can't really measure my progress, and she totally understood. She made it sound like her whole life was like that with all the things she knew she should do, but I look at her life and I see a successful person who is doing everything she knows how. She's totally one of the hero's of my life. If I ended up in a situation close to where she's at right now, I would consider my life a success.
All in all, I realized that the discrepancy between how I looked at her life and how she looked at her life was based on expectations. All she could see was the things she hadn't done that she had expected herself to do that day, and all I can see are the things that she's been working on for years that are totally awesome. It made me feel better because in conjunction with that I realized that for the classes I teach, I used to have to speak slow, and now I don't. Even though my classes act really bad sometimes and I'm frustrated with them, technically I've done a good job since they understand way more english than they did before.

3. Today I was reminded of a close friend of mine. A girl who has had her share of struggles in life, like the rest of us. I first met her in one of my student wards at BYU where she was the relief society president. Really an amazing girl. Anyways, one day she was having an especially hard time with all the things that she was expected to do. It was a little too much and I'm sure she felt a little like garbage because she knew she couldn't get it all done. She called her dad and told her a bit about how she was feeling and how hard things had been for her and he gave her this advice.
"honey, I want you to go outside, k?" (Father)
"Um, ok" (Daughter)
"You outside?" (Father)
"Yeah" (Daughter)
"ok, I want you to yell at the top of your lungs, 'Damn you society and to hell with your expectations'" (Father)
"Really?" (Daughter)
"Really" (Father)
"Now?" (Daughter)
"Now" (Father)
(Yelling) (Daughter)
"Good job Honey, you feel any better?" (Father)

That story always made me laugh a lot. And I think he's right. I wouldn't word it that way, but I think we get caught up in what we think we should do and we don't give ourselves enough credit, so we're bogged down by bad emotions cause we never feel like we're doing good enough. But we are doing good enough. It may not be everything we hoped for, but we're doing our best, and I think when we can look back on our best we'll see that great improvement was made and that we're happy with our effort.

With that in mind, I went to class today ready to have fun. Not to have all of my kids behaving perfectly.
I went with this hypothesis:
Even if we're playing games, we're still practicing English, and therefore still improving.
So even though a straight class of games is not common in high school, for my classes, it's not a bad thing, since I teach spoken English, and if we're speaking, we're practicing.

So, here was my class today.
Part 1 - I rolled up some trash paper and we threw it around the room. Who ever it landed on had to answer a 'favorite' question. ie "What is your favorite color?" or subject, or basketball player. We did that for about 15 minutes and it was super fun. I asked the questions to the students if they got the paper. At one point one of my students threw the paper at me. And I asked him who he was trying to hit. He said me! Then he asked me who my favorite girl was, so I said my mother. They didn't like the cop out, but the game was a hit, and almost everyone participated.

Part 2 - I went through about 8 vocabulary words that had to do with Christmas. I think you'll see how they fit together.
Santa
Beard
Gift
Coal (naught or nice right?)
sleigh
reindeer
chimney
I explained each one and how it fit together with Christmas and made sure they all knew how to say each word, and what the meaning was.
This lasted about 10-20 minutes

Part 3 - I erased the words and we played a game where after I divided the class into teams, I called on random kids and made them spell out words that I called.
This part lasted anywhere from 5-20 minutes depending on how much of class was left.

Overall, the lesson went well in every class. They heard english, they spoke english, and we rejoiced. There were a few kids who weren't paying attention, but when I let it go, I felt better. I would love to be able to have every kids undivided attention, but as long as there's agency that's not going to happen. But I'm happy to teach the kids that want to learn and to continue to learn how to be a better teacher to reach the kids that aren't as interested.

Anyways, in conclusion, I think expectations for how you want to perform are good. But they have to be reasonable. I think if they are, they'll bring happiness as we strive to be better, I think if they're not we'll end up beating ourselves up a lot for things that we may have actually done a good job on. So, I will continue to refine my expectations of what I want to achieve with my classes. I can't make everyone fluent, but even up to now my students have made leaps and bounds in their abilities. I think I'm doing alright.

Why China reminds me of my mother

2009-11-16T04:16:00.001-08:00

Every year of my child hood our family took a road trip to Utah. Maybe summer or winter, or both, but the 10 hour drive between Northern Utah and Southern California has and will always be a part of my life. My mother always gave us comics or books to read on the drive up. None of us ever got car sick, cause we were raised reading in cars. This was beneficial for many many reasons. Here are a few:

1. My mother always wanted us to love reading. Yep, that totally worked. Most people in my family are pretty avid readers. Granted, the last book I read was a comic book, but I still think she succeeded.
2. We all have steel stomachs. None of us get carsick. Way to go mom.
3. Mom was smart enough to know that if we were occupied, she had full control of the radio. So, I was raised listening to a lot of her music without thinking about it too much.

I think my Mother's favorite music was the Carpenters. As in Karen and co. The reason I say that is because she played Carpenter music (which will be called 'Cusic' from here on) ALL THE TIME. Ok, that's an overstatement, but she listened to it quite a bit. Music is in my Mom's blood. My sister used to always say she knew when Mom was coming up the stairs because my sister could hear a song on my mother's breath. I think something about Cusic really resonated with my mom. They were good songs. They had positive lyrics, they were in her range, and they were catchy, even for me. I never sang along though. Not because I couldn't, but because I enjoyed more listening to my mom express herself. I don't think she thought about it a lot, it was just part of who she was (and is).

Now many of you are thinking, 'great story Sam, but what does this have to do with China?'
If you are thinking that, good job, that's a splendid question.
Here's the answer.

I was sitting next to a young Chinese business man at a dinner place on the street tonight. (And I mean literally on the street, that's where they set up shop in the evenings, on the side of the street) He was probably about 30 give or take a few years. I was eating my meal peacefully and he was humming to himself. After a bar of music I caught myself humming along with him. I then thought, 'how the heck do I know the song this Chinese guy is humming. That's impossible. I don't know that much Chinese music.' And then it dawned on me. It's because he was humming Cusic.

China is a really interesting place, very few American artists are big here. A lot of people know a few of the big current names in America, but for the most part people don't know a whole lot about american music. However, some how Cusic made it through the America-->China filter, and came through big. Many people may not know the Carpenters by name, but all Chinese people know the music. I find my self smiling every once in a while when a motorcycle or moped drives by me and I can hear them listening to the Carpenters.

To make a long story short, one of the things I love about China is that it reminds me of my mother.

Disclaimer
The author of this article in no way claims his writings to be the final authority on the famous Sandi Griffiths and her views and tastes in music. (or Cusic). In other words, Mom, feel free to let me know if I'm off on any of this.

Made a kid cry

2009-11-05T21:14:00.001-08:00

Yep,
I made a kid cry. I still feel bad. So here's the story, I've spent most of my week having discussions with my classes on whether phones, video games, and mp3 players are good or not. The purpose was to tell them I don't want to see them on the phone anymore in class, ya some kids were on phones, some would listen to music, some would play video games.

It's hard to discipline a class when you're students don't have to worry about a grade. Since we only can teach each class once a week there's no testing or no grade for my students for my class. I got sick of kids saying they thought it would be ok to listen to music on their headphones in my class. I figure if I'm a good teacher, my kids will be learning english. So the lesson was meant to help kids understand I like phones and such, just not in my class. I told them that if I saw a phone from then on, or an mp3 player, or anything they played games on, I would take it for 3 days. I figure that's a good punishment, enough to help them know they shouldn't have it in my class. I figure it's nice since phones aren't permitted and i think most teachers here would either break the students phone or confiscate it permanently.

As of today, I have taken three phones and a dictionary/mp3 player. In the class I just taught a kid was very slyly listening to music and showing his friend. He had a headphone sticking out the end of his sleeve and when i asked him for his mp3 player, he acted like I didn't know what he was talking about. I pointed to the headphone sticking out of his sleeve and then he knew he was caught. He gave me the mp3 player and class resumed. Over all actually a good class.

After class the kid approaches me, his name is Duke (actually a nice kid, most of mine are, they're just punks sometimes), and tells me he's sorry and he'd like it back. Now he knew the punishment, so I told him I was sorry and I'd give it back on Monday (today is Friday). Then i left. He catches up with me and asks for it again. I say no. He then tells me that it's his friends and to please give him another chance. I say, we talked about this for a half hour, that's your chance. I'm not mad, I just want him to understand that this is not ok in class. I start to walk up my stairs, and the poor kid starts to cry. He's a bigger kid, my height, but easily has 40 pounds on me, and it's probably muscle. I was really surprised. He asked me for another punishment. Any student of mine that cries in my opinion has learned his lesson. I felt pretty bad. So I gave it back (first one I've given back since my new policy) and told him to write me 1/4 of a page in english about why he is sorry.

Man, being a teacher is crazy. I feel like I haven't been challenged like this in a long time. I can't get away with crappy lessons or half effort. I like it. I feel the need to become something more. I also think that if I do, my students will reap the rewards, and that's good. Most of my classes now aren't good or bad because of themselves, they're behavior is almost directly linked to my lesson. If I have a great lesson, usually I'll have a great class. If I have a bum lesson, it's pretty rough. There's nothing quite like a clear indicator of how well you're doing your job. Anyways, here's to being a teacher, and the lessons of life.

Cooking Joy

2009-10-27T06:48:00.001-07:00

So, I haven't posted in a while. Part of that is becuase my camera is busted. Sad I know. My documentation efforts are seriously hampered. Until I find a camera we're back to just text. What a shame.
Well, the good news is. I finally broke in my kitchen. The stove is propane and it took a lot of stuff to get it going.

First, my wok was messed up, so I bought a new one.
Then I realized I needed a new hot water boiler, cause I wanted to be able to wash my dishes. (No hot water = no clean dishes)
Then I taped my kitchen fan, (Which is just a hole in the window with a fan in it) to the window because it was falling out.
Then I realized that I was out of propane, so I bought some from the propane guy who walks around outside.
Then I realized that the attachment to the propane tank was busted, so I went and bought a new one.
Yesterday I finally hooked it all up.
And today, I made carrots, spinach and peppers. It was a little spicy. Mmmmm.
Lets just say cooking in a wok is one of the funnest things I have ever done. I highly recommend it.
I've seen people do it enough that it actually was pretty easy.
Next dish to conquer is fried rice. I should have that one done within the next couple days.

PS have I mentioned lately that I love China? Wo de fan hen hao!

Sleeper Trains and Sleeper Buses

2009-10-15T05:38:00.001-07:00

So, as most of you know we were pretty jazzed for the national holiday. Because we can hit a lot of things close by we decided to go far away for this vacation. And we did. Kunming was a 27 hour train ride from Yongzhou county (where I live). This had it's pros and cons. The pro is that I actually like sleeper trains. The con is that I hate using the sleeper bus.

Sleeper trains- When you want to travel really far, you take a sleeper train. Pretty self explanatory is that you can sleep on the train. The trains that cover big distances usually have a few cars of hard or soft seats. They also usually have a few cars of hard sleepers and maybe 1 or two soft sleeper cars, obviously a sleeper is more expensive than a seat, and soft is more expensive than hard. The seats are what you'd imagine them to be. The hard seats are kind of nightmarish. Some people will take the hard seats for 1-30 hours and sometimes they stand the whole way. So compared to that, I was in the lap of luxury. The Sleeper cars were rally awesome. They were just like bunk beds everywhere. It's pretty tight, you can't sit up on any of the beds except the bottom ones (There's top middle and bottom), but it's comfortable and I had no problem sleeping through the night, which is good since we were on a 27HOUR TRAIN RIDE. That's probably the longest anything ride I've ever had, and it was way fun.

Sleeper Bus- A friend once told me never to take a sleeper bus. Ideally, a sleeper bus works like so. You get on at night, go to sleep, and wake up in a new place. We wanted to save time since we only had so much for vacation, so once we got to kunming and had seen the stone forest, we decided to take a sleeper bus to Li Jiang. Good idea? Hard to say. Li Jiang was awesome, the sleeper bus was, well..., an adventure.
I posted pictures of the train and the bus. The bus is the one with all the metal bars the the yellow bed sheets. The train was about a billion times bumpier than anything I have ever imagined riding (Including a giant armadillo). Not only that, but it rolled you side to side into the bars through out the night. And we went with John and his two kids (Toddler and Baby). Didn't sleep much that night. We got on the bus at about 830pm. I fell asleep at about 11. Woke up at 12, and at 1230, I heard Brooke laughing a couple beds over. Someone said, "What's up with Brooke?" and Brooke said,
"Sorry guys, this is the only way I know how to handle this is to laugh."
This was followed by a lot more laughing and a lot less sleep. I'm pretty sure every Chinese person on that bus hated us by the time we were done. Stupid loud Americans, and yes, we were.

The train pics are first. The squatter toilet is on the train. I used it. Squatted and everything. You proud? After the squatter pictures are the bus.

I will say, I do still love to travel.

More to come.

Re: The Stone Forest of Yunnan

2009-10-13T07:52:00.001-07:00

So, I mentioned recently of places I hope I get to go back to before I die. This is officially one of those. This place is outta control. In some parts, it's a total labyrinth. And in others there are beautiful meadows with giant stone monoliths everywhere. The dense maze parts were way fun. It was really people friendly, but still very natural. A lot of walk ways were so skinny we had to fold up the stroller and it wasn't uncommon to go up or down more than a couple hundred stairs in a row. It was honestly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Way cooler than any city I've been too.

I put as many pictures as I dared when sending an email from Gmail (that's how I update my blog) and even though it doesn't give a full experience, it should be a good taste of what I saw.

First off, it was way touristy. Which causes some problems. I don't think Chinese people see White people that often, because every where we go people stare at us and take pictures of us. Especially when I travel with little white kids, it's amazing how people will gather. It's especially amazing how Chinese people's personal bubble's are significantly smaller. A lot of Chinese people will come and poke and prod the kids. I guess that's not weird here.

Second off, it's really normal for people to spit here. So apparently going green means using spit bags instead of spitting on the ground. I guess spit isn't biodegradable or something. We got a big kick out of those.

Third off, I'd like to tell a short story. So towards the end of the day we figured we should probably start heading back. We were traveling the outside of a big loop that went around some of the denser parts, and I saw a path going in to center again. I'm thinking, hey we're on the outside far away from the entrance let's cut through the center and make this faster. Even though I'm usually really good with directions, turns out this wasn't one of those times. We totally got lost, which was ok, because getting lost in Zion or Eden isn't really a bad thing, and after an hour plus of wandering at the end of a long day, we popped out pretty close to where we went in. Any time I suggested a short cut for the end of the trip I always heard Boo's in response. But, turned out to be an awesome day.

Overall, the Stone Forest outside of Kunming gets 5 Stars. It's amazing what good company and beautiful scenery can do to boost your happiness meter.

I still have a few more posts to cover the rest of our holiday. Stay tuned!

Friendship Exuberance

2009-10-06T00:34:00.000-07:00

Last week was seriously one of the craziest weeks of my life. I had about 8 days off for the Chinese national holiday and it is easily one of the most intense vacations I have ever had. I mean, we milked this thing for all it was worth. We traveled across China in buses and trains and it was great. I saw some of the coolest places I've seen in my life in the last week. I also experienced some of the craziest things in my life. Some things I'm not so sure that I would ever want to consider doing again, and things I pray I'll get a chance to see one more time before I die. I kind of think that life is like that.

The one thing that really made the difference for me though was the people I was with. I don't know how I always get so lucky with friends, but even in China my friends have made a big difference for me. This trip was a great example for me. We hit some pretty crazy conditions in a couple spots and we laughed about it and pushed on through and it has turned into one of my greatest memories (and it's not even over). The pictures above are the people I traveled with. I traveled with three girls, who have kind of turned into little sisters, and a married couple with their two kids. The one thing that really got me thinking about this was how easygoing they all were. Even in the crazy circumstances they could all roll with it, make it work, and laugh it off. Whether we hadn't had enough sleep, or we hadn't eaten, my new friends were patient, nice, and supportive.

I think a good friend can make all the difference. Some of the sights I saw were breath taking, but having the other people there and even the kids I traveled with just made it something completely different, and in a good way. I think that people often cross our paths and we just have to realize that we can be a good friend to them and vice versa. I really am amazed at how much sweeter my travels have been because of the people I went with or the people I met. This is probably the same kind of joy I hear some married people mention every once and a while (my dad).

The pictures above are the friends I spent the crazy week with. I write a blog about the trip and some of the stuff that happened to us really soon. Thanks for reading, I love to hear from all of you.

Sorry it takes me time to write back, lately it's been easier to update the blog than write everyone back, but I'm working on it.
And yes, I grew a beard.

Back to School

2009-09-30T20:24:00.001-07:00

These are all pictures of my school some are class room buildings, the one with a big open square in front of it is the school office building.We do have a lake. Man made, but it comes with fish and some really cool paths over the water.Across the lake, depending on where you stand, you can see student dorms and the track field. There's one picture of a building with loads of clothes hanging on every level. Those are the student dorms. Those students are totally packed like sardines. They don't really have closets, I think that's why there are so many clothes outside. Just beds and a bathroom shared among 12 kids each. I also took some pictures just of random stuff across campus. Keep in mind that even though this is a school there are like 10 apartment buildings on campus where teachers, other school staff, and their families live. I live about a 2 minute walk from all of my classes. I have to say, I like it a lot and during the school year this place is pretty clean (that's cause they make the students clean it). There's also a big silver structure that looks like hands and some wierd orb floating on spikes. That's our hands upholding the sun, or the students, our future.

The last picture I want to point out is the basketball courts that also have cement ping pong tables. This is where we do Tai Chi in the mornings, followed by ping pong. I love this place.
Sometimes going back to school isn't that bad.

Let me finish with one story.
When I first got to Lingling (My current town of residence) I was brought to a hotel for an awesome dinner. There I met a guy named Luke Liu. He said he was(is) an english teacher at my school and that we would be colleagues. His English is actually really good, and since he was the only chinese person there who spoke english, we talked for quite a while. It didn't take him very long to start bragging about our school though. I think that's pretty normal here. One of the things he said was, "We have very beautiful school. Maybe even #3 most beautiful school in Hunan, maybe #2! Maybe even #1 most beautiful school in ALL of Hunan!" He was pretty excited about it. Now when ever I talk with the other teachers about our school I can't help but do the countdown from "maybe #3 to maybe #1." And it's twice as funny in Chinese Accent, but I do have to say, he was right. This is a really beautiful place.

Great Wall, Great Adventure

2009-09-29T06:14:00.001-07:00

So, I finally got my camera up to speed. I'm sorry it took me so long, but I'll make a lot of posts within the next two-three weeks with pictures. It's exciting for me. The bad news is that the Chinese National Holiday starts on the first, which means I don't have any classes after tomorrow. This sounds like good news, but I think this coin has two sides. I'm going to Kunming in Yunnan for the Holiday till the 8th and I may not have time or access to the internet to put up any more posts, so I'll try to put up as many as possible before I leave. Putting up pictures is a little time consuming, and considering the other things I set goals to do (Like learn Chinese and practice guitar) are suffering, I may not get much done. So bear with me.

Anyways, here's the great wall. I have to say, it was awesome, and I mean that in the literal sense. It's huge, and the views are beautiful. I took a lot of pictures, there aren't really any good ones of me (surprise) So most of these are scenic shots.

First, let me clear up a couple misconceptions I had. The great wall isn't a single wall, It branches off like crazy and goes in all sorts of directions. I'm pretty sure it's continuous though. So whenever it branches I think at least one direction goes on for a long while. Second, It's big, but It's not as big as I thought it would be. I kind of thought it would be this 50 foot wide parade route thing, but it's really what it says it is, a giant wall. Although, I must say, It's an awesome wall.

Breakdown
Picture One
The great wall really flows with the landscape. Some parts are flat, but only because the mountain ridge it's built on is flat. Usually it's up and down, and sometimes it's ridiculously steep. During the steep times, I kind of feel like I'm climbing a ladder.

Picture Two
For those of you who forgot what I look like, that's me. (This is silly, because there's a picture of my on the side of this page, but for those of you who ignored that, this will come in handy.)

Picture Three
Every 100-200 meters there would be a gaurd tower of sorts. Inside each one were sweet doorways and sweet windows. I felt like a kid wandering ruins of some ancient civilization. (Which I was)

Picture Four
This is one of those steep parts I was telling you about. You'll notice a boy standing at the top of those stairs. His name is Shane and he's my hero.

Picture Five and Seven
This gives an idea of how the great wall snakes across ridges. It's actually kind of breath taking.

Picture Six
Nice clear picture of a guard tower.

Super Mime Strikes Again

2009-09-21T22:29:00.001-07:00

I was once friends with this awesome, but slightly crazy (in a healthy way) Chinese kid named Eric Chao in high school. Great guy, really smart, really nice. At some point for a Spanish project he filmed a video (in Spanish) of him in his evil lair plotting to take over the world. At that point he took on the nick name - "ChaoDoom." Every villain needs to fight a hero right? At some point later (keep in mind most of my friends had nick names) my friend Mark (who we called Ace) coined the name "Super Mime." It was fun at the time, and the name actually kind of stuck through the rest of high school. I even had a license plate that said, 'SPRMIME'. Little did I know it would be prophetic.

I seriously pantamime everything for these kids. There's no way to exaggerate this. They all know just enough english that between my charades and my english, teaching vocab is not only easy, it's really fun. This week I taught my kids most the words they would need to talk about being sick and how they feel. Here's a few words we covered-
Sneeze - I taught them to say "Bless you"
Cough
Cold
Flu
Fever
head ache and migraine (This one was fun because I would make the same motions as a head ache 'rub temples' and then for migraine, I'd just yell a lot so they knew it hurt worse)
Throw up - that one was way fun
Pass out
Sprain
Amnesia
Broken Bone
One of the ways we'd review is I'd say, "Show me...." and then one of the words and they would all act it out. It's pretty fun to watch an entire class pass out.

A lot of my teaching is just trying to expand their vocabulary and help them to know how to use the words.
So most of my lessons will go like this.

Introduction - Today I told my class that if they were good we'd watch a music video on my laptop and I'd hook it up to the speakers and we voted on which music video to watch

Core - We dig into the daily vocab hard and fast. I write words on the board and if they understand them we move one, if not, I explain them

Practice - I make all the kids write a few sentences with some of the words I listed and I walk around the class and help with grammar

Fun conclusion - Usually we play some sort of a game where they use the sentences they wrote. Last week we split the class into sides and played tic tac toe. Each team had to have a player read a sentence with good grammar and a vocab word of the day to be able to write on the board. Today, I just let them watch a music video. =)

Spare time - Last but not least, some times we have a few minutes left before the bell rings.
During this time, I try and hit on conversation basics. I usually talk about the difference between things that are polite and slang. Like, "How are you?" vs "What's up", or "me too" vs "ditto."

It's funny, I feel like I'm giving a show, or more like I'm giving them part of myself, but I don't feel like a clown or a performer or anything. I really do feel like a teacher. I have to say, it's awesome. I really like it. Part of that reason may be because I teach the 'smart classes,' but even if I didn't, it's not like the other kids aren't smart, and I think even if they had really bad English, it's amazing what charades can do. I really do feel like 'Super Mime.' and I really do feel like I'm helping these kids.

Until next time, ChaoDoom.

Power of Love

2009-09-12T01:14:00.001-07:00

So I wanted to right about love after reading this morning, and I thought to myself, 'Self, this is why you have a blog.' So here is a long winded entry about what the power of love means to me.

Huey Louis once sang,
"The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing...
You don't need money, don't take fame,
Don't need to credit card to ride this train"
(Power of Love)

I remember listening to that song a lot on our jukebox when I was a little kid. I think that's part of the reason I saw love as this mysterious thing, that could be a blessing and a curse, but either way was something powerful and worth respecting. To this day I still hold to that opinion mostly, it's just that my understanding of it has deepened a bit since my childhood. Now I still see it the same way, love can make a man cry or sing, heck it's done both to me more than once. But I see it in a variety of different lights. One man cries because of a break up. Another cries because of loss of a loved one. Another because he never had one. I think now that love is less mysterious, and more just plain uplifting.

At some point about 10 years ago I had a revelation one day. I realized that one of the things people want more than anything is to be loved. It had come at a point when a couple people had been calling me and I couldn't figure out why they wanted to talk to me all the time. This was Junior High, probably one of the clearest points in life where it's easy to see that people need love (Usually in the form of approval and acceptance). It sort of hit me that that's what these kids had wanted. Part of the reason I could realize this was because that was what I wanted too. I was kind of a class clown in my band class, and I knew I loved the attention. Why would anyone else be different. This is still a belief/theory that I hold to strongly. People want and desperately need to be loved.

Oddly enough, even though we know we need it, we (I and other people I've noticed) often find more reasons to with hold it than to give it. But I think my situation is different,I say, I broke up with her because she's crazy. It's ok for me to talk bad about her because she's psyco. Or maybe so and so is trying to take something from me that is rightfully mine. Or maybe John said something offensive in church. I don't know why, but it's so easy for us to become the victim, which entitles us to with hold our love, even though often, that's the one thing that would make something better. Even in severe criminal cases I would argue that most are evil because they either chose to with hold love or too often in their lives, they experienced everything but love. I'm not trying to rob justice, but often we take an act of sin and use it to label a person, sometimes a good person. And I think a lot more of us do this than we would like to know. At least I think I do it more than I would like to admit. Sophocles wrote, "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." One of the beautiful things about love is that it is given even though rarely deserved. Even though we know we make mistakes and that many of us do not deserve it, we still hope for it more than anything.

Love for me is usually the answer to issues in life, mine and others. Do you love someone enough to let them go? Enough to watch over them? Enough to sit and console? Enough to sit and listen? Enough to drop what you're doing and go help? Enough to take criticism? Enough to be wrong? Enough to let someone else be wrong? =)

Here's the motivation for this post. I read this talk by Elder Wirthlin on Charity this morning (the awesome one in the Nov. 2007 Conference) and it's funny how every time I go back to it, that talk rocks my world. Anyways, he said a few things that made me want to write this for my own records. One of which is this quote:
"The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life. "
Hmm, the true measure of success. At the end of the day, what else really matters. Love is what I remember, of all my friends I've had in college or on my mission or in highschool. I remember and revere the one's who really loved me. Heck, even girls I dated. I hated breaking up, but it was so much easier when I knew they genuinely cared about me. I think that is why I'm still friends with many of the girls I dated, because they had developed an ability to love, regardless of circumstance.

Now, what would happen if love for our fellow man ran a bit more rampant among us?

Here's the other quote I love- (same talk)
"consider your sacred duty to teach others to love the Lord and their fellowman. This is the central object of our existence. Without charity—or the pure love of Christ—whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive. "
Yep, this is true. I want to have more concern for the people around me. I want to love the Lord a little more, because I know if I can, my life will switch from black and white to vibrant color. One thing I am amazed about is how happy I am in China and I think one of the main reasons for that is that I can feel the Lord's love for me. I just have to get better at passing it on.

What's in a name?

2009-09-09T04:55:00.001-07:00

Last week I assigned all my classes homework,
1. Pick an English name
2. Make a name tag
From what I can tell most kids did alright. There are the kids whose English isn't so good and they just didn't do it, but once they saw the rest of the class pull out name tags they usually got to business pretty quickly, but even though most kids did the homework, I still had to go check all the names, just in case someone picked something they shouldn't. Like the kid who named himself Lucifer in one of my classes. I made him change that one. I will say that I was pretty excited when I met a kid who had named himself Tank. I thought that was cool enough i let him keep it. I did let one kid keep the name Obama too. So here are some of the stats for the week.

I think I had 3 guys who had named themselves Chloe. I made them change their names.
I had one guy named Misty. (When I told him to change his name, he asked if he could be Diamond, I sighed and tried not to slap my fore head, ... and then said yes)
I had I think 10-15 guys overall who picked girls names.(I actually made all the guys with Girls names change their names)
I think I've only had one or two girls in my classes who had boys names, but I've still met a few girls who chose boys names, (Peter and several Allens at least)

Now here is the fun part. I think I helped at least 200 kids pick new names, maybe even up into the 500's. Now I really tried to stick to normal names, but once I had worked through the names of my last room mates, pretty much all my friends, my ex-girlfriends and their family, My family, kids I knew in grade school, all my old pets, and all the normal names I could think of, a thought hit me. There's probably a good chance these kids might not leave China, and if their English gets that good that they do go to America one day, they'll know to change it. So I loosened up and picked a few more interesting names. Here's a list of some of the names I gave out.

Apollo,
Creed,
Rocky, (go Rocky)
Locke, (As in John)
Guile, (Street fighter)
Laser, (I even made the sound and motion of a laser so he knew what it was, He loves it)
Destiny,
Victor,
Hugo,
Luke,
Umaro, (FF3)
Jade,
Dutchess,
Winny, (as in "The Pooh")
Clam,
Plato,
Trigger, (That's one of my favorites)
Sissy, (I figure Girls can be Sissy)
Fire,
Ice,
Dakota,
Lance, (If Lance was only a pretty boy name and not a weapon, I probably wouldn't have used it)
and Saber.

Here are a few names my friend Jason gave out,
Han,
Chewy,
Leia, (I actually gave out one of those too)
Vader,
and Luke

And for those of you who may think that I shouldn't have given a kid the name Trigger, I quote Juliet from Shakespeare.

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet;
      So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
      Retain that dear perfection which he owes
      Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
      And for that name which is no part of thee
      Take all myself."

(I'm pretty sure she wanted Romeo to change his name to Trigger too. That name is way cooler than Romeo)
(Also, I apologize for calling boys named Lance "Pretty")

Learning Curves

2009-09-03T04:02:00.001-07:00

So, I got an email from a guy at China Horizons (the group that set me up at my school) and he wanted to make a newsletter and asked me to write about something significant that had happened to me in China. So I wrote this.

So the first day I taught an English class in China things had worked out in such a way that I only had to teach one class (That'll never happen again). So I head for my class and I'm feeling pretty confident, I mean, how hard can it be to teach my native language right? Wrong. I got to class and got started and for the most part, those kids caught maybe 20 or 30% percent of my lesson. I figured I had landed somewhere between "These kids don't understand enough English to learn" and "I have zero English teaching skills". I consider that first lesson to be a dismal failure. Probably one of the bigger failures in the last few years. I went home and sat on my couch and zoned into what I call "Sam mode," where there is no interaction, only deep thought and all I could think about was how if my teaching level was where I thought it was (Level 0), and if all my classes are like this one, then my time in China is going to be pretty rough. So I decided it was time to ramp up my learning curve. I started plowing into this book I bought about how to teach english as a second language and was surprised at how much I could learn in a short amount of time. Now most of my classes have actually been amazing. I love these kids and am impressed with how much English they know, but that first day really spurred me into a different mindset while I'm here. I want to improve myself now and give these kids everything I can in the little time I have with them, and now that I feel that way I can recognize significant development in myself even in the last few days.
Now during the first week at Yongzhou #1 middleschool, I gave each class I taught some class rules and one of the rules I gave to them was, "It is good to make mistakes." I made them all repeat it and explain it to me to make sure they understood. About my third day I asked why it is important to make mistakes (ask this every class). One of my students gave me an answer that dropped my jaw. He said, "Failure is the mother of success" (in English). I have no idea where that proverb comes from, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that this was true for my students AND for me.
To make a long story short (too late I know), China has been a paradigm shift for me. I'm usually the kind of kid who won't try until he knows he can kick butt. But, failure is the mother of success. So just like I want my kids to try english and make mistakes, I will study and then do the same. I will try, and I will make mistakes and learn. I'll do this when I teach, and when I speak Chinese, and in a lot of other areas of my life. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy here.

I'm going to try to put up another post tomorrow. Hopefully I can pull off adding pictures
Thanks again for the emails. You guys are great.
If the last two sentences make you feel guilty, here is my email address.
Gadiandi@gmail.com
=)

Yongzhou - Home Sweet Home

2009-08-27T18:54:00.001-07:00

So on Wednesday the guys from my school came and picked and Jason and Brook (the other teachers working at my school) from Changsha. Of course it was about a 4-5 hour drive so when they got to Changsha they wanted to take a break for a while before we hit the road again. They fed us lunch, which was really nice of them, and then they took us out to the car they drove up, which was big enough to seat three people, but not big enough for the luggage that three people brought (not a huge car). So they asked us if they could take our luggage to the train station and send it down that way while we drove. Not a big deal, except that we didn't know when we'd get the bags back and we didn't have any other clothes because they were in our bags, and we took our valuables with us so they wouldn't get stolen on the train. So I went about two days in the same clothes, kind of fun. I have this idea about adventure that makes everything more fun and less painful, so it actually didn't bother me too much.

Once we got to Yongzhou that night they took us to a banquet where they fed us again (they treat us really well, especially for China) and we ate more wierd stuff. Here's a list of the crazy stuff I've eaten in the last 72 hours.

Pig's ear (actually really disgusting)
Pig intestine (You can bet I didn't know what that was until after I ate it, actually wasn't that bad)
Honey Bee Larvae (as in thoroughly cooked maggots, Slimy, yet satisfying)
Chicken Foot
Pickled radish (If you like pickled stuff, it's great)
and a bunch of other stuff which I probably will never know what it was

Overall, this is turning into quite the adventure. I'm really happy about it. At the dinner we had when we got to Yongzhou, we met a guy named Lucas (I don't know what his Chinese name is) who was really awesome. He toasted us quite a bit at dinner and drank quite a bit. He kept trying to offer us whatever it was, (it was like a chinese whiskey, he told us it was 58% alcohol) and told me that I was a sissy for drinking juice when he toasted us, and that he was a real man. It was actually really funny, and then at the end of the night he rejoiced that we're colleagues. At that dinner, it kind of started to hit me that I've really gotten myself into something deep here, but the more I think about it, the more excited I get.

Yesterday morning after we settled in (I live in this sweet apartment, that's bigger than anything I had at BYU, even if it's a little different) Lucas took us around the town to show us where everything is and how to get around. And it was crazy. There's loads of people on the street here selling their wares. Most of the people selling on the street are selling food. You can go buy meat, fruits and veggies, and live chickens and frogs (all for consumption). As for the neighborhoods we drove through, it's pretty crazy. It's kind of this third world meets first world type of thing. The last bus I rode yesterday was really dirty and dingy, but it had a nice LCD screen mounted above the driver so you could watch commercials while he drove. The neighborhoods we drove through ranged from nice city to really 3rd world huts and alleys and everything in between. In the middle class part of town you can walk by a nice fast food place that's right next to a really dirty empty space that used to be a store, but looks like the building caved in. you can drive on the main street with the buses and the scooters and theirs the occasional guy pulling a wooden cart by himself ON THE ROAD. It's really kind of an amazing place. Now that I'm a little more situated, I'll start taking and posting more pictures.

Anyways, I love this place. I start teaching school on Tuesday (which I think is when a lot of schools start teaching in the states too) and more posts to come.

Thanks again for all the emails. I love to hear from everyone.

Ride the Train

2009-08-25T01:38:00.001-07:00

I finally left Beijing yesterday afternoon after eating the best noodles in my entire life. We went to the forbidden city in the morning, which is huge. It's where the emperor lived with the government officials and his eunuchs and concubines. (I always marvel at how rich people get in a caste system) It's really beautiful and really exotic and it's right outside tiananmen square.Tiananmen square is gigantic. It's basically a huge courtyard the size of several football fields and it's right at the entrance to the forbidden city. As you enter the forbidden city there is a series of gates or buildings you walk through. The first one is called Tiananmen
tian=heaven
an=peace
men=gate
Tiananmen = Gate of Heavenly peace

and on that gate is a giant picture of Mao Zedong, who Chinese people for the most part love. In the middle of Tiananmen square is a mousoleum that has Mao's body preserved inside. Yay. You can go look at it, but it was closed the day we went. Darn. Really interesting place. Anyways, after we left the forbidden city we were going to go to the zoo, but we never made it. We got hungry and ate at this hole in the wall place down some series of alleys. I wanted fried rice, but the guy I was with ordered noodles, turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. My noodles had tomato and egg inside and some type of leak, and it was awesome. A lot of the food here doesn't need sugar, it's so different, but it still tastes delicious. Anyways, hooray food, moving on.

Last night we got on a train called a sleeper train. You basically get on at night, hop in a bunk bed, go to sleep, and then wake up in the morning in a different province. We ended up on a really nice train, it was tight for space, but not as tight as the lower class trains. We had four bunks in our room. Had it been the middle class train (which is what our program director was hoping for) we would have had six bunks in a room, and had it been the low class train, it would have probably been a reality check for me. It's funny how big a difference there is in standard of living. I've heard that people don't need much to be happy though. I guess I'll find out soon since Hunan is supposed to be one of the least developed provinces, so I'm sure I'll get a chance to see a lot of things up close.

I had my final debriefing today about how to teach English and the kinds of things I'll have to work with culturally and overall. I'm sure I'll have a lot of things to blog about. Tomorrow morning I'll get picked up and taken from here in Changsha to Yongzhou which is where my middle school is.

For now this is kind of a travel log. Sorry about that, but It'll be more cultural the longer I'm here.

Once again, thanks for the emails. It's really nice to hear from everyone. If you have skype let me know so I can put your name in. Here's my email one more time gadiandi@gmail.com, I'd love to hear from you.

Sam, China - China, Sam

2009-08-22T02:59:00.001-07:00

I have had a heck of an introduction to China this week. It's been awesome. I have never had so many new smells at once in my entire life. I don't even know how to describe most of them, and some of them I don't even want to remember. I've never been personally acquainted with a squat toilet before, and I've never been to a place where people are more than willing, they want you to barter with them. I have no idea what constitutes about 90% of my food, and I understand about 1/100,000 of what I hear going on around me. It's pretty fantastic. For all the stuff I don't understand, I feel comfortable and welcome here.

I went a saw a few things in the last couple days. I can't post pictures, cause I'm on a computer in a hostel and not my own, but I'll do what I can when I get to my own apartment next week. I saw the temple of heaven today. It was the place the emperor used to go offer a sacrifice every year. It smacks a lot of things that were close to me in symbolism and in architecture. There were layers of three everywhere. Most of them were show by a progression from clouds (things in the heavens) to the pheonix, which is a symbol used for longevity and health, and also for the empress, to the dragon, the symbol for power and for the emperor. Really amazing. I also saw a big group of old people slow-dancing in a park close to there. I don't care what culture I see that in, it always makes me really happy.

I also went to a big pearl market where they sell knockoff everything, and it was pretty crazy. They yell at you as you walk by and some will literally try to grab your elbows and walk you to their stall, where they'll try to sell you whatever they can for usually more than 6 times their lowest price. I bartered with one girl for about 20 minutes and got her down to about a third of her original price and when I settled there she was so happy she hugged me. (She also kept asking if I had a girlfriend, to which I could only tell her I was going to wait till I got back to America.) (Which I am)

We saw the great wall yesterday, and holy cow. That's an amazing place to go if any of you get a chance. It's pretty crazy. Mostly because it's all stairs. Best workout I've had in weeks.

Well, stay tuned folks. I'd really love to hear from you because I'm posting this from my email, and it'd be really nice to know if it was working.
Gadiandi@gmail.com

Vancouver

2009-08-19T11:06:00.001-07:00

Short update for those of you who were hoping to hear from me so soon. (That's ok if you number in the negatives)
I'm feeling better, but still praying I won't get quarantined for a week (which is what they do if you arrive in China and they think you have the swine flu, and no, I don't have the swine flu). And for the fact that I didn't sleep much last night, I'm actually doing really well. Still safe. Still fairly coherent.

3 things before I jet
1. China isn't allowing facebook or blogger right now, but I can update my blog through emails, so that shouldn't be a big deal. Skype DOES work. I do expect to hear from people, and my skype name is "GadiandiSun" in case anyone missed it.

2. I had a revelation at 5:30 this morning. I was trying to fall asleep while a small child was intermittently yelling. This child was also sitting RIGHT next to us. I don't know how kids get that loud, but it was pretty intense for us when we hadn't slept for a good 24 hours. (it was really tough to sleep over night in airport, didn't work out too well). Anyways the child screamed once more right into the ear of a friend of mine (who was innocently sleeping up to that point) and it set the wheels in my head spinning. My friend had talked about how she didn't really like small children, but having several loveable nieces and nephews my mind started to discover a way to reconcile her feelings for kids. My thought process kind of went like htis.
A. I wished Children had a volume control nob......
B. If I could invent one of those, I would be rich!......
C. Dang it!
D. Some one did invent that already, it's called a pacifier
E. Wait a minute..... ( and this was the moment of truth for me) maybe it's not called a pacifier because it pacifies children, maybe it's called that because it pacifies adults....

3. I love how easy it is to make friends when the time is right. I seriously met four awesome people last night whilc trying to sleep in San Francisco Airport. One was this Indian family from Canada, who ended up giving us free breakfast vouchers, and the last was a guy named Peter who played cards with us for an hour. And literally all i did was say Hi how ya doin and I ended up spending at least 2 hours with each.

You guys are great. I'd love to hear from anyone when they get a chance. Even if I left yesterday - if this blog is only one way for the whole time I'm gone I'll be really disappointed. (Guilty prod for the future)

New Horizons

2009-08-07T00:34:00.001-07:00

Ok guys. Yep. I've officially started a blog. Part of this is so that I don't have to write what happened to me like 15 times to all my friends every week (as if I'm that popular), and the other part is that I think this could serve as one of the records of my trip for when I return. So this is for you, but it's mostly for me. :)

So I'm moving to China and it's going to be AWESOME. Ever since I came to school I always had a reason to stay in Utah until one day recently, I didn't. It's actually that simple, and when that day came, everything sort of fell into place so that I could leave. Even my own mother thought if I was going to do something like this, now would be the time. I finished college, I'm single, and I'm not locked into a full time job yet (which I hope to be when I get back). So I applied to this group that sets people up to teach English in Mainland China and I got accepted. I leave on the 18th of August and I'll be gone for almost a year. I bought Rosetta Stone so I can learn Chinese while I'm over there, that way when I get discouraged from trying to communicate with people I can go learn Chinese on a computer and still feel good about myself. I bought a teaching English as a second language text book, and I'm pretty ready to rock house.

I graduate from college with my masters degree from BYU next week and a few days later I fly to China. Most of the posts from here on out will be a catalog of my travels in China and beyond. At least until a get back.

A few random thoughts:
1. Starting over is a pain (as in moving and/or trying to meeting new people), but I think it's really healthy to step out of your comfort zone every once and a while. Granted, moving to another country is a little more out of someone's comfort zone than normal, but still. I think we were meant to always be expanding in this life. Not just mentally and physically, but socially and spiritually too.

2. Even though something may be right, it can still scare the crap out of me. I wake up in the mornings and my stomach squirms a bit thinking about the fact that I fly to China in less than two weeks. Not because what I'm doing is wrong, but just because it's huge. This happened to me once in the past right before I moved to Australia. That was one of the best things that ever happened to me even though it scared me to death.

3. I think we need to do things to make sure we don't get too comfortable. Moving to China is something that falls in line really well with my life goals, but sometimes I forget where I'm going and I just chill out for a while. If we want to make a difference with our lives, I think we need to constantly think not just about where we want to end up, but also how we're going to get there. I've wanted to learn Chinese for a long time. I've thought a fair bit about how I'd get there and I think that's part of the reason it was so easy to make this decision.

4. Finally, (and this one is random) I think mistakes can be healthy. When we make them, it keeps us on our toes and helps us realize that we need to keep working on who we are.

Anyways, if anyone actually takes the time to read this, you're welcome to read on as much as you want, which is obvious or I wouldn't post it online. Also, let me know if there's anything specific you want me to write about. It might help out a lot in terms of keeping a good record.