Peak shots-- Why we're here

Last Tuesday night, our group took a group of Mainland students from Poly U up to The Peak.

The Peak is a super high mountain on Hong Kong Island (the lower part of Hong Kong) that has a great lookout point from which you can see most of the city and beautiful Victoria Harbor (or, I guess it would be Harbour, since this was a British colony). We had a blast! You can kinda tell from the pictures how breathtaking the view is. When you see it in person, though, it really does something inside of you, deep in your spirit. It reminds me of how small I am, how creative and huge God is, how vast this city is. I'm so glad I got to share this experience with our new friends.

Polo, Chris, Justin, Joe, Alex--I'm so thankful for each of you and for our new friendship! You guys make life here so sweet and rich. I'm so glad I know you. I look forward to all the memories like this that we'll make over the next year or two. You guys are the best!

Here are the pictures:

1) Arguably the best group shot since we've been in Hong Kong

2) Me, and (from left) Justin, Joe (can't see him that well), Polo, and Chris

3) I like this one. Someone yelled, "Crazy pose!" and I think that only about 5 of us actually did a crazy pose. Me, Zach Benson, Mary, Katie, Jason. The rest of you just smiled normally. Thanks. Now we just look silly. :)

Take note--->

I've installed my twitter account to feed directly into my blog.

Because I'm busy working through some ESL curriculum development, I haven't blogged in a while. But you can check my twitter feed either here or on facebook (or through twitter if you've crossed over and have a twitterID).

I update twitter much more regularly than I do my blog.

Just wanted to make you guys aware.

Dinner

Last night I was invited to eat at the apartment of my good friend Polo. My friends Chris and Joe were there with me. They are all mainland students who are studying at Polytechnic University here in Hong Kong. The three of them hosted me for a "traditional Chinese dinner." I met Joe at Hung Hom MTR (subway) station and we walked to Polo's apartment about a half-mile away. I was met at the door by Chris and Polo with hugs and a tall glass of water.

I asked if I could do anything to help.

No. Of course not. You're our guest.

Polo and Chris and Joe took turns in the kitchen, each cooking a different dish. I sat on the couch and enjoyed great conversation (with Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" on in the background, I should add) as these three culinary studs took turns cooking a feast.

And it was definitely a feast.

Joe's contribution: Fried eggplant (delicious).

Chris's contribution: A dish that had eggs and shrimp (delicious).

Polo's contribution: A dish that had potatoes and carrots in a delicious sauce (delicious).

Did I mention it was delicious?

Additionally, they made rice and had some duck (yes, duck!) and fish from the store.

I liked the three homemade dishes best, even though the fish and duck were good. But man, those guys can cook!

We laughed for several hours and talked about school and girls and video games and Christianity and future jobs and languages and traveling and all sorts of things.

I am so grateful for these guys. Wow.

Thanks, Polo, Chris, and Joe for a wonderful night. You guys are the best. I feel very at home when we are together. Thank you for making me feel welcomed and for being my friends.

(Oh, and if you guys don't know what it meant when I said you are "culinary studs," it just means you are really awesome guys and you can cook super well!)

Catching up

It's saturday morning and i'm lazy. Nothing on the plate for today (a great thing!), and it's as good a time as ever to try to write (and finish) a blog.

Sorry I haven't written much lately. You know how sometimes you go through a time where you're working through some issues and it kinda consumes most of your emotional/spiritual energy? Yeah. That's been here recently for me.

But, I don't want to neglect writing on the blog. And even though I haven't been writing, that's not to say I haven't been looking around for things to blog about. I have.

Here's another top ten:

1. Dinner with some friends. Polo, Vincent, Claudia, Joe, and Justin, our new mainland friends from Polytechnic University in Hung Hom, came out with five members of our team to try their first ever "breakfast for dinner" meal the other night. We took them to the Flying Pan restaurant (more on the name in a little bit), a place that specializes in omelettes. We've been hanging out with these guys (and their friend Chris!) a lot these past few weeks. It's been such a joy getting to know them and hear their stories. You guys are awesome!

2. The Flying Pan. Obviously, this is a play on "frying pan" and the Chinese inability to distinguish correctly between the letters L and R. That's why you have "flied lice" and why Malorie is constantly called "Marorie" here. And why words like syllable and possible are sometimes pronounced syllabrr and possibrr. Which provides a nice transition into point 3...

3. English as a second language. i'm working right now (and have been for the past month) on developing an English as a Second Language course for Mandarin students. It's been super interesting to study the differences between Mandarin and English morphology (how words acquire meaning) and phonology (how the sounds of a language are formed). Like, for instance, did you know that the X sound in chinese is formed by curling your tongue backwards towards the back of your throat and blowing air forwards like you would for an S? We never curl our tongues backwards in English. And they never put their tongues between their teeth (like we would for th sounds). And they would never comment on men and "their cologne." They would say "the cologne of the pronoun masculine plural." They have a word to denote tense, gender, number, and the like. So these are just a FEW of the many differences I'm trying to address. I'll blog more in detail about English program stuff in the future. But it's exciting!

4. Some pictures.

For all the UGA fans back home, I came across this rugby bulldog.

A cool opportunity you don't see in America. Coming to a mall near us.

A Chinese advertisement in the middle of a mall. Way cooler than American signs.

Zach Furr at the lookout point on top of Chinese University.

Public transportation. Always crowded.

5. Food. It's getting better as I know what to get/ not to get. One of our favorite restaurants is a place called Tommy's. Not because it's called tommy's. But because it's completely chinese and the only guy who speaks english is a guy named tommy. So he helps us order and in thanks, we named the restaurant after him. not sure what it is in cantonese.

Anyway, sometimes Tommy isn't there. And that's where our handy dandy iphones come in. I sometimes have to google green beans and pork or fried/steamed rice and show them the pictures. This one, though, is a pork and peppers dish. And because they have several dishes that have pork and peppers, we had the waiter write down the dish in Chinese characters. I took a picture, and whenever we go I just pull up my photo library and show them this:

In addition to Tommy's, we are trying other things. Me and Furr and Benson and our friends Chris and Polo went out to a restaurant the other day. Benson's was served in a piece of bamboo:
6. Team dinners. I love Thursday nights. Matt and April prepare a feast for us and we spend the evening eating/laughing/playing games and wrestling with Josh and Caleb/and watching the Office. Matt downloads the episodes off iTunes and we set up a projector and speakers and gather around and watch the previous week's episodes together. I think Jason's laugh is one of my favorite things in life. He laughs harder than anyone I know. I think if I ever get depressed again, I'll tell jokes to Jason or just watch some funny movies with him and it'll likely make me feel better.

7. "A community of gratitude". April and Josh and Caleb prepared notebooks for each of the team members the other day. (I say "prepared"--April bought little 4x6 notebooks and Josh and Caleb stuck superman/power rangers stickers on the guys' books and princess pictures on the girls'. They are adorable.)

April challenged us to journal reasons we are thankful over the next month and a half until thanksgiving, just as a simple way to be meditating on the things God has done/is doing for us. The assignment? 1000 reasons we are thankful. (That's about 30 a day, give or take). I am excited! I have started carrying it around with me and so far my entries range from stuff like "I'm thankful that God spoke to me this morning through Psalm 16" to "I'm thankful for iTunes movie rentals on a Friday night when I'm kinda bored."

8. Growing ministry. We are entering relationships with people in our neighborhood. With people from Polytechnic U and City U and Hong Kong U. With people on basketball courts and soccer pitches and behind counters at starbucks. With people at our church (Island Evangelical Christian Church ) and at the chinese church where we help out with an English language program (Yan Fook). With the waiters at Tommy's. With my barber, a chinese guy named Henry who speaks great English while giving a great haircut, and his assistant jessica, who gives a great shampoo/head massage afterward. With the security guards who work at our apartment complex. Our prayer is that each of these relationships would continue to get deeper and fuller and that we could show the love of Christ to all these people we have the joy of knowing.

Hope you all are having a great week. My prayers are with you!

Twice.

At two different times I've been sitting in Starbucks writing a blog this past week.

(I'm kind of a blog perfectionist in the sense that it takes me a while to write one. I put a lot of thought into what I want to say. I don't just throw stuff on the blog at random. Contrary to the name, the "ramblings" are often the product of lots of thought and effort...)

The internet here is kinda sketchy. (And when you write a blog it supposedly autosaves every minute or so. --With good internet, that is.)

The thing is, when your internet goes out and you've just spent an hour on the same page writing and then press "submit", everything gets erased. And you realize the autosave feature stopped working about two minutes into your blog when the internet went out and you didn't know it.

(See the picture below for how I look.)

I'm trying to blog about a few things, guys. I promise. But for whatever reason, it doesn't like me this last week and a half or so.

Stay tuned. I'll try to rediscover these lost posts. May take a while.

Whooops...

I had an "uh-oh..." moment today. It looked like this:

That's me accidentally deleting my contact list in my email account. And Ctrl+Z didn't work. I went through my old emails/facebook/etc. to try to reconstruct it as best as I could. But I know it didn't work all the way. I'm missing roughly 15-20 contacts that I had before.

I sent out my first email update letter. If you didn't get it, it's because you probably got deleted. So, if you would like to receive my email updates, please comment on here or send an email to micah@gracecampus.net and let me know that you are one of the victims of my finger clumsiness. Or if you weren't a contact I had and would like to receive them anyway, let me know that too! I'd love to spread the word about what's going on here!

Hope you are having a very merry Autumn Festival weekend (third-biggest Chinese holiday that happened last night...)

Miss you guys!

A random picture of my favorite animal

This dog was just chillin outside a local business. It made me laugh. And it made me miss my lab and boxer back home. Sammy and Casey, we have a wrestling date sometime next spring/summer. You two better get ready: I'm coming for you.