1. Humanity, Pt. 1 - October 15, 2010 "We were carrying on our merry way over the pedestrian overpass when out of the corner of my eye I saw them..."
2. Humanity, Pt. 2 - October 16, 2010 "The Bug, eyes wide said, "this is why we are Here...He wanted us to see her tonight!""
3. Humanity, Pt. 3 - October 18, 2010 "I know that there are many more who need help.  But for now, the opportunity to minister to Him exists in little Qian Qian's need...to be His hands and feet...and for His glory alone."
4. Quick update - October 19, 2010 "That is 7 times the cost estimate of yesterday...but translation is a tricky thing...maybe it was 10,000 for only the first surgery...or maybe the doctor today didn't want to bother with a poor woman who couldn't possibly pay?"
5. Looking Ahead - October 21, 2010 "But I see now more clearly...it is an IMPOSSIBLE circumstance.  How could a "median income" family keep their newborn?"
6. Qian Qian's Photo - October 23, 2010 "Two organizations can help us, but Qian Qian and his mother would have to travel several hours away for the first surgery alone (and he will need several over time.)"
7. Qian Qian Update - November 8, 2010 "Now as we are on the verge, Lord willing, of Qian Qian's first surgery, he told me that he sees what is happening as a "God arrangement," too fantastic for coincidence...but a clear indication of a love he believes the world needs."
8. Hospitality - November 13, 2010 "Both Qian Qian and I are known, loved, and He desires our return of wrshp in response to His love."
9. More on Qian - We need some Prayer - November 17, 2010 "no matter what others say...or how Qian Qian's family might act (his Aunt also recently offended the native helpers)...that we're doing this because HE said to...and that it is for Qian Qian...and he is an innocent boy who needs help."
10. Surgery - November 26, 2010 "We are in awe of His mercy and the privilege of watching this healing.  What a beautiful way to remember this Thanksgiving.  We will continue to lift up Qian Qian's family as they begin a new chapter together."
11. It's about people... - November 30, 2010 "I very nearly missed the beauty of getting down on the pavement, of sitting with his mother to hear her story...the deeply spiritual experience of looking into his eyes and seeing my Lrd staring back...inviting me to wrshp him by helping this little one, the least of these...in need."
12. I saw him! - December 1, 2010 "All the way home in the taxi, all I could do was sing praises...the sky was alight with an very unusual sunset...my heart filled to the brim with divine joy...over the horns honking, the radio blaring a Chinese news report, the throngs of people pressing together to get to their homes...I'm pretty sure I could hear the very heartbeat of my Father."
13. Transformation - December 2, 2010 "He was just as darling as I remembered him from the street that night.  He has such personality and was so curious about the foreign woman in his hospital room."
14. Life on the Range - April 7, 2011 "We have good news on the Qian Qian front...looks like in about 3 weeks he'll be traveling with his parents to have his palate surgery!  We've been waiting all winter for him to gain enough weight (now that his lip is closed, it has been much faster) so that he could undergo anesthesia under the hospital protocols."
15. Strengthen your hands - May 19, 2011 "We thought for sure that in 6 months, a normal 14 months old baby (at this point) should have gained weight.  Sadly, we got the call after they had arrived for the pre-op physical that our precious boy had LOST weight in the past 6 months."
16. Qian Qian Update - June 8, 2011 "We have very limited contacts...almost none outside of our city...but here He has brought us a connection that leads to the very village where QQ's family is!  Praise Him. Praise Him, Praise Him."
17. Back at it... - September 3, 2011 "How thrilled we are that we've been privileged to be a tiny part in the Plan for this boy, his family, and his fellow villagers."
18. Encouragement - September 4, 2011 "Then they all hear."
19. Qian Qian - The Next Step - September 28, 2011 "At any rate, he has been gaining (up 1.5 kgs in the past 3 months) and we are setting our sights on November. "

Speaking of horns, I hate walking down Liufang, it’s “the village” just up the street from us. I hate it when I’m walking down the narrow streets and hear a van come down it while s/he’s blaring the horn to let you know that they’re there. It’s LOUD! Try standing at the bus stop and have a bus honk their horn 20m away. That’s even louder!

If there are others with me while crossing the street, I let them take the lead. I still hesitate when they decide to cross but I do my little freak-out skip across the street instead of the calm and collected prance of my neighbour.

I don’t think it’s a China-only thing. When I cross at a crosswalk in Toronto, I still don’t cross if there’s a car that looks like they’re still going 30 km/h and barely slowing down. I wait for them to come to a near stop before I walk out. I’d rather be safe than sorry. I can’t assume that they noticed the blinking crosswalk lights with all the distractions in cars.

This week, I’m working on a project for my students. Little paper craft houses for our little town. I’m glad I have a small class just finishing up the last few and then I’m off to bed. Anyone want to purchase property in our little town of 12? Contact Karen Realty, you know where to find me.

Today, I went to extend my resident permit. I was going with someone from HR and two other people that needed to renew their permits, too. I felt like I was doing something wrong by putting on my seat belt when I sat down in the van but I can’t help from doing it. I’ve been in a few accidents, one of them in China, so I understand how precious the seat belt really is. I feel like I should stop wearing it so I don’t offend the drivers but Wuhan driving is kind of crazy sometimes.

We have school buses that drive students home after school. The buses are supervised by two teachers. I had to take over someone on Friday. I love the driver, he’s an awesome guy, but I get scared when I’m in the bus sometimes. I don’t know exactly how fast he was going but it felt like 80 kph because it sounded like the bus was working pretty hard but maybe it was only 60 kph. We’d hit bumps on the road and I’d fly half a feet into the air. I would flinch whenever he braked hard to avoid the vehicle in front of him or the person that was jaywalking across the street.

As I am tired, I am going to stop right here and go to bed. Good night. :p

My luggage is checked. I head to the waiting area but remember that I have a bottle of grapefruit juice in my bag. I sit down and finish my drink while listening to some music playing on someone’s laptop and watching whatever is playing on the huge monitor in front of me–it looks like some Victoria Secret fashion show of Santa lingerie. All done. I find myself a recycling bin and head to the “Safety Check Area.” No liquids? Check. No lighters? Check. Some man is boarding in 10 minutes, I let him go ahead of me. Carry-on scan time! “I have a laptop.” “Okay, take it out, please.” I walk through the detector, green light, I’m clear. I don’t have to take off my shoes this time because I’m wearing my Crocs. I pack up my laptop and head to the departure gate. I set up shop a couple rows from my departure gate. I’m in denial and think that Wuhan has turned to the light and decided to offer free Internet at their airport. No luck. The only unsecured wireless network is China Mobile’s and they require a CMCC account. It’s about 08:30 and my flight isn’t scheduled to take off until 10:20 so I end up listening to music until about 09:30. I look at the monitor above my departure gate: “ETD 11:50″ Delayed 1h20m! Fine. Listen to more music, stand up and stretch a million times, open up a bag of Chinese chip-style rice-cake-like snack to nibble on because I’m getting hungry.

I see the plane! Time to pack up and sit and twiddle my thumbs while all the passengers get off the plane and we can finally board the plane. There’s the announcement. China Eastern Airline cardholders get priority boarding. Okay, twiddle my thumbs a little longer. There’s only two people left in the line, my turn. Seat 19A. Window seat! 19B is empty, yes! I pick up the safety booklet (because you’re suppose to review it every time you get on a plane!) and read it through. I chuckle at the baby doll a woman is holding and the photoshopped water to show how to use the seat as a floatation device. We sit around for a while and we hear an announcement on the loudspeaker. Due to poor weather conditions en route to Shanghai, the flight has been delayed indefinitely. I shuffle through the 3-4 publications in the seat pocket in front of me. Oooh, Shanghai Expo 2010. It’s in Chinese and English. A little while after, they tell us they’re going to start serving lunch. The flight attendants serve the back 3 rows when another announcement is made. It looks like the weather en route to Shanghai has cleared up, we’re taking off in 5 minutes. Lunch is on hold, time to prepare for take off. *rumble* That’s the engines warming up. I look out the window. The wing flaps are adjusting, we’re almost ready to go! The plane heads to the runway. We’re on standby for, what feels like, 10 minutes. I nod off. I wake up to the plane moving. Finally, we’re taking off! As we rise higher and higher, Wuhan slowly grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears below us as we enter a fog of white clouds. That’s all we see for the rest of the flight. We hit a bit of turbulence once we get into the clouds but it only lasts about a minute before it calms down.

We’re almost at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, we hit some more turbulence that feels like the drops on the Mindbuster. About 5 minutes before the announcement to land comes on, we change elevations and my right ear doesn’t find it’s equilibrium even after trying to swallow 20 times. It slowly starts to feel like my brain is being pulled out from my ear and I have this ache all along the right side of my head. Is this what a migraine feels like? The ache doesn’t go away until we’ve landed and we’re rolling into the passenger drop off. The pain is gone! My ear drum isn’t going to explode! *cheer* Arrival time, 13:40.

I get out of the plane and walk down the metal stairs that don’t have coloured strips to tell you where the next step is. I took care, didn’t stumble and didn’t look like a klutz. I boarded the shuttle that drops us off at the domestic arrivals door. I’m one of the lasts, so I squeeze in. Some girl doesn’t take off her backpack and ends up taking up blocking my only path to go further into the shuttle to make room for more people. I end up squishing between the backpack girl, some 50-year-old Japanese guy and a 60-year-old Chinese lady. I can reach the overhead handle, I feel gigantic! My arms start to give because I’m holding my carry-ons in one hand but we’re almost there! Must… hold… on. I make it! We walk through the domestic arrivals door and I’m heading the pack. Baggage claim, up the escalators. The escalators aren’t turned on yet. Incentive to walk the stairs! Halfway up the stairs, the PVG employee gets to the escalator and turns it on.

I follow a series of signs and head down another flight of stairs and I arrive at baggage claim. Monitor says we can find our luggage on belt 2, to my left. I pick up a trolley and head to belt 2. First one there. At the start of the belt. Baggage starts to roll out. A total of one bag in first/business class. o.O Roll, roll, roll. Not mine, not mine, not mine. Of course, first to check in, last to get her luggage, as always.
I walk to the exit and they check to make sure I didn’t take someone else’s luggage by checking my luggage receipts. Right, you’re not an idiot, you can go through. First stop, SPD bank machine. Withdraw some cash and head to currency exchange. They sell Canadian in Terminal 1, yes! I get my cash and head to Terminal 2. Terminal 2 is packed, a flight just arrived and people were streaming out of departures and clogging up the hallway. It just so happens that my destination is on the other side of the crowd. I make my way through the crowd and get to my destination, the “Cash Recycling” machine, also known as the ATM. I pull out more money. There’s maximum withdrawals per transaction. I didn’t want to stand at one machine putting my card in multiple times, so I just go around to different machines–strange, I know. The guy behind me is a foreigner too. At first, he walked past the machine not realizing that “cash recycling” meant ATM before the security pointed him in the right direction. I mean, duh, who doesn’t know “cash recycling” means ATM, right? *boggle*

I have nothing else to do so I head to check-in. They tell me my flight has been delayed five hours. “Would you like another flight that connects through Vancouver?” The first and last time I connected through Vancouver I missed my connecting flight because Customs took to long. “Mmm… no thank you, I’ll wait.” Oh, I get a 70 RMB coupon for food, valid in any Terminal 2 restaurant. Score! I can’t find a vegan option anywhere and I’m starving! I didn’t have breakfast. I pick coffee with 3 packs of brown sugar and noodles in soup with seafood. It seemed like it had the least animal product in it, but, in fact, it came with half a boiled egg as well as two pieces of fish- or shrimp-meat chunks. It came with pink kimchi too!

I spend the remaining 7 hours of my wait at gate D75 surfing the web and dealing with tax stuff for my last two months of salary. Shanghai is awesome enough to offer free wireless or at least someone named “spia-guest” gives us free wireless. Since my last visit, they’ve added little outlet hubs with universal plugs where people can plug in their laptops or other electronic devices so they can burn energy while they wait. I used to use the plugs in the floor that no one seems to know about.

Everyone at school wears them, so I’m just jumping on the band wagon 10 months late at the school and 4 years late in the world. I bought a full-back version of the Malindi and an Audrey. I don’t like the bow on the Audrey much but I was there and I was buying one anyways and they were going to be indoor shoes so it didn’t really matter that much. I like the Olivia but the huge faux-gem kind of irked me so I put it back on the shelf. I spent 428 CNY for both, which according to the website and today’s exchange rate and taking into account Ontario taxes, I’m paying the same price. They’re kind of comfy. I’m just not fond of the plastic-on-skin noises if I’m not wearing socks. Some of their styles are cute but others are really tacky. You win some, you lose some.

You gotta love sleepless blog posts.

The Guānggǔ Music Festival is a televised event in Wuhan. I’m not sure about the rest of China. It seemed like a big thing. The production had stage monitors, fancy-shmancy lighting, pyrotechnics like fireworks and flamethrowers, smoke machines, bubble machines, and exploding containers of gold paper that would shower the stage. They were passing out signs for the audience to hold up to the cameras when it passed by and whistles and glow sticks and colourful lightsabers. They cued fake applause, cheers and whistles. The works! It was pretty cool to see it all first hand.

I haven’t been able to find any articles on last night’s show yet, but here is the old one.

“光谷音乐节” on 武汉晚报 (May 24, 2009) (*.pdf) You can read the article in shoddy English here.

We don’t have a 4-day weekend, but we still have time to travel. Some of the teachers and I are going to head to Hángzhōu (杭州) to do the tourist thing. I really don’t know what we’re doing when we get there, but they have it all planned. We’re taking off by plane tomorrow after work and then coming back by train Saturday morning, just in time for the music festival. I did some digging around and Hángzhōu happens to be the home of the Lóngjǐng tea or Dragonwell tea (龙井茶). I’ll have to buy myself some of that. It looks like it will cost me about ¥300/box. o.O

Every Monday, we have flag ceremony in the morning instead of homeroom. After standing at attention for the Chinese national anthem a student stands under the flag and says a speech about a relevant topic for the week. This Monday, it was the Dragonboat Festival. Crystal talked about the best-known origins of the festival, the story of Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan was a scholar and a minister to the King from the Southern Chu during the Warring States Periods. The King from the Southern Chu allied with a stronger state. Qu opposed the alliance and was banished and accused of treason. Years later, the alliance state conquered the Chu capital. After this news, Qu committed suicide on the fifth day of the fifth month by drowning himself in the Mìluó River (汨罗江).

The story says that locals that admired Qu Yuan tried to retrieve his body from the river by paddling out on boats. This is said to be the origin of the dragonboats. In hopes to stop the fish from feeding on his body, the locals threw rice into the river to feed the fish. This is said to be the origin of the rice dumpling, zòngzi (粽子) that is commonly eaten during the festival. I have some in my fridge right now. They’re so teeny tiny and cute.

We find out over the weekend that the judges have selected 3 performances from our school. Now, we have to prep for the big show on Saturday because there’s a ¥5000 prize money for the first-place performance!