Ok-

I have had a bit of time to think and pray, and feel in a much better mental place to deal with this. It is sunny in Yanji, i have my thesis the-students-celebrate-it-is-over party tonight, and tomorrow i am supposed to have lunch with one of my students, and then MC our English Department Christmas party, which takes a lot of preparation, and i hope, on Saturday evening to meet with some of the Russian students from Yanda. Somewhere in there i need to make a worship set, and have worship practice, because I am leading on Sunday morning.

If i decide to keep pushing ahead with Korea, it may mean some crazyiness, but i could probably take some kind of a vacation in february that would be much closer to home so to speak. Ironically travelling within China would be just as expensive as the trip i had planned to the middle east, which was a really good deal, but it wouldnt be the end of the world- and there may be some possibilities that i could in fact get all of these documents by the start of school in February.

I have realized thought that part of me wants to stay at YUST a lot, to teach the thesis students, and the English Teaching methods class, and the pronunciation class.... To get to know some of the students better who i have built relationships with, especially our YUST russian speakers, who i feel like i have kind of neglected this term. I would love to continue to help Chunhua in her amazing work here.... Maybe i just need to figure out what i want.

God is being good to me, and sifting through many other problems and weaknesses i have, including a) my trouble in saying no to things that are asked of me b) my trouble saying no to one potential life because i want to live both potential lives at the same time... this theme has recurred often in my life...

Thanks for your support and kind words to me... i feel the power of your pr- already

Thor

STUCK~!

So the rug was pulled out from underneath me on Tuesday, as my status here had suggested. On Tuesday, this was the beautiful plan for my life...
A) Go on fun trip to middle east after this term is over and see dear friends the VanSlotens, the Millers, Jerilyn Sambrooke, Ben Post, Jeremy KnappB) Have a great and meaningful job at a great university in Korea and make 30,000$ a year, at least 15,000$ of which i would be able to save to give me a head start for a very comfortable...C) 2009 entry into a PhD program, with plenty of time to apply.

BUT BECAUSE OF ONE SEXUAL PREDATOR MY BEAUTIFUL PLAN IS RUINED!!!

Korea passed a new law which stipulates that all foreigners wanting to teach in Korea must have an FBI background check, as it turned out that there were sexual predators who came into Korea on an ENglish teaching visa. As you know i am living in China now, and I had hoped to do my Korean visa here, before I flew to Turkey on January 3rd. I thought that i had been already hired at Handong, and that the visa process would be a speedily accomplished formality, given the numbers of foreigners who work as English teachers in Korea.
I got an email from Handong on Tuesday, not only informing me of the background check referred to above, but that i actually didn't have the job at Handong.... yet.

It said:
"that you were recommanded as a new faculty member. We're going to do a process for recruitment. I would like you to submit as below,
1. Application Form (refer to the attached file)
2. Original Transcript (Bachelor, Master)
3. Original Diploma (Bachelor, Master) * Your diploma will be return to you when you come to Handong. The diploma is for issuing your visa.
4. Work Experience proofs (Certificate of Experience and employment)
5. List of accomplishment in research activities.
6. Research papers since March 2003, or about three outstanding papers including doctoral thesis within the most recent five years.
7. 11 copies of your photo
8. Carbon copy of your passport
9. Criminal Background Record which is issued by your country"

Well I didn't know that i would have to go through a whole second review and interview process, which at best would be finished by the end of December. Even if I could possibly assemble all these documents to Korea, which would involve:

1.) sending a BA diploma from the US
2) getting MSU to reissue an MA Diploma which I have never seen, sent to my parents, then sent to Korea,
3) getting Work Experience Certificates from Lithuania,
4) sending a list of non-existant research activities, as i have been working at teaching universities,
5) getting what ever a carbon copy of my passport is and
6) convincing some Chinese policeman to notarize my fingerprints, getting it translated into English, and then sent to the FBI to wait 16-18 weeks for processing...

...even if it were humanly possible to get all of this done in the next few weeks, i wold still have to wait for their review process, and that would mean cancelling my trip to the middle east, giving up my position at YUST, all for a job i may not even get, mainly because of a document that may or may not take 16-18 weeks to issue....

So I am left with what i see as two options, which are equally scary...

1) Keep the great trip to the middle east, just stay at YUST, and give up the dream of working at Handong and having a real job for the first time in my life... It makes sense in some ways to finish out the year here. I probably have enough supportleft to do it. But then the question is THEN WHAT?? If i were to aim for an Aug 2008 entry date I would need to get my applications in YESTERDAY, and some of the deadlines have already passed... And instead of having a nice 15,000$ nest egg to start a four-year PhD adventure with- enough to maybe even get a car, i would be starting at a school, with no guarantee of a 4-year assistantship mind you, with a savings account of 0$!!

OR

2) Throw away the trip to the middle east and spend the next two months frantically assembling documents. This would quite probably involve a 1800$ trip to the United States to get a 18$ document from the FBI. However there is no guarantee at all that it would be even possible to be in possession of said document in time for the school year to begin on February 18th. So even though there is a possibility that i would be able to get this great job in Korea, there exists the very real possibility that i would be stuck in the US, with no document, no job in Korea, no longer this great and meaningful job at YUST, no possibility to get a job in the US. I couldn't even live with my parents, because there is no job in Traverse City that I could do, and even if i could find a job i would have no car to get there, and even if i could find some kind of job that i could walk to in some city, i would still have to pay rent somehow to live there. I have unlearned how to live in the United States, and I can't imagine how it would be possible for me to live and work there.

I just feel like Satan is really lying to me- that my skills are unneeded, that my education is all wrong. Several of the universities I applied to in Korea never even got back to me. Maybe my CV is horrible. Everyone says "oh great you know so many languages" but that doesn't help me get a job. WHo needs someone who can speak 6 languages kind of well? better if i spoke two fluently. I just keep picturing myself getting stuck in a dead-end job in America, just to be able to afford the car, which i need to get me to my dead-end job, alone and isolated.
And the annoying thing all this needed to be decided already- every day the plane tickets both to the middle east, and to the united states are getting more expensive. The longer the indecision goes on, the harder it would be to take any of the paths. And noone can give me any clear answers of if it is worth it to keep pursuing the job in Korea, or if it is worth it to try to aim for a Phd start in 2008. But what else would i do? I'm almost 30, and i feel my youth rapidly draining away. I always thought that by this point in my life i would know what the heck i am supposed to be doing when i grow up...

I know i have a lot to be thankful for. I really thank all of the people who have enabled me to be at YUST so far. This semester has been amazing in terms of opportunities. Know that this is written out of the tension and frustration of dealing with all this on top of a SUPER stressfull week of theses and course registration, being sick and sleep-deprived...

I know they say God will make away where the seems to be no way. I just can't see it!!!

Can it be done already? (when its time to stop buying groceries)

I feel like I was just going along normally, and all of a sudden everything became a panic about final exams. How can the end pounce on me so suddenly? So many tests and review guides to create, grades to hand out, old homework to hand back, last meetings with people who are living, attempts to clean up the apartment.

I think my least favorite time in life is the period where it is not worth buying new groceries, as you will be leaving, and you have to creatively use or throw away the perishable goods that you have. The first moment you realize "oh man I have to start using this stuff up", then you know the end (or at least some end) is upon you. Goodbyes, graduations, appreciation dinners, special lectures, no time to appreciate the suddenly gorgeous breezes, as the Siberian winter has slid away into a sticky continental summer.

Will I use the summer well? I hope so! I want to apply to schools and scholarships, to start writing a book maybe, to work hard on Korean, to visit friends and supporters; we'll see how all that pans out.  Whatever happened to the well-rounded, jack-of-all-trades idea man? The capitalist economy doesn't exactly select for people who spend their days pondering about the flaws of Plantegenet England, the mysteries of Korean morphophonology, what exactly Jesus was trying to say with the parable of the day-laborers, what implications quantum mechanics has for postmodern theology, etc.... Oh well, I know Jesus loves me anyway, even if I'm not exactly cut out to be a cog in the great Capitalist machine.

In the meantime, I'll be staring out the window trying to extracate myself from a stack of  files.

Irritations

So next week is the last week of classes, and no joke, LAST NIGHT, i got an email saying that the Chinese government university which runs some of the required classes for YUST students, just CANCELLED our last week of classes!!??? This is the most retarded thing ever. You teachers out there know that- how you can just cancel the last week of classes? The chinese government is SO inefficient about some things. For instance, for the thesis students which I had this semester, i was given forms 2 weeks ago, that were supposed to be filled out retroactively, in triplicate for each student for the entire semester. For each 12 page thesis, 20 pages of detailed forms had to be filled out. I swear it took me longer to check and double check all the paperwork, which of course was written in Chinese, than it took for the students to actually COMPOSE the thesis. And the maddening thing is- it doesn't matter anyway... Noone will read those comments. Noone can read the English anyway, let alone in my handwriting. It just has to be all done so that it LOOKS official, without having any substance. In many ways this country is like that. It doesn't matter what something actually IS, as long as it LOOKS good.

These little frustrations happen every day here. This is a country lurching forward into some kind of a chaotic restructuring, so quickly, that it has no time to catch up with itself. It does get quite frustrating, knowing that nothing at all is known in advance.

Listen to me- I sound like some kind of British colonial complaining about the "natives" and how they could use a good dose of 'civilization'. We humans want to change things overnight, especially when we stare right at something that makes no sense, and we know a better way. Still there are two pieces of wisdom I have to remember in those situations...

1) There is always a reason WHY things are the way they are. Something that appears senseless, usually has a historical reason why it developed the way it did. And there maybe some advantage in this system which "makes no sense", that is hidden to the mind of the foreigner. At least understanding WHY can help one be more patient. This is a country where for thousands of years already, people have gotten used to perhaps well-intentioned but non-practical mandates from arbitrary ruling authorities. That doesn't change in just 60 years.

2) There's a line from the movie "Power of One" I sometimes think of. When one character was frustrated with apartheid, his teacher said "history will prove who was right". The young character said "but history takes too long!". To which the teacher replies "You are correct, but it is never kind to those who try to hurry it."

In many ways I feel like the life of a foreign teacher is steeped in this attempt to try to hurry history along. I felt it at LCC, I feel it at YUST, and it is not all bad. But there have been very few revolutions in history that have actually worked or acheived what they set out to do. I hope I am not becoming cynical, but i guess there is a time to bend, as well as a time to stand up for what makes sense.

I have the sinking feeling that these are important lessons for me to be learning now, as I will need them at some point in the future.

Just the kind of thing that G_d likes to do, when you're not looking. He teaches you some kind of good character-building lesson through hardship. Hmmph... Oh well, thats the kind of G_d He is, and I know I'll probably thank Him for it later...

Impressions of the last week

Walking by Yanbian University and walking into a huge cloud of vanilla-extract-smell. This is entirely curious as there is no bakery anywhere nearby, I have never seen vanilla extract anywhere in Yanji, and it is DEFINITELY a departure from the normal street smells one encounters here.

Saying good bye to a friend Hyunho, a Korean-Chinese who is moving to Japan to start a new life. I realize the chances of me seeing him again are slim. I realized with kind of a sense of tyranny that i now have good friends who live in, permanently,... lets count... 26 countries. No matter where I am in the world, my friends will be perpetually elsewhere. Even if i move to the states, my friends are scattered all over. Homelessness...

Sharing with a guy in my apartment about the Great Hope for us for Salvation, and feeling as if the needed words and analogies were pouring through me, and not from me. Hearing him say at the end, that he had asked many Xn's about this Great Hope, and that this was the first time he ever really got a good answer, that he could believe in. Praise Him

Sitting in a Good Friday service, where the litany was let by a British Anglican, the verse was read by a Korean Russian, the announcements by a French Chinese scholar married to a Jamaican, the closing done by a North Carolina Southern Baptist, as southern as they come, sitting next to my German friend Moritz, and meeting our new French teacher in French from French Guiana, planning with my Korean-Californian friend Jamie how we will say good bye to our Korean-Swiss friend Angela who is moving to Shijiazhuang to study traditional Chinese medicine. Yesterday alone i taught in Russian, had fairly substantial conversations in French and German, had Korean class, joked with Chunhua a bit in Chinese, and of course taught American culture in English...

My American culture lessons this week were on three hefty topics- Mormonism, Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. SOO interesting. At least to me! And a challenge to teach these subjects to students who already have their firm ideas about American foreign intervention in world affairs, and American history. Teaching that class requires more than anything, detachment. I can't love America too much, and I can't be too critical of it. I am thankful for the overseas experience i have had, without which, i don't think i would be in the position to do this well....

Yesterday was one of the longest days of my life, and it was so nice to reward myself at the end with a bit of Brie cheese... from Changchun... acquired only with much ingenuity and luck. I have never thought to praise Him for cheese before until I moved to Yanji. :)

More and more I realize that I am not actually in China. YUST, and the world i find myself in, is so much more a weird mix of Korean, and YUST's own odd culture. If i try to tell anybody when i get back home what "china" is like, don't believe me- I haven't been there :)

I read American short stories every night before I go to bed, trying to inform myself on the breadth and mystery of the American culture, as i am teaching American Culture class. It has been a long time since I have loved literature so much. Funny that i had to move to Yanji to rediscover a fascination for things American....

Just a few random thoughts from a very busy week...

Ok- so i don't know if i did something right, but suddenly I am able to blog again from my own computer. We will see how long this lasts. The only downside is that all of the commands are in Chinese, and the Chinese blogging vocabularly as of yet eludes me. :)

So hopefully i can post on here more often!

Snow- last week i went to church on Sunday, expecting it to be warm (3 degrees) as it had been all week. Upon leavning church we discovered an inch of snow. That kept coming and coming. By Monday a half-meter of snow had fallen. Then a true Siberian wind picked up. I know that technically, geographically, I live in the Siberian climate region, but i had never experienced a cold sustained wind like that one. The blizzard went for two whole days, and the buildings of YUST were humming and resounding like a giant teapot at boil, wind and snow pouring through the cracks of these badly sealed buildings....

Thursday and Friday got warmer again, and today 5 inches of beautiful fresh soft snow have fallen, and everything is back to winter. It doesn't feel like March though- i have experienced so many weird climactic shifts this winter.

One thing i can say- Yanji is going to be a mess when all this coal-dust stained snow melts in a city with extremely pour drainage, and a fine soil that turns into the most gooey sort of mud upon contanct with any sort of moisture.

That's what i have to look forward to, but for now i will enjoy the snow!

Back to China

Well... I'm back in Yanji. I am not sure what classes I am teaching. I don't have the syllabus for the classes, nor my class lists, just borrowed some textbooks that might work. Two of the classes I may have are supposed to meet at the same time. I have no place to plug things in in my office, no internet connection, no printer, a chair that doesn't work, and no clue where to begin.

But, i have a warm little room, and nothing exploded or spoiled or died in my absence. I have a couple friends, other English speakers with whom to communicate, and my schedule is as of yet a blank slate waiting to be filled in.

I have a sunburned nose from Dubai, thoughts of that monstrous palm-treed, freeway-bound city in my head, guobaorou in my stomach, half-filled out applications for jobs and for grad schools on my computer, anxieties about my future, a cool new book about J-s in French which I got at the Frankfurt airport, Deutsche Welle on my TV set, and a resolution that since I can't avoid this coming semester, I am going to push through it and enter into it and be the best witness I can be, and be as faithful as I am able at the tasks that are appointed to me.

De Poort

I have spent the last four days in the Low Countries, staying at the YWAM base in central Amsterdam, hearing amazing teaching, meeting new friends, hanging out and being encouraged by my old friend Emas Gricius, honing my Dutch. I visited my old pastor from Klaipeda, Roy Ball, who now lives with his wife Joke leading an Anglican church in Heiloo, and got to walk through beautiful dunes. I can see why the Dutch moved to West Michigan. Noord Holland looked almost exactly the same as Ottawa county! I got to take a crazy day trip to Brussel, Europe's capital, have deep conversations, go for a bike ride out among the villages along the IJselmeer and just take a long last breath before plunging back towards Asia.

People ask me am I read to go back. Honestly I can say no, not yet. But I suspect that my heart for China is waiting for me in the Yanji airport, ready to be picked back up again, ready to be investing in serving another 4 months. Kind of hesitant about it, but i also know that usually I never want to leave the place where I am. Am bracing myself for what will happen on Friday when i finally land, late at night, to pay 20 Yuan for a taxi back to my cold grey dormitory on the hill overlooking Yanji. Am glad i will have a week before school starts in earnest.

I am very glad i spent this time in Europe. I feel it was well invested mostly. Was not a tourist at all really, but have spent the time pouring into relationships, re-touching-base with many former colleagues, contacts and friends, letting God refine me and bring even more of my sinful nature to the surface where it can get tested and worked on. Pray for me there in China!

Little Blue Book

I have a little blue book, which tells me I am an American. No, that isn't entirely meant, that my passport alone identifies me as an American. I have met many people in my life who have literally grown up in other countries and cultures and the only thing American about them is their passport. This is often the result of America's unique law, that if you are bown on American soil, you become an American citizen.

In fact if there is one thing i HAVE learned in China it is that I am more American there than i have been at any time in my life. In Europe I always felt like i COULD fit in; if i dressed appropriately, refrained from smiling, watched my language, I could probably get away with people not guessing my nationality. But in China there is no hiding the fact of who I am- no possibility of fitting in. Dismaying at first, but in a way very freeing.

So anyways- this little blue book. More than anything else, it has accompanied me on my journeys, since Apr 29, 1999. It is fraying, the picture is bulging out and looks doctored as a result of my passport having been in my pocket in numerable bus journeys, gotten wet in the rain, gone on camping trips, etc... It is chock full of various stamps and visas. It has been appended twice now, and the little book isn't so little anymore, but its also in pretty bad shape. I had trouble leaving both Romania and Poland with it this week.

So I intended to go to Vilnius to get a new passport. The Lithuanian embassy is i think america's most accessible and friendly embassy in the world, and i love doing stuff here. Normally its no problem to get a new pasport. one catch- my chinese visa, which i need to reenter china, is in my old passport. China does not accepted still valid visas in invalid passports- something all the sane countries of the world accept, so naturally China doesn't. So I can't get a new passport, until I get to China.

Getting a new one China not only requires taking up to four days off work, to negotiate the 24 hour train ride to Shenyang for the all of 20 minutes a week that the American embassy is open to the public, but also presents me with another problem. I have to get a new Chinese visa 2 weeks after my arrival in China. Not enough time to get a new passport. And if i get the new visa in my same old passport, then I am stuck again in the same situation- i can't get a new passport without jeopardizing my right to return to China.

So my only hope is for accomodating border guards for the rest of 2007. I will have to some how smile my way along on my old passport until at least July, the first chance I will have of returning to the US, getting a new passport, and if I return to CHina, applying for a Chinese visa, also in the united states, even though it is MUCH more difficult there. I am caught in a teufelskreis that i can't get out of.

So pray for the integrity of my little blue book. It has been a faithful little companion to me :)

Eu nu vorbesc romana....

Right now i am sitting in an internet cafe, in Chisinau, Moldova. Alone. Things aren't so bad really- there is a lot of interest among Moldovan students for LCC, I just heard an amazing band of Moldovan folk music, and ate a really good meal of traditional Moldovan food. Yet I guess the phrase that describes how i feel best right now is "stretched too thin"... I think i have seen and experienced too much in too short of a time, and for one of the few times in my life, I am hit right now by an intense longing for a home. Where would that be? Yanji kind of, but i think i would be lonely there too this time of year. Klaipeda? The closest I have, and in fact it was hard to be ripped away after only a week in Lithuania and after such a warm reception to move on to Romania so quickly. Am glad i have a couple more weeks there! Lansing? Also many people I love there, but all are busy with their own lives, and were I there, i would also be a perpetual 'guest'. Traverse City? I love my parents and the countryside there, but i also don't have a life there. I guess maybe the best we Christians ever are on this earth are 'guests' and 'pilgrims'. a recurring theme on this blog i know....

Romania

Being in Bucuresti, it was a bit hard to believe that it entered the EU already. Seems a bit rushed, but just from outer appearances. The city is pretty haphazard, and i guess it reminded me more of Yerevan than anything else, except without the cafes or the mountains, but replete with many monumental buildings made of a kind of golden stone, thanks to Caecescu and a long tradition before him. I remember always hearing, from way back, stories from Nick and Carissa Minaar about Romania, and it is interesting to have finally seen it. Yes Caecescu's Casa Popului is gigantic, impressive, and a little bit sad when one considers how much it cost the Romanian peasant to build, and also the architechture that was destroyed to make way for the monster. Bulevardul Unirii may have been impressive in communist days, but now with the fountains dry, streets choked with crazy drivers, and random neon signs and billboards of every size and color, there is no word for it but ugly...

Driving across Wallachia, i was amazed at how visible Romanian geography is. there are three main parts, Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia. Wallachia is flat as a pancake and has no trees. So you can basically see all of it at once :) Then to the north are the snow capped tree covered mountains of transylvania. the border couldnt be more obvious. Moldavia (as opposed to Moldova) is made of long parallel valleys, still treeless. Romanian cities look much different than any other communist or eastern european cities i have seen. it is so fascinating how the elements are all the same, yet each former communist country has its own twist.

Entering the Moldovan Republic, after a relatively easy border crossing, the change was noticable, primarily in road quality, but Moldova, even in the dark, was incredibly hilly and covered with alternating thick forests and vineyards. Am very sad i wasn't able to see the countryside during the day! More to come about this trip later.


P.S. if only Korean were as easy to learn as Romanian- a fascinating Romance language with a huge slavic lexical influence (eu citesc = 'I read' treba = 'need'), postpositions borrowed from Turkish (studentul = 'of the student', studentilor = 'of the students'), and interesting high vowels. Also there is a crazy sound correspondence whereby what are velar consonants in most romance languages become labials in Romanian! {lakte(Lat.)=lapte(Rom.), okto(Lat.)=oapte(Rom.)}

2006

2006 began with fireworks over Tuetting and Starnberg on the Starnberger See, surrounded by teenaged campers, with prayer and worship, in southern Germany. 2006 also ended in Germany, surrounded by German teens and 20 somethings on a soggy ridge over looking Wermelskirchen, watching a thousand fireworks, drinking sekt, and praising God for what he is doing in that little German city.

The year began and ended very similarly. How has it changed me?

I have skiied the Austrian Alps

I have stared at the North Atlantic from Europe´s highest cliff in Ireland

I celebrated my birthday with amazing brothers at an Applebee's in Marion Indiana- with as fun a group as can be gathered on this earth

I led a small but very moving Alfa course in Klaipeda

I had all kinds of complicated situations with the opposite sex

I renewed my love of the State of Michigan

I saw the museum of the Armenian Genocide, the museum of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the museum of Georgian History

I ate in a real Irish pub, ate in the back of a little bus in Kazbegi Georgia with a bunch of orthodox teenaged guys, ate in the world's most exclusive shopping center, ate donkey, stingray, and squid on the streets of Yanji

I worshipped God in Korean, in Chinese, in Russian, in Georgian, in German, and in English

I stayed with the Watson´s in Tbilisi, with Jon in Shanghai, with Kathryn in Wuxi, with my parents for two months, in a dorm at IWU, in Nigel´s house in Kill Inney Ireland, in youth hostels, on Jari´s floor in Helsinki, in a tent along the Gauja, in a guesthouse on the island of Hiumaa, in my little room 1303 at YUST, in the Hull´s house in Lansing, at the Brinkmans´in Lansing, in a cabin on Lake Superior, with Doug in Nashville, with Josh in Nashville, on a boat on the gulf of finland.

I presented at a conference in Narva

I taught German, and Thesis, and Linguistics, and English conversation

I started this Blog

I flew to Nashville twice to be in weddings, and discovered a great church there, and was best man for the first time in my life

I had an amazing guy´s small group every thursday in our orange apartment at Janonio 16, with guys from 10 countries

I spoke in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, English, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, French, and Spanish

I went to a Christian rock concert in helsinki, asia´s largest church in tbilisi, and the gigantic TSPM church in Yanji for Christmas

I carved a grapefruit for halloween, managed to find a scrap of turkey for Thanksgiving, watched fireworks over Grand Traverse Bay for the 4th of July, taught at LCC for valentine´s day, gazed at the proud skyscraper´s of beijing for mid-autumn day, had a cozy gathering at the Mueller´s apartment with my friends from YUST and some guests from the Silesian techinical school for Christmas.

I heard amazing teaching at the Exodus Conference, at Miesto Baznycia, at the Brueder Gemeinde in Wermelskirchen...

I have been really shaken to my core, stripped of illusions about myself, thrown into deep culture shock, tried and tested, and come out whole and breathing and living and still trusting God and still making the hard decision to follow him day by day.

I have shared the Good News about Jesus so many times in many different ways, everytime being amazed that i am bold enough to do that, and amazed that people actually are interested to hear about it

I have been blessed incredibly by my God and every person who has made my life possible, tenable, and rich- my family, my friends, my many supporters , my colleagues at LCC and at YUST...

Thank you LoRD for 2006... May i burn up for your glory as the Piper-lovers say, in the year 2007. Who knows what this year will bring? Bog ego znajet!

Wirtschaftswunder

Have you ever seen the movie Auberge Espagnol? I know i wrote about it on here once, but i recommend it. Right now i am sitting in the Schmittman Kolleg- what we in the US would call a CO-OP affilitiated with the university of köln. It was 10 degrees today (ive even lost track of how much that would be in fahrenheit- i pretty much think in Celsius now), and me and my friend Kai went to the museum of the history of the federal republic of Germany today. It was so interesting to see how Germany went from the bombed out ruin of WWII to the modern society it is today- a country that i love, and that seems to be to me in no way connected to those old movies and war doceumentaries i see. I just can't grasp that this is the same country that in those old films cheered on Hitler in throngs.

I have been really struck by the affluence and efficiency of Germany. I should have expected that I know, but it really seemed like the trip i took to get here was from one world to another. It just seems impossible to believe that i could set out from Yanji westward and end up in the Bergisches Land, with its beautiful streets, rolling lush green hillsides, slated-walled houses, cafes, konditereis, modern schools, order, peace, quite, affluence, tolerance, freedom, harmony. You can get to all those things just by driving? It really seemes to me like my plane trip must have been from one planet to another, instead of just around our little globe.

Even the crass excesses and contrasts and luxury of Dubai felt like a completely other world. The desert, the wealth, the bravado, the striving for ever more luxury, that felt foreign to me, although in some ways it felt much more like China- a country where the attempts to outdo and impress with overstated architecture are everywhere. One thing that really hit me about Dubai was that it is really a pan-asian city. No one group predominates. There are Filipinos, Malays, Chinese, Pakistanis, Dravidians, Hindis, Koreans, Russian Central Asians, Europeans, every shade of Asian, all speaking English in its various beautiful forms, all come together in a brand new city built out of nothing in the Arabian desert. I don't think any city in the world demonstrates the true heart and future of the English like Dubai does. English is the language of Asia, of Asians, accepted and transformed by them. It is only a matter of time before English ceases to be thought of as a European language, or even an American one. There are twice as many English speakers by some estimates in Asia as there are in the United States.

My good friend Mike, with whom I teach in China, is a big documentary fan, as am I, and in between our exam giving, exam grading, goodbye parties, Bible studies, etc... we watched several episodes of this gigantic 50 hour documentary on WWII. It has really struck me in the last few days how the world has changed since my grandfather fought in that war. The Germany today would be unrecognizable to Nazis- a multicultural bed of postmodernism and tolerance, the heart of the new enlarged multicultural EU. Where 60 years ago i might have had to stare at all these young Germans that i have been visiting and spending time with down the barrel of a gun, now i can hear their stories, play poker with them, worship Jesus with them, pray with them, play with them, love them and be loved by them. Mao TseTung is surely rolling in his grave as the capitalist paradises of Wangfujing in Beijing ring up their yuans in designer Armani boutiques with Haagen Dazs and Pizza Hut. The once grandiose Tiananmen square now feels outdated ugly and rundown, surprisingly devoid of traffic, in contrast with the new mgea skyscrapers and frenzied business of the new centers of that great economic giant. The Great Hall of the People, rather than impressing, just makes one feel sad and used and tired. The Arab world- in the time of those documentaries a backwater of sheikdoms and baksheesh is now the heart of a brand new economic boom, transforming all of Asia and calling the Asians to itself. THe prospect for Islam has never looked brighter, the influence and power of the Muslim world has never been stornger, and i highly doubt that in a worldly sense, that Christendom, in the old sense of the word, possess anything that can counter these new rising powers- China, the Arab World, etc...

The world has changed so drastically. To me it feels like it has shrunk completely. We have the freedom to just move around this earth, in peacetime, in a way that was unthinkable in the days of those old WWII documentaries that i watch with Mike.

Tomorrow night i go to Klaipeda, and complete my first circumnavigation of the world. A journey that started at the little Klaipeda Bus Station to the moving goodbyes of my friends, will soon complete itself. I will have come back to where i have started; but as ever the Journey is still underway, and will continue to drive me ever ever on, the way it drives all my brothers and sisters around the world, till we reach our Final Rest in our True Home.

Ok this blog has been sadly asleep for a long time i realize- a victim of the poor access to the Chinese internet and my own laziness. Hopefully now that i am on european soil, these green pages will be filled with overdue remarks and thoughts about my life in China... mal sehen... everyone makes those sort of resolutions.

on this first morning of 2007 i am sitting in a beautiful house in Dhünn Germany, rain falling on the shockingly green fields and rolling forests of the Bergisches land. My body clock could not be more messed up. I realize how lucky i am to lead the life i have been leading... Last night i stood on a rainy ridge watching fireworks shoot up from a thousand houses in the city of Wermelskirchen across the valley- the sky ablaze with red and green and gold in all directions, glasses of Sekt, conversations with newly met brothers and sisters, my stomach full of amazing and with-a-brand-new-appreciation enjoyed German dishes like Schichtsalat, tomato soup with basil, fresh bread, Marscapone with rasberries... The day before i was eating pitas from a lebanese fast food store in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, next to the world´s largest indoor ski slope (yes snow skiing in the Dubai desert, under the shadow of the world´s highest building). I swam in the Persian Gulf and smelled saltwater breezes and palm trees, and watched the sunrise over the Arabian desert behind the skyscrapers of dubai from a pier in the Persian Gulf. The day before that I was wondering the dusty streets of the Forbidden City in Beijing under the choking brown-gray haze that is the Chinese sky, eating chachangmien in the backstreets of a chinese hutong, and wondering at the extreme contrasts and contradictions that are China.

I haven´t had time to process any of this, and over the last 3 days i have had 4 4-hour sleep periods, but I think i will adjust. I have some great appointments with brothers coming up in Germany, and i am VERY excited to get back to Lithuanian soil again, to see how much of that language i can still speak, to see my old friends. Even if it means i have to fly through wretched Frankfort Hahn airport. I am looking forward to getting there and having time to process and catch up to all the crazy adjustments i have been through.

See you in Lietuva!

Crossing rivers

The other day I was reading in deut 31 the song that moses sang at the end of his life and looked across the river into a land that he could not enter. Several things all converged at one time. I can in some ways relate to moses. I too have stood across the river many times from a country I could not enter. I have looked over the rushing Nemunas at the guard tower across from Rusne. I have looked over the frigid waters of the Narva River, with two imposing castles staring at each other, the EU faced off against the Russian Federation, longing to wander the dirt, chicken-filled streets of Ivangorod. I have gazed across the Bug at Belarus, seen Iran on the slopes of a distant Mt. Ararat, and now I have looked across the shallow sandy Tumen river at the most off-limits country of them all. Staring across a river at another country is a surreal feeling. (pictures on flickr) Especially when the river makes such a difference. It is almost impossible to believe that one little sandy river, easily fordable, and with no apparent guard towers or resistance, separates the easy and privileged life I lead here, from the complete otherworldness of the country over there. Just thinking about what is going on across that river, in those villages that I could see (assuming that they are not fake villages planned for the benefit of onlookers- that might very well be the case), the hillsides with every tree felled down for firewood, the rice crops planted on improbable slopes by people desperate to grow more food, the ramshackleness of some very believable huts, and the tired farmers going out to pull in the late October rice…. It is a great reminder for what a difference a river can make, and how it is only by chance that I ended up in the world on this side of it, and that they ended up on the other side of it. I don't really know what to believe sometimes of the things I hear… but I do know that living with that nearby has changed the way I see the world and live. It is hard to complain about cafeteria food that you don't like when you can look up and see those mountains. It is hard to complain about a message that bores me, knowing how desperate some people in the world are to be able to have a meeting and get teaching.

Also moses was not able to cross Jordan because of his mistakes that he made. He, as far as we know from heb 11 and jude ascended to paradise, yet the consequences of his failings were not small, even though he led a life where many things did please the father. I am confident of where I am headed after death, but some times I wonder if there will be areas in my life where I always stay on this side of the river, and curious about the other side, because of the bad decisions that I have made/am making… Standing across a river from a forbidden country is a good thing for a X'n to do. And no- looking over the Detroit river at Windsor doesn't count. :)

Peace out.

A great sunday

Sunday morning i woke up at 6:45- even though it is almost november, it is already full daylight at 6:45 here. I had arranged to meet one of my students from SKor to go to the Roman C Ch here in town. I woke up to snow falling heavily, and mountains blanketed in snow. In the soft morning light the frigid stone halways of our school seemed cold, exactly the kind of day to stay warm in bed. Instead I met my student, and upon discovering that the cafeteria was not open yet, invited him to my messy room for an impromptu breakfast of huevos rancheros, and cereal i imported from Shanghai. With gloves on my hands (we'll see how long it is before i lose them) and my sturdy boots on, we rode the little bumpy minibus down the hill to the quite unimpressive looking grey Catholic ch. The inside was as cold as the outside, reminding me of the cold cement st. casimir's church behind LCC. it was barely decorated, and mostly it was old korean ladies, covered with cheap white prayer shawls, braving the freezing cold and mud streets at such an early hour. Even though i only know a few words in korean, it seemed very familiar to go to mass- the same rhythms and components that people around the world do. An Italian priest intoned the mass in perfect korean, attended by two mismatched chubby korean alter boys. I got in a really good conversation with my student, which was the point. I was impressed at how orthodox and austere the service was, matching the building- no saints, no mary, no candles, or shrines or altars... just a simple straightforward homily about our Master.

Then i trudged back up the snowy hill to go to our english language service. An incredibly motley crue of nationalities, styles, personalities, conceptions of Xity. Mainly yust staff and faculty, some foreign students, other random people who live and work around yanbian. it was a great service. authentic. heartfelt if not professional worship songs, some great hymns. An honest message. in that room are people who have risked and are risking so much, that small gathering would not be the fellowship i would pick were i to live in the United states, but i do appreciate these little outpost fellowships, made up of random and assorted people whose only common bond is the Master, whose worship is unstudied and rough-around-the-edges yet real.

This was followed by the worst cafeteria meal ever- i only ate the rice, and tried a little bit of the grass, but the after-taste was, well, grassy. Had a good talk with Vic, from Georgia, over lunch, about our responsibilities here and the often conflicting situations we are put in. Watched 15 minutes of "America's Next Supermodel"- the weekly ritual of some of our english faculty. A great reminder why i am not living in the US :) The contrast between the old ChosunJok (korean-chinese) ladies i had seen that morning, muddied and freezing from the trek to mass, and these self-absorbed, b**chy models couldn't have been greater.

My muscles still sore from a three-hour long sweet American football game the day before (which necessitated me hopping back and forth between English, Russian, and German), i next headed to a faculty meeting. I love my life some days- where else can I play American football on a ghetto pitch overlooking the gritty coal smudged skyline of Yanji and snowcapped mountains receding toward NK, calling out plays in russian, as a Quarterback, and the next day attending a faculty meeting all in korean. The faculty meetings, which are usually inadequately translated and overly boring, are notorious here at YUST for us non-Koreans, but it wasn't so bad. I took my new Korean book with me, and learned all kinds of cool things. Did you know that Korean puts their causal complementizer ("because") inside their verbs, after the stem, but before the tense-agreement information (I node). I don't get how that is syntactically possible. How can the C information which modifies the IP be dominated by the I node??? I have been trying to draw trees to figure it out.

Chonun aju bapa-yo hangukmalul kongbuhaNEULAGO-yo.
I-TOP very busy-DECL Korean -OBJ study BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I am very busy, because i am studying Korean"

Chonun kayo choha- NEULAGO- yo.
I-TOP go-DECL be good BECAUSE-DECL
"As for me, I go, because it is good"

Only linguistics dorks will care about this, but that was more than enough to fascinate me during my meeting. I must say though, our president is really an inspiring man, and totally optimistic- his vision is contagious


After that, I got to take a delicious 35 minute nap. Then I went to the warm, yellow, cozy apartment of Richard and Susanne Schwemer. Richard was once an administrator for the Munich School District in Bavaria, and is here with his wife for a year teaching German. I really appreciate their insights and hospitality. They invited the whole German community here (of which I am an ingrafted part) to an amazing meal. We had pasta salad, bavarian onion bacon and cheese cakes, roast meats, with great german sauces, garlic salad, bread, and of course kimbap!(it couldn't be ALL german). I am amazed they could throw that together with ingredients found in Yanji, and it was the best meal i have had in so long. Had such a great conversation, laughing, talking about life here in Yanji. It was so filling, not just for my stomach. I reluctantly tore myself away, armed with my new flashlight (which i had gotten at our very Korean new teachers reception dinner the night before), and trudged through the shuddering bear apple-pear orchards, avoiding the complaining geese, through the darkness towards the little warmly lit chapel across the valley. There is nothing like being in a freezing and dark night and approaching a chapel with warm yellow light streaming out the windows, the sounds of Russian praise choruses growing louder as you approach. I really like that group of brothers and sisters, and that simple service (yes, the third one of my day). It is good for my russian, but i really appreciate their warmth and interest. We in my small group had a really good discussion about luke, and i just realized that man, these are really great brothers and sisters. I felt so much at home there, and joking on the dark road back toward YUST at the end of the evening.

I spent the last hour of my day cleaning my floor, then getting cozy under my blankets, enjoying the company of my electric space heater and huge plant, and red a short story by Chekhov in Russian, and some German poetry. Reading Chekhov in Russian was one of those things on my life list of things to do before I die. I read it slowly, and still need to consult my dictionary, but i am doing it! Cross one thing off the list! I still have on the list though to write a poem in russian.

So that's a day in my life

PS: One thing that has happened a lot recently is power outages. Today i taught my last class, a 4 o'clock class, in the dying light of twilight. When it got to dark to read, all the students turned on their cell phones and aimed them at the blackboard and it was light enough to see actually! So much for candlelight. Maybe thats why its almost impossible to find a candle here in Yanji. Still its kind of cool and cozy to sit around in the dark office and chat with my colleagues. Its also a convenient procrastination excuse.

PPS: im thinking of going to lithuania for my two month winter break, help out at LCC however I can...- looking at cheap ways to cross this great landmass... another good procrastination tool.

Ok- some more random things i have either seen, or learned about life here, since my last posting to this blog, which was ages ago! Sorry for the uncharachteristic silence faithful readers!

- I was overjoyed to discover that cilantro is abundant in China, it being the food that i missed most in Lithuania. What surprises me most is that Koreans on principle HATE cilantro. Something about the smell/taste drives them crazy, kind of the proverbial liver/brussels sprouts for Americans. I will never understand this reaction to something as amazing as cilantro from a people who have no qualms at eating every sort of rotten fermented vegetable under the sun. (and under the waves!)

- In one day in Wuxi I saw:

a shagnasty comatose panda

thirty old chinese people doing the electric slide in a park

people beating dogs with sticks and getting them to attack their arms, which were covered by a protective shield

a giant topiary that was part brontosaurus part elephant

cats in a monkey cage

people throwing their trash (hard) at bears in tiny rancid cement zoo cages trying to get them to make noises

panda bear shaped paddleboats

boiled corn on the cob that was so soggy and nasty that i almost rolfed when i bit in to it

a bright pink fake pagoda

GIGANTIC hornets

- In Shanghai, I saw many old men with "stat sheets" on sons and daughters who were too busy working to actually meet people to date. The parents basically haggle in the park all day trying to match up propitious marriages either among each others progeny, or with helpless bystanders. Given that the prospective marriage partners are too busy to actually meet people, i would say this doesn't bode well for the quality of those marriages. I laughed watching the desperate scene, but was also stuck by the tragedy of the frenzied capitalism here. mao is surely rolling in his grave, if he were to see the parade of guccis and starbucks and western tourists.

- in the oldest building of Shanghai, there is a gigantic starbucks on the first floor. In the ancient temple complex in Wuxi, a McDonald's adds an authentic oriental touch. Even little Yanji is due to have its first Walmart this spring!! (which normally i would abhor on principle, but given that my chances of finding decent cheese and possibly even tomato sauce will skyrocket upon its opening, i must begrudgingly admit an amount of eager expectation on my part).

- China is an urban planners dream. I remember walking through the halls of the UPLA building at MSU thinking how cool the projects were that the students were doing, redesigning little parks or neighborhoods. Here China is redeveloping massive hundreds of square mile tracts of land into cities. The advantage of communism- no red tape. Seriously, the projects here are MASSIVE, and surprisingly well done. China is building a modern harbor way out in the middle of the East China Sea, based around what is currently a small cluster of islets. It will be connected to the hungry markets of the mainland by a huge superhighway bridge, 35 miles long. They are already in the middle of doing this. A building is halfway finished in Pudong that will dwarf the Sears Tower, all of Chongming Island is being redeveloped into a massive exhibition of green living and environmentally friendly city-scape. Gigantic concentric park cities, harbor cities, StarWars-like in scale and farm are sprouting along the Chinese coast. Jaw-dropping, absoultely jaw-dropping. I dont see how a country that hasnt yet figured out that concrete sealant could keep buildings from crumbling after 5 years, or how to run a waste management system can pull this off.

- I wasn't kidding about the buildings here. Everywhere you see construction, but the problem is that buildings that are only 5 years old look like they are 20 years old. the construction quality is so bad, that all these buildings will probably have to be all built again within a decade or two.

-the scale of shanghai is mind blowing. there is no center, the way we think of it. you can take an hour train ride through the city, and basically never experience a change of density. As far as you see, 50 story towers crowd each other out, along narrow streets, old style chinese houses are being torn down everywhere that they still exist to make room for these towers. I have experienced density, as in manhattan. But such density sustained over such a large area- that is something i have never come close to experiencing and can't describe. Even Hong Kong is squeezed basically into a very small area, instead of sprawling across a huge area, the way that Shanghai is.

- remember the 80's game frogger? it has nothing on crossing streets in Chinese cities. No vehicle ever has any intention of stopping, swerving, or arresting speed for the sake of a paltry pedestrian. I thought tbilisi was bad. It is a mystery to me i haven't seen any human roadkill.

- just a short walk from YUST i am in a total wilderness, total agrarian landscape. I am so glad that i live outside of Yanji up on this hillside. Even in these crystal clear golden october days, often there is a huge cloud of smog which totally blocks the view out over the city.

- i was able to go to the meat market all by myself.. i wish i could take pictures there, but i think they'd construe that as rude. Seeing the filetted dogs, and random pieces of meat and every available sea creature. First you buy the meat, then you take it to ladies who grind it for you in a meat grinder. There are 6 of them and they all yell at you and try to get you to come to them. I don't discern any difference in the grinding abilities among the ladies so it is always hard for me to choose which one to use as they all shout at me. The reward for this is sometime this week i will cook some ground lamb with onions and cilantro and eat it on homemade tortillas- on a day when i cant stomach the caf food that will be the perfect treat.

- apparently ice your muffins with your ersatz evaporated-milk/non-dairy-coffee-creamer frosting BEFORE you bake them in your toaster oven.

- i played Mafia the other night... in Chinese... the official party game of Chr'stendom. I think i have played mafia in 10 countries and probably 6 languages. a good way to learn some vocab

- When i was in Wuxi i went crazy on the western food- i was so happy. i ate at a mcdonalds twice, starbucks once, and TGI Fridays. I was never so happy to see a hamburger. You know the movie Office Space, where Jennifer Anniston has to wear all those "pieces of flair"? Well we (kathryn and I) had a waiter, who was so covered in flair that he could barely move. Buttons, ribbons, spangles left and right, the combination of that, plus a slightly nerdy physique and the awkward Chinese accent--- poor kathryn- was in tears... It was a perfect random end to a random day that included me randomly attending the prewedding reception of a chinese couple i had no clue who they were. they had a really bold event though, declaringly publically their belief.

-Wuxi has giant 5 foot fake water lilies that glow at night. i am used to fake many things here, including (according to kathryn) fake rocks, that make fake "nature sounds". but somehow these water lilies managed to pull it off.

- it is pitch dark by 5 pm, and there is no heat yet- i am freezing.

- i am slowly learning my way around chinese food- had two amazing successive dinners of ordered in chinese food at chunhua's flat.

- i feel like i could sleep forever here- little things are so draining. i need to be cautious that i dont get too much sleep.

- i finally got a korean textbook today- a gift from its author!! a korean sociolinguist who studied under Bill Labov and did the seminal study of sociolinguistics of Seoul korean.

OK enough trivia for now. stay tuned for more- these are the kinds of things i dont think its worthwhile to send out in a support letter, but are nonetheless maybe interesting to someone.