It's beginning to feel a little like Christmas

It is a beautifully sunny and extremely cold Saturday. The temperature has been steadily dropping the past few days.

Yesterday I taught, like usual, and worked on Christmas lesson plans for next week. After dinner, several Chinese students and several people on our team hung out in Joelle's room. Christmas music was playing and there were some little desserts. Joelle and several Chinese helped her put up a little artificial tree. Then when there was a power outage, like there is sort of frequently, we gathered around some candles in the dark.

Early this afternoon I ventured out by myself to the other side of town to go to Wal-mart. I got in and out of Wal-mart fine. There were a million super tacky Christmas decorations in Wal-mart. It was like what Christmas would like in a bizarre movie, I think. I kind of cringed. But there was Christmas music playing over the loudspeakers in English! Songs like "Silent Night" played. I was probably the only one in the whole store who could understand, and I enjoyed it. I don't think that song would be playing in China if they really knew what they were singing about--the birth of the Son!

I got on the city bus #231 for the 25 minute ride back to campus. We were immediately ensnared in the most incredible traffic jam you could possibly imagine. We were on a main two-way road, which intersected under a gigantic bridge with traffic coming from all the other directions. Nobody was paying attention to the signal lights, which could have eventually erased the jam. There wasn't even an accident. In the midst of the chaos was a bus and a car, which were entirely encircled. Everyone else was trying to go around them, but all the buses and cars and mopeds just got into a bigger and bigger knot.

I had a nice view of it from the spot where I stood. Our bus got into the thick of that knot in the center, also. Our bus driver was a girl who was maybe 20 years old. I felt bad for her, because she was trying to go around but the jam just got messier with each move. Everyone on the bus was passively watching to see how she'd maneuver the bus next, and her brow just furrowed more and more with each passing second.

So we sat for a while in a gridlock, with taxi drivers yelling, horns honking incessantly, and pedestrians stranded in the midst of it all. For some reason I didn't panic. To me, it looked impossible to get out of the mess that worsened by the minute, but I knew that everything in China will work itself out somehow. By some miracle, we eventually got around it, ever so slowly. I wanted to pat our bus driver on the back. By this point many of the passengers were asleep when I looked back at everyone.

After that, our bus got more crowded, but I had managed to get a seat. Then a teenage kid hobbled onto the bus with crutches. I was surprised when nobody moved to offer him a seat, like they did for middle aged plus people or pregnant women. I was tired from standing during the traffic jam, but something told me to get up for the kid, and it turned out to be the highlight of my day. He gratefully accepted the seat, and the dozen or so people surrounding us smiled so brightly at me. A few people looked down, like they were ashamed that the foreigner with the ridiculously heavy shopping bags had offered her seat before they did. Then people suddenly offered me their seats, but I said, "no, thanks" in Chinese. When people slid by me to get off the bus they just smiled. It was a very small, but pleasant experience. It's often the little thing in everyday living that speak to people the most, rather than huge, momentous events.

Anyway, that's been my day so far! I have to prepare for my Chinese tutoring now. Then tonight I'm going to a "girl's night" for Chinese sisters in Him. It should be great. Happy Saturday!