Look for the good

(My favorite cafeteria in China at its least busy time. This picture is from last week, but I ate there again today).


Happy end-of-April greetings!

Your Monday is probably just beginning, but my Monday is nearing its close. It was a rather uneventful day, but still blessed in little ways.

My first class this morning had a paltry 18 students--from a peak of 45 students. They have all left for recruiting. The class went well, though, because it was more laid-back and they had more opportunities to speak. I also let them sit down when they talk (usually students here stand up whenever they answer a question or speak).

Then at lunch I went with two students to the student cafeteria--one of my favorite haunts on campus. The food isn't really that good, but for some reason I get a lot of energy when I walk into the very crowded and chaotic place. And we don't have to spend 30 minutes trying to decide what to order.

I ate with Karen and Sarah. Karen is Wendy's roommate. Wendy is the girl whose hometown I'm visiting for the short May holiday. Karen told me how excited Wendy is to have me come. Apparently when I told Wendy I could visit with her for four days, Wendy spent the entire day talking about it with her friends. She also called her parents... and her grandparents, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and close friends. She told them about my visit, and that they should "prepare."

Oh, my goodness. I don't know what that means. Later my team and I were laughing that the whole town will probably turn out for the occasion. We envisioned a parade, people dancing, and banners declaring, "We warmly welcome you, white tofu-skinned woman!" It will be an adventure, I'm pretty sure.

Then my two sweet, well-meaning students once again declared how they are concerned about my marriage. People, why must we discuss this every day? I'm not exactly dead and buried yet. They insist I must find a nice Chinese man to marry. Today they suggested that I marry a "professor." I think most of my 190 students are much more concerned about my lack of a boyfriend than I am. Actually, I'm not concerned at all.

In other news, there were a mere 14 students in my second class this afternoon. These seem to be the ones who have held out against the head teacher, and somehow haven't left for recruiting. So I tried to make the class as meaningful as possible for them.

We talked about advertising, and they did mini-commercials for different products. My favorite was probably for toothpaste. Apparently there is a famous toothpaste in China, "Hei Ren," which translates into "Black man" toothpaste, that the students included in their commercials. I've seen rows of toothpaste boxes in the supermarket with a picture of a really crazy picture of a very dark black man with a top hat and gleaming white teeth, smiling cheesily. But I had no idea that the toothpaste was actually called "Black man." Wow, you learn something new every day here.

Then after classes today Shannon and I wanted to take a bread van back to old campus instead of cramming onto the city bus. We sat in the bread van waiting for the driver to find more passengers. We sat there and had to listen to his chit-chat, which were are getting to understand more. He went on a long description of how our noses are such much different and bigger than Chinese people. He pointed to his nose, our nose, his nose, our nose, and so on and so forth. We were like, "okay, dude, we get it." Actually one of the sort of outdated phrases for foreigners in China is "da bizi," which is "big nose." Then my roommate went to get a hair wash at the hair salon we sometimes go to. One of the guys there inquired about my whereabouts to her. He asked, "Where is the tall girl with the tall nose?"

Anyway, I think I've exhausted most of the stories from today. Enjoy your day! I leave you with a sentence from a book I'm reading. It helps me in adapting to this culture, which can still be very strange and different: "Look for the good and the beautiful, and when you see it you will see [His] grace." Words to live by in China...