More than Surviving

I don't feel like a very good blog writer lately. There's not a whole lot going on. We are just teaching classes, hanging out with students on a constant basis, and trying our best to survive. Okay, we certainly do more than survive, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it. :)

Since I don't have much to say lately, I'll share some words from somebody else. Remember how once and a while I talk about pollution and danger on the road, but you still feel really alive here? I was reading an article by a guy named James Fallows in "The Atlantic." You can find the whole story, "How I Survived China," at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/fallows-health-china. I'm surprised I can even access this website; so many other websites are blocked. Anyway, here are some excerpts that I laughed about, because I've written about almost the same things:

"...The health situation for ordinary Chinese people is obviously no joke. After stalling, the Chinese government recently accepted a World Bank estimate that some 750,000 of its people die prematurely each year just from air pollution. Alarming upsurges in birth defects and cancer rates are reported even in the state-controlled press..."

"..."I tell my patients, the most important ‘medical’ step you can take is to put on a seat belt in a car, wear a helmet on a bike, and run for your life in crosswalks," a Chinese doctor said. Road safety is that bad..."

"...The positive aspect is, there’s a lot to take your mind off your health. “I am amazed at how well people do here, considering,” another Western-trained doctor said. “It is an exciting place. It’s a historic time. People seem to feel alive.” That made sense when I heard it—in China I had felt terrible, but alive — and makes me say that foreigners who want to go should not be deterred. They could even work on the environmental problems affecting the billion-plus permanent residents."

I agree. Sometimes you can feel so terrible here. Then other times, you feel better and more alive than at any other point in your life. Sometimes you can feel so frustrated, and then other times you can feel so incredibly content and happy. Maybe that's just life, whether you live in China or not.

Anyway, life's good, especially with relationships. However, our province, Jiangxi, is in a record drought, meaning farmers and villages are suffering even more than usual. Hundreds of thousands of people don't have access to water right now. I guess water is being diverted from the Three Gorges Dam to our city, Nanchang, and other big cities. Can you lift this up? Jiangxi is usually a soggy, rainy place, making it a great place to grow rice. Now with a very long drought, these people who literally only survive day to day are really struggling. It puts my so-called "surviving" into perspective...

Maybe now's not the time to introduce this topic, but I'm going to visit one of my good friends in Sichuan province over Spring Festival. She lives in a city called Dujiangyan, serving on a "special project" with the same organization I'm with. The majority of the place was destroyed last year, because it was closest to the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake. Thousands of students died there. Wow. I don't know what else I can say about that. You can google it and see for yourself.

I didn't intend for this to be a depressing blog! It's not meant to be that way. Lastly, I've included one of the latest pictures from one of our open houses. Can you find me?