we are here somewhere in china. the Lord has blessed us in so many ways since we have been here. we prayed that He would come before us and prepare the way and of course He did. He is so faithful.
i think so far my favorite part of where we are, besides all of the parties and new friends we have made, is the hotel we are staying at. first of all getting into this place was a lot of fun. when laura and i went in at first and asked if we could stay there the kid behind the counter told us no. but when paul went in and asked the manager everything was ok and we got prices and paid for our rooms. they had a really hard time understanding that we needed 3 rooms…not 2. they couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t take a room with 3 beds and one room with 2 beds. doing this would mean that some of us girls would have to sleep in the room with paul. which is not ok. they could not understand this. the maids upstairs on our floor are the ones who had the hardest time with this concept. this just insn’t in the phrase book. they finally got it when i pointed to all of the girls, shook my head no, put my hands together and made a pillow for my head and pointed to paul. they finally understood.
the two maids on our floor are so funny and by far my favorite people that we have met so far. at first we really had a hard time understanding each other and it was really frustrating. my favorite thing that they do is, when they keep trying to explain something to us and we just don’t get they decide to write it down….in chinese characters. then they just laugh when we give them a blank stare or keep saying….we don’t understand that. we still don’t really understand each other but it is getting a lot better. they really like the phrase books and they want to look at them all of the time.
in china you don’t get keys for your room. the ladies who work on your floor have the keys to the room and when you need to get into your room they have to come and unlock it for you. which also means they can come into your room anytime they like. which ours do. laura and i have decided that our room is also the storage room. they come in and out all of the time to get cleaning supplies and to hang the wet sheets all over the room to dry. one day they came in and outside in the hallway they had a washer. we had already taken our clothes to a laundry place and so we didn’t need it. they kept pointing to our clothes and trying to tell us that we could use it to wash our clothes. laura finally found nevermind in the phrase book and they seemed like they got it and started to leave….we thought. we turn around and they are wheeling the washer into our room and into our bathroom. so we just thought ok we will have the washer in here. we had to leave for a while and when we came back the maids were in our bathroom doing their laundry.
they also like to just come in and hang out with us. while we are in our room they just come in….sometimes they just stand there, or look out the window or they just have a seat on the bed and hang out. the same day as the laundry incident we had invited some friends that we had made over for a party. laura and i went back to clean our room up and one of the maids came in. she had a seat on the bed while laura and i cleaned. laura found this very ironic. we were cleaning…the maid was watching.
these ladies are so sweet and have been such a blessing to us. they will definatly be a part of this trip that we will not forget.
