Hello from China!
I want to start out by saying that I love my vegetarian friends. But even more so, I love my vegetarian friends who are on the race. I've given them a bit of a hard time, as I myself am a ravenous carnivore, which I always found justifiable because COME ON, they don't eat meat! But I've found some use for these vegetarians recently*. You see, it may seem obvious, but on the race, you don't just eat whatever you want whenever your want. Most often, we will eat communal food as a team, as we have been. Which means when we order food, some of it we may like, some we may not.
For example, yesterday for lunch my team ate at a restaurant in the mall (more about this blunder later on). We ordered two types of dishes, one a rice dealio and the other white rice and chicken smothered in some type of deliciousness. I shared my dish with Allison. With her being the team vegetarian, that turned out quite well. Seeing that I got to eat all the chicken in the plate (along with the chicken from other teammates plates), I found the light at the end of the tunnel. For those who know me well, you know I have always been (jokingly not jokingly) critical of vegetarians, but now this experience has given me newfound respect for these people. However, never will I ever become one.
So, now an update on how my first few days in China have been, which the story above reflects quite well.
It's the beginning of the third day here in Harbin. The weather here has been beautiful, not too warm and not too cold, and the sun has been shining steadily since yesterday morning. The climate here is much like it is back home in Wisconsin, except right now sunrise is before 5 am and sunset is in the 6 o clock range. It's also a bit warmer currently.
The Harbin metro area is home to 10 million people. The buildings are tall and construction of both complexes and infrastructure seems to be the norm. All the people I've met in China so far have been very amiable and friendly, stopping to try to talk to us or take a photo with us. I have found that my beard gets many looks from the men; they will walk past me, smiling, rubbing their chin in an approving manner.
The travel here was an interesting albeit mostly boring trip. We flew out of Atlanta tuesday afternoon to Incheon, South Korea (a 14 hour flight). Then we flew a couple hours to Beijing where we stayed for the night in a hostel. Here we had our first team breakfast, an egg hard boiled in soy sauce and a half a stick of fried bread, which was awesome! We then left for the train station and took a 19 hour ride up to Harbin. We took a bus from the station to our hostel. The buses in China are engineered to pack the most amount of the people in as possible; there is a row of very small seats along the sides of the bus, and then there are metal bars attached to the ceiling and sides that course all throughout the bus. And yes, you have to hold on really tight. Safety is second priority when it comes to driving here.
Ministry for us doesn't start until tomorrow, so for these first few days time is basically ours. I slept basically all of Friday, as many of us did, since I slept no more than an hour on the train. Yesterday my team Uniquely Knit spent most of the day together. We started out eating breakfast (PB and J!), and than went to go exchange some cash for Chinese yuen. We then spent much of the rest of the time at the mall across the street from the hostel we are staying at.
Here we connected to Wi-fi at the coffee shop for awhile and spent time just roaming the mall, which was literally 95% clothing outlets, and 4.5% restaurants. For lunch, we stopped in at a nicer restaurant to eat. We ordered two dishes that met our food budget for the day, and also each a cup of water. The water was hot an opaque color of brown. But the rice and chicken we ordered looked very good. Since the waitress didn't bring out extra plates for us, we decided to ask her for some. Jacob attempted to ask her for more plates, but instead we ended up getting more plates of food. And it happened to be the most expensive thing on the menu, meaning we went quite a bit over budget. But we ate good.
Afterwards we went roaming around the mall, where we found what could have been the best ice cream I've ever had at a place called the Dairy Fairy. I plan on going back very very soon. We finished out our day with a quick workout, hanging out in the girls room (since we only have one room key for the guy's room and the guy who had it was lost somewhere in the city), eating dinner, having a short meeting with our contact and returning to the coffee shop for a little bit.
So far, these first few days have been awesome! China is pretty boss, the people are accommodating, the food is exquisite, and the experience has been a blast! I'm super pumped to start our ministry tomorrow, which is simply to make disciples of Jesus here! More will definitely come on how we will be doing that later on! I also love my team! I feel like as we spend more time together, whether task oriented or just spending hanging out doing whatnot, we are becoming closer to each other as we spend more and more time getting to know each other. God has blessed me by putting some incredibly awesome people in my life.
'Til next time, stay cool.
Yours always,
Jake
*note: sarcasm, vegetarians have just as much value to God and myself as those who eat meat.
