Ni hao! I know I say this every month, but I CANNOT BELIEVE that we are in month 10!!!! This is by far my favorite month of the Race so far. I absolutely LOVE China!!!
When I signed up for the Race, I prayed for one of two things. I prayed either that my wanderlust heart would be satisfied – or – that God would give me a strong heart for just one of the countries. And I think China may be it!! I really love it here! I always knew that I was super fond of Asia, but had only been to India and Nepal. God definitely has strengthened my heart for all the countries I’ve been to so far, but China is in the lead! I will for sure be coming back, not sure what capacity, we’ll see what God has in mind!!! I am praying for super clear clarity on what He has for me!
China has surprised me in many ways. Here are some fun little tidbits I have picked up over the past few weeks:
>> Chasing buses means living in the city. These bus drivers are so nice! We wave them down and they stop for us even if we are wayyyy too far from the stop, so sweet!
>> Strangers on the street are so kind. We are constantly stopping people showing them our phones, pointing to the map, showing them an address in Mandarin and asking for directions. They have gone as far as looking it up on their phone for us, or even one guy walked us all the way to where we were going once!!! So nice!
>> If you take a bottle of water on the subway, they will either scan it using a little sensor thing. Or they will say “drink.” Which makes you think you have to finish it all, which isn’t cool, because you JUST filled up that water bottle so that you could drink it all day long! But really what they wanted was for you to take a sip just to prove that it was drink-able, I guess haha. They must be checking for lighter fluid?
>> Beijing just passed New York City for the most number of subway lines. We are mastering the maneuver quickly!
This month my team is working at a volunteer-run consignment shop. What happens is expat families who are in Beijing but move back to their home country (whether it’s US or Germany or wherever), what do they do with all of their household belongings? They can donate to this retail shop (furniture, clothes, books, movies, toys, jewelry, shoes, whatever, even money!). And then the shop turns 100% of the proceeds to pay for medical costs for orphans and the less fortunate. Also, they have other global initiatives; for example, they donated hundreds of blankets to Nepal this month to aid those recovering from the earthquake, stuff like that. The retail shop provides support to 48 charitable organizations in Beijing and also numerous others throughout China and Mongolia.
Check them out here: www.roundaboutchina.com
Here are some stories and pictures from my month. 🙂 yay!
^this is us at Roundabout! We work 10am-4pm. We take two buses from our apartment to get to work every day. It’s so fun! It definitely feels like I live here. These are the volunteer aprons, cute! In this picture, we were testing out a puzzle. The only way to really know if a toy is complete is to test it out!!! We spend time putting together Lego pieces, finding matching doll clothes, and making sure we have all the pieces to puzzles! I love puzzles!! Feels just like home – right, mom and dad? 🙂 We’ve always got a puzzle going!
^our group has two main jobs at Roundabout. One of them is sorting DVDs and one of them is sorting books. I have mainly been working in the DVD section. This is some of our work! Riveting stuff 🙂 haha. This is for 6 hours a day, people! The DVDs keep rolling in. They pretty much receive new boxes or bags of donations of DVDs every single day. So when a new donation comes in, we have to open each DVD case to make sure the correct disc is in there, and for a series, that it’s a complete set. Then sort by type! Then box them up.
^11 boxes of checked DVDs! A man came in and bought all 11 boxes! He must own a shop somewhere else where he will re-sell them. But that’s okay. Because him buying these brings in a lot of money for Roundabout! The DVDs are 1 yuan per disc (that’s only $0.16 per movie)!! Most of them are fakes, ripped offline or copied by companies here. I mean, we are in China, most everything is a copy!
^so this is where our mind is when we are working throughout the day. Roundabout serves so many charities and the blessing they provide to hundreds of needy people is tremendous! These pictures are some of the stories of surgeries being paid for, babies being nursed from malnutrition, cleft pallets corrected, stuff like that. It’s truly incredible how even little tasks like helping the volunteers sort DVDs can directly provide care to those who need it most. It’s what I love so much about working at non-profits: the feeling of affecting your local community in a positive way. And that’s exactly what we are doing!!! Warms my heart.
^this is the __th (I’ve lost count!) friend from home who I have spent time with on the field! Hua is my dad’s friend. They have worked together for years at DISD and Hua has known me since I was little little little. She’s from Beijing and she was visiting her son and his family this month. They invited my team and me to a meal and we were able to sit and talk and feast and it was so fun!!! It’s such a blessing to know people all around the world. It was so good to see you, Hua!!
^this is the hostel we stayed at for a few days in downtown Beijing. Isn’t it adorable? This is sooooo China! I love it!!!
^Steff and I toured the Olympic Stadiums!!!!!!!!! We are both obsessed with the Olympics. I remember watching ALL of the 2008 Beijing games!!!! So fun! This is us ON TOP OF the Bird’s Nest!!!! This is the park where the opening and closing ceremonies were, where they handed out medals, where the track and field games were held. We were able to tour the inside of the Bird’s Nest, go on the roof, and tour the inside of the Watercube where Michael Phelps won all of his medals!!!! Did we chant U-S-A! U-S-A! and maybe a little Mi-chael-Phelps Mi-chael-Phelps??? Of course we did!!! 🙂 🙂 Proud to be an American!
^ahhhhh I love the Olympics!!! The Beijing Olympic Park is beautiful. I could spend hours here. They built a Central Park-like area around all the stadiums for the guests. I’m so glad I was able to see all of it!!! These are large statues, representing the Olympic ring colors, of course. See how big they are, there are people sitting at the bottom. So cool! The Olympic Park is only a handful of subway stops from our apartment. I love it!!!!! We plan to go see it lit up at night sometime this week. The city of Beijing pays for the electricity to light up all the Olympic stuff (buildings, towers, statues, all of it) every single night. That’s a lot of money!!! But they are so proud, as they should be, it’s beautiful!!!!
^this is me on the Great Wall!!! My squad climbed it together, it was ridiculously cool!! We climbed all the way up, through 36 towers, and then alllll the way down! Not sure how many miles or steps exactly haha. Being here was so incredible. I never thought I’d ever come to China and now I’m here and my heart is so big!!!!!!!!!!
^part of my team goofing off on the Great Wall this morning 😛
^our contacts at Roundabout decided to treat us to a day at the Great Wall!!!! We went to a different part of the Great Wall than before. We rode a cable car up and we rode the ALPINE SLIDE down!!!!!! How cool is that?!?!?!?! It was so crazy fun!!!! We were going SO FAST! This picture was probably super dangerous hahahaha. We were supposed to be 30 meters apart from each other! But we wanted a team selfie!!! Haha 🙂 Push forward to speed up, pull back to brake. As you can see, I am getting realllllly close to Jenny and am realizing I need to pull back before I hit her!! Don’t worry, I pulled back in time!
^so a friend of mine (a coworker from EY) used to live in Beijing and gave me a map full of tips!!! He suggested this dumpling place: Mr. Shi’s Dumplings. And let me tell you, folks, this food is HEAVEN. I get the 15-piece fried dumplings with corn, Chinese chives, and egg. YUM!!!!!!!! AND don’t forget the spicy fried green beans!!! They are crazy good! This place is three subway transfers away, dozens of stops, but it’s worth it! We have been TWICE already and plan on going again this weekend one last time! Ah I love it!
^these are my dumplings!!! As you can count, there are only 8. Which means I ate 7! These are the 8 I brought home to heat up for leftovers in our toaster oven. And the red peppers and garlic cloves were the flavoring in the green beans. We took them home too and used them to cook up with some vegetables and rice. YUM! That’s one thing that has happened on the Race. They call it poverty mentality – which basically means that we focus more on what we don’t have than what we do have. So we see peppers used to flavor the green beans. And our brains immediately realize that we can USE THOSE AGAIN!!! And with napkins. You save napkins. You never know when you will use a toilet (ahem… a squatty potty…) and of course there is never toilet paper. And if you’re using a public toilet in China, it most likely won’t even have a door, much less toilet paper!
^my team loves me. We huddle 8 bodies in front of my little tiny iphone 5 and squint our 16 eyes to watch this season of The Bachelorette! I love it so much!!! Can you see our set-up? We put a chair in front of us, stack some books, prop up my phone, hook it to those little green speakers. So fun! It’s been interesting watching the entire season on an itty bitty screen! We laugh and squeal the whole time – what a fun season! ($15something season pass on iTunes…. yesssssssss!)
^you’ve cat to be kitten me right meow!!!! My team ate CAT!!!! I DID NOT! I’m a vegetarian!!!! We went to the night market in Donghuamen with all the weird food stalls. A list of foods they ate: cat, dog, seahorse, starfish, tarantula, scorpion, and snake!!! Ew!!!! I opted for a bowl of chow mein noodles and some candied fruit. 🙂 Let’s just say none of their stomachs felt entirely normal the next morning… ha! Awful!
Can’t post a blog without a picture of GRATNEY!
^Logistics by Gratney shirts! Graham designed these for us! Aren’t they adorable??? So fun! Best Logistics team ever. 🙂 Haha. This was us at the airport after the squad landed in China from Mongolia. We have now successfully gotten all 40+ of us through 10 immigration checks!
NEXT UP: MONTH 11 = SOUTH KOREA.
We fly Sunday June 28 from Beijing, China to Seoul, South Korea at 1:20pm with Korean Air Lines. And then my team transfers super quickly to the other airport in Seoul to fly down to JEJU ISLAND where we will be all month!!!!
Y’all! Look up Jeju Island!!!! It’s BEAUTIFUL!!!! I have not had a “beach month” yet – and I am so excited!!!! (we call them beach months or bush months, depending on modernity, location, amenities, everything, haha). This is gonna be awesome!!! They call Jeju Island the “Hawaii of Asia.” We will be running a children’s after-school program and some local community church outreaches, like helping paint and clean and stuff.
PRAY FOR a strong finish at Roundabout China this week for my team! PRAY FOR safe travels to Seoul and then Jeju Island. PRAY FOR a renewal of focus for our last month, that we aren’t just coasting to the end, but that we are purposefully connecting. PRAY FOR unity on my team, Team Street Food.
Thanks for your prayers, your comments, and all your love!
I fly home on July 25! See y’all sooooooooon!
Also… I turn 30 on July 1. Goodness gracious! Getting old! 😉 A new decade, I love it!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 A fresh start, an improved me! God has been so good to me all these years, and many more to come! Thank you, Lord!
