We arrived in Hsinchu!!
We landed in Taipei August 11th, got picked up by a complete stranger, and headed to an unknown place. That was just the beginning of a very interesting start in Hsinchu. Although the first two weeks were completely chaotic and frustrating, we soon began making ourselves at home. Thankfully some missionaries took us under their wings and have been teaching us the ins and outs of Hsinchu since. We've enjoyed seeing around the city and some neigboring cities. We even got to go to a Taiwan pro baseball game. Nothhing from home compares to this sports game experience. I can't even begin to explain how the fans get into the game and cheer until the last inning is up. It's also fun to look around and see people eating dumplings and drinking tea - a little different than home:)

Sight-Seeing in Beijing

One morning we got in a van and thought we were going with our campers on a field trip to the largest university inChina. About an hour later, we got dropped off at the Forbidden City. So, here we are traveling around the Foridden City amongst millions of Chinese people. There are a lot of buildings, that's what we got out of this tour. Tour meaning, us walking around wondering what a tour guide would be saying if we had one:)

After going to the Beijing International Church on Sunday, we were surprised by a stop at the Summer Palace. That's the way things usually went in China...didn't know what was happening until we were in the midst of it. We were usually dropped off by our driver who didn't speak English, he'd point on a map to where we should meet him, show on his clock how much time we had, and off we went. Usually our time at these sites consisted of getting from point A where we got dropped off, to finding point B where Brother Lo would pick us up. It took around 3 hours to find our pick up spot at the Summer Palace, which was timed perfectly according to how much time Bro. Lo gave us. It was a beautiful place! Once again, no tour, but we enjoyed just looking and making up our own ideas of what things were used for what:) Whenever we knew we were no longer lost at these tourists spots, we'd stop and enjoy an icecream treat. We longed for those times:)

This is the American baseball team that came to spend an afternoon with our Beijing campers. They were very encouraging and brought a lot of energy to the camp. They were even kind enough to host Andrea and I for a night on their side of town. They were staying right in the city (we were an hour outside of the city), and, well, you could say living it up on their off time. They treated us like queens that night, starting at starbucks, then to the night market, a shampoo/head massage, and ending with a swim in their hotel's pool. They blessed us in so many ways that one night...most of all just encouraging us and giving us a great send off as we began our year in Taiwan.

Andrea and I also went to the great wall before leaving Beijing. This was quite an experience. We loved climbing the wall, no matter how hot it was or how many umbrellas we had to dodge. The umbrellas? No it was not raining, Chinese women use the umbrellas to protect their skin. You can imagine the height of the umbrellas, and well, our height...doesn't work out so well when there are millions of people climbing the great wall. We made it through though with all eyes in place...some hair missing...but that's ok. The funny part of this story, well funny now, is that we had come to the Great Wall with 6 of our campers. We climbed with one of our campers, thinking the other little ones were spending the day with the driver. Ooops, we got to the end and there were the younger campers, just waiting for us. We honestly didn't know we were supposed to take them with us. Not so sure they would have made it through the umbrellas anyway?? Everything got smoothed over, but for a little bit there we thought the driver was going to send us back to America. "Communication"...wow have we learned about that since we've been gone. It's a continuous battle, and will continue to be. Two different languages will bring that, no matter how well you act things out:)

Fun China Experiences

Food! You all know Andrea and I love food. China put a whole new meaning to that. We loved the choices, especially the "lazy susan" way of giving us those choices. We just put our chopsticks in and take a bite...never really knowing what it is, or understanding how it will affect us after. We've eaten things we thought we'd never even look at:) KFC was quite a treat!

Here are just a few of our fun "China" experiences. Baotou is known as "deer city" so basically there are many places to see deer. Only not only do you just look at them, you are free to chase, pet, feed, or probably even ride them.

Andrea and I took up the chance to get our hair cut in the little village where our Beijing camp was. We would venture to little areas on our runs...this day we decided to stop, and hey, why not get a hair cut for 50 cents. She did a great job.

And the beds...wow...when you need to sleep...you can sleep, no matter what kind of arrangements you have. Our beds were defenitly just a board with a one inch matress. At first we had some aches...but those went away and we became quite used to our rock solid beds. They actually prepared us for what we have in Taiwan. Beds are just made a little less soft here:)

Beijing English Camp

On July 29th four of us from our team flew to Beijing and started another camp on the 30th. We were excited to meet another team and get to know another group of kids. What we weren't expecting though, was that the team there would be leaving and the four of us would be leading the camp and in charge of 40 kids. Although that came as quite a shock we forged on through and began the camp the day after the Baotou camp ended. This was a completely different experience than our first two weeks . Andrea and I were given the leadership positions, which caused much stretching and growth throughout the 2 weeks here.

We carried on the schedule that we had made in Baotou, only now each of us teaching a class of about 8 students. Andrea taught the youngest group and I taught the oldest group. I enjoyed getting to know my students and having converstation with them. Even though we were free to share our faith at this camp, the hearts were not as receptive. This was discouraging, but caused us to truely search God's word and pray about how we would be used in this camp. We trusted in God's plan and knew that if we continued to follow him, he would be faithful. We shared freely during classtime, group time, and free time. Again, many seeds were planted, and we can only pray that they will be fed in the future. One of my students recently wrote me to say he had just finished reading John in the Bible I gave him. It's so great to see God still working and still showing me why we were placed at that camp.