What a week!

This week has been good.  In some aspects difficult, but good.

It started out with a team from America.  I do not have a picture of the team to show you, because we were too busy to take too many photos!  They came and helped us put on an event called the Silly Olympics.  The students completed various silly tasks, and we kept score and announced winners at the end.  It was fun--and silly!

Immediately after the event, we had a second event.  It was at the same location (our English Center), but it was a different kind of ministry.  This is aimed at people around my age, and it's done in Chinese (sometimes translated to English).  It's run by my friends, and I have somehow managed to finagle my way into the "core group" who plans and leads it.  It was a lot of fun!   Here are some photos from the day.  In the photo from the potluck you can see a few of the Americans who joined us that day!  They left half way through, so are not included in the group photo.

We said goodbye to the team on Tuesday after they joined us in our group classes.  They were a great help and really brought up the energy in our classroom.  My students really enjoyed talking with them, and we're thankful for their time here!

Wednesday and Thursday I had the opportunity to have a friend stay with me, which was really fun!  She had come on Saturday, but stayed somewhere else until Wednesday. I enjoyed spending time with her, and on Saturday we had gone to a Spanish restaurant with 2 other friends.  The restaurant was delicious, and I am so thankful that they were all adventurous enough to try out a new cuisine, which allowed me to eat paella! ¡¡Qué rica!!

On a different note, I did experience something difficult this week.  It was the first time that I really experienced conflict management.  A different friend and I had a conflict due to communication issues.  If you haven't heard before, Western and Eastern cultures have different methods of communication.  Usually they have differences which are laugh-off-able, but occasionally communication breaks down enough to create a serious issue.  In my year (and 3 months) here, I experienced this for the first time.  Thankfully, this friend is also a Christian, so we were able to start the conflict-management with prayer, and ask God to guide us to find a middle-ground.  We did have to use a translator, who also happens to have an impeccably high knowledge of American culture, who helped us communicate and understand each other.  Living in China, it was easy for me to understand the conflict, since I've lived in Eastern thought for over a year.  (I guess I still don't know it well enough, though, to avoid getting into the conflict in the first place!)  It was really difficult for this person to recognize how I think.  At first, I was frustrated, because how can she not see where I am coming from?!  But then I realized that it's just a culture difference, and that this person hasn't spent a prolonged time immersed in Western thinking.  We ended the conversation on good terms, but I just pray that in the future we're able to learn more about changing the communication so that we're able to work in a middle-ground.  I figure that I should probably change my style, since I am a guest in this country, instead of trying to make others change to accommodate for me.  Please pray for me to be able to immerse myself in this way as to avoid another conflict like this!