Rain!

The two photos below were taken within 30 minutes of each other out my bedroom window.  It's strange having the torrential downpours, and then a clear day, and then another downpour later in the day.  There have been flash floods, heavy rain, and lots of thunder and lighting recently.  It's crazy!

As for my sickness that I posted about last week: I am almost over it.  It took me out for a while, but I am slowly recovering.  It's not H7N9, don't worry ;)  I am just suffering from a more severe cold, with loss of voice and loss of energy as side effects.

Sick = NO FUN!

So I am sick now.  I have been for the past couple days.  Yesterday I went home from work a little early, and today I am going in quite late.  I am going in now, and it's almost 5:30pm.  So I am excited to have had time to sleep.  I went to bed last night around 9, fell asleep around 12 (due to a runny nose, I was unable to actually sleep!), and woke up a couple times, but finally at 3pm.  I wanted to sleep longer, but I was afraid that if I went back to sleep, I wouldn't wake up in time for my 8pm class!

I would appreciate your prayers for me to be able to stay focused, and to be able to get back to health as soon as possible! :)

谢谢！

Food and Fruit

When I ask someone (with lower level English) what their favorite food is, often they will respond with a fruit.  Not because that's their favorite food, but because they actually heard me ask what their favorite fruit is.  It's not a big deal, but I realize more and more how important pronunciation is.

So I am planning to make a cake for my friend's birthday.  My friend really likes durian, so I am going to take one for the team and purchase durian.  If you don't know what it is, durian is a southeast Asian fruit that smells...horrible (pictured left).  I believe it tastes as wonderful as it smells, but there are many people who disagree with me.  So my plan is to buy some durian, blend it, and then make it into a cake.  I found a recipe online, but now I just have to decide when I will make a test cake.  My house will smell like durian afterwards for a few days, so I am not too excited.  We'll see how that goes!

If you have ever cooked with durian and have some advice for me, please let me know!

Christian Music

Last night I was in class, and we were talking about what kind of music we like.  We were practicing grammar forms of using infinitives or gerunds appropriately after certain verbs such as like, love, don't mind, can't stand, etc., and so I prompted the question, and the students answered and discussed.  One of the students then threw the question back at me, and I said that I like listening to Christian music.

I had all of their attention, and I explained how the Christian music is uplifting, as the music is talking about how awesome God is and how He helps us, instead of a lot of the secular music which is about how someone is mad at their boyfriend, or cheating, or how they bought awesome shoes the other day.  I like listening to music that will make me feel good.  Then I also told them that I like to listen to Spanish and Chinese music as well, but that Christian is usually my favorite.

One of my students told me that she also enjoys listening to Christian music, and some of the others just listened intently.  It was nice to be able to talk with them about it.  Thank God for the opening!

Guangzhou and the days following!

I just spent a week in China's 3rd largest city, Guangzhou.  If you frequent my blog, you will remember that I was there not long ago with some friends for a day trip.  This time I stayed for 5 days or so, and was able to meet the family of a friend, and tour around the city with them.  We saw many things, such as the Guangzhou Tower, many special monuments, Beijing Street, Papa John's Pizza (yes! I ate there twice! I was so excited!), the subway system (which we dont have in Macau...I only get to use it when I go to HK of GZ), and more.

Overall it was a nice, relaxing trip.

I came back on Friday night.  Saturday I slept late, and then got a call from a friend asking if I wanted to go to Zhuhai (the next city over) for some fun, so we did.  We had such a nice conversation that all of the restaurants were closing as we were trying to find something to eat.  One restaurant told us that we could eat there, but as we asked for food, they informed us that they didn't have any of that particular food.  They said, how about this? and pointed to a picture.  We didn't say yes or no, as we were discussing, and before we could accept or object, the food was in front of us...one bowl anyway.  We were then informed that that was all that they have left, and we watched the light in the kitchen get turned off.  So we asked for another bowl and we shared some pork chop noodle soup.  It was very delicious, but the experience was an interesting one!

The next day, the friend that I went to Guangzhou with was doing some street magic, so I was able to go and watch the group perform.  It was amazing :)  They were raising money for charity: if you haven't heard, there was a terrible earthquake in Sichuan (Szechuan).  There was a HUGE fundraiser going on at that time in the downtown tourist area.  It was so much fun to see all of the excitement and everyone in their traditional clothes.  As I was standing there/walking around, I ended up meeting with 3 coworkers and 1 other friend who were also in the area!

Afterwards, my coworkers and the magician friend went to a local temple to tour and to learn.  When you enter a temple, one of the first things that you notice is not the temple itself: it's the smell.  It smells so strongly of incense that if you are in the temple, your clothes will smell like it for at least another couple hours, if not the rest of the day.  It reminded me of Leviticus when God was giving a special 'recipe' for incense that the Hebrews were to make ONLY for the temple, so that when one went to the temple to worship, he would have the aura of God on him (or her!).  It was a smell that was not only pleasing to God, but also a reminder to go to the temple to worship when you smelled it on others.

This smell, however, is far from pleasing to God.  This smell is of wickedness, as other gods are worshiped in this temple.  I love the physical beauty of the temple, but quite frankly, that's all.  It's beauty, but it's absolutely nothing.  The gods being worshiped there do not exist.  They cannot help you.  There are hundreds of gods.  Floor gods, gods of luck, money, lost things, kitchens, etc.  In any temple you'll find multiple gods to serve.  This reminded me of Romans chapter....something...where Paul was talking about the myriad of gods that the people worshiped: they even had a temple to the unknown god, which Paul used as an opportunity to explain who that God is--the Triune God!  To my knowledge, they don't worship an 'unknown god' here, but I am constantly trying to figure out how I can find a way to talk to my friends about the Gospel.

After the temple, we tried to find a restaurant.  An hour later, we decided just to go near my house to a restaurant that we knew, and to all go over to my house for games.  We played Phase 10, which was a lot of fun!  I love playing games, and it was fun to share that with my friends!

Today was my day off, so I spent it recovering from my vacation, cleaning my room, and cooking a couple meals for the week.  Tomorrow it's back to work, and though I was so happy to be on vacation, I am happy to get back to see everyone again this week.  Added to our team this week are the parents of a coworker.  It should be fun to have them here!  I am excited to have an even fuller team!

I think that's all for today.  Enjoy your week! :)