Tidal bore

One of the great things about our new apartment is that we have a fantastic view of the Qiantiang river. It is nice to sit on the balcony and watch the river.  In the evenings, when the weather is nice, we like to take walks along the river. 

The river empties into a bay, and the unusual shape of this creates the world's largest tidal bore. You don't know what a tidal bore is?  Well, I did not either.  Basicly, during the high tide, the ocean backs up into the river. In October, this causes a rather large wave. " The tide rushing into the river mouth from the bay causes a bore which can reach up to 9 metres (30 ft) in height, and travel at up to 40 km per hour (25 miles an hour). [The bore is] known locally as the Silver (or Black) Dragon." Wikipedia

We knew it was the time of the year that the bore happens, but we did not know exactly when it was.  For a few days, we had been seeing people show up along the river int he late afternoon. Then on the biggest day, there was a huge crowd.

We went up to the top floor of our building to watch.  At first we just watched out the window, then we made our way to the roof.

Can you see the bore coming?  It is that wave across the river.

 Here you can see the wave breaking along the banks.

The noise you hear in the video is the wind and someone's AC near where we were standing.  You can see the wave breaking on the far side of the river.

Some years the bore is much bigger, and it is much higher at different places along the river.  It was nice to be able to see this without having to be in the huge crowd.

mountain

October 1st, is Chinese National day (kind of like our July 4th).  Most businesses and schools have a week off.  It is a great time to recharge you batteries and take in a little traveling or sightseeing.  Of course, since the entire country is also on holiday, many scenic and tourist spots are very crowded.  We usually avoid West Lake at this time of the year!

Josh and Yan organized a short trip up a local mountain.  It wasn't exactly crowded, but there were more people climbing this mountain than usual.  

We walked up hundreds of stairs through some nice trees.  

This was the view from the top.  Can you see West Lake?  We took some pictures from the top of the mountain.  Maybe Josh will have a picture of our group.  Then we walked back to a (mostly) deserted pavilion.  There we sang a few songs and prayed for this city and God's work this coming year.

After we climbed down from the mountain, we ate a meal together at our beloved "round restaurant". (This mountain is close to our old apartment).

Will you continue to pray for the city of Hangzhou and our involvement in the Lord's work here?

Typhoon Fitow and flooding

On October 7th, we were hit by a typhoon.  A typhoon is just a hurricane, but they call them typhoons if they develop in the western part of the Pacific Ocean.  We experience some weather from a typhoon almost every year.  This year, our province was hit pretty hard by typhoon "Fitow".  It did not storm too badly in Hangzhou, but it rained a ton!

It started raining on Sunday and rained all day and all day on Monday.

Jon went into work Monday morning.  After he got there, the boss called and told everyone to go home.  So Jon came back.  It was raining pretty hard, the wind was picking up, and some places were already starting to flood.  This is what he looked like when he came in.

He had to walk/wade through some flooding, and his umbrella did not make it.

We stayed in the rest of the day and on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, Jon went into town to the school.  He took the bus, but the bus only took him so far, and not the normal route.  Once he got off the bus, he walked about a block and then took these pictures!

I heard it rained 8 inches in about 24 hours. In less than a week, all the water was gone and things were mostly normal.  

Meeting in Homes

It feels great to be meeting and worshipping in homes again. We hosted the worship in our home for the month of September. David and Annie have volunteered for October. The office we met in last year had the potential to hold a really large group. However, the group seemed to get smaller and smaller as the year went on. Everyone got up and went home soon after worship in the office. In homes everyone sits around and talks and enjoys snacks together after worship. In a home we all squeeze in and sit closer together. One Sunday Dan, Bill Gates, Jane and husband Yorex stayed for lunch after worship. They had not all been together for one year, so it was fun to catch up with their lives. Another Sunday HongMei stayed later asking about the retreat JiuLian group was organizing. Dan had time to open up his computer and show the map location and retreat schedule to HongMei.

Caleb’s First Soccer

Recently at Caleb’s school the children were able to choose one extra activity to learn on Friday afternoons: Chinese calligraphy, drums, painting, dancing, kungfu, or soccer. Caleb chose soccer. He was excited about it because we watch the university students play soccer in the stadium all the time. Caleb’s math teacher is the soccer coach. He is a young guy in his twenties, just his second year of teaching. So the first Friday afternoon there were 50 boys wanting to learn soccer and only one math teacher. The coach announced, “We have too many boys. We can only keep two from each class to learn soccer.” So you guessed it, Caleb’s class had three boys so they had to pick a number. Caleb guessed the wrong number. It makes my eyes tear up to think about a little boy, especially my Caleb, walking off the soccer field, not being able to play, because he guessed the wrong number. But the soccer coach called him back, “GaoJiaLe you can stay.” We really are treated as special guests here in China. We heard this story and GaoYan asked Caleb, “So did you feel sad when you thought you could not play soccer?” “No, I didn’t feel sad.” Well, GaoYan and I understand the math teacher extended a special favor to our family.

Extra note: At the Yellow Dragon stadium they have a soccer league for young children. Also we heard of one Christian mom with three boys and lots of energy who is trying to organize a soccer league in another part of the city. Both opportunities are too far away for us, but great to know other children have a chance to escape their homework, get out there and run and play.

Discontented?

I can't read Chinese.  I can recognize a few characters but only  a few.  Hallie on the other hand can read...uh I don't know, several characters.  She also knows how to write characters and knows how to copy characters.  This has proved helpful in a few occasions.

I love cooking with a crockpot.  It is so easy and helpful.  I like to make pots of soup or stew in the winer, and we like to eat pots of beans.  I have a really large crockpot I bought our first year here.  Recently, I inherited a smaller crock pot from an American that returned to the US.  I decided to make some barbecue chicken sandwiches.  I just used a package of chicken breasts (3 breasts) added some barbecue sauce and some southwestern spices and cooked it on low for several hours.  Right before I served the chicken, I shredded it with two forks and added a little more barbecue sauce. We ate it on hamburger buns.  

Back to reading Chinese, this is what the dial on the crock pot looks like:

I asked Hallie to tell me what the settings were.  She could read some of them and make a pretty good guess as to what they meant, but she decided to be sure.  So, she copied the characters down and entered them into my computer and plugged them into the translator and came up with this:

off/ heat retention / slow / discontented

For this meal, I used the slow setting. I did not want discontented chicken.
 :)

We are back!

We finally made it to China. Yay! Our flights were really as smooth as they could have been.  I also feel like I slept more on the flights than I usually do.  Of course I barely slept the night before.  When we arrived in Shanghai, we were all VERY tired.  We ate some “dinner” and went to bed.  We were in bed before 7 pm!  We all woke up around 3:30 or 4 AM.  We hung out in the hotel and then we went to eat some breakfast around 6.  Then Hallie and I went to the Embassy (consulate) to get some pages added to my passport.  Then we returned to the airport to take a bus back to Hangzhou.  We finally made it to our apartment with all the bags about 6 and were in bed about 7:30 or 8.  We were tired!

As you read in Josh and Gao Yan’s post, they were somewhat tired and discouraged at the end of last school year.  We did not feel that way at all.  Jon was physically tired and more than ready for a break.  He was working two jobs and traveling about 4 hours 3 days a week.  However, we were really excited about this new area we moved to.  We made some plans and felt like some great things were happening here.  We were ready for our break, but also equally excited about the upcoming year.

Then some things went wrong this summer.  It was pretty discouraging.  We were really excited about Jon’s new job and the great potential there. But they messed up the visa stuff, so we started to have some doubts.  Also, several of the people we were planning on working with here in BJ moved away.  Some moved back to the US, and Heather moved to Shanghai.  There are a couple of contacts we will meet with every week, but every weekend since we got here has been a working weekend or a holiday, so it has been hard to get into a weekend routine. 

We had felt led here, and thought Jon’s job was a huge blessing, but we stared doubting.  Was all this God telling us this was not the place for us, or was it Satan trying to discourage us.  As I write this, I can see, it was probably Satan trying to discourage us.

Slowly, things are getting better, we are getting settled at home more.  The kids have more of a routine now.  The weather has been fantastic lately.  Things at Jon’s job are leveling out some (they are finishing a big project soon).  Hopefully we soon we can see some new contacts to share with.

Pray for our whole team to be excited about God’s work here in Hangzhou!

This is a picture taken from the roof our building.  This is a section of our neighborhood.