Pictures

I've uploaded all my Beijing pictures here. I'll write soon about everything that happened while I was there!

Phew I'm home

Beijing Day 6 and the Sunday after

Finally! I've gotten round to writing about the last day!

We had to be up early again (but not quite as early as the day before), pack, go down for breakfast, and be on the coach for something like 9am. It might have been earlier because we wanted to see Tiananmen Square before being at the airport for 1pm. Not all of the group came- some had left the night before and some decided to have a lie-in or have some quiet time.

This was the first time we'd driven through the city centre and it was really exciting to see all the different buildings and stuff. I was hoping to be able to see the new Olympic Stadium but we didn't :(

Anyway, here we are in Tiananmen Square! It was very big and very busy. I felt quite unnerved too knowing that there were secret police everywhere. It wasn't particularly exciting just standing in a square... but I'm glad I've been. I didn't remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre until Sharron was talking about how she remembers seeing it on TV back in the 80's.

Whilst we were at the square Joe and Gretl, very quickly and discreetly, filmed the Vine News for the next week. It was great seeing it on Sunday morning! After Tiananmen Square we went back to the Centre, had a quick debriefing, packed our cases onto the coach and went to the airport. I finally arrived home at about 9:00pm.

On the Sunday after we arrived home Jo and me went to the 11:30am Sunday service, and as we arrived Pastor John caught me and asked me if I'd give a short testimony about the mission trip! I hate public speaking. I don't normally shy away from it, but he was asking me to get on stage at the 11:30 in front of hundreds of people. I agreed anyway...and spent the time during worship worrying and writing down what to say. Finally Pastor Tony called us (and someone from the Thai mission trip) out and I did get on stage, although at one point I nearly sat down, and it was terrifying. I don't really remember what I said except at one point I had to just stop and breathe because my voice was really, really shaking.

So that's my first ever mission trip. And hopefully not my last! We were very lucky that we got to stay in comfort, with good food, and hot showers, and nice regular toilets (at the Centre anyway) and we got to meet some fantastic people.

Beijing Day 5

We're getting there...only 2 more days to write about!

Day 5

We were up and on the coach again at 6:30am. We arrived around 11ish and went straight to lunch at a very local restaurant. We were sat in groups of 8 or so, and each table was in a different room, and the dishes were bought out one by one. There was chicken and corn soup, a green salad and then this big plate of shredded meat was set down. We all eyed it a bit suspiciously as Jacinta asked the waitress what it was. "Oh no guys...I don't know if I should tell you... let me go and double check what it was." We were in rural china, in a local restaurant, so I kinda guessed what it was. So before Jacina came back and confirmed it was what we though it was I took a piece and ate it. And it tasted good.

Dog

"Yeah guys...it's dog..." We had a big discussion about whether we should eat it or not (too late for me). Madeleine and her husband tried some, and so did Jacinta. Jo tried a bit too. I had a few more pieces. They also brought out a rabbit stew which wasn't too bad either.

We were back at the orphanage around 1ish. We were split into 2 teams again- one to knock down a wall and another to do other odd jobs for the orphanage and then play with the kids. I went to play with the kids, of course! First we had to wash the windows but that only took a few minutes with everyone helping. I was so excited to see the children again! I was immediately grabbed by this little girl and I was spinning her around and she was climbing all over me. I had to keep one of the cheeky boys from going in my bag- he worked out that was where i had sweets and balloons and stuff. I gave the little girl a rattle made from an empty water bottle with stoned in but not long after she gave it up to one of the boys it was dismantled. Those kids weren't stupid!

The girl got bored of me soon enough (perhaps because I was just sitting and letting her crawl over me, bottom in the air) so then I tried playing with the 10 year old boy. Like I said before, he is severely autistic, and I don't speak mandarin so I was wondering how I could engage... so I started singing to him. Just the ABC and Ring a ring of roses over and over but I think he liked it. I was holding his hands, and stroking his back, and he was smiling, and I just him to know that someone loved him. And through that I just had a revelation of how much God loves us. I really, really hope they can find homes for all those children and especially that boy. They all just need someone to love them.

While the children were napping we all helped to move the bricks from the broken down wall. It sounds boring but it was so much fun! We formed a human chain and passed all the bricks along. It took us no time at all!

On the coach on the way Esther helped us learn a song in Mandarin, about how we are special and unique to God, so after the children's nap we gathered them all round- and the staff- and sang to them. We also sang Every Knee Will Bow, Row, row, row your boat, and some more I don't remember. Even if the kids got bored we all enjoyed ourselves!

We left a bit later after feeding the kids snacks and drinks. For dinner we went to a very nice Argentinian restaurant with Robert Glover and other people from Care For Children. I ordered a really nice meal of Salmon. Some of the boys ordered sheeps testicles so I tried a bit of them too. I thought they were going to taste really bad so I was chewing really fast...but then I stopped and actually tasted them and they taste fine. Like kidney! So I don't think anyone can say I'm not adventerous with my food haha.

Beijing Day 4

We were up at 5:30am, on the coach by 6:00am and well on our way by 7:00am. We were on our first journey to the orphanage in Chengde. I don't know what to write here because we've been told not to put pictures of the orphanage up on the internet because they don't want to attract any negative attention- e.g. from foreign newspapers or something- but I really want to share with you what we did and what we saw.

We arrived at the orphanage at 11:00am- 4 and a half hours after we left the Centre! We were due to arrive at 9:30 so we'd lost an hour and a half. We were given a quick tour and got to see some of the children before lunch. The orphanage was part of a complex with a wing for children and a wing for adults and elderly people. There was also a wing that used to be used as a hotel to generate income. But since the orphanage teamed up with Care For Children they've been getting government grants and don't need to do that now. It was not in a bad condition- it was definitely not like the pictures I've seen of Romanian orphanages with bare rooms and children tied up in beds. The childrens bedrooms were quite nice with proper beds, duvets, and pillows. There were 6 beds in each room I think. There was a shower in one of the rooms. The nursery where the babies slept had loads of cots lined up next to each other. When I looked in the cots there were lots of babies with only cleft pallates. The room where they ate was basic- white walls and a table where they'd dish up food. Upstairs there was also a classroom with a colour TV. Downstairs there were 2 courtyards- one with a slide and childrens toys, the other empty. The babies were kept in a therapy room. They had special walkers and foam matts on the floor. Everything was basic, yes, but not awful conditions. And much better than I was expecting.

We walked to a local restaurant for lunch which the orphanage had booked for us. They ordered us so much food! And it was all lovely stuff- lots and lots of different dishes and everyone was so full and we ended up taking more than half of the food back with us to give to the orphanage.

Afterwards we were split into 2 groups- one group would leave at 1pm to go back to the Centre and halp serve at the Jackie Pullinger dinner, the others would stay until 3pm and meet the first group at the restaurant for dinner. I offered to stay until 3pm. We all helped do some digging for some plants and then we were taken to play with the children. There were about 15 children which I'd say were aged 3-10ish, and about 10 babies. There were also teenagers and young adults but I only saw 2 of them. Some of the children were mentally handicapped but I'd say most were in the orphanage because they were physically handicapped or deformed in some way. Even if it was only a cleft pallate- something which can be corrected with (as I understand) a fairly simple operation as a baby. It was heartbreaking.

Jo stayed in the therapy room while I went outside to play with the older kids. I think they loved the attention once they got used to all of us! It was a cold day but the kids were still wearing crotchless trousers, their bottoms must have been really cold hehe. I thought it was bad at first, but after visiting Tiananmen Square and seeing kids there, I realised that it's quite normal in China. Means they can just squat and do their business (in potties) without taking their trousers off. Someone had bought balloons so we were blowing them up and giving them out to the kids. There were red balloons everywhere and it was windy so they kept blowing over the walls. Someone (or the orphanage staff) had also bought stickers for the kids so they loved sticking them on their hands or faces, or giving them to us. Because I don't speak or understand any mandarin it meant I had to rely on facial expressions and body language to communicate but I didn't find it too hard since I'm used to it at school, and once I found one child I could play with for a bit it gives you more confidence to play with some of the others. I really enjoyed it!

I think we left around 3:30pm and must have arrived back at the Centre at 8:00pm to pick up the others. We then went to the same restaurant we'd been to before, not far from where we were staying, and had another good meal. I think we all slept well that night.

Beijing Day 3

This day was Sunday so we went to the BICF Next church. It's layout is very unusual- There are sofas at the front, then behind them are tables with chairs, and at the sides are rows of 3 chairs. It's almost like someones sitting room. Our own Vine Band lead the worship and Ps John did the talk.

After the service they served lunch- a buffet of Mediterranean type food- and held a quiz. This is where I met Anita. We had to get into teams so I plonked myself down on her table. We also had a girl who didn't speak much English (Anita was translating to Mandarin) and another nice girl. There was this crazy guy called Gabriel leading the quiz and he was so funny! There was a music intro round and he got a bit carried away singing heehee. I had to leave 3/4 of the way through the quiz to go back to the Care for Children centre, where we were staying.

When we got back me and Lauren spent the afternoon making an awesome costume for Bosco. Bosco was playing a tramp who turned into Jesus for a drama in the evening worship. As you can see it's made out of bin bags, canvas and a table cloth. We covered it in mud to make it look really tramp-ish. In the evening the Vine held a worship event for anyone who wanted to come. Loads of people from the BICF church came, and of course there was all 45 of the Vine people, and others from Care For Children. Ps John gave a talk again, there was worship lead by the Vine, and a drama too. Jo was in the drama playing a self-involved teenage girl.

The drama went like this: there is a beggar in the streets and people are ignoring him- a pastor, a mother and her son, a teenage girl, and a business man. The business man throws $10 at him but carries on. The beggar comes into church but still everyone is ignoring him even though they are Christians. They are too busy worshipping to notice him. But the child sees him. And the child wants to talk to him, but his mother keeps pulling him back. Eventually the child runs and hugs him, after that the beggar throws off his coat and he is Jesus, so everyone falls on their faces. It's really, really moving.

After everyone went and we were all done cleaning up, boxes full of McDonalds were delivered. Yay! We were all starving by then. You should have seen everyone dive in to them hehe. Not long after that (and after a cluster prayer meeting) we were tucked up in our sleeping bags ready for a very early morning.

Beijing Days 1-3

Day 1

We arrived in Beijing, without too much trouble, at 11:00pm. By the time we were in bed after a "brief" briefing it was 1:30am and we had to be up and at breakfast by 8:00am, argh! We did all manage it though. Most of us stayed in the actual Care For Children building in the different therapy rooms. Ours had a double sink, 4 camp beds and a heater. It was freezing the first night because we'd turned the heater off before we settled down. Lesson learnt though! My room mates were Jo, Lauren and Esther.

After breakfast we were taken to the Great Wall of China! And it was so amazing! It was a bit misty and very cold so the pictures look a bit grey but it was perfect weather for walking. We got the cable car to the top and then walked along the Wall. Ok stating the obvious but it's really long... Even just to walk to the place where you can go back down to the food and souvenir stalls. I think we walked for about 45 minutes. And then we got to tobogan down to the bottom! It was so much fun!! It wasn't just a quick 2 minute slide either- it went on for about 10 minutes and you went so fast on the corners. Someone at the front of our group kept going really slow though so it caused traffic jams at the flat bits. Grr!

In the evening the Care for Children centre hosted a "Friday Night Live" youth event aimed at non-Christian teens with a live band, food and a talk by a guy called Lennie and Mark Russell. It was really good. Well, I wasn't so into the music that night, but Mark's talk was awesome. He gave a brilliant illustration of how valuable we are to God- if we take a £20 note we can crumple it, stamp on it and spit on it, but it is still worth £20. So no matter how many times we sin we are still worth the same to Him. Cool, huh?!

Day 2

We had another early start because we were helping Care For Children hold a carnival for all the local children. There was an Easter egg hunt, clowns, an acrobat who squeezed herself into a tiny tube,an Egg bashing game, free photographs, free manicures and massages, a silent auction, face painting and lots of food including chips mmmm! Me and Lauren dressed up as Mickey and Minnie mouse and greeted the children by the entrance before the official start of the carnival. It was so strange wearing the costume- when people were taking my picture I was still smiling even though I had the "head" on, and it's so hard to see anything between the "eyes". A woman gave me her baby to hold and I couldn't actually see the child- talk about scary.

I manned the bouncy castle for a while, until it deflated haha. I think there was a power cut. After that I helped with the ball toss game. I watched the magical mask-changing man, the very bendy acrobat, and a cute clown juggle hats as well as got myself a caramel dragon made. It's amazing watching the guy do it- he takes a ball of caramel and blows it into whatever shape you want.

In the evening- before dinner at a nice restaurant- we went to a prayer meeting at the Beijing International Christian Fellowship church (BICF).

More videos to follow!

Beijing!

This time tomorrow I'll be in Beijing! I'm all packed and ready to go! I still don't know who my "mortal" is but I've had a basic itinery- sightseeing and youth worship on Friday, carnival and another evening worship on Saturday, chuch Sunday. Monday and Tuesday we'll be working in the orphanage serving them in whatever way we can. Exciting! Oh, one day we'll be serving at a Jackie Pullinger event too.

Today at school was sooo laborious. Love that word hehe. I was sat there with nothing to do except sleep, and spend all day on Facebook, and to watch Sex and the City. It's great to know I was being paid to do that :p I left early so I could go into town and go shopping. I finally got round to getting my hair dyed too. I haven't had my highlights touched up since I got them done in Britain. It only cost $250..that's £15. I'm going to get it cut when I get back.

On the way back from town I was sat on the LRT with Jo and I saw this girl run to the back of the carriage (close to where we were). She had a facemask on so I didn't recognise who it was at first. Not long later a helper ran up to the child and gave her a big smack on her legs, and started giving her a telling off. I looked a bit closer and saw it was Cream! Cream who is my most mean and manipulative kid. The one who told the other English teachers that she was "done with you now" and she wasn't going to listen anymore. She still doesn't do what I say most the time but she's not as bad as she was. I'm glad it's not just me she's naughty for!

I'm going to do a bit of tidying now so it's all nice for when I come back!

Flu Alert

On Wednesday night the government closed down all kindergartens and primary schools because of an outbreak of a nasty flu bug. Read the story here. It would have been great if it meant that I actually got an extra week off like Joel and Zoe...but no. All the full-time staff still have to come in. So I'll be spending a week doing pointless jobs like remaking english games that just get shoved in the store cupboards.

Only 6 days until we leave for Beijing!

Ni uh ma?

Are you hungry? We had a very quick mandarin tutorial at the mission trip training on Saturday. Mandarin is pretty easy. Loads easier than Cantonese. We also got to meet most the other people on the trip- there's 45 in total. We've been split into smaller cluster groups and I'm with Lauren (from my cell group), Alex (another older guy...30s? a teacher), and a girl called Esther (23, and goes to 180). They're all really nice and it's good to know that I'll have at least 3 other people i know. We'll be doing "angels and mortals" while we're there too but I have yet to find out who my mortal is. How it works is that I will have to give encouragement and stuff to my mortal throughtout the trip and at the end we all have to guess who our angels are. I can't believe that we're leaving next week! It's going so quick. I'm getting very excited now. I just a bit nervous about the showers and toilets. But Jo keeps reminding me we're not going for comfort...and I know... I'm just not keen on using a squatty toilet.

Got to school to get through before we leave though. This week the vocab is letter, stamp and postman. This is quite a fun lesson- I've written a letter and got a big envelope and I make a postbox out of a chair, and give one of the kids a bag so they can be a postman. I then get them to roleplay writing a letter, posting the letter, and delivering the letter. I can't think of a song to go with the lesson though except postman pat. Grr! I'm trying to face out row, row too because they've started to get carried away with the screaming. In my nightmare class (Class 1a first thing on a Monday and Wednesday morning- my afternoon class are now quite good and I've grown fond of them) one of the girls kept asking to sing "cookie, cookie" and I was really confused. "How does cookie, cookie go Candice? If you sing it then we can do it." I thought maybe it was a song they learnt last year or for a performance. Well today it twigged- she means the "hokie cokie"! She's been asking for it for weeks!

Oh, I'll be putting pics on flickr of a protest the domestic helpers were staging on Sunday about pay. They are really badly treated and only get paid a little more than me for doing 18 hour days. They work 6 days a week and some are made to sleep on the kitchen floor, and there's a high rate of abuse. It's awful. And sometimes they get really nasty, bratty kids to look after.

The sun has put his hat on...

Yay! Winter is over! This week has been gorgeous. I took the day off today so I could go and get a visa for China. Took us over an hour to find the embassy in Wan Chai! It was such a nightmare. I went into town after to do some shopping and because it was so nice stopped off in the park for a while to read and just enjoy the sunshine. It's warm-but not hot- with a nice warm breeze. I love this weather! I've bought myself some nice haagen-dazs and now I'm watching December Boys, with Daniel Radcliffe. I'm so happy hehe.

Yay!

More pictures from Cebu, taken by Greg and Derek the canadian guys we met at the hotel. See them here!

Here's some of my faves:

Spelling "help" on the city tour

A girl dancing while her blind grandad played guitarDancing at the Christmas party

John and Mel dancing

Sleepy Saturdays

We were meant to go to the China Embassy in Wan Chai to get our visas this morning but neither of us woke up until 10. Apparently it gets really busy so we're leaving it til next week instead.

I've had a really good week. Last Saturday we went to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch for Vinny's Birthday with my church plus group. There are now 3 little babies in the plus group so all the women clucked over them while the parents had some time off. They are so cute! The food is really good at HRC- I had a burger with bacon and cheese but only managed to get a third of the way through it because it was so big.


School went well- I've been teaching them aeroplanes, helicopters and hot air balloons and getting them to throw paper planes at targets as well as singing a lot of "row, row, row your boat" from last week when I taught them about boats. The kids love screaming after the "if you see a crocodile don't forget to scream"! I also did PE with the nursery kids for the first time (they've changed my timetable again). They are so adorable! But standing there watching them go round in circles on tricycles is just a bit boring.


I also went to the Jackie Pullinger sessions at church. They were so good! She wasn't as blunt as on Sunday in these. We got to hear some testimonies of people Jackie had worked with and helped come off drugs. Jackie also shared a lot more of her stories. She also talked about why there are people in poverty, why we should go and help the poor and how to minister to them. It was really inspiring and I'm not at all hesitant about the mission trip at Easter. I missed the last session on Saturday morning because I got back so late on Friday night and was really exhausted. I'll probably download it though once it's up on the Vine website.


I haven't done much this weekend apart from church and a little bit of shopping. I've paid for the Beijing mission trip in full now (came to $4300) so I'm definitely going! There's a team of 43 people. It's very exciting! And it's only 3 weeks away now.


I need some more jeans to wear but none of them over here seem to be of very good quality. My favourite Miss Selfridge pair are getting really thin and faded. I looked on the website to see if I could get another pair the same but they don't stock them anymore :( I live in jeans...Don't know what to do. Think I'll be browsing ebay until I see some decent ones.