"Wo yao yi tong shui." ("I need water.")

Well, this week has been fairly quiet.  I continue to spend as much time as possible with Yi Feng.  I'm reminded of something that C.S. Lewis wrote.  He said that if a man loves a woman, he wants to stay with her and never leave her side, but normally the necessities of life (like earning money) keep tearing him away.  But, if he is somehow able to arrange his life so that he has no outside responsibilities, and spends all his time with her, then the fascination grows stale.  I hope I never get to that point.

In other news, I accepted the job offer from Hy-Lite English.  I will continue on my current status until September.  Then, I will sign a full-time contract for one year.  My schedule will also change.  I'll be working mostly nights and weekends, unfortunately.  I'm pretty sure I can get Sundays off, or at least Sunday morning for church.  That's life when you're working with schoolkids in a private education business.

The main thing I wanted to write about was the water.  That is, my drinking water.  For reference, here's my water dispenser:

Water Dispenser

In China, as in Korea, the normal tap water is not considered safe to drink without purification, although we use it for everything else (except brushing teeth).  Most people have water dispensers in their homes, like the one pictured above.  This works fine for me, until the water runs out and the jug needs to be replaced.

I have asked around, and no one seems to know of any place where you can go to purchase these water jugs.  When it runs out, you need to call the phone number on the barrel, tell the person on the other end that you need water, and what your address is.  Then, they send a delivery guy with the water.  Same-day service, apparently.  That works fine for most people here, I guess, but for me (since I don't speak Chinese), not so much.

When I was spending all day at Wuxi International School, I just filled my small bottles from their dispensers, and I managed not to use mine very much.  (I did the same in Korea, only with larger bottles and filter machines.)  Thus it was that this week was only the second time that my dispenser ran empty and needed a refill.  The first time, I took the empty jug down to the guard shack and showed it to the guard.  After some protesting in Chinese, he showed me the phone number.  Then, when I asked, "Do they speak English?" and after some more Chinese, he got out his phone and made the call for me.  (I wrote down my apartment number for him.)  Fortunately, I had nowhere I really needed to go that day.  So, I went up to my apartment to wait, and later, the water guy came.  It cost 14 RMB (if memory serves) to replace the water.  More than the 10 RMB I had been quoted earlier, but quite reasonable.

This last week, my water was running low again.  So, instead of having to bother the guard, I asked Yi Feng to teach me how to call for water myself.  She wrote down in my book what I would need to say, and drilled me on pronunciation until I had it right.  On Friday, the water ran out.  Saturday, I planned to leave by 10 a.m. to catch a bus and meet someone.  So, I made a call at 8 a.m., figuring a local delivery shouldn't take two hours if I called early in the day.

The call didn't work out quite the way I planned.  After an hour or so, I got a call back from them.  Someone spoke a little English.  I tried to tell them my address, but it ended up that they said I should find a Chinese friend.  So, I called Yi Feng.  She said she would help.  She said she enjoyed doing something for me.

It turned out that, since I was using the area code on the jug, I was getting the water place in another city, where (I guess) their main office is.  Yi Feng said she made the correct call, and that I just had to wait.  Well, I waited until 10 a.m., but then I had to leave.  However, I had a plan that I thought would work.

I took a rubber band, and a 20 RMB bill, and attached the bill to the neck of the empty jug.  I then placed the jug outside my apartment door before I left.  I figured that if no one stole the money, and if the delivery guy was intelligent, he would take the empty, leave a full jug, take the 20 RMB bill, and maybe even leave my change on the full jug.  That would require both honesty and intelligence on the part of everyone involved; two things that are not always guaranteed in China, apparently.

Well, something went wrong.  Either he didn't show up, or he wasn't sufficiently intelligent or observant to notice the bill on the jug and figure out what he was expected to do with it.  The jug was exactly the way I had left it.  No one stole my 20 RMB, but I didn't get my water refill, either.  (I have a small reserve, so I'm not going thirsty just yet.)

What I really want is a way to buy one additional water jug.  I want to keep a full one next to the water dispenser.  That way, when one runs out, I can replace it immediately, without waiting for a delivery.  Then I would have plenty of time to figure out how to get water delivered at a time when I am present to receive it.  I think I just figured out how (based on my scanty understanding of Standard Chinese), but I'll check with Yi Feng first.

What I'll probably have to do this time is get help.  Yi Feng texted me this afternoon (as I was riding home on the 766 bus) that she is free all day tomorrow.  She has some places that she wants to take me to.  Well, I'll take any excuse to spend time with her, doing anything.  Lord willing, I'll meet her at 8 a.m. tomorrow.  That afternoon, I may have to take her to my place, where I can call for water, with her present to help if something goes amiss.  Then we can sit and wait for the delivery, and I can take her out to dinner after the water arrives.  That's the plan, anyway.  There's plenty we can talk about while we wait.

Prayer Requests
These past few weeks have been a little surreal for me.  Spending hours almost every day with a beautiful young woman, going out for meals with her, holding hands, sharing dessert, etc. never happened to me in the U.S.  Yi Feng actually wants to spend time with me, and even welcomes physical contact.  How could this happen to me?  It feels like I'm living someone else's life.  As one of my colleagues said to me, "It looks like you've got a girlfriend."  Well, she denies it (in both English and Chinese), but I don't really care how she defines our relationship, as long as she continues seeing me, and letting me express my affection for her.

So, thank God for bringing Wu Yi Feng into my life!  For the first time in my life, I have real hope that I'm not destined to live like a monk.

In addition, I just heard back from Jane, the vice-principal at WIS.  She says I don't have to move out right away.  She'll tell me how to pay the rent on my current apartment.  It's about 1400 RMB/month, which, considering the location and quality, seems quite reasonable when compared to others that I've seen.  So, praise God for at least a short-term solution to the housing issue.

The only thing that's really bothering me right now is my lip.  On Wednesday, I took Yi Feng out to dinner (as usual), at a restaurant that was new to both of us.  The meal involved a boiling pot on a hot plate right at my seat.  Taking something out of the pot, I misjudged the temperature of some mushrooms and burned one spot on my lower lip rather badly.  It's got a scab now that's quite noticeable.  (Yi Feng was very cute about it, wanting to touch it last night, when it started bleeding from trauma.  She doesn't mind how it looks.)  So, please pray for infection-free healing.

Also, Amelie's mother had an accident on her bicycle last week.  (Of course, she wasn't wearing a helmet.  Hardly any Chinese people wear proper helmets unless they're on something motorized, and even then not always.)  She seems to have suffered a rather bad concussion.  (Worse than the one I had when I was 10 y.o.)  She's been in and out of the hospital, and Amelie has been busy helping her.  Please pray for healing for Amelie's mother.

Well, I've got to get to bed now if I'm going to be well rested when I meet Yi Feng.  ("Go to bed early," she would say.  Apparently, in Chinese, it's like our "Sweet dreams," or something similar.)  So, thank you for reading, and thanks for praying, especially for Amelie's mother.  God bless you all.

How safe is it in China?

I thought I'd write this post because some of you are undoubtedly concerned for my safety.  Now, I have some pictures about the safety situation in China, and related concerns.

Category 1:  Street/Vehicle Safety
The traffic situation here is a little crazy.  Chinese drivers seem to take crazy risks, leaving no space, e-bike drivers darting in and out of traffic and pedestrians, with kids on the bikes, no helmets on anyone.  (Well, there are a few helmets.  But I haven't seen any in the stores yet.)

I was actually surprised that I didn't see any collisions.  That is, until yesterday evening.  I was just crossing the street to go to church, when I heard a crunching sound.  I turned to look, and this is what I saw:

BMW vs. Bus

Yes, that's a BMW and a public bus.  Guess who won?

Actually, neither was going fast enough to do any serious damage.  The BMW driver was probably just trying to get into traffic, and either didn't see the BIG RED BUS, or thought he could get by fast enough.  Since both lights still seem to work, I'm guessing the only damage was cosmetic.

Category 2:  Apartment/Personal Safety
I have it on good authority that if a foreigner is hurt, robbed, or cheated by the locals, then the police will come down pretty hard, because it hurts China in the long run.  So, I'm probably pretty safe on the streets, even though some Chinese tend to steal because they don't have enough money.  But what about my apartment?  Behold, my steel door, with deadbolts:

Top of Door

Center of Door

Bottom of Door

The bottom of the door also has a vertical bolt to match the top.  All of these bolts are extended halfway by one turn of the key, and full extension by a second turn.  There is also another bolt that I can throw separately from the inside.  That's a total of 9 bolts to keep my stuff safe, 10 to keep me safe.  Paranoids, eat your hearts out.

Chinese Consulate

Or, to use the full title, the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China.  (Sorry, no pictures this time.  I left my camera behind, which was good, because they are not allowed inside.)

Today I returned to the big house on Geary & Laguna, and this time I actually made it inside the visa office.  Appropriately enough, as I approached my destination the second time around, the first visible sign of the Consulate's location was not, as before, the flag of the P.R.C., but a long line of people extending from mid-block (where the door of the visa office is located) almost to the corner.  I had walked from the BART station to save on bus fare.  It's about 1.5 miles, slightly uphill, not a difficult walk for someone like me.

I arrived at about 12:45, and lined up behind a gentleman who was clearly not Chinese, and we chatted for a little bit.  The line wasn't moving, because the office was closed for lunch.  At 13:00 we were allowed in, after a security screening.  The number system wasn't working, which actually didn't surprise me too much, so I got in the visa line, which was clearly labeled in English (and, I presume, in Chinese as well).  I had a pleasant conversation with the woman behind me, and just as I was about to run out of yarn on my knitting project, I got to the front of the line.

The woman behind the window checked over my papers, taking my passport and a color copy thereof, taking the application with pasted passport photo, and the copies of the working permit and letter of invitation.  (She looked at the originals and let me keep them.)  She showed me that I needed to sign the application, which I did, and gave me a ticket to pick up my visa on the 29th (Friday).  She did not take payment at that time.  I was told I would have to pay when I picked it up.  She kept my passport, as expected.

Having read some negative reviews online, I was mentally prepared for a huge hassle and runaround.  I must say, I got out with rather less trouble than I expected, thank God.

Prayer Requests
First of all, praise God for helping me resolve that personal issue that I mentioned several posts back.  I just had to ask for help, as it says: "Ask, and you will receive."  (Thanks also for the help that I received, you know who you are.)

Also, praise God for a relatively painless trip to the Consulate and the successful submission of my visa paperwork.

At the same time, please pray for my return trip on Friday and the timely issue of my visa at that time.  In addition, please continue to pray for the rest of my preparations, which are numerous and sometimes complex.  You'd think I'd never done this before!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for praying.

First Week in Korea

Well, it's been a week minus a few hours since I first touched down in Korea, and I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto. :-)

Where do I begin? The flight was excellent in every respect. Singapore Airlines has world-class service and amenities, there was hardly any turbulence, I had a window seat next to a vacant middle seat, and the retired Hindu woman in the aisle seat was very friendly. I had no problems with immigration, customs, or health screening. Baggage claim was uneventful & accomplished at warrior speed, and my promised ride, though not the person I expected, was waiting for me, right where I expected, and recognized me immediately.

My first disappointment came when I tried to change my traveler's checks for Korean won. The currency counter at the airport charges a commission for traveler's checks, and I didn't want to pay that. I forgot I had some dollars that would be hard to spend in Korea. So, I arrived at the apartment without any spendable money. I also arrived later than I wanted to, because my driver got a little lost, since he was unfamiliar with the route and his directions were not very clear. Also, I won't get a decent paycheck for over a month, and I don't have an up-front settlement allowance. But, things are much better than they could be.

For one thing, the previous occupants left shampoo and other toiletries, so I don't need to buy those yet. For another, the school provides two meals per day while I'm working, so I only need food for breakfast plus the weekends. My roommate shares what he has, and Josh C, the guy who drives the school shuttle and picked me up from the airport, took me to the store and paid for some food for me. Cereal is expensive here, so breakfast is mostly fruit, like bananas, apples, and nectarines. (I could really use some granola, though.)

For another thing, in asking around for some help getting a ride to a bank, I learned that one of the school secretaries was looking for dollars for some reason. I made contact, she got some cash from the ATM, and I changed all the dollars I had for won. The rate was fair, and now I have some money to buy groceries. Since I don't have to pay for transportation, and my roommate won't ask me to kick in my share of the utilities until I get paid, and the school provides up to 10 meals per week, I should be OK.

One of the downsides of being where I am, is that there's not much within easy walking distance. For another, hardly any of the Koreans here speak any English. On the upside, the air is clean, the crime rate (aside from public drunkenness) is virtually zero, and the people are pretty friendly.

I've been very busy. On Sunday night, Josh C told me that I would be expected to start teaching Monday morning. I felt unprepared, not to mention jet-lagged, but as a warrior I can do whatever it takes to do whatever I have to do. Teaching math when I'm jet-lagged and disoriented is nothing compared to the challenges I conquered at Warrior Camp.

Then, on Monday morning, I met Chris Lee, who seems to be Dr. Cho's right-hand man. (Dr. Cho is the principal of the school.) He told me that, because of my recent arrival and the government's strong recommendations about containing the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, I wouldn't be teaching for a week, although since I was healthy I was free to come to the school, work at my desk, eat meals, etc. So, I got my books and computer, and I wasn't in any hurry, because I had a week to prepare lessons for two different classes.

Then, on Monday evening after 10pm, the doorbell rang. It was Chris Lee, and he had come to tell me that Dr. Cho wanted me to start the next morning, September 1. (That was the date I had originally promised that I could start.) Again, it would be hard, and it might not be pretty, but as a warrior I can do whatever it takes, so I agreed. The kids had been in study hall instead of math class for over a week, and Dr. Cho didn't want to lose any more time. I can't blame him, although the timing of his decision was not the best.

So, I started my teaching career on Tuesday, 1 September 2009. (Yes, this is a red-letter day for me.) First we had to get the textbooks, and then I had to teach without having prepared anything. I've often thought that I could do that, and it turns out that I can. However, I don't recommend it as a habit. By Wednesday I had a plan, and on Thursday and Friday I was able to cover two lessons per block, which is necessary to get through the required material on time. (No, I haven't planned it out with a calendar yet. I'm just doing as much as I can.)

Between teaching, settling in to the school, planning my lessons, settling in to the apartment, and trying to study Korean, I haven't had time for much else. So many things here are different, there are challenges everywhere when trying to do the simplest tasks, which makes them take much longer than they should.

For one thing, the unified laundry machine is labeled in Korean. (Thank God there are English instructions available!) Trying to do a load, I was convinced it hadn't dried them properly, so I tried to run a dry cycle. Again, not convinced. Then my roommate comes home and tells me it uses steam to dry, so they won't be dry like home, I have to shake them out. I hung everything on hangars wherever I could find a place to put a hook on my side of the apartment.

Then, on Friday, I had my biggest challenge in Korea to date (outside of the classroom):

It started because there was no shuttle available on Friday afternoon, since Josh C. and his wife Meagan were coaching the volleyball teams at their away games. So, I caught a ride home with Dick & Sherry, before dinnertime, which meant I needed to prepare my own dinner for the first time since arriving here. Not having enough of my own food in the apartment for dinner, let alone the weekend, not feeling comfortable using that much of my roommate's food uninvited, and finally having some won of my own to spend, I decided to do some shopping.

There is a small convenience store here at the apartment complex, that sells some necessities and sundry items. Between that and the farmers' markets that take over the streets every 5 days, I could buy all the food I needed. However, Friday was not a market-day. There is also a shuttle bus that I learned about, chartered by the management of the apartment complex, which provides transportation between the complex and the downtown area at no charge.

Feeling adventurous, and not finding what I wanted in the convenience store, I decided to take the shuttle. The driver spoke more English than most Koreans here, which isn't saying much. I was able to communicate that I wanted to go shopping in town, and that I needed food, not a restaurant, but food to cook. (At least, I think he got that message.) Where he let me off, I didn't see what I wanted immediately, so I decided to walk up and down the street.

I went into one or two stores, I crossed the street twice, and then I finally found a little side-street with a few open-air produce stands. I had been looking for brown rice, but I didn't even know how to say "rice" in Korean, or spell it in hangul. What I ended up buying was a handful of bananas, a few brown potatoes, a few yellow onions, and 10 brown eggs. The eggs were in flats of 25 (on the metric system, of course), and I used hand motions to show that I wanted fewer. The woman at the produce stand put 10 eggs in a bag, without additional padding. (Needless to say, I was very careful with that bag on the way home!) I offered the woman two 10,000 won bills, she took one and gave me two 1,000 won bills and a 500 won coin. Seven and a half thousand won for a handful of bananas, a handful of onions, a handful of potatoes, and a metric dozen eggs. Not as cheap as Imwale's, perhaps, but not bad, considering I started with over 150,000 won to last until payday. And, I should be able to cash my traveler's checks before then.

(This shopping trip taught me a valuable lesson: Be flexible in my purchasing plans until I know where to find what I want. Instead of putting "brown rice, lentils, eggs, tofu, milk," I need to write: "carbs (complex), protein, lipid/oil, calcium" as the nutrients that I need to shop for, and get what I can find to meet those needs.)

I walked back down the street until I was near the place where the bus driver had dropped me off, and looked in vain for the bus stop he had mentioned. (If I saw a bus-stop sign, I didn't recognize it.) As Providence would have it, before long I saw the bus itself, with the logo of the apartment complex, and I waved and ran (carefully holding my bag!) to meet it. The bus stopped, the door opened, I boarded, saying, "Go-map seumnida," to the driver (which he acknowledged with "ne"), and carefully took my seat.

At the apartment, I put away my purchases. I found one of the eggs was broken, and 9 whole. It was better than I had feared, but not as good as I'd hoped. Next time I go shopping, I'll bring something like newspaper for padding. (There was a Korean newspaper by the door on Saturday. I can't read it, but that doesn't make it usless!) I sautéed a sliced onion and ate it with spaghetti sauce, which was good. I also made two eggs in a hole with some bread from the fridge, and cooking oil from the pantry. That was dinner on Friday.

Saturday I mostly worked on lesson plans. Didn't finish with all the plans for next week, but I am prepared for the next two days. Now that I'm familiar with the lesson planning software/templates, I should be able to get caught up by Monday evening. For lunch, I baked a potato in the microwave, and sautéed a chopped onion and pepper (from the fridge). Next time I'll seed the pepper first! Wow, was that spicy!

Saturday I also went shopping again, this time at the convenience store. I got some spaghetti and a small bag of what I thought was brown rice. Since there's plenty of spaghetti sauce in the apartment, I cooked some of that first (after translating the instructions with my computer), which was good for dinner.

Sunday, I spent a fair bit of time translating the writing on the "rice" package. (When you need to translate Korean cooking instructions, Google translate is worth its weight in gold. So is a computer that can type in the source language.) It turns out the "rice" is some kind of rice-barley mix. It cooks in 15 minutes, so it must be white rice. I'm not sure how much of a complete grain the barley is, but the package says (in Korean) that it's an excellent (quantified) source of dietary fiber. It has kind of a nutty flavor, and I bet it would be good with milk for breakfast.

I'd like to post some photos, but the job of teaching and settling in to Korea hasn't left me much time for photography. I'll try to take some shots of the farms and grave markers on the road between my apartment and the school. That's about the only time I have when there's nothing else I need to be doing. If any of them are good enough to post, that should give you a flavor of what my commute is like.

Prayer Requests:

First, praise God, and give glory to Him, for enabling me to learn a few words of Korean and some of the Hangul writing system before I left! Thanks to that, I know how to greet people and take their leave, thank them and acknowledge thanks, introduce myself and say where I come from, and ask people their names and where they come from. Also, I can slowly sound out the writing. While I can't really use the language to get things done, this limited vocabulary is still very helpful. It makes a great first impression, when I bow to someone I've just met, and say, "Mannaso, pangap-seumnida (Pleased to meet you)." It's also good for impressing my students. I'm pretty sure I'm the only new foreign teacher at the school this term who introduced himself in Korean, or asked a student his name in Korean when there was a problem communicating in English. This brings me to my next prayer request:

Please pray that my students would be able to understand me. Some of them don't speak or understand English very well, which is very understandable, considering how slow my progress is in learning Korean. I'm trying to make sure that everything important is also written down on the board, because students of a new language usually master reading more readily than oral comprehension. Please pray also that I would develop a habit of speaking slowly and clearly, to help my students understand me.

Please pray that the visa/currency conversion situation would get worked out. (Because the provincial ministry of education refuses to grant accreditation to my school, it is very difficult to get a school-sponsored work visa. Most of the non-Korean teachers used religious worker visas until the government caught on and refused most of the renewals, which created the vacancies that I am helping to fill. That's why the school is planning to move to a different province within the next two years. Green cards are even harder; I would have to marry a Korean woman to get one!) What concerns me is that I will eventually need to convert won to dollars, to pay some bills incurred in the U.S. Official currency exchangers will stamp my passport every time they do so. If I leave the country on a tourist visa, and the immigration officials see that I've been converting a lot of won to dollars, they'll wonder if I've been working illegally to earn that many won. While immigration officials recognize that the government doesn't grant enough E-2 visas to meet demand, and they don't go around to schools checking teachers' visas, they can hardly ignore evidence that's right in front of them. Please pray that God would work everything out in His time.

Finally, please pray for my relationships with my co-workers, especially my roommate. There's no cause for concern yet, and they're mostly a pretty cheerful, easygoing bunch, but I'm still working on finding my place socially. Language barriers are part of the problem, as is the limited time that we have to get to know each other. Also, I've only been here a week, and most of them have been here longer. I'm taking Tae Kwon Do, starting next week, which should help. (Other foreign teachers are also signed up, including the Korean-American twins, Rachael and Sarah. I'm looking forward to getting to know them better, so I can tell them apart!) The instructor's English skills are quite limited, which will make things interesting, so I'll need to pay close attention.

Thanks for reading. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you. And, until we meet again, may the Lord hold you in the palm of his hand.