Busy busy busy!!

So - since my last post we had a youth conference, celebrated Easter (and I got to drink coffee again after 46 days w/o it!), I went out of town for "Po Shui Jie" (Water Splashing Festival), had a dance performance, and a 3 day volleyball tournament! Whew! I was trying to upload pics of all these but my internet has issues, so I've just put links to another site where I have pics up... Enjoy!

First was our youth conference, PERMEATE!! This was an awesome time with over a hundred students in attendance. I explained a lot in my newsletter, so if you didn't get that let me know and I can send it to you... Here's a couple pics and you can click below to see more...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034255&id=61800615&l=82c937cbdb

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034526&id=61800615&l=74bf05dfe3

After the conference was over I desperately needed a little R&R, so what better to do than go to the biggest water fight in the world? Every year the Dai minority group celebrates their new year (which is in April) by having a "water splashing festival." For 2 days they have various parades, performances, dragon boat races, etc, and then on the last day they literally have a huge water fight. It's a little insane and overwhelming, especially being one of the few foreigners there, but it was fun! Here a some pics from the various activities, sorry I don't have any of the water fight b/c literally if you walk outside with anything valuable it will get ruined.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034911&id=61800615&l=88798e8411

After returning from my trip, it was straight to rehearsals for the dance performance. The first half consisted of our normal selection of dances - some contemporary, hip-hop, etc, along w/ a new one - Fusion. This one was really fun as it was a combination of hip-hop and chinese fan dancing - extremely difficult but fun! After those we did an Easter song since it was right after Easter and we wanted to share the story. When trying to decide what song to use, we were thinking of all the songs we've seen performances to before and of course, what better song is there than Carman's "The Champion." So, I got the role of playing Gd and got to help choreograph for it! Of course there were minor mistakes, but for the most part it went well and hopefully people got something out of it.

Lastly, this past week-end we had a 3-day volleyball tournament with some of the Chinese schools in our city. This was an awesome experience for our students to get to meet other kids their age and to improve their volleyball skills. We lost all of our games, but they played hard, and it was the first time they'd really played, so I was quite proud of them! GO BEASTS!!

Here's a link to pics from the performance and the tournament:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034912&id=61800615&l=56f270aaf1

Fan Dance

So tonight I went to the "fusion" class at the dance studio. It was my first time to go because it's on Thursday nights and normally I have youth group, but this week is spring break so I was free. I was really excited about it because I've heard it's a really fun class. What is fusion you might ask? Basically - it's a mixture between a Chinese style of dance and a western style. It could be ballet and Dai minority together, or hip-hop and Wazu minority, any number of things. Well, tonight was a hip-hop / chinese fan dance. And what looked really cool and fun, ended up being incredibly difficult! Who knew that these girls who grew up using fans would have no problem flipping them open and closed so easily! Me on the other hand, being the only foreigner in the class, looked like a freak! I'm used to doing OK in dance classes simply because I've done it so long, but that was not the case tonight! I kept dropping the fan and throwing it across the room and couldn't get it open at the right time - it was a disaster! But it was fun, and now that's my new goal - to learn how to do this well. The teacher is my roommate (so convenient) so she said she'll help me at home =) So, if / when I do master it I shall try to post a video of it for you to see... I do have to say though that by the end of class I was starting to get the hang of it...

A Day in the Life...

So, since buying a fancy new camera while in the States I've been itching to just walk around and take pictures of everyday scenes around my house. Well, today I finally had the time to do that, and thought I would share some of those pictures. The whole time I was wishing I could be invisible though b/c there were so many pictures I wanted to take but unfortunately not everyone likes being a model. They did however volunteer their kids for pictures... =) Anyway, enjoy the pics!

NYC Dance Studio Grand Opening!!

So, my friends Liz and Chen Jia's dance studio opened this past Sunday and it was so exciting! It was awesome how all the doors were just opened perfectly for this, and it's such a blessing to be a part of it. We did several performances to give people a glimpse of what kind of classes will be offered, and just to get them excited about dancing! I really hope that someday I'll be able to be a more "active" member of the studio, but until then I'll thoroughly enjoy taking classes there! Hereare a few pics from the day.

It looks like we're looking in a mirror...

Chen Jia doing a solo Chinese Dance

Two of our hip-hop dances - fun fun!

What is true "praise?"

Last night I asked my high school students "what is praise?" Here are some of their answers.

Worship. Prayer. Giving your heart to the Lord. Saying God is good even when life isn't. Thankfulness. Contentment. Seeing the beauty in things. Giving your “bad stuff” to God. Making a connection to God. Something you do every day, every minute. Lifestyle. Exaltation. Adoring. A compliment the person already knows, but you give it anyway. A compliment because of who or what makes them “them.” Your life and your actions. Encouragement. Love. A hug. Dancing. Running. Everything can be praise.

I just thought that was cool. And here's a quote from a book I've been reading: "What if we were so moved by who God is, what He's done, what He will do, that praise, adoration, and worship continuously careened in our heads and pounded in our souls?"

Praise and Service

Praise

Ok, so last night was the first real youth group of the new semester and we decided to do an all praise night with jr. high and high school together. The students leading the night had been preparing for months - learning new songs, replacing music equipment, setting up new lights, and who knows what else. I was in the States for most of this, so I was just really excited to see how the night went. We've never done an all singing night, and while the night wasn't perfect, I think it was definitely the start of a tradition. One of my favorite moments of the evening was during a really upbeat song with everyone singing and in the middle of it all were two little 6th grade girls jumping up down and singing with all their might. They didn't care that they were surrounded by a bunch of non-jumping high schoolers or that they looked silly, they were just enjoying praising God! And it challenged me so much because how often am I more concerned with what others may think instead of just praising the Lord? And I thought about how much He must have loved that, the purity and innocence in their hearts.



Service

Over Christmas break a few people had the idea of collecting extra blankets and passing them out to people in need, so today we finally had a chance to do that and what a blessing it was! About 15 students met at the youth center at 10am this morning (it's Saturday mind you!) and headed off to an area where homeless people are generally at. We split up into 3 groups and spread out. I was on "team red-head" and we headed down the street looking like one big family. We quickly found one lady sitting on the street obviously in need but trying to sell a few pictures. We gave her a blanket and some bread to which she replied "xie xie, xie xie, xie xie! (thank you)" with a huge smile on her face. Feeling pretty excited, we kept walking to see who else God would bring our way. One student knew of a section of the street where people usually are, so we headed there. We found several people in a row doing whatever they could to earn money: an armless boy drawing with his toes, a handless man singing, and a blind man playing a traditional instrument. To each one we gave bread and a blanket and received huge smiles and words of gratitude in return. My favorite story of the day though was when we found a blind mom and her approximately one year old son. We knelt down and offered food and the blanket and the son immediately began to eat it and the mom just started crying and saying how thankful she was. So, did we tell each of them about our faith and beliefs? No. But were they impacted by the love of God anyway? Heck yeah!

Trying Again...

Ok, so I obviously haven't posted anything in over a year. But, as I have just told many of my supporters, I really am going to try to be more committed to writing on here this year. So, we'll see how it goes...

For my first post of this year, I keep trying to think of fun stories to share, but I have too many... So, I guess I'll go with the first one I thought of. As most of you know, I just returned from a trip to the States, and while in the States I cut off about 15 inches of my hair. So of course it's a bit noticeable, and is definitely the first thing people have commented on when they've seen me. And most of them have been very nice and said they like it (and I think most of them actually do!) but there's always a few that are a little more honest. For example, my local friends said they liked it the first time they saw it when it was straight, but the next day I saw them and had it curly and they were like "What did you do to your hair?? What's wrong with it? Why did you mess it up?" and were literally pulling on it trying to straighten it out. And then they were so confused when I said I wanted it that way...

I think my favorite story though is of a 6th grade boy. When he saw me he didn't even recognize me at first, and then when he figured out it was me he slowly walked up and carefully gave me a hug and says "You cut off all your hair! You look....different..." I asked him if it was a good different or a bad different and he goes "Umm....I don't really know, just different..." and at this point my co-worker pulls him aside and says "Anytime a girl gets a haircut you need to tell her it looks great. So go tell Amber she looks beautiful." The poor kid was mortified!! Tell a girl she looks nice??? Ewww!! He literally ran away. And it made my day. =)

So, that's the story of the day. And this isn't the best picture, but it's the only one I have at the moment...