What Have You Got To Be Thankful For?

So after all my long journeying (it seems long), I am back in home-sweet-home Yangzhou. It was really great to get away for a bit, although traveling in unfamiliar places seems to bring all the cultural and language barriers back to the forefront. There are different kinds of stresses involved in traveling in China. To name a few…
1) Very little privacy on a sleeper full of Chinese people wanting to stare at you.
2) Interesting accommodations: the hotels were nice (including the BRIGHT orange towels), but the trains were a little less comfortable, thanks to the glaring lights and blaring music.
3) And I have to mention the squatties. They have a grab bar in front so you don’t lose your balance on the moving train. Much appreciated. The last thing you would want to do is in any way touch the floor, which gets pretty gross by the end of 21 hours. The squatty is basically a hole out the bottom of the train – you can actually look down and see the tracks underneath. Word of advice: Never walk on train tracks in China.
4) Lots of time on trains and buses: Loud, crowded, and filled with smoke. How do more people not die of lung cancer?
5) Lots of confusion: because nothing goes according to plans. And (most of us) can’t read street signs and bus schedules. And even if you can, it might not help. So you walk. A lot. And ride buses. For a long time.

We were in Xian for less than 36 hours, but we were able to see the world-famous Terra Cotta warriors. There’s a bunch of them. It tends to be a bit of a let-down to see something really famous because of course you can never get as close as the world-famous photographs. My favorite part was taking pictures, and I put a few of them up on flickr.

On Thanksgiving Day, we visited the “Temple of Thanksgiving.” We didn’t realize beforehand that was what it was called in English, but I must say it was quite fitting. There was a 7-story tower you could climb and look out over Xian. We also got to see the old city wall several times as we careened through in city buses. Overall, the traffic in Xian was amazingly orderly (they even stopped at red lights!), but we did have the worst bus driver I’ve yet experienced. Yikes. We also saw the Bell Tower when we were wandering around the city looking for a bus. Plus we experienced a whole lot of the Xian train station.

Our train to Xian was 13 hours but the train back was 21 hours. That’s just how it works. This one stopped really often and gave us a little scenic tour of the countryside. So our Thanksgiving dinner was cheese and crackers on a 21 hour train ride from Xian. I must admit, I was a bit envious thinking of all of you back in America.

On Friday we came in from Xian and spent the weekend with other teachers in the region. There were about 30 teachers overall. Much as I love my teammates, I had been looking forward to time with other foreigners. It was kind of overwhelming at first, though! Once I got over the initial shock of so many foreigners, I had a really good time. I knew some of the people from training and met some fun others. We ate together (including a western-style Thanksgiving meal), played games, and had some good fellowship time. It was good to hear about the struggles and encouragements and lessons of others. It was good to laugh a lot and be sarcastic and joke about the idiosyncrasies of living in China. I came back with some good memories and quotes and private jokes that wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I tried to tell you about them.

I can’t say it was the best Thanksgiving ever or the easiest. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, and it was interesting being in a country where it doesn’t exist. Of course, my students were excited to learn about Thanksgiving and I was able to get together with other teachers to celebrate, but it didn’t exist in the sense that I’ve always known it. I guess because of all the traveling and the holidays I was reminded of the difficulties of living in China. While Yangzhou is starting to feel familiar, other places are still very foreign. So in a way it was hard. But I was finally able to get past my ingratitude and selfish expectations and remember the point of the holiday. If I could sum up what I’ve been learning this week, I keep being reminded: “It’s not about me.” It was a time of confronting my own selfish desires and refocusing my attention on the greatness of the Father. Through his grace we are able to “give thanks in all circumstances,” not grudgingly and not in spite of circumstances, but because of his goodness.

“Praise the L, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name
Praise the L, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits”
Psalm 103