The Only Good Mosquito... is a DEAD MOSQUITO! Muahahahaha!

I'm not trying to gross you out! (Well, maybe just a little) Anyway, this is one of my many would-be vampiric attackers, which I so valiantly annihilated using a Swiffer mop. This is a life-size photo... I know... I wish I were exaggerating too... :)

Updates!

            Oh GOODness… Let me catch my breath!!!!!

            Has it been a busy week! Or rather… last two weeks… last three weeks…

            Needless to say, time blurs when you’re having fun.

            Anyway, Fall is in the air here in Beijing. Red and yellow have flushed the land, and the air is thick with… well... something is burning… and it’s not necessarily a comforting or pleasant smell, like the autumnal wood-smoke of home. Either way, I’m glad to be wearing scarves and coats and boots again.

            We are apparently at the end of “mosquito season,” although I refuse to believe it. However, I must say that one good result of such an abundance of the tiny monsters has bestowed upon me extraordinary skill in the production of mosquito wall art…. In other words, I have killed so many that the smudges on my walls (left by the miserable bugs’ corpses) have begun to look a bit like some abstract painting.

            Tonight my family and I had an impromptu dinner party. Helen (I will call my Chinese mother “Helen” for security purposes) invited her mother… a small, walnut-like woman with a happy face and very particular taste for sunflower seeds. My uncle’s family also joined us. I met my cousins, the 5-year-old Timothy, and the 6-month-old… ah, I’ve forgotten his name. It was long and Chinese... Well, one thing I do know about the child is that he was big. VERY big. Carrying him was more like carrying a sack of flour than a six-month-old human child.

            Dinner was a sumptuous affair… fish, “meat dragons,” steamed red and green peppers, bing (a type of pancake), date-and-rice porridge, and cold duck. Delicious!

            The evening ended violently.

            Don’t be alarmed. I shall explain.

            This is the account of the transpired events as translated to me by my sister, Diana. Prior to her explanation, I had been reeling underneath the weight of intense confusion… and the weight of three small, violently inclined children.

So, according to Diana, after dinner, my younger brothers, Mark  (7) and Eli (4) and my cousin, Tim (5) decided to establish a make-believe kingdom in the laundry-room. Mark immediately declared himself undisputed ruler and appointed the other two as his trusted generals.

            I, innocent and clueless, needed to hang some wet laundry from earlier in the day, so into the royal court I ambled. Sidestepping the three (who evidently had been busily plotting a war of some kind) I began the harmless task of hanging wet jeans and various sweatshirts on the clothesline. Before I had finished hanging the first pair of pants, the room was suddenly full of shouts and I was under heavy attack! Chaos! Violence!

Now, Chinese children learn kung-fu at a young age. And those little fists can be vicious. It was anarchy. Hair-pulling was involved. Mark bludgeoned me over the head with a large bottle of laundry detergent. I’m pretty sure someone even tried to stick a Lego up my nose. Thankfully, my sister, Diana, came to the rescue.

            She graciously explained to me afterwards that naturally, since I had entered their secret kingdom (the laundry-room…) I was, of course, nothing other than a spy and had to be dealt with. And for Mark, dealing with spies obviously meant death-by-mob-beating. Or severe-injury-by-three-miniature-kung-fu-masters.

Oh, siblings.

Just another new (and slighty life-threatening) world for me to explore.

Life otherwise has been fairly peaceful. Teaching continues to be a joy. While most of my friends probably have learned to drive and maybe even have cars of their own, I can say with great pride that I have recently obtained… wait for it… wait for it….

a bike!!

A real-life, squeaky-geared, rickety bike (in typical Chinese fashion) with a basket and everything!

But, honestly, it’s so nice to have a way to get out and go! I can now visit the market at any time, Kristin’s apartment is no longer an uncomfortable walking distance away… I can even fit in (sort of) with the locals, who seem to prefer a bike over almost any other mode of transportation.

We celebrated Kristin’s birthday on the 19th! We went all out… It involved a surprise breakfast, massages at a small, local spa, an extremely spicy mystery dinner… good times, good times. LOVE YOU KRISTIN!

I (along with my brothers) came down with a fever this weekend, but will be working again tomorrow morning, I think!

Kristin and I are busy this week planning for our up-and-coming trip to Japan! If you have any recommendations on things to do, places to go… please let us know!

As for home… Oh, I miss home so much!

But… not in a way that would diminish from the passion and love in my heart for this place. China has taught me so much, inspired me in ways I can’t yet describe in words. Faith, hope, love, family, friends… my whole world is suddenly bigger, and growing in size with every passing day! A strength rumbles in the ground here, and it shakes me to the core of everything I am… I’m humbled and awestruck and eager to see how the Story unfolds, and how, if there is any way, God could bring the same deep fervency with me home.

But acorns before oaks. I’m not going home for another 8 months. And frankly, I’m glad. There is so much more to explore... so many more ways to grow in strength and peace and joy, so many things to learn, so many places to see, so many people to know and love... before I go home.

But, all truth be told, my mind no longer has to stretch itself very far to convince me that this place…

China itself…

…could become home.

The Kindergarten

Hmm. Where to begin today's little literary excerpt... ladi-da-di-da... let's see... I think I'll regale you with tales from "The Chronicles of Kindergarten."
Ah, yes... that glorious five story building with doors through which about one hundred asian toddlers can be found anywhere from running, waddling, being dragged/bodily carried through at about 8:00a.m. every morning. Welcome to my office...
The day starts for me at about 7:30. I (kind of) wake up, tumble (quite literally) downstairs, and eat (or rather inhale) my breakfast. Then I stare blankly at the wall ahead for a good five minutes... my mind, at this point, is still in shock... trying to somehow grasp the dumbfounding reality that it's been woken and made to process lukewarm noodles, miniature shrimp, fried rice, and soggy spinach for it's first meal of the day. I guess I forgot to mention that breakfasts here often consist of the last-three-night's leftovers.
Not that I mind! Theres actually something surprisingly comforting about a warm, savory breakfast eaten with chopsticks from a chipped clay bowl... it's just... different. Like everything else here.
And so, after I emerge from my stupor, I usually come to realize that "Oh... I guess this is real life... maybe I should try and prepare for the day?"
From then on, it's a flurry of dish-washing and panicking and suddenly I'm stuffing my bag with things I may or may not need, I'm forgetting my keys, wrestling with those terrible inventions called shoes, exploding out the door, unlocking the gate, struggling with the rusty bolt, slamming it closed, locking it...
And then I'm free! The day has begun.
So, down the neighborhood road I amble. The morning sun is usually just high enough above the general smoggy-ness of it all to appear a white-ish grey, instead of a bloody red. At about this time of day, there are a good deal of older folk out and about... either stretching sleepy limbs, or sweeping the streets with twig-brooms they've made themselves. By the time I'm within eye-shot, all activity stops. Eyes are glued to me in unconcealed interest... my face, my hair... all of it is absurd. I can almost hear their thoughts screaming, "What is THAT? WHY is it on MY stretch of asphalt? LOOK at it! IT EVEN IS BLOND!" You see, if I were living in downtown Beijing, my blondness and my pale-ness and my general non-Chinese-ness wouldn't be anything of an anomaly. But out here, in the outlying villages... it's a pretty big deal when you witness a Westerner walking down the road.
Down one neighborhood highway, across a busy street (on which I'm liable to be squashed flat upon by a marauding donkey-cart or motorcycle of these days) and down another neighborhood road lined with ceaselessly barking dogs, and suddenly... there it is. The Kindergarten.
I reach the doorway where the guard nods at me, says something cheerful (It could be anything from "Hello" to "You look like an albino carrot" for all I know of Mandarin Chinese) and opens the door. Up two flights of stairs I fly, and then I'm off to my first class. I never know what I'm going to be teaching until someone comes to inform me in broken english about five minutes before the kids stampede into the classroom and raise havoc. As an unpaid teacher... a Western unpaid teacher to be precise, I don't necessarily have the privilege (or the burden, depending on how you look at it) of running my own classroom. I'm there to be an "English Influence." Apparently It doesn't really matter if I can teach or not... that fact that I speak English fluently is frankly quite enough.
The kids arrive in a flurry of sounds... I can hear laughter, chatter... there's always someone crying. No matter what. But hey, they're what... two? four years old? The door bangs open.
And so it begins.
"A!" I shout.
"Ayee" a million tiny glorious voices answer, honestly more beautiful than any professional choir. Their enthusiasm and random joy nearly brings me to tears. Thank you God.
"B!"
"Beee"
"C!"
"SEEEEEEEE"
You see... I've never been much of the babysitting type. I'm not overly fascinated by those burbling balls of bumbling flesh called "babies." That's just not me.
Or at least I didn't think so.
The truth is, these children have become a small part of me. It took a few days, granted. At first, they were terrified... among a few of the younger ones, my appearance still brings forth tears and wails. But now, now that they've seemed to realize I'm not there to eat them, it seems to be their favorite thing to laugh and giggle with me about jokes I can't understand... And I'll be honest... for the first few days, I was pretty terrified of them too! When you're an only child and have no experience with children whatsoever, 10 pairs of black eyes staring up at you with either menace or curiosity (like I said, it depends on your perspective) can be a little intimidating.
But God's shown up in more than a few ways. Every day, every hour, every moment in the classroom is His to do what He wants with. He knows the desires of my heart, and He knows that these kids need all the love that can possible be given to them. And somehow, somehow, things fall into place, and there we are again, laughing and learning and loving one another, teacher to student, student to teacher.
Teaching is one of the greatest human capabilities. The spider doesn't have to be taught how to spin a web, and neither a fish how to swim... but we, in all our stumbling glory, have to learn something new every day of our lives. It's beautiful and terribly difficult all in one fell swoosh of an emotional life-journey.
And so I've been greatly humbled by it all. I've done more learning in my days of teaching than I thought was feasible. And I'm happy. So, so happy.
The day at school ends with lunch. I skip back down the stairs and into the teachers cafeteria, where a cheerfully round woman hands me a steaming plate of assorted vegetables, tofu, rice, and an optional dose of chili-oil. Even though I can use chopsticks perfectly well, she seems to insist in loud, repeated Chinese phrases that I use one of their 100-year-old spoons. Maybe it's because I'm American. Or blond. Or both. Either way, she's so incredibly kind, and seems to genuinely want to share her world of culinary delights with me... I recently was introduced to the joys of a fried shrimp head... and only a day ago she beckoned me over and forcefully took my plate away, left the room, and returned it to me... but it was sprinkled with something that resembled sand. I was later to discover it was ground sesame seed. (Both the shrimp head and the sesame seed powder were delicious, I might add.)
And so I finish my meal, pack my bag, and able on home again. Back down the neighborhood road, (I always stop at one house to visit some newborn puppies... we communicate thus: I stick my finger through the fence, they chew on it, and then when I can't handle the little pearly-white needles riddling my flesh, I say good-bye. They just continue to chew things... now it's each others' tails) back across the hazardous stretch of busy Beijing street, (be reminded of the scene in Mulan where Grandmother blindly crosses that insanely busy road, disappears in a cloud of dust, and reemerges, shockingly alive? Yeah, well... I always said my life was a Disney movie...) and back into my own neighborhood.
So there you have it.

The Backstory

I think I might begin today’s post (warning… it’s a long one…) by clearing up any confusion you might have about to how and why I made it to China in the first place.

As for why, the truth is, I don’t have the faintest idea.

Sure, I can give you facts, logistics, anecdotes… I can put you in touch with people who’ve followed and drawn lines between very scattered dots… but, the plain truth is that knowledge and understanding of big-picture purpose is something very few people are gifted with.

I am not necessarily one those people.

I will say, however, that I sense within me a type of peace unlike any I have ever felt before and that my relationship with Him is more real, more tangible, more breathtakingly personal and more mind-shattering than it ever could have been at home. And that, at least, is verification enough for me to know that there is a bigger plan at work here, and that I am exactly where I need to be.

But as for how this all happened, let’s start by taking it back a few months… actually let’s take it back a full year…. Vroom-vrrooom-beepity-beeeeepy-boop-bop-screeeeeech… (that was my imitation of a time-machine. Hope you enjoyed it.)

Okay. October, 2010. It was about at this point in my young life that I was realizing that my life was becoming another cog in some great machine. Hippies would call this machine (insert an ominous music tone here) The System.

            Ooooh, scary. SO dramatic, right? But, I’ll be honest… I really did come to realize that since the day we’re born, the world makes it clear that our central purpose in life is to (insert an even more ominous music cue here) make money. Our education, preschool through college, prepares us for a life in constant pursuit of happiness… happiness that supposedly comes in the form of graduation from Ivy league colleges and lucrative business dealings. And so, as the pressures of this supposed future life loomed like stormy mountains ahead of me, of I sat through Geometry and English and Chemistry with a mind filled near bursting with ideas of how to break “The System.” My plans involved everything from writing letters to the president to hiring my nerd friends to build me an escape rocket. I even started praying that God would send some marvelous cataclysm that would destroy all AP national exams. Now, don’t get me wrong! My high-school is a wonderful place! I love my friends and my teachers… my time there was filled with more love and fun than is altogether fair for any high school student’s underclassmen experience. So, understandably, some of you are reading this and thinking, as my own mother and father did, “You’re enjoying high school, so what’s the issue? The system is real life, kid. Suck it up and do your homework.” And I’d have to say that you’re right for thinking along those lines.  

However, all joking aside, I did (and still do) truly believe that we are all meant for something greater in life… and that if you feel an opportunity to be and do “something greater,” you shouldn’t have to wait until after college. Or until you’ve wangled your job into some financially secure position. I truly had a desire in my heart to go out and do something good and real and meaningful and big with my life… and I believe that desires like those should never be ignored.

So, with our hearts beating in our brains, my parents and I began to pray.

One thing led to another (I normally hate that phrase, but it will have to do for now) and my dad came up with a brilliant idea. Education overseas. Immediately my mind went to places like Paris or Venice or Barcelona. Beautiful cities? Surely. Educational? Of course. Would I be breaking the system? Well, kind of. Would I find God there? That question was answered with silence in my heart. I then knew that if I were to leave PV, I’d want be going somewhere that was truly different… truly another world. A place where nothing of my old life would thrive, and a place where I would be forced to rely on strengths greater than my own to survive.

A place like China, maybe.

My parents were soon on board. (Man, how I love them… shout-out to Mom and Dad! Miss you!) And so we eventually came in contact with a woman on the east coast who had connections in Asia. We shall call her Linda for security purposes. Her immediate reaction to the idea of setting me up with a Chinese host-family for the year was, “No, no. Certainly not. Madeleine is far too young.” However… and heaven knows why… she contacted a family here in Beijing anyway “just to scope things out.” Remarkably, the family replied to her immediately with, “Oh, what a coincidence! We’ve been praying to have a high-school student stay with us for about six months now!”

For some, that scenario would be called an outstanding stroke of good luck. I like to call it a “God-wink.”

Now, fast-forward a week or two. At this point in time, another desire is unearthing itself in my heart. I thought about it. I prayed. I thought. I prayed some more. And then I determined that, if I were to be out and about in the world, I wanted to be doing something. Getting my hands dirty. Serving in whatever way God saw fit. One thing I knew for sure… I wouldn’t want to go somewhere like China unless I knew that I’d be moving in ways that would further His kingdom.

That’s when we learned that the host family we’d come in contact with owned a kindergarten, and that they were in want of English-speaking teachers. I speak English. I can teach… or at least I think I can teach.

Either way, for me, that was God-wink number two.

Fast forward again… by now we should be in the spring months. Mother (as mothers often do) was getting worried about the idea that her only daughter would be gallivanting around China… alone.  Apparently there were some sleepless nights involved. You know how it is. Nevertheless, Mom came up with a brilliant plan… a plan that would keep me safe and secure, not to mention the fact that the execution of said plan would allow her to sleep soundly.

That plan boiled down to finding a very special person… someone with skills somewhere between Jason Bourne’s and Mary Poppins'… to watch over pwecious widdle Madeleine during her adventures China.

Take a moment now to rest your brain for the coming rollercoaster of relational connections that led us to the ever-so-awesome 23-year-old Kristin.

            First, my mother begins the hunt for Mary Bourne/Jason Poppins by asking one of her colleagues, Megan, if they’re interested in an international-nannying-gig. For various reasons, Megan declines… however, her brother, Ben, knows of a friend on the east coast that possibly would be interested. He contacts Kristin, who sends her résumé to my Megan, who then sends it to my parents… after an exchange of e-mails and some long phone calls, Kristin agrees to visit Beijing with us in June of 2010. At this point, we are all still utterly unaware that Kristin and Linda (our first contact in regards to this adventure) knew each other, or that Kristin’s mother had travelled to China with Linda in the past.

            “God-wink” number three.

Kristin is, in and of herself, a kind of God-wink… another brilliant piece to add to this increasingly complex and ever-enlarging puzzle. My parents had dreamt of someone relatively skillful in math and science to act as my guardian during this adventure… so as to keep me from completely and utterly ignoring my academic career. Kristin just so happened to have majored in bioengineering. Kristin needed a job and one that fit her major… My dad just happened to have a spot open for her to work with him on patent law… a business 80% of which deals with medical devices. My parents also dreamt of someone with experience in world travel... and surprise, surprise… Kristin had studied abroad in Hong Kong! We were hoping for someone with leadership experience… Kristin had recently finished the Fellows leadership Program through The Falls Church.

And then…(don’t worry, I’m almost done) then there’s Elizabeth, another young east-coastian with an eye for Asia. Kristin meets Elizabeth one morning in August at a Starbucks. She learns that Elizabeth plans to spend the year in Beijing to teach at a kindergarten… and to live in a three-bedroom apartment with a few other international teachers. Lo and behold, Elizabeth was planning to teach at the same kindergarten I now teach at. And the apartment mentioned happens to be the same apartment that Kristin and Elizabeth now share. Not only that, but Kristin and Elizabeth’s mothers just happened to be in the same bible study… And later, we learn that Elizabeth’s father happens to indirectly know my father. But again, none of us had the faintest inkling of any of this before coming here… to Beijing, China. We came here practically blind, knowing no one. Can you imagine our joy in discovering the links and lines that connect us and our purposes half way around the world?

The list of God-winks goes on, and on, and on… all of it is impossible to record in written word without the risk of frying your hard-drive. We’re still discovering things even now, a month into this adventure. Call it luck, chance, coincidence, fate, destiny, probability, opportunity, connections, happenstance… call it anything you want. I’ll just call it God.

P.S. To track the photographic side of this adventure, drop by Kristin’s wonderfully colorful blog: http://perpetualescapades.blogspot.com/

Welcome to China

" She-nan-i-gan | shəˈnanəgənz |

              plural noun | informal

         - Eccentric and high-spirited activity, behavior or venture;

               mischief "

Well, a shenanigan it certainly is. If someone... anyone... a curbside prophet, a wrinkled-as-a-walnut fortune-teller, or even my own mother... had told me a year ago that today I’d call Beijing my home, I’d probably have burst out laughing. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl who hails... well... hailed from a small magical peninsula by the sea. Some of you may know it as Palos Verdes. Good old PV. A beautiful bubble of safety and mollycoddled childhoods, complete with ponies and gated castle-communities, boasting views of a kingdom otherwise known as Los Angeles.

Uh, Beijing? 

For nine months?

Let's just say I'm still pinching myself. 

Some would say that if I were in my right mind, I would be sitting underneath unwavering, fluorescent, classroom lights, letting the voices of academia “enlighten” my childhood away. Thank God (truly!) that I was blessed with an Alice-like desire to forever chase the white rabbit out and away from the bonds of normalcy. To chase it right into the midst of adventures, shenanigans, that I previously would have considered inconceivable. That’s where the Spirit part comes in.

None of this would have been possible, feasible, barely imaginable… without the Spirit… His beautiful, powerful, passionate and playful Spirit. The same white-tailed Spirit which lifted a clock to my ear, nudged me forward, and forced me to jump with faith down a hole, a fissure in the day-to-day systems of my previous life. The rabbit hole (which can also be called an escape route) has led me farther down and around than I ever expected to go… but to Wonderland it certainly brought me.

Only... my wonderland happens to be a place where noodles are a breakfast food... car horns are a means of conversation... dusts act as a city-wide epidermis... kung-fu can be done in your living-room... charades is my second languages... dead geckos fall from the sky... blondness is an oddity... random is a lifestyle... 

and God is the only thing that matters.

Welcome to my wonderland.
Welcome… to China.