Reflecting Upon Beijing

May 7, 2011

                 As I am entering my last few weeks of this trip to China, my “China Adventure” I want to reflect on some of the things that have impacted me during this time. First, my host family has been wonderful! I couldn’t have asked for a better family to live with than the Xu’s! In the four months that I have stayed with them, we never had any conflicts and they have gone out of their way to be more than accommodating. I am very thankful that they have provided for me so well: my food, room, toiletries, transportation, etc.  They would agree that I get along with them very well. Xu Mingyu was worried that cultural differences would inevitably lead to some conflicts, and he was prepared to handle them in a very frank way. None really arose though, so I think we were both surprised. I have discovered that the number one way to maintain peace in the face of cultural differences (or any differences for that matter) is a willingness to listen to the other person with an open-mind and open heart. I think we both just found each other’s points of view very fascinating. We all wanted to learn from each other. If you have this attitude, you will learn a lot and it is very easy to avoid conflict. In my experience “different” does not always equal “wrong.” Ask questions, have a dialogue, you may be surprised.

                Next, taking part in the different activities at Haidian Church has definitely been a highlight of my time in Beijing. The media team that I volunteer with (Abe, Meng, Wei, David, Lidan, Su Lei, Isabel, Rick, and others) has really been a lot of fun. Even if I am not working on the English blog or another project for the church on a given Sunday, they are still cool people to go eat lunch with and practice my Chinese. We have had some very insightful and thought-provoking English lessons recently. They learned the word “booger” and then impressed me with the sentence “Would you like some green tea or my boogers?” … One of their shirts said “FCUK” and they thought it had something to do with the United Kingdom. I promptly informed them this was not the meaning, and that maybe you shouldn’t wear such a shirt to church again. Yes, I have had such a great impact on the media team! They are just a great group of people that I feel honored to have met and hope to work with more in the future when I return to Beijing.

                And speaking of returning to Beijing, I have officially been accepted into Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学) for a semester of intensive Chinese language study. So, if everything works out as planned, I will be coming back to Beijing from September of this year until mid January. I am a little worried about my current student loans. I hope that the banks will let me defer my loan payments while I am gone. And just so you know, my college fund is always open for donations. J Feel free sponsor my next China adventure. I will provide you excellent PR on this blog and sing you a Chinese song if you do! It would be such a great investment! I think that the total for tuition, dorm rates, and plane ticket is only around $6,000—pretty good compared to PLU. So what do you say???

                Anyways, last but not least, my co-workers at CEC have been a lot of fun to work with. Claire has been so patient in teaching me the ropes. She is a really hard worker and is very smart. Sometimes her English is better than mine. I will miss working with her. Even when she is really busy, she still has a relatively calm demeanor, which helps keep all of our stress levels down a lot. Celina has been really encouraging in reaffirming that I am doing a good job. Sometimes I feel like I am unqualified to be working at a place like CEC, but she has helped me realize that my work really has made a difference in the organization. My supervisor, Amy, is really good at what she does and she is well-liked in the office. I am really thankful that she gave me so much time off when my family visited. She has helped me become better professional writer. Before I came to CEC, I was very good at writing academically, but now I feel more confident in drafting professional invitation letters and emails. Overall it has been a really good experience interning at CEC. Some of my other colleagues (Zhu Wenting, Tammi, Xiao Chi, Jessica, Maggie, Helen, Kevin, Paul Zhang, Wu Laoshi, Jefferson) I have also gotten to know fairly well. I didn’t know many people outside of my department because we didn’t work very much with the other people, plus my language skills made small talk during tea break a little difficult. However, the Annual Summit brought us all together and they got to know me a lot better. And I must say, my Chinese improved a lot on that trip! Overall, CEC has been a good place for me to have my first “professional” job at. The vast majority of my co-workers are fairly young college graduates under 30. They work hard, but are also very easy-going. I wish my Chinese was better and I had more free time because this is a good group of people who I could really see myself becoming close friends with outside of the work setting.

Chinese Word of the Day

选项 Xuan Xiang: "Option"

Verse of the Day

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”