National Single Awareness Day

 Wow, it seems sometimes days will past and nothing significant will happen, and then you have a couple days like my past three days in which so much occurs! In light of this, prepare yourself for a longer blog update! I will begin with Friday!

Ashley and I

Tannah and I

Friday was 11/11/11. Officially it is titled the National Single Awareness Day here in China. What a beautiful and awesome thing to celebrate! Heck yes, China- let’s celebrate this ability to be devoted in heart and mind to our Father- the territory that comes from the blessing of singleness. So as I awoke on this beautiful Friday I could not help but smile as I read a text message from one of my precious students Susan, “Good morning ladies and gentlemen… are you single? I am… I am free and still available and today is the day to celebrate! So do what you want, it is your day to celebrate! Happy Single’s day!”  Love it! I love the amazing text messages I will get from my students throughout the day! So the day began! I went to class and my students were buzzing all day, anxious to get out of class. As was I! On Friday evening, I traveled with two of the “supers”, 

Tannah and Ashley, to a nearby 

city called Sipin. The UTP team there planned a “Singles” party for Friday evening. So us three were the only ones from our teams to make the trek out there to celebrate for the night. With bags packed, we set out for the train station. By train, the city is about an hour away on bullet train. When we got to the train station, we walked in and it is a huge warehouse type building inside with a huge waiting area. We saw a line forming at the far end for our train and we begin to push our way through (as is normal in Chinese crowds). And as we walk all the way through the room, I can feel everyone staring at the three of us foreigners. I have never felt so much unwanted attention on me- although that is so common as the “foreigner” in another country. The line begins to move and we push and shove our ways through a cattle like gate to get to the boarding deck for the train. The train comes and sprint to the 18^th car in order to get on before it takes off again. We find our seats easy enough, but after we sit, a Chinese woman comes and points to Ashley’s seat. Ashley pulls out her ticket and shows the woman that it is her seat. The woman explains that Ashley’s ticket is for Thursday and her ticket is for Friday. We all pull out our tickets and sure enough all of our tickets were bought for Thursday’s train- the day before today. We begin to slightly get nervous- we are already on the moving train…. Will they catch us and through us out? Or will we be allowed to stay since the tickets were the same price? We decide to move to the bathroom hallway to stand for the ride because our seats are invalid. Apart from this tiny mishap, the rest of the ride was rather smooth. When we got off, we took a short taxi ride to the UTP school to join the party. They had ordered pizza for us and had many delicious snacks! We sat around and talked with each other… or more like I met everyone for the first time! It was really enjoyable to be around other American teachers from other teams and here about their experiences here in Asia. Many of them have been serving with ELIC for several years now. As the party picked up, we enjoyed games, movie trivia (of which I only knew 1 answer because all the movies were from the early 80s or before and I was by far the youngest in the group), and rock band! It was a dream come true to play rockband on Friday night because for those of you that know me, I LOVE the drums and have a desire to take lessons one day! Following this, us girls turned in for the evening by watching a movie. We spent the night there in Siping, and Saturday we had plans to go to a nearby orphanage.

the line waiting for the train station

Saturday was a day that I will never forget. We slept in, and then ordered food in and enjoyed girl time with several of the members from other teams. I was the only first year and it was such a blessing to hear the work the Father has done in each of the other women’s lives and the experiences they have had serving here in Asia. In the afternoon, we went to a nearby orphanage. I have never been to an orphanage like this before and before we walked in, I was very nervous. I am not one of those “naturally good with kids” kinda girls… nope, I was the girl who would baby-sit for the money counting the seconds until the parents returned. I am just not naturally drawn to little kids, so knowing this I was not sure what to expect or anticipate for the afternoon at the orphanage. However, the minute we walked in I could feel a strange balance of discomfort and comfort wrap around me. My discomfort came for the sight I beheld…. Infant cribs lining the walls of one room and beds lining the walls of another room. So many was my only thought. As we walked further down the hall and into another room, the sight broke my heart even more. All of the orphans who were infants were sprawled on the floor; limp, drooling with their heads awkwardly shaped. There were so many just lying there and I knew these babies were mentally and physically disabled. I walked in and moved toward the first crib. I looked down and there was the sweetest, tiniest infant lying still as a rock. One of the UTP teachers who has worked with the orphanage before came up alongside me. She looked down and said to me, “this baby girl is a miracle baby. They found her abandoned at a hospital at 1  month old only weighing 2 pounds! They didn’t think she would make it; until recently she had been in an incubator. I was dumbfounded. How parents or a parent could birth a precious baby girl like this one and abandon it was beyond me! I stared down into her dark almond eyes and I instantly knew, this baby had not been abandoned. There is One who is greater and more full of love and He is with her every moment of her day. The UTP teacher broke into my thoughts, “do you want to hold her?” Hesitant and afraid I didn’t really reply to her. She picked up the baby anyways and set her in my arms. I felt so incredibly awkward. Is it a natural thing to know how to hold a baby?? I sure hope not because it definitely was not natural for me! Uncomfortable, I walked around the room toward the window and just held the tender fragile little baby. It’s amazing how small they can be! I was completely captured by this handiwork of my Father- and was instantly so joyful for the day when I will hold my future nephew, Riley James! Overwhelmed with the Father’s heart for this precious being, I began to sing to her all the worship songs I could remember. And it was truly a time I will never forget. I got to hold a sweet brain-damaged baby who is beautiful in the eyes of the Maker; chosen and adopted as a daughter when the world didn’t want her and didn’t think she was worth taking a chance on. What a beautiful and loving Father we have to love us and choose us despite the standards and ways of this world. We are never abandoned and never unloved. We are loved by our Creator. I am so thankful for this. After spending an hour at the orphanage holding and loving on the kids, it was time for us to head back to Changchun. Getting on the train was simple and we had the right tickets this time. We found our seats and settled into the peaceful journey back, each lost in our own thoughts about the hard experience of seeing so many kids abandoned by parents for their physical or mental inability to be “perfect”. This is one of the downfalls to the 1 child law in China.

me holding the baby

Shortly it was time to get of the train. As we were getting our luggage down, a man who was very drunk passed by gawking at us three girls. As we moved closer to the door, he began walking back toward us. Ashley, the protective one, said “Courtney, get in front of me”. As Tannah was already in front of her, I swiftly put myself in front of her. The man came right up on Ashley’s back and she acted as a barrier between us and him. She blocked him with her body and her bag not allowing him to get to us. At first, I could not hold my laughter in at the scene. Ashley’s face was cracking me up and she was boxing him out as one does in a free throw at a basketball game. It was incredibly impressive. But then, the man was tireless and he began to scare us yelling obscene things in both English and Chinese. There was a guard/train conductor standing by us, watching this man trying to get around Ashley. We kept asking him to do something about the drunken guy but it seemed there was nothing he was willing to do. However, at one point we had been pushed and moved around a lot from other people that in the space between the exit door and the seats we were on one side and the man was behind the door on the other. He began to bang the glass door and the walls escalating our fears. I quickly turned from entertained to scared. The conductor/guard man finally decided to calm the guy down so he moved over there while another conductor guy moved me back and Ashley up putting me closest to the scary drunk man. The drunk man saw his opening and begins lunging toward me to grab me but Praise the Father, the conductor was in between us and he pushed him back, pinning him against the wall. This allowed us enough time to quickly bolt of the train, losing ourselves in the sea of people so that he would not be able to follow us out. Despite the chaos of the traveling, the adventure to another city was a welcome change of pace! It was refreshing to leave campus and gain a new perspective as I gear up for the last part of this semester pushing through the holidays!

PS… with the snow all over and temperatures dropping… the past two days have been a “WIC” moment… (when in china) with the power being out for the last day…. Yep- we have had NO heat! Yay! J time to be resourceful and creative!