China Trip: Sunday, 16 July 2006

6:30am
Woke up so early! But the sun was already shining. Well, actually the day was bright, but there was dense cloud cover. We woke up to the sound of the church choir rehearsing downstairs.

8:00am
We had congee and “pao” for brekky. I also found out that we had to turn on the gas tank located just outside our bathroom to have a hot shower. However, the cold shower last night wasn’t too bad…

10:00am
We attended the 2nd service at the church. The first service was in the local dialect, Hakka. This one was in Mandarin. There was a large crowd, but the church wasn’t packed. Most people come to the 1st service. I didn’t understand a thing, as my Mandarin is pretty much non-existent! So all I did was smile, nod and agree. We were introduced to the church towards the end of the service.

12:30pm
Lunch – the chicken was good! The fatty bits were yellow in colour – weird. We had lychees again! Apparently it’s the lychee season this week and next week, it’s longans!

1:00pm
A team meeting was schedule after lunch. On most days, this would be a time of briefing and bringing up issue/concerns, if any, with the students.

(far) Jenny, Fong Peng, Iris, Megan, Iris, Annie and Sam
(near) Chan Soon and Tiong Kam

Someone’s hand, Chan Soon, Frank and half of Jenny

2:00pm
We went shopping. The taxi fare from the church located in the older part of Heyuan city, across the bridge and to the newer part of the city was ¥6. (~$1.07) There were 7 of us, including Janet who took us around. I was the only guy (guess I’ll be the one carrying the bags huh? Ah well, good practice for the future!) As we walked around the town, heads obviously turned our way – especially with Jenny and Megan, the two Caucasians on our team, and me - tall-ish compared to the local Chinese males.

The street just outside the church

4:00pm
We stopped by at the lone McDonalds store located at a busy intersection. I tried the Sweet Taro Pie that James had recommended. It costs ¥4 (~$0.72) for one, or ¥6 (~$1.07) for two. Their McDonalds store looked so much nicer than those in Australia. There was a lot of décor, the seats had heavier padding and the interior looked like a massive playground jungle! The service was better: someone (probably the manager on duty) told us to sit down and took our order for us.

At McDonalds – enjoying the Sweet Taro Pie.

We also came across a sign. For some reason, there’s always something wrong when Chinese is translated into English.

Funny sign – the elevator was a rather nice sight to see.

4:30pm
Back at the church compound where we were staying, I met a former student, Jasmine Huang, who knew James and David. She’s very determined to do well in her studies in order to study in Australia.

5:00pm
My room-mate Chan Soon took some time fiddling with the computer in our room. In previous years it has served as the summer school’s office. He managed to get the internet and printer working! I had a chat with Tiff on Gmail.

6:00pm
Dinner – and yes there was lots of food. I was expecting to lose weight or something. It’s not going to happen!

7:30pm
We practised our songs and drama for the Teachers’ Concert on this coming Friday night. The songs were in Mandarin, and we sang with piano accompaniment, played by Melissa (she has extremely long hair and is the grand-daughter of the older of the two church pastors). The drama is called Choices and tells about the story of Creation – they way God intended, how evil has come into it and disrupted God’s perfect plan and finally, God’s plan of redemption. There are 6 characters God (played by me), Creation (Megan) and 4 demons: Pride (Jenny), Greed (Kat), Drink (Iris) and Drugs (Annie).

9:00pm
I showed some card-tricks to Annie, Kat and Megan. We also shared about our testimonies and expectations.