I have gotten ahead and left out some activities….
First… Happy Birthday to my younger brother… HAPPY BIRTDAY to John… Sorry I am a little late!!! His birthday was the 23rd. My niece and great niece also celebrated birthdays this month… Happy belated Birthday to Wendi and Dariane too.
Two Sunday’s ago we went to the Abundant Grace International Fellowship Church. Services for foreigners are Saturday’s at 6:30 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. We attended the Sunday service. I don’t know if that particular Sunday was different from the normal, but there was a speaker from Colorado that spoke on ‘Christ as a family man’. He had a slide show of famous art that depicted Christ as part of a family and the symbolism that was illustrated in the art. It was very interesting, however very different from a typical service I was used too. Everyone was very welcoming and the church was packed. The preacher is from Australia and seems like a really nice man.
They have lots of small groups which are similar to our bible studies from home. Here is the description: Small groups are the place where we connect and grow spiritually, together. It's the place where we laugh and sometimes cry, together. It's the place where we have a physical and then spiritual meal, together. When someone is having a 'Shang - low' or 'Shang - high' moment, facing stress, under pressure at work, celebrating a promotion or birth we walk through our time here in Shanghai, together. It is an opportunity for fellowship and support.
But since arriving in Shanghai, I have been watching and listening to the archived services of the Prestonwood Baptist Church. They have an incredible website and it is rich in information as well as various sermon series. One can also listen to the PowerPoint radio broadcasts. It has allowed me to stay fed in my Christian life. I have to watch early in the morning before the internet becomes too congested and the video feed is so bad I cannot watch it. With the whole country on Satellite for TV and Internet… usually by 9 or 10 in the morning things get really slow. But I enjoy my time with Prestonwood a couple of times a week. We used to attend Saturday night services there when we lived in Garland… but once we moved to the ranch, we tried out several churches and have settled in on First Baptist of Mabank. I will take what I can get here to feed my soul.
We were unable to attend the local services this past Sunday … our basement bathroom flooded when the pump broke while I was showering. So what started out as getting ready for Church turn into stopping the leak and mopping water. It was not a pretty sight. I prefer the downstairs shower as it is much larger than the shower upstairs. I am so used to the tankless water heaters and the constant temperature we have at home that adjusting the water temp in tight quarters had more than once sent me huddling to the corner of the tiny upstairs shower to avoid a scald. The downstairs has an ample shower that allows you plenty of space to move out from the water. And the landlord scheduled a worker to be here at 3pm… so church would be next week. Just a small setback... we will be going again and again. There are not a lot of choices in Christian churches so you go where you can.
Sunday morning had turned into a personal care time. Michael would be coloring my hair. You heard right… with limited choices, Michael did the deed. I forgot to tell Melia, my long time hair stylist, we would need much larger gloves for Michael. The medium gloves were stretched to the maximum and once the fingers were on… they still lacked about an inch getting over them on. It looked pretty dicey… but we forged ahead. I mixed up the color according to Melia’s instructions… and he started applying color. I had these visions of looking like a Dalmatian, but I just closed my eyes and prayed. After taking a much longer time than it normally does… he had applied all the color. Now the 35 min wait.
Passing the time working on my blog entry, the time clicked by and now it is time to rinse. I again, followed the instructions and rinsed, shampooed and conditioned. So far so good…. Time to check the mirror… ok… it is looking good! No spots… even color… I give him a thumbs up!! Let’s get this combed out and dried and really examine it. He did a great job…so he lives to see another day!
Now it is my turn to be in the hot seat... beard trimming time. I have not trimmed his beard in probably 20 years, but since the Chinese men can’t or don’t grow beards, Michael will not let them touch his. So outside with scissors in hand we go… 45 mins later he was all trimmed up and looking spiffy. Now during the 45 mins I had to listen to him whine… but I managed to get a thumbs up from him in the end too.
My neighbor on the second floor, Maria that I had met in the lobby several weeks ago came by yesterday for a visit. She is originally from Columbia and her husband is from England. She has a beautiful 4 month old baby daughter, Isabella. This is the most adorable baby. She invited me to go to dinner for tonight, Tuesday. So we are going to meet and have dinner together. I told her I would be happy to babysit for Isabella if she ever needed or wanted to get out without the baby. I look forward to spending more time with them.
We took our first official Chinese lesson last night. We had fun with it, but it is not going to be a piece of cake either. As much as I would like to believe I do not have a Texas accent… when trying to make the sounds needed to speak Chinese... it becomes abundantly clear just how much of an accent we both have. Our instructor, Cindy, will come to our apartment twice a week to teach us the Chinese language. She got to laugh a lot last night as we both struggled to round our mouth or no round, or tongue curled or not curled, or with breathe out or no breathe out, or do this or not this… it was crazy. But I made lots of cheat notes that hopefully will pay off in the end. The hour zoomed past before we knew it. I am looking forward to Wednesday night and our next lesson. Today I am practicing my sounds for the PinYin equivalent of vowels, then the combination of 2 vowels and the rest of the letters of the alphabet. I hope no one is listening outside the door…I am sure it sounds like someone is dying in here!!
Now it is time to plan out what we will do this weekend and for the upcoming business trips that we will include weekends so we can explore new areas. We will travel to Chengdu the first part of April which is in the Sichuan province. It is about 3 hours by plane from Shanghai. It is the location of the Panda Research Reserve among other things. Then toward the end of April we will travel to Malaysia to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. Which translated means "muddy confluence”. More on this city once I have an opportunity to scan the internet for information and points of interest.
It seems I am earning the title of social director and tour guide for our weekend adventures and now our jaunts to various cities as I follow Michael on business trips that we add the weekends and turn into mini site seeing vacations. Depending on when and how long… at some point in the trip, I will fly to join him and then we will explore together. Wish me good luck!! My blog content depends on it!!!
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