Readings on Modern China

We were hanging out with our friend Woe from Toronto last night and just reflecting on our various experiences and perspectives of the Far East. It's been a blessing to catch-up on one another's lives and what's happening.

Another one of the benefits of actually living out here in Asia is that you hear more perspectives - through the media, colleagues, friends and of course the many Taiwanese who love to talk about politics. I've also been enjoying magazines from the Cathay lounge that I sneak out for Sandra from time to time! It's not unusual these days to have China being written up in the newspaper or magazines, but the availability is naturally more living here. I will point out that there is almost zero coverage of Canada in world news! (Don't worry, from time to time I still pop into globeandmail.com to see if anything "interesting" has happened!)

On Sunday, we picked up the latest editions of Time Asia and Newsweek for our return flight. There was an interesting article on China, specifically on Chengdu. Part of me wishes that I saw the article before our trip, but nevertheless, it was an interesting article and solidified a few of our observations of the city - even a city that wasn't running at 100% due to the Chinese New Year holidays.

Click here for the link to the online version of the article. I'm not sure how long these Time articles are available online for viewing. Lot of interesting tidbits and perspectives from the interviewees which I won't repeat all of them, but a few that questions that the article and our recent trips to China raise:

• With the continued (and high) rate of growth in China, individuals, corporations and governments are arguably building relative "wealth". Even those you would consider the "poorest" - the people who collect disposed plastic water bottles or cardboard from garbage bins to sell for a living. They too are making relatively more money than they were in previous years. What happens with this growth? How will consumerism impact the emerging China? Here's another link to a second Time Asia article that makes reference to a HSBC study that surveys people in various Asian cities on spending / saving (note the reference to near or at zero savings rate for the United States).
• It is quite obvious that the younger emerging generation in China today is interested in many elements of the "West" and find this "trendy". Some obvious examples are apparel that contain anything English (even with incorrect spelling - a grammatical error saved Sandra from purchasing a new sweatshirt she saw on sale!) or the significant line-ups at the local Pizza Hut - a popular "date place" in China and of course, the perceived status of holding a Starbucks coffee cup. How long will this "fascination" or "interest" in the West continue? Will it evolve to something else? The question for the Church is whether the church today gets some of this residual interest and people discover something much greater and with more significant substance. If there is a change of evolvement of interaction between East and West, how is best should the church position itself to feed the inherent spiritual needs of people to enable them to find God?
• See article reference (online page 2) to Starbucks coffee costing US$3.30 in a city where the average income per day is about US$7. Still, many will use this huge percentage of their new earnings towards having that Starbucks cup in their hand (for this same amount, you can have dinner at a nice sit down Chinese restaurant or even a SiChuan hotpot dinner. A local Chinese soft serve ice cream was US$0.14 vs. the trendy TCBY frozen yogurt cost of US$3.00.
• According to the article, Chengdu is China's fourth largest city, but most people don't hear much about Chengdu. You hear lots about investment in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. This next tier of cities is gaining investment interest from the government and significant investors - there is a LOT of room to grow. What will be the impact of this growth?
• See article quote from the Chief of Marketing for North Asia at Motorola, "If you want to be No.1 in China, you have to be successful in every city in China".

We made reference to walking through local areas in Guangzhou (frankly not so "nice" and not so "comfortable" areas of Guangzhou - fortunately it was in the middle the day). There was the usual full alleyways of vendors selling to local people, many of the students - clothes, accessories, cell phones, etc. Sandra referred to it as a Ghetto from the sense that this was the area that household units existed - the sleep, eat, make money, socialize, etc. all within this area. We saw many children either participating in the entrepreneurial efforts with their parents, or smoking and hanging out with their friends in adjacent alleys. The thing to point out is that there are not traditional trades or family businesses that are inheritted, but it is the entrepreneurial efforts of selling or providing whatever consumers of the day will purchase (frankly, often these can be substandard goods provided on an as-is cash basis). We doubt that many of these particular families can afford to provide their children a decent education. Making money has been a necessity of physical survival and people are naturally trained to make as much as they can because they don't know if they will make any the next day. What happens when there is the economic growth referenced above? Is there a point where basic needs are met and you may break yourself out of this cycle of poverty or entrepreneurialism? Is there an understanding for this particular group on concepts of saving, debt, etc.? Who will be there to provide, train and educate? It was quite sad for both of us to be swarmed by people we would consider "children" (in age) to purchase their goods and services. We know that there is a realistic necessity for their own survival, but wonder what will become of them in the long term. It just drives your heart and spirit to pray .. but what specifically are we praying for? There is so much to learn and our "Western influenced" perspectives may not be the appropriate answer.

Here's a final short Time Asia article. It's about toxins and tainted food. I wouldn't recommend reading if it will deter you from trips to China, but it is a realism that speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit at all costs. Read here at your own risk! Some of you may have heard the reference to some parts of China being like the "Wild West"!

Home is...

home (hm)
8 out of the 10 definitions that were nouns

1. A place where one lives; a residence.

2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.

3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.

4. a. An environment offering security and happiness.

b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

5. The place, such as a country or town, where one was born or has lived for a long period.

6. The native habitat, as of a plant or animal.

7. The place where something is discovered, founded, developed, or promoted; a source.

8. A headquarters; a home base.

We're back in Taipei. For me I feel back at home. I was able to put things away, I'm not living out of a suitcase, I feel clean again after showering. (For some reason, every time I travel I feel like I'm not really clean until I'm "home" again.) So I guess this is it, Taipei is officially "home" for me. I don't know if Ray feels the same way, but I know he's sleeping very happily with his own pillow again.

Lots to share about our trip but will save that after a good night of sleep.

Tomorrow our friend R is arriving in Taipei to visit for a couple of days. Yay! Guest #2!

Chinese New Year Adventures

Happy Chinese New Year to you all!

Sandra and I have been "on the road" away from our "home" in Taipei for about a week now. We are now in Shenzhen and will return to Taipei on Sunday evening - for a total of ten days off for Chinese New Year holidays. It's been a satisfying, educational and relaxing vacation after only two months in Taiwan. We're ending with a weekend at our friends F and T's apartment in Shenzhen. We got here this afternoon and are now enjoying a comfortable evening hanging out with F and T. I'm taking the opportunity to blog while Sandra is introducing our friends to Season 6 of 24. Two more to be added to the list of addicted shortly!

We chose to have a very limited itinerary (including a one way ticket into Chengdu, Sichuan) for this trip and see where we would end up. Our itinerary ended up being: Hong Kong - Thursday to Sunday, Chengdu - Sunday to Thursday, Guangzhou - Thursday to Friday, Shenzhen - Friday to Sunday.

Each and every one of our trips to Mainland China end up rich with now more familiar as well as new experiences:

1. Challenging questions to think about (e.g. our unplanned trip to Guangzhou and wandering into a very "local" and non-tourist area gave rise to questions about those who are "born" into a lower social-economical circumstance and the cycle of "entrepreneurial survival";
2. Adventures in pushing ourselves to do "local stuff" but recognizing that we are "wealthy" by local standards and with that comes privileges (e.g. taking advantage of the local Chengdu bus system including a 40 km ride to the Panda Breeding Centre for 2RMB ($0.30 Cdn) along with upwards of 80 people but recognizing that as brave as we were with local food, local transportation, etc. that we always had the option of hopping into a taxi with an affordable (to us) rate of 1.60RMB per km;
3. Recognizing how "big" China really is - in its cultural differences, language differences (e.g. we realized that Taiwan Mandarin and pace of speech is easier for us to understand than local Sichuan dialect) and geography;
4. Unplanned, but not by chance, encounters with people (e.g. numerous people fascinated with our ability and choice to converse with one another in English including a lengthy conversation with a store clerk in Guangzhou about the trend of a shift from the prominent Cantonese dialect in Guangzhou to Mandarin / Putonghua);
5. Networking, appreciating that old and new friends from all over the world are a blessing and a gift in our journey to experience life to it's fullest (e.g. time in HK was a casual yet stimulating reminder of why we're out here, friends to graciously host us, not only physically, but also to help us gain a deeper understanding of life elsewhere, friends to make connections for deals, jobs and who knows what!); and
6. Food - we love the food in China and recognize now the statement that the west primarily knows Chinese food as the "Cantonese food" that the early Cantonese emigrants introduced. We are building our list of favourites (e.g. zha jiang mien), but love the regional foods. It's also official that Sandra can't handle Sichuan spicy, but Ray can handle it most of time, especially when we say "bu tai la".

All of the experiences of our time in the past week cannot be documented here. Many thanks again to our short-term missions leaders and teammates who were so instrumental in setting the foundation for our experiences in China and other cultures. The willingness to experience different elements of the social-economical spectrum, the openness and sensitivity to ask God to show us things in people and places that we wouldn't otherwise see and instilling us in an attitude of flexibility and humbleness to learn has been invaluable. Perhaps I'll write more on this later, but to our team, you've given us an "approach" or "methodology" to new places and people that continues to evolve.

In addition to the above points that I've just listed in no particular order, the most important is also recognizing that God is always a few steps ahead of us! Related to this point is also recognizing that the full revelation and integration of our experiences, even on vacation, may not fully come until later. As I posted earlier, picking Chengdu wasn't much more sophisticated than spinning the "China globe" and picking a spot to visit that was reasonable in distance and airfare (and of course a new place to visit). However, spending some great fellowship time with mission-minded and mission-experienced friends in HK reminded us of good friends who have participated in trips with a well respected mission organization that does a lot of work in Sichuan province. A take away from this whole week for Ray is to pray about potential opportunities to volunteer / serve with this organization. More details to come, but at a high level, the organization's philosophy / approach (including its relationship with local government and people) as well as the actual work (education / training with university students in business and management) are completely in line. Lots to consider... Chengdu was more than about seeing Giant Pandas!

So... that's all for now about China. Sandra will blog about a few things (I'm sure this will include quite a bit about Giant Pandas). With each trip comes with more desire to learn more about Chinese culture. On one hand, we feel like we're getting more comfortable with learning to navigate through China public transportation, knowing the price of staples such as bottled water, on the other hand, we continue to make some judgement errors that cost us more travel time or booking hotels that are not our first choice, etc. It's all part of the fun of travelling in China! We even travelled a little heavier than usual reserving space in our packs for red pockets, gifts from outside of China and a set of nicer clothes. Unfortunately, while we were ready for it, we didn't get invited to any unplanned banquets on this trip... Oh well, maybe next time!

Vacations and extended trips away from "home" and "routine" are opportunities for reflection upon life and often (well... for Ray, always) create a sense of urgency upon return. Here are a few things that are on my mind to focus on or get done when we get back to Taiwan: 1) register for Mandarin lessons - time is flying by and I am severely inadequate in language skills - no excuses anymore, just start and 2) set some goals for deciding on what ministries to focus on in Taipei - work will get busy from March onwards - need to set boundaries.

Okay, I'm told I need to go to sleep. We'll aim to upload some pictures on the blog or flickr with some more tidbits of observations shortly.

Jesus Years

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. ~ Luke 3:21-23

A friend of mine once told me that when you turn 30 you enter your "Jesus Years" because that's the age Jesus began his ministry. I guess it's a more positive way of looking at the fact that you're getting older. I actually like it because I think when you turn 30, you're entering a pretty significant decade in your life: you're more mature (hopefully), more experienced (maybe) and have a better idea of who you are (or not). So as you enter this significant stage it's also a good time to reflect on who you've become, and what's ahead.

Well, Jesus Years...Here I come!

Hooray! and Hiya!

Excerpt from SUCCESS ~ by Emily Dickenson

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

So we did it! I am now a resident in Taiwan and will be able to get my Alien Resident Card when we return from our Chinese New Year trip! Hooray! What a long battle this one has been. I am truly thankful and can be confident that it has truly been God's hand at work through all of this. So many MORE things could have gone wrong but it didn't. Yay God!

Unfortunately...just as we finish one battle, another one is still being fought. Last night was one of our roughest nights (well actually Ray slept quite well). We finally bought the mosquito zapper, but it was a useless weapon against the invisibility shields of our enemies. The mosquitoes are extremely cunning and nimble in Taiwan, and they surely know how to stay in "stealth mode". At 3:30 a.m. I was awaken by buzzing in my ear and ended up battling against 4 mosquitoes with the electric tennis racket (How did they get past our new zapper weapon?!!!). Unfortunately the mosquitoes were too smart. They intelligently hid in the fabrics of the curtain where I didn't want to use the zapper or flew way up high onto our 10 feet ceiling, out of my reach. ARRRGH! I finally only managed to get 3 out of the 4 vicious blood-suckers and ended up hiding under the covers the rest of the night and swatting away everytime I heard a buzz. I am pooped!

This morning I woke up immediately and googled some mosquito info. Here is what I found for those who are interested:
- http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/a/aa050503a.htm
- http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/moslife.htm

A Few Random Thoughts

I think you may have figured out by now that Sandra's entries start with some type of "quote" where as I just jump into a ramble of thoughts until I run out of time. I've been on a semi-dry spell lately in terms of blogging, but it has been a good two to three weeks of adjusting to church, work and life in Taipei. In many ways, it feels like we're a lot less busy than we were in Toronto because we haven't signed-up or committed to too many things. Our experience to date at Grace Baptist Church in Taipei has been really good. More on our church experience another time, but its funny looking at how "involved" people are at church with activities almost daily. I'm sure people had the same impression of our schedules in Toronto. Right now, we're easing into the community by getting to know people and building relationships one at a time. For the time being, we have decided to attend the bilingual Saturday evening fellowship (for those of you who understand, its has a distinct "CCFish" familiarity) and Sunday English service. During the week we've been attending Tuesday night prayer meeting, but looking at opportunities to get involved to help kick off a small group ministry or participate in Alpha program. Practically all of Taiwan is off on a nine-day long (including weekends) Chinese New Year holiday. We come back to work for Monday / Tuesday Feb 26 / 27 and then we get Feb 28th off (Taiwan Peace Day)! We're hosting our first "bigger" event at our apartment on the 28th... some people from the fellowship will be organizing some type of "outing" and then back to our place for the holiday.

The other thought that's been on my mind is that time can pass by really quickly. While we're cautious about committing to too much until we have more visibility to what opportunities and commitments we will have, we don't want to be too slow to get off the ground either (e.g. I still haven't enrolled in structured Chinese language lessons!). In terms of evolving "circles of relationships" here in Taiwan, the obvious ones we are tracking so far are: 1) relationships with each other and God; 2) relationships with Ray's coworkers; 3) relationships with Sandra's coworkers and the MCA missionary community; 4) relationships with friends from church (many who aren't Christians); and 5) relationship with other local friends like our landlady SF and her family and V from the hotel.

Work has been going well. I only had one short trip to HK (only 1 hour away) during these first few weeks of transition. There's a lot to do, but I've been able to manage my own schedule so that allows me to start work a little earlier and make it home for dinner. The home office also facilitates some more effective work for evening conference calls, etc. The goal in the first few weeks has been to get to know my team and our local office environment.

There have been a LOT of ups and downs. Our office has some very unique politics and challenges. One thing I've realized in the few months I've been working here in Asia is that relationships and "substance" really matters. You have to really deliver and have depth in your recommendation, conversation, product, etc. If you skim on the surface or avoid the issue, it's not going to work. There are times where its frustrating because politics or personal history might get in the way of a good solution. I've realized that I take a very methodological, analytical and hopefully logical approach to issue resolution... but that doesn't always work here! Lots to learn.

The other challenge has been English language. Our office has an extremely low level of English language proficiency - at all levels. This is an issue my group will be addressing over the next couple of years (for global competitiveness, etc.). From a personal perspective, it makes it difficult to build casual relationships because you don't really know who wants to talk to you because they want to learn English and who literally will be afraid of you if you don't speak Mandarin! The first thing we do when we return from our trip to Mainland China is to enroll in Mandarin studies!

The good news with both our transition to church and to work is that there are the familiar universal needs - primarily for relationships and for a listening ear. While there have been small successes and seemingly bigger setbacks for my function overall here in the Taiwan office, one on one conversations in the last few days have validated a need to be here and that a small light can go a long way in a dark place. Like many other audit groups around the world, the teams at our office are in the middle of their "busy season". Often not for work, I've had the need to drop by the office at odd hours to pick-up stuff lately - 10pm Friday night, Sunday afternoon, etc. The "bullpen" (staff seating area) has been completely full at these odd hours.

I've been working with a project with HR where we've set-up mentor / menteee relationships with certain people who are applying for short-term work assignments in the US. I offered my name to whoever wanted to sit down and go over their resume and application as well as share my own experiences (selfishly this is a good way for me to understand the issues facing our auditors today). I sat down with one of our audit managers on Friday afternoon. I intended to start our informal meeting with mutual introductions of ourselves. Not two minutes into her sharing of her own background (and in response to my reassurance that our conversation would be off the record) and she broke down crying! Yes, yes.. I have made the first person cry in the office! She was explaining to me that she has been working everyday (that would be 7 days a week) since January first and often to 10 or 11pm at night. A lot of people in our office are under immense pressures and feel suffocated in their situation. Today I had lunch with a slightly more senior (experienced) person and while no crying, the nature of the conversation was about the same.

For those of you non-accountants out there, this might not make too much sense to you... but its a scene that is quite familiar to those who have worked in public accounting firms. While maybe not always so extreme, I believe the stress is a nature of the profession that we're in.

There are no easy answers or solutions to what people are feeling in the office today. While I have some ideas and a reasonable understanding of the pressure points, I don't pretend to think that these issues can be solved quickly. However, these two intimate encounters with my colleagues has reminded me of some of the professional and personal contributions that are possible here in Taiwan. Being in a newly created position, the full extent of my role is still largely undefined. It's these situations that remind me that there are significant reasons to continue to press on in what I've been hired to do here. I won't get into all the technical details here, but its been a good reality check the past few days.

I also want to quickly mention here that I've also been inspired to think about whether I'm putting 100% into building my team here in Taiwan by being a part of Sandra's interview process. I've been inspired by the passion, integrity and drive that Sandra and her co-workers (teachers) put into their work. Sandra and her co-workers talk about their students and their work like they would their own students. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices as they share about their work. Sandra left a great group of coworkers and friends back at JPS in Toronto. This is why it was so significant that Sandra has found a school where she can build something similar. We're looking forward to meeting more of the staff in the MCA community. Through the interview process, we've realized (and are impressed) that MCA has set a very high standard for the teachers that they hire and train. Most of these teachers have left their home countries for short to long-term periods to commit to what this school has set out to do. MCA's compensation philosophy is based on compensating their teacher's as part of the missionary community. While the compensation is designed to support the families during their time here, monetary incentive is certainly not the reason these teacher's have come all the way to Taiwan. These teachers are here to make a difference!

Through a few new projects we've kicked off, I'm slowly getting to know the English speakers in the office (or at least those who would like to learn English). Its a nice arrangement where they have the desire to practice English and I have the desire to practice Mandarin. More importantly, I'm learning a lot about the perspective and worldview of this handful of people who have been selected by our office to apply for this global exchange opportunity. It's been fascinating to hear about their life and their reasons for wanting to go overseas (and return in two years time). It's also humbling and convicting to know that I've been placed in a position and circumstance to support these individuals.

It's Chinese New Year (or Spring Fesival in Chinese 春節) this weekend - the most important holiday of the Chinese calendar (in Taiwan, Christmas isn't even a statutory holiday). A common practice is for married couples to give these red envelope / red pocket to children. I realized today that there is also a practice in the office for managers to give their staff red pockets as well (these are Chinese red envelopes with money / cash in them). I've talked to a few people around the office about this and to be honest, struggling a little bit with this. Here's what I've gathered so far - its primarily a symbol of granting "luck" and "good wishes" to the person.

I have no problem with the monetary aspect, whether its in the form of cash or the form my treating my team to a nice lunch (although from a North American perspective, I'm more comfortable with buying an expensive lunch). I can also see parallels to the North American practice of purchasing gifts, gift certificates or writing cards at "Christmas" or the "Holiday" season. However, as a Christian, I struggle a little bit with participating in this traditional that suggests that I believe I'm passing some "luck" through this process. This practice is quite common (and I'm learning expected) in Chinese culture. If anything, I think people would think more about my actions if I didn't participate as opposed to participate... However... I'm still on the fence about this. Any comments or thoughts?? Comments would be appreciated. I'll sort out the "how much" question through local friends here... :)

Sandra and I are off to mainland China this Thursday (via HK and Shenzhen). It seems like we just got here and now we're leaving for a ten day vacation! We don't really know where we're going or what we'll be doing. We basically purchased a one-way flight from Shenzhen to Chengdu! We've been to mainland China enough times to know that there will be an adventure awaiting us whereever we go. We'll let our spirit and our stomaches guide the way through Sichuan until we decide on our means and timing of transportation to make it back to Shenzhen to visit with some friends from Toronto. Our decision to go there was based primarily on a desire to be in mainland China for the holidays... some cursury reading on history, pandas and spicy food... but in reality it was also a bit of let's spin the "China map" and see where elong.com will take us for a reasonable price! So, out come the backpacks and the warmest clothing we have for our adventure!

Tomorrow is the day!!

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” ~ Philippians 4:6-7

For those who have been traveling this visa journey with us, tomorrow is the big day! Tomorrow morning I'll hopefully be picking up my "resident" visa and heading to the immigration office to see if they will grant me a re-entry permit and allow me to apply for my ARC (alien resident card) right away ~ they seem to be able to do that in HK. If all goes well, then I will able to breathe a HUGE sigh of relief....

Mosquito War

Another Dead Mosquito ~ Earthlife Web

A little mosquito once sat on my arm,
her evil intent was to cause me some harm.
To stick in her proboscis and suck up my blood,
leaving behind a sore itch I must rub.
I think its quite mean doing something like that....
So I raised my right hand and I swatted her flat.

I'm waiting hopefully for the next cold front as we begin to feel the heat, dampness and mugginess of the city. And it's still considered winter here!!

Unfortunately, as the weather changes, so does the amount of mosquitoes in our house. Ray and I have been mercilessly attacked by mosquitoes the past 2 days. I currently have 4 neat little dots on my right cheek and 1 on my left cheek. I also have several on my arms, shoulders and back. Plus there's the constant feeling of being attacked by some bug when it turns out only to be a string or a piece of my hair. It's not very pleasant.

Tonight, after some advice from some friends from church, we're going to come back home armed for battle. We're going to be getting a mosquito zapper, and maybe one of those tennis racket things that ZAP! mosquitoes until they burn to a crisp.

If I were buddhist I would probably not be doing well on the Karma cycle having all these evil thoughts against mosquitoes, but I'm not. And I'm very happy to get rid of these nasty insects!

A Job! A Job!

"As Chance would Have it - Study in Coincidences" - by Hans C. Moolenburgh

"My life is but a weaving, between my God and me.
I do not choose the colours, He worketh steadily.
Offtimes he weaves sorrow, and I in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent and shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the skilful weaver's hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned."

Although the above poet more New Age, I loved the way he wrote these lines in his poem. It totally conveys my awe at how masterfully God crafts each of our lives.

So I've signed a contract and after my police check I will be officially hired by Morrison Academy - Bethany Campus from July 1, 2007 - July 1, 2008. It's really quite a beautiful facility and through the hiring process both Ray & I have been thoroughly impressed with their thoroughness in hiring and their professionalism as a school. Everything from their recruiting video, their website, their Taiwan handbook for those just landing, and their understanding of Visas has been very thorough and informative. (Here's a glimpse if you're interested: http://www.mca.org.tw/index.cfm?id=244). I was actually interviewed 3 times before I was hired. Once by the recruiting officer for my character and faith, once with the principal for more curriculum and classroom focus, and once with the superintendent for the final approval.

When visiting the school I was first given a tour to meet all the teachers (it was very nice to be welcomed and to actually see the school). The principal (An English speaking German, born in Taiwan) was extremely friendly and warm. He made me feel very comfortable to be myself and share about my interests and passions.

It really hit me that God had prepared this job for me and me for the job when I saw the SMARTBoard in the library. For those who don't know what it is I'm not going to bore you with my regular passionate rant, but it's basically an interactive whiteboard that connects to your computer and works like a touch screen. It's an AMAZING tool for teaching. (http://www.smarttech.com). SMARTBoard is just one of the companies that make interactive whiteboards. There are others, but SMARTBoard is Canadian.

Anyways, back to the story. You see, the day before the interview I was negotiating with Ray that maybe we can invest in a projector and a SMARTBoard during the year I was teaching at Morrison and then when we leave we'll just leave the equipment as a donation for the school. So I was going to ask the principal if he would be okay with that. Well before I even had a chance he showed me the SMARTBoard and said their school was going to be piloting SMARTBoard's beginning Fall 2007. One will be in every classroom. I was just shocked. One of the things that I was missing most about my school back in Toronto was that I left the school just when they were starting the interactive whiteboard pilot school-wide. I had been using the interactive whiteboard for about over a year now and thought it was an amazing tool, but to see other teachers use it too was so exciting. I was sad that I missed out on all the excitement.

It's not that the SMARTBoard was a be all and end all thing, but everything weaved together so beautifully. I was leaving a great principal in Toronto, I would be working with one in Taiwan. No interactive whiteboard, one in Taiwan. Working with a great team in Toronto, principal wants to build a team dynamic in Taiwan. Teaching grade 4 in Toronto, Grade 4 in Taiwan. Christian support at school in Toronto, well...it's a Christian school in Taiwan! AND, on the school's perspective they were looking for a teacher to take a 1 year contract for the Grade 4 teacher and it worked out perfectly that I only wanted a 1 year contract.

I felt like God was teaching me that just because He wants you to be ABLE and WILLING to give things up, He doesn't necessarily NEED you to give it up. He is truly a master Craftsman!

Beautiful Words

This is what the LORD says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. ~Jeremiah 6:16

I was reading a passage today that I found incredibly comforting and beautiful. I think it would make a great song or hymn. Singing the words would be like honey on my lips. For me, it was like God answering my prayer about understanding His calling for Ray & I. It is so relevant in so many of our daily lives as we seek to understand God and His will for us. It's not necessarily an answer, but it leads to an answer.

I also like it because of the words. I think words are so important. Words can make people cringe, laugh, cry, feel comforted...the words in this passage are just nice. Crossroads, ancient, paths, good, walk, rest, souls....

My favourite word that I've encountered is the word "dollop". I was explaining to my students that I like the word "dollop" because a "dollop" of anything is always something good....ice cream, whipped cream, mousse, mashed potatoes.

So I figured I'd leave you all with a dollop of words today! :)