I slept ok last night. We may be forced to get 2 rooms in Hangzhou as I have told Mark that he is going to scare poor Mavery to death if she wakes up during the night to the loud scary noises coming from his side of the room. Last night I was to tired to get up so I moved from throwing pillows to leaning as far over as I could with out getting out of bed and pulling on his blankets to yelling. Thankfully this did not start till this morning around 5ish so I had a pretty decent night. Going to bed at 10 and waking up at 5 is still longer than I sleep at home. So, if you are praying, please pray that this cold Mark has goes away TODAY, that I do not get it and that our room is QUIET tonight! (he is going to be so happy that I am talking about his snoring to the whole world!)
Today we tried to attend church here in Shanghai. Our guide had looked one up on the internet and found an international christian church. She wrote down the address in Chinese, so we got a taxi to take us to it. And you know that spending time in a taxi is spending much time with the Lord as it is. I am praying the entire time, please Lord, just keep your arms around this car, over and over. So the taxi drops us off, we see a cross and figure we are in the right place as we do not see many crosses here in China. We get out and notice it is gated shut. Hmmm. There is a sign, and many chinese people are stopping to stare at the sign (and of course stopping to stare at us!) and we have no idea what it says. We tried to get a picture so we could have Esther tell us what was going on, but it was hard to get a picture through the bars. We were bummed as we really wanted to spend some time in worship today. Davina has a church as does Kristy, but they are both in the afternoon and we will be getting on the train this afternoon at 3pm.
Since we could not go to church, we lucked out and the church was right next door to a 7 story mall. And you know that makes me happy! This was a regular mall, not a bargain as you shop type place. It was not quite open yet, so we got hot chocolates at Starbucks and sat outside and watched the people. This is hands down my favorite thing to do here in China. I just love watching them, watching the kids, just taking it all in. I look and I see Sage & Mavery in their faces. It is just so different this trip. Last time I felt the need to just soak it all in, as if I could not get enough. This time I feel so much more relaxed and I am just enjoying being here. Not that I did not enjoy it before, because I loved it as you know. But this time I just feel so much more comfortable.
While outside starbucks, an older man came up to us. Typically alot of the older people stop and stare at us somewhat disgusted looking with us. Not that they necessarily are, but it just the look they give. So he just stared, but had a twinkle in his eye. I waved and said hello and he was just the sweetest thing and just made our day. He asked where we were from and we told him America and he asked if we liked it here. We told him Shanghai was very beautiful and he asked us if we had any amercian coins as he likes to collect coins. I pulled out a quarter, the only coin I had on me. He held that thing like a treasure and said he would keep it for all of his life. He is 81 years old and has lived here for 75 years and said he was probably born in Shanghai. I told him his english was very good, which it was and he was so shy about it and said not so good, but it really was. Mark asked if we could take his picture and he quickly ran off with a wave and no picture, but he really lifted my spirits this morning.
We walked around the mall for awhile and I bought some childrens books in Chinese. Some are fairy tales such as the 3 little pigs, cinderella, snow white. Well that is my guess of what they are from the pictures anyways. The others are picture books of things such as a numbers book, food, etc.. I figure this will be fun for Mavery this week to look at as they show me how to say the chinese word for each picture. Maybe she will teach us chinese as we point to the picture and she says the words! The books were cheap, but I stopped in Swatch and the watches were $100 US. that seems alot to me. Not that I have a swatch. So maybe not.
We caught a taxi from the mall and we are packing now for our train ride to Hangzhou. Oh we did get to SEE the kids this morning. (your saturday night). We were on skype. It took quite awhile to figure out. We could see them before they could see us and it was quite comical watching them but they could not see us and were all just looking confused! We finally got it going but the sound was not working so we had to use our cell phone to talk. Which is not good as that will add up quickly in cost. So if anyone has any idea why the sound might not work, please let us know.
My heart and thoughts are so full of Mavery right now. But I will save that for its own post later today. Less than 24 hours now! Mark says I have to stop hogging the computer if I want pictures up, so I guess I will turn it over to him. Come back and see pictures of yesterday and today in a little bit!
Today we tried to attend church here in Shanghai. Our guide had looked one up on the internet and found an international christian church. She wrote down the address in Chinese, so we got a taxi to take us to it. And you know that spending time in a taxi is spending much time with the Lord as it is. I am praying the entire time, please Lord, just keep your arms around this car, over and over. So the taxi drops us off, we see a cross and figure we are in the right place as we do not see many crosses here in China. We get out and notice it is gated shut. Hmmm. There is a sign, and many chinese people are stopping to stare at the sign (and of course stopping to stare at us!) and we have no idea what it says. We tried to get a picture so we could have Esther tell us what was going on, but it was hard to get a picture through the bars. We were bummed as we really wanted to spend some time in worship today. Davina has a church as does Kristy, but they are both in the afternoon and we will be getting on the train this afternoon at 3pm.
Since we could not go to church, we lucked out and the church was right next door to a 7 story mall. And you know that makes me happy! This was a regular mall, not a bargain as you shop type place. It was not quite open yet, so we got hot chocolates at Starbucks and sat outside and watched the people. This is hands down my favorite thing to do here in China. I just love watching them, watching the kids, just taking it all in. I look and I see Sage & Mavery in their faces. It is just so different this trip. Last time I felt the need to just soak it all in, as if I could not get enough. This time I feel so much more relaxed and I am just enjoying being here. Not that I did not enjoy it before, because I loved it as you know. But this time I just feel so much more comfortable.
While outside starbucks, an older man came up to us. Typically alot of the older people stop and stare at us somewhat disgusted looking with us. Not that they necessarily are, but it just the look they give. So he just stared, but had a twinkle in his eye. I waved and said hello and he was just the sweetest thing and just made our day. He asked where we were from and we told him America and he asked if we liked it here. We told him Shanghai was very beautiful and he asked us if we had any amercian coins as he likes to collect coins. I pulled out a quarter, the only coin I had on me. He held that thing like a treasure and said he would keep it for all of his life. He is 81 years old and has lived here for 75 years and said he was probably born in Shanghai. I told him his english was very good, which it was and he was so shy about it and said not so good, but it really was. Mark asked if we could take his picture and he quickly ran off with a wave and no picture, but he really lifted my spirits this morning.
We walked around the mall for awhile and I bought some childrens books in Chinese. Some are fairy tales such as the 3 little pigs, cinderella, snow white. Well that is my guess of what they are from the pictures anyways. The others are picture books of things such as a numbers book, food, etc.. I figure this will be fun for Mavery this week to look at as they show me how to say the chinese word for each picture. Maybe she will teach us chinese as we point to the picture and she says the words! The books were cheap, but I stopped in Swatch and the watches were $100 US. that seems alot to me. Not that I have a swatch. So maybe not.
We caught a taxi from the mall and we are packing now for our train ride to Hangzhou. Oh we did get to SEE the kids this morning. (your saturday night). We were on skype. It took quite awhile to figure out. We could see them before they could see us and it was quite comical watching them but they could not see us and were all just looking confused! We finally got it going but the sound was not working so we had to use our cell phone to talk. Which is not good as that will add up quickly in cost. So if anyone has any idea why the sound might not work, please let us know.
My heart and thoughts are so full of Mavery right now. But I will save that for its own post later today. Less than 24 hours now! Mark says I have to stop hogging the computer if I want pictures up, so I guess I will turn it over to him. Come back and see pictures of yesterday and today in a little bit!
1 comment:
I am hanging on every word.
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