Final Post

Well we made it home safe. I hadn't really planned on right much on this post, but I have a great store from the Hong Kong airport.

So me and some friends in China bought airsoft guns a few weeks ago and planned on having an airsoft fight, I missed out on it because of some other (more important) plans. So when it came time to pack I decided that I was going to take it home, no reason to leave since I'd shot it a few times. Anyway it made it through customs in Xiamen (not surprising) and so I thought that it was all good. So Stephen and I were sitting in the terminal waiting for our plane to LA to arrive when we heard them say my name over the loud speaker, now this isn't anything new to me, seeing as how I almost missed a flight in the same airport on the way to China. So we walked over to the line and didn't give it a second thought. So a few minutes later while standing in line I see a lady walking around with a sign that says "Morris Brett" so I jump out of line and tell her that that is me. She then asks me if I had a "gun shaped object". I answered "yes" and she then told me that I needed to follow her. She then lead me down the airwalk (the moving walkway thing that leads to the airplane) and then down a flight of stairs and into a van that is parked very close to the airplane. She asked me to take a seat. Inside the van there were three people and my bag. They asked me a few questions and the informed me that the police were on the way. Now up to this point I really wasn't all that worried, but once I heard that the police were on their way I got a little bit nerves. A police van pulled up a few minutes later and out came three armed police man, they each had at least two guns strapped on them. They then asked me to open my bag, which I did. Looked at the gun and saw that it wasn't a real gun, asked me a few question and copied my passport information. Then the lady lead me back to the waiting area were I then told Stephen about what happened.

Well that my great airport store. I'd like to thank everyone once again for reading my blog and PR-ing.

Heading towards the West

Well we're on our way home, we've made it past security and now we're waiting for our first flight. Not looking forward to our 13+ hour flight from Hong Kong to LA, but I am looking forward to Starbucks and Popeyes.

Thanks for all the PRs.

Video Cast - Favorite Places

I think this will be our last video cast.

Nameless

Well I'm following David's advise and I'm keeping my blog updated.
The trip is coming to an end, we've been saying goodbye to some of our friends, and that's never fun. We also began the packing process and the clean process. I don't really have much else to say. We leave China Thursday night and land in Dallas at 5am. Yeah I think that's about it.

one week

so we have one week left in china. i have mixed feeling about this, on one hand i miss home and all my friends like crazy, but on the other hand i know i'm going to miss all my new friends in china. i think i'm going to miss china in general, the people, the culture, living on a college campus, the excitement of trying to get someone who speaks a different language then you to understand what you are saying. this trip has really gone by fast, and as i sit here writing this entry all kinds of great memorizes come to mind and it makes me sad to think that i'm leaving. this next week is going to go by to fast! please be pr-ing for us to really finish the trip strong.

Mafia

Here’s a more detailed entry on the past week.
(7-6) Sunday: Ok, so this was a pretty boring day, but I did work on the hand out for our Word study. And attended The Bridge, I lead my own group once again. Went out to dinner afterwards with our friends Nina and Eric. Walked all the way home. Nina said that the Chinese people believe that if you walk 100 steps after dinner you will live to be 100. I think we walk way more then 100 steps. I’d guess we walk between 2 to 3 miles.
(7-7) Monday: “Teacher English". Ate lunch at Muslim Noodle, I’d have to say its one of my favorite restaurants, great pulled noodles with beef. Then we took a bus to Lun Du to do some shopping. Came back to our room and watched movies because it was raining pretty hard. Ate dinner at a friend’s vegetarian restaurant. Had our Word study, it went really well, and afterwards the bookstores owner asked us to design some things for a calendar and a t-shirt.
(7-8) Tuesday: Slept in. Ate junk food in our room for lunch. Designed a hand out for Word study and worked on some other projects in Photo Shop. Ate dinner with our friend Mark, some sort of spicy noodles with chicken, not that great. And then we got a drink that Stephen and I call “milktea surprise” it’s regular milktea with beans, bean paste, jello, nuts and something chew that we have yet to identify. After dinner we called some friends and went to Gu Lang Yu, after we got there we walked around and discovered that all the places were closed, but McDonald’s. So we sat in there and played Mafia until it closed at 11. Then after it closed we took a taxi to the McDonald’s by Xia Da, which is open 24-7, and played Mafia until 2:30.
(7-9) Wednesday: Slept in pretty late and ate lunch around 2 at one of the campus’ cafeterias. Hung out in our room. And then met our friend Jason for dinner. After dinner Jason took us to the Xia Da library and got us some books on basic Chinese, he then taught us Chinese for about an hour and a half.
(7-10) Thursday: Went to work around 9, packaged and boxed CDs. Ate lunch at a place that Stephen and I nicknamed ‘Icy Plum’, because they have a really good drink there called icy plum, they also have some really good fried dumplings. Met our friend Jason around 1:30 for another Chinese lesson. Then met our friends Joyce and Sofia and went to the Jun Joe campus (for freshmen), it’s about a 30 minute boat ride from the Xia Da campus. Went skating at a very small skating rink. I think they were probably the worst skates I’ve ever used, but it was still fun. Neither one of them had been skating in a long time. After skating we took a tour of the campus and ate dinner. Some of their friends that we met for dinner bought everyone “milktea surprise”. Then caught the last boat home.
(7-11) Friday: Met our friend Turner for lunch, he took us to Icy Plum. And after lunch showed us a pirated DVD store that none of the foreigners know about. After that we went to the library and surfed the internet. Met our friend Mark and tried to goto the movies, but the movie we planned on seeing wasn’t playing because a new Chinese movie had just come out. So we came back to Xia Da and start a huge game of Mafia at the English Corner. Played until about 11, then talked with some friends and regular English Corner-ers ‘til about 12:30.
(7-12) Saturday: Texted my friend Maggie asking if her restaurant was opened on the weekend and asked how to get there, she offered to come and pick us up so we set up a meeting place and time. Her restaurant was about a 10- 15 minute drive away from our dorm. It was a very nice restaurant. On our way home we saw a Walmart, so we jumped off the bus and went in. It was a little bit different from the Walmarts in American, but it was still the same concept. Ate dinner at Harbing Sway Ju, another one of our favorite restaurants. Met our friends Lynn, Joyce and Sofia for more “study games” played some sort of IQ game, Mafia .and Stephen and I played a game were they timed us to see who could learn the most Chinese, he won, I think it’s because he’s been here some many times, but he said it’s not. I lost the game so the other team got to paint our faces.

Untitled

Once again I have neglected my blog, but it hasn't totally been my fault. The last time I was on the internet I couldn't get onto Blogger. Anyway here's a brief update. Since my last post we have gone through an earthquake, eaten Chinese vegetarian food, climbed a mountain in the dark, ridden on a bus for more then an hour and not known where it was going, and have had over 20 cups of Chinese tea in one sitting. I think that's all the highlights.

Video Cast - Paradigm Edition

Graduation, hiking & very old audio equipment

It’s been a while since I last updated so I guess I’ll fill you in on everything that’s happened. Alright I’ll start from last Saturday, we slept in, like we normally do on Saturday and were woken up by a phone call from our friend Cameron asking if we’d like to grab lunch, he ended up taken us to the same place we had eaten the day before and ordering the exact same thing, but it was still really good. Then after lunch we decided to look for a cool place to film the Paradigm video, but the battery for the camera died so we didn’t get to film. After our failed attempt to film the Paradigm video we went with some of our friends, Lynn and Joyce to the Napatoa Temple, which is located on the side of a mountain and then went down the other side of the mountain to a “plant park” and it had three main parts, desert plants, mountain plants and rainforest plants. Then on the way back Joyce and Lynn got us lost and we ended up having to climb a gate to get home.
Sunday: Got up early and went to Fellowship, ran audio at Fellowship, not my favorite venue, think of it as the LP chapel, but with equipment from the early 90s, unreliable to say the least. After Fellowship we headed to Good Service Lady to grab some lunch with some American friends from Fellowship, I think Good Service Lady is my favorite thing about Sundays. Later that afternoon we went to The Bridge, I lead a group by myself for the first time, it was quite a lot of fun, met tons of interesting people. After The Bridge we got a call from Stephen’s friend Jason inviting us to dinner, we accepted and explained that we had already made plans later that night so we’d need to be done around 7, he insured us that it wouldn’t be a problem. So we set off for did with Jason and his two friends (I can’t remember their names) and we walked for close to 30 minutes, I thought a few times we were lost, but they said they knew the way. After we arrived Stephen and I realized that the place they had taken us was only a 10 – 15 minute walk from our dorm, meaning that they had wasted a lot of our time, once we were seated the Jason sterilized his cup and bowl using very hot tea and then when he was finished he turned around and threw his bowl full of hot tea onto the floor, I almost burst out laughing, he then explained that is was a “bad habit” of his. After finishing dinner we realized that it was a few minutes after 7 and we were suppose to be meeting some friends around 7:15. We ended up running the entire way back, I guess close to 2 miles, in flip flop, and were only a few minutes late. We headed to a graduation party with our friends Lynn and Joyce, it turned out being more of a talent show then a party, but it was still fun.
Monday: We “teacher English” at the Nissi bookstore to about 8 people. After that we went shopping to buy some snacks before the hurricane hits, by the way the hurricane isn’t going to be a big deal, just a lot of rain. We also printed our hand outs for the Word study. The 4 Fish invited us to come over to their house for dinner and it was very good, some sort of Mexican dish. After dinner we walked on the beach and picked up glass bottle. Afterwards we took a taxi to the Nissi bookstore for our Word study, the cab driver was a nut, he forgot to turn on the meter until half way there and then he didn’t know how to get there, so we got to use our 10 Chinese words and hand motions to try and tell him how to get there. It ended up being fine and we got there in time.
Tuesday: We got invited back to Novelink and we arrived there around 9, they didn’t really tell us what they wanted us to do over the phone so we weren’t sure if we’d be teaching more class or what. Turns out they had some questions and some error that we helped them work out. It was a lot of fun, I think I could have spent the whole day at Novelink. After we got done at Novelink we decided to try and shoot the Paradigm video again, and I had seen some cool abandoned building when we had taken a bus a stop to far. The building ended up being a little more difficult to get to then we had originally thought, but it was well worth it. We ended up exploring the buildings until the sun had set. On our way back to the main road we heard a Chinese lady yelling something, but we couldn’t quite make out what she was saying and once we were on the main road she came over and started talking to us, she said she had a major in English and had been looking for someone to practice with, we ended up walking along the beach with her and talking for a few hours. We got onto a very full bus that was heading to Xia Da there were a lot of highschool students on the bus and one of them said “China” in English and I ended up starting a conversation with about 6 highschool students because of the word Chine. Isn’t the Father amazing!?

Well that all the updates I have. Thanks for all the PRs.

Mac Classes

July 17th-
Well Eddie’s team arrived on Friday and we’ve been able to do a few things with them including two pr-walks and a beach party. It’s really nice to see other people from LP and hear that wonderful Texan accent I’ve come to miss. We did our first English Word study on Monday night and it went well, please pr that the Chinese in our Word study would understand what they’re reading. And we also taught our first Mac class and it went really well. They seemed to have learned a lot and it was very easy for us to teach the information.


July 18th-
Todays Mac Class went really well, it was a much small class then yesturday. Not to sure what else we have going today, maybe dinner with some new friends.

Video Cast - Note to Self

(sorry that it's in two parts, photobucket only allows 5 minute videos and youtube is blocked)

Birthday

Sorry I haven't post in a while, we've been super busy and we only get on the internet every 2-3 days.
Well anyway, we've met a ton of people and our schedule just got really busy, apparently we're "mac experts" (since about 98% of Chinese people use PCs) and we're teaching three different mac class.
Also my birthday was really great, we got pizza for dinner with the 4fish. And then when I got online I was a little bummed that I didn't get to many messages on myspace for my birthday, then I got on facebook and there were 20+ messages! you guys are amazing!
Ohh yeah we're working on a video so hopefully we'll have that up in the next few days.
Thanks for all the pr-

Video Cast - The Dorm

Video Cast - Impressions

06/02/08

Today has been a very interesting day, we started the day off with a bowl of frosted flakes and a cup of instant coffee. About half way through my cup of coffee the handle on my mug decided to break off resulting in a little bit of a mess. After cleaning the mess up we went down stairs to meet a new friend named Lynn who offered to show us around the campus. We ended up “exploring” and not really finding all that much. She had mentioned earlier that the library had free wifi so we head over there, only to find a headache. It took us close to 30 minutes to get our computers online and once we got on the browsing was very slow. And for whatever reason my computer decided to only load MySpace. After a very frustrating time at the library we decided to grab some dinner on campus with Lynn. She picked out the dishes and most of them were very good. I had eggplant for the first time, and I thought it was alright. After saying our goodbyes we met our friend Cody at the West Gate (one of the main gates in and out of the campus) and he helped us get a pre-paid cell phone. Then we grabbed some coffee at Brown Sugar Café and surfed the web.

We got a dorm! Also we don't have internet in our dorm (stupid .exe) so we will be updating our blogs from a few different coffee shop that have wifi.

We're also working on a couple of video blogs that we hope to have up in the next few days.

Puppet Show

Last night we did a puppet show for around 1,000 people. We've also done a little bit of sight seeing to get to know the town a little better. This morning we went to a private school for children with autism ran by one of our brothers. It was a lot of fun. We did a short puppet show and Matt and Shelby both sang a few songs. Later on tonight we're going out with the Merge team for dinner before they leave. I think that's about it.

Made it to China

I'm super tired, jet lag is no fun.

Anyway blogger is blocked so I can't promise I'll update it.

T-Minus 2 Days

Wow this trip has really seemed to come up fast. I'm really stoked about this trip.

Updates: nothing major, I still haven't started packing. Hahaha I'm a procrastinator.

T-shirts

We still have some t-shirts left, they're only $20.

They're super nice American Apparel shirts.