10K to Tiananmen

   So one Saturday, June 13, a group of 6 of us Summer Staff volunteers (along with one long-term staffers daughter) set out to walk 10 kilometers from a point in Beijing to Tiananmen Square. We were invited to take this journey with two ladies, Darrah and Ann, who had walked from the New Day South location to the Foster Home here in Beijing, over 2200 km. (Darrah wrote about the experience over at the New Day blog, I highly recommend you read it to find out more about their amazing journey and their heart behind it.) They would be finishing their walk on that Saturday, with those last 10 km landing them in the heart of Beijing, Tiananmen Square, and invited anyone from New Day who wanted to join them to meet in the city and finish the walk with them. So on Saturday morning we piled into cars, got dropped off at the designated meeting place, and began our walk. 
   It really was not a tough walk and we all enjoyed getting to talk with one another and learn more about Darrah and her story. We saw parts of Beijing we wouldn't normally see as we walked along and only once did we get a little turned around and have to ask for directions. It was so special for Darrah and Ann to invite us along to finish this journey with them and to get to be there as they reunited with their loved ones at the finish line. Darrah's mom and Ann's husband, along with some of the volunteers and friends from Ann's organization, all were there to greet them when they made it to the square. They had been gone for over four months and hadn't seen their loved ones in at least that long so it was sweet to get watch as they finally reunited. After plenty of pictures we said our goodbyes and wished Darrah and Ann well as they spent their day catching up with friends and family and celebrating their amazing accomplishment. 

Some summer staff and Darrah (on the right making the silly face) after finishing the walk.

    Our group spent the rest of the day sightseeing at Tiananmen Square, then headed over to Forbidden City, and then walked down to Wangfujing Street for lunch and some shopping, and even some scorpion eating (but not by me!). By the time the day was all said and done we had walked more like 20km and were exhausted, both by the day spent in the sun and the walking. But even though our feet hurt and we were ready to climb into bed at 6pm, it was so worth it. We got experience a small part of someone else's epic journey and then spend the rest of the day exploring this city we have been calling home this month. These are the adventures that make memories that won't soon be forgotten!

3 girls ate scorpion on a stick while we were at Wangfujing street market. A cultural experience I didn't feel the need to partake in!

These are my two roommates and they have been two of the biggest blessings here! So thankful for sweet girls to share these experiences with and become friends with over these few weeks!

Sunday Funday!

   The weeks here are full of work and life in the village but on the weekends we get to explore the city of Beijing through both planned and unplanned excursions and adventures. Saturday's are when we usually go into the city for planned trips or sightseeing and Sundays have been our day to embrace our "Westerner" side with church, Western-style lunches, and trips to foreign-imports grocery store!
   The very first Sunday I was in China we got a large bus to take the majority of the foreign volunteers here at New Day into the city for church at Beijing International Christian Fellowship for their special "Unity Sunday" service. The Unity service combined both the Chinese and English services so everything from worship to the message was communicated in both languages. During worship they would sing one verse and chorus in Chinese then the next in English, I absolutely LOVED it! This was my first experience in a multilingual service and it was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Getting to worship the same God in multiple languages, with people from all over the world was an experience that I will not soon forget. It was so humbling to be among people from all tribes and tongues and feel like I was getting just the tiniest glimpse into what Eternity will be like.

The message was given in both English and Chinese.

   After the service we spent the day in one of the more "Western" parts of the town and all split up in smaller groups for lunch and some exploring at the mall there. The group I went with decided to go to a nicer brunch restaurant called the Rug which was an interesting experience, they had community style seating (multiple groups at the same big table) and even had an avocado latte on the menu. 

My first "Western" meal while in China; almond crusted chicken and house-made chips (which were delicious!).

    We finished our first Sunday by wandering around the mall next to the restaurants and then shopping for some items that cannot be found in the local village stores at Jenny Lou's, the foreign-import grocery store chain in the city.
    The next two Sundays were very similar to the first with church, lunch, and shopping. We attended BICF's contemporary English service and then would go to a more Western/ upscale part of the city for lunch and some shopping and then finish with grocery shopping at Jenny Lou's. The second Sunday a group of friends and I went to a popular restaurant chain here, Element Fresh and I got the "Big American Breakfast" and my American stomach was one happy camper. Scrambled eggs, bacon, and french toast, it was glorious! China has many delicious meals but breakfast as we think of it in America is not something that is easily found here so finding a traditional breakfast was heavenly. 

My "Big American Breakfast"

   Last Sunday after church we got to explore the 798 Art District here in Beijing and it was so neat! Another volunteer Annie and I broke off from the large group and sat down outside (it was a GORGEOUS day for Beijing so we took advantage of it!) for a nice lunch of delicious burgers and fries! Then we wandered through some galleries, stores, and coffee shops. It almost felt like we had been transported out of China, that is until we realized we still couldn't understand anyone or read the signs... 

Icecream, art billboards, and Polaroids made for a fun-filled day in the Beijing art district. 

   It has been interesting to spend these Sunday's exploring parts of Beijing that are SO different from our small village life here at New Day and getting to experience an international church fellowship unlike anything back I've been to back home. They have been long days but so fun and full of experiences I won't soon forget!

My current "normal"

  While life in China is never really normal I have definitely developed a rhythm to my days here and have a schedule that is helping to make life here feel more normal. For those of you who may be curious, here's a breakdown of what a typical weekday looks like for me:

6:50am-- wake up and start getting ready, it gets light by like 4:30am here so sleeping in doesn't really happen. 

8:00am-- we meet for our morning prayer meeting where volunteers and staff come together to pray over the foster home and New Day. This is also when we get updates on the foster home and the children. 

8:30am-- most days I head to the foster home to start my work day around this time, depending on when prayer ends and if we have summer staff meeting or not. 

8:30-11:30am-- I am at the foster home during this time and have 2 one-on-one sessions with different kids and then spend the rest of the time with some of the younger toddlers during their outside time. 

11:30am-1:00pm-- lunch! We get a nice long break for lunch and during this time I usually take a break and read a little, eat, and take a few moments to myself. 

1:00-3:00pm-- this time looks different from day to day but it is generally our time for our Chinese class and various training sessions that the summer staff has to go to. 

3:00-4:30pm-- I go back to the foster home and spend more time with the kids. Depending on the day I get to have another one-on-one, go to a therapy session with one of my morning one-on-one kiddos and then play outside. 

4:30-9:30pm-- The rest of the evening consists of making dinner and hanging out. Some nights we have activities like fellowship or community dinners and other nights we just hang around the campus and take it easy. This is also the time we typically make trips into the village for groceries or whatever else we need (aka icecream). 

9:30pm-- since we get up so early we typically find ourselves in bed pretty early and most nights I am curled up in bed with a book or my laptop catching up on social media by 9:30 and asleep by 10:30. A welcome change from my 11pm or later bedtime back home. 

      An example of our general weekly schedule, though it varies between people and weeks. 

So there you have it! A typical day in the life of Lexie in China. I hope you now have a better idea of what it is I'm doing here and what my days look like. I love this new normal and have been so blessed to adjust quickly to it. I can't believe over two weeks have passed by and am looking forward to another great week coming up!

Also check back for more posts on what I did this weekend and my excursions in Biejing in the next couple of days! 

One Great Experience

  Before coming to China I had never traveled internationally before so I have never had the chance to experience and see and of the "Great Wonders" or "must-see" locations around the world. I knew that I would be able to spend some time while in Beijing getting to sight-see and that the Great Wall was a must-see place before I left. So this weekend I got to check my first Great Wonder of the World of the list. 
  Three other of the summer staff girls and I, along with one of the long-term volunteers who served as our tour guide, visited the Great Wall this past Saturday and it was such a fun day! Weather in China can be rough between the pollution and the heat (which has been upwards of 95 degrees F recently!) so we prepared ourselves for what could have potentially been a very hot and smoggy day. But instead of the miserable weather we had been getting we got beautiful clear skies with breezy weather that made for the perfect day to hike along the Wall. We took a chair lift up to the wall and then once up we walked along it for about an hour. It was an incredible experience getting to walk along the wall and be at one of the great wonders of the world. We took lots of pictures, climbed more than our fair share of unevenly spaced steps, and altogether had a great day just taking it all in. When we finished walking we got to take a toboggan slide back down to the entrance, and while being on the Wall was incredible, the slide was definitely one of my favorite parts of the whole day! It was just so much fun! I definitely recommend anyone who visits the Wall takes the slide, you won't be sorry. 
   Besides getting to visit the Great Wall, which was obviously a must-do thing while I was here, I have enjoyed lots of other cultural experiences in Beijing over the last week or so and plan to see even more over the next several weeks! It has been so exciting getting to travel and experience another culture and I am looking forward to the adventures to come!

Time is flying by!

   So I have officially completed my first full week in China and I cannot believe that so much time has already passed. When I was applying to come to China back in January I remember looking at the different summer staff positions and seeing that you could pick to come for one month, two, or as an extended summer staffer for over a two month month stay. I knew that where ever I ended up spending my summer I wanted to go for several weeks and a month seemed like just enough time, especially since it would be my first international experience, and I could not even fathom going anywhere for three months. I applied and was accepted for the June program which would give me just around 30 days in country, which coming into the trip seemed like a very long time. Now that I am 10 days into my stay here I completely understand why others would come for the whole summer or even longer. I am so in love with the kids I am working with that I already know saying my goodbyes in just a few short weeks will be incredibly difficult, no matter how homesick I get. But instead of dwelling on the future goodbye I am doing my best to live in the moment each day and cherish the time I have here in China, with these people, doing this work. 

    So this week was most of the summer staff's first full week here and we officially got to start working at our various assignments. I am spending my time here in the Foster Home with the toddlers and older children. I have been assigned to do one-on-one sessions with a couple of the children, something I was really hoping to get to do. One-on-one's are when a volunteer is paired with a child and meets with them for 20-30 minutes each day to work on their developmental goals and needs. It is simply constructive playtime. It can be anything from practicing rolling a ball, to helping a child learn how to use scissors or working on recognizing body parts. It is a great way for children to get more individualized attention, to work on helping them to meet their developmental milestones, and build relationship between the child and volunteer. When I'm not working with children one-on-one I just get to be with the large group of them and play and spend time with them. I spent this past week just getting to know all the children and then specifically getting to know the the few who I will be spending that one-on-one time with. On Monday I will begin the one-on-one sessions, and I could not be more excited! I'm praying big prayers that there would be visible improvements in the children I am working with, some goal met or developmental milestone achieved, during my time here and would love to have others partner with me in that prayer. I've already learned that in the grand scheme of these children's lives I am only apart of it for a brief moment, but I want to make sure that I use that moment to invest fully in their little lives and do the most I can for them including praying the big and sometimes intimidating prayers for developmental milestones reached and healing in these children's lives. 

   I am looking forward to what the next three weeks will hold for me and the other summer staffers. I know that there is still so much more to be seen and done here! I cannot wait to see what this next week holds!

The adventure has begun

Ni hao friends!
    Well I have now been in China for a little over 2 days and already I have learned and experienced so much and it is only the beginning! Here is a (not so) brief overview of what the last 60 or so hours have looked like:
    My flight arrived Wednesday night local time and luckily one other summer staff volunteer, Virginia, was on my flight so we waited together for our driver to come and take us to where we will be staying the next several weeks. We arrived to our new home around 10 at night and most everyone else was already asleep, there isn't much staying up late around here. Our driver walked us up to our room and we met Annie, who would be our temporary roommate. Many groups and individuals come through here so sometimes there is a shuffling of rooms and when we first arrived our permanent room wasn't available yet so we stayed with Annie until we could move in. We quickly changed and washed up and then fell right into bed, we were both exhausted and at that point I had been up for the better part of 30 hours with only some short lived naps on the plane. 
    The morning after I arrived I was still kind of in sleep deprived daze and really had little idea what was going on. We were told to go to morning prayer so we attended that and then after we were informed that all the summer staff would be going into Beijing. However, we weren't just going into the city for a touristy day but instead it was an exercise in getting us comfortable using the public transportation here in China. So they took the group of us, some of which have been here before and were familiar with how to do everything, showed us how to get to the Pearl Market using the bus and subway systems and then once we arrived at the Pearl Market they left us on our own. A couple of the staff who had been here longer volunteered to take groups to different locations throughout the day and serve as a resource on the way back if necessary. However, Virginia and I were still suffering from jet lag and and lack of sleep and could barely make it through the first hour or so at the market and knew we wouldn't make it through an entire day of adventure in the city. After eating lunch in the city we made the (maybe risky) decision to venture back to our village just the two of us, no seasoned veteran to look out for us. We made sure we knew all the subway stops we needed and the correct bus number and then went on our way. I have to say we did a pretty good job, we made the correct transfer on the subway and knew exactly what stop to get off, however we somehow managed to still get off at the wrong stop... We got off the subway thinking it was the correct stop (we were mislead by the blinking map on the subway) and managed to roam around that area for probably a good 45 minutes or more looking for the bus stop we remembered but just could not find. It wasn't until we finally gave up and went back to the station to try and find a phone to use that we realized, we were not at the right station. We had a good laugh, bought more subway tickets, and made the ride one stop back to the correct station. Once we walked out we immediately recognized the area and made it to our bus stop and back to our new home with no more complications. It was an adventure for sure, two very sleep deprived jet-lagged Americans trying to use Chinese public transportation on their first day in the country. But we successfully made it back, no outside help required, and I now feel confident I could get to and from the city without a problem. 
     Later that night we went out to the village with a group of girls for our first dinner here. It was family style with several dishes brought out and put in the middle of the table, most of which I wasn't really sure what it was but tried as much as I could. Unfortunately, between all the new food and lack of sleep my body couldn't handle it and I spent most of Thursday night pretty sick which made for a pretty miserable night and very long Friday. Friday was all about orientation. We had a general orientation for volunteers, our specific summer staff orientation, and then more specified orientation for where we would be serving and a tour of the facilities. I had to miss out on some of the fun, including a village scavenger hunt, because I was still feeling pretty rough but luckily by Friday night I was finally feeling well again. 
     And now it's Saturday and we have a free day to do as we please, which means I have finally got to unpack all of my things in our permanent room, Facetime my roommate back home, and update this blog! Internet connection is way more spotty than I anticipated so the blog may not be updated as regularly as I would like but I will try and update as I can. Thank you to everyone who has been sending me kind words and lots of prayers, it is all so appreciated and needed! Monday starts our official "work" week so I will get to know more about what my assignment here will be and what the day-to-day will look like. 

Until next time,
Lexie

Taking the first step

Well, it has officially happened. I have now successfully made it through the first flight of my journey on my way to Beijing! Currently I am waiting in the Seattle airport as my next flight is not till 5pm Seattle time, so this is the perfect time to finally get this blog up and running! 
For those of you who don't know, I will be spending the next month in a village outside of Beijing, China volunteering with an organization called New Day in their Foster Home as a general foster home volunteer. As of now my exact role and responsibilities are still to be defined but I will be spending my days loving on the children there, getting to know the staff and other summer volunteers, and taking language courses during my free time. I plan to share more about how I ended up spending a month of my summer in China in an upcoming post but for now I just wanted to get this up and going before I leave America! I do not know how the internet situation will be once I am in China but know that I will have some availability and plan to update fairly regularly. 
Thank you to everyone who has followed along this journey so far and supported me along the way! I am so excited to finally be on my way and start this adventure! I look forward to sharing stories from my journey and what I am learning with you all!

Until China,  
Lexie