Cheap Pizza! Does life get better?

 

This have been going pretty well in China.  It is good to be in the flow of things.  Of course since it is China it is not the smoothest flow, but at least it is fun.

 

Sunday was a pretty normal day.  I did get a letter from Song Laoshi, one of my tutors from last year.  It was really good to hear from him.  I love hearing from people back home. *hint, hint*

Monday felt like I was back home in America, but not as a college student, but rather as a teenager.  After classes got out I went with Lars and Chris to look at a video game that Lars was thinking of buying.  Of course as soon as three guys get into a game/gadget shop all interest in time stops working.  We pretty much sat in front of the big screen in the store and played various PS3 games.  It was actually a lot of fun just to hang out with them like that.  Really does remind me of the times I had as a kid.

After that was done we went out to dinner with their wives.  After dinner we all decided to go and get some chocolate shakes, but when we got to the store we found that it was completely closed.  I was crushed!  How am I going to get my shake fix if the good and cold drink stand is gone!

Shakeless we went back to their house.  There we opened up some Oreos and used the milk that I bought and had some Oreos in milk.  Just another thing to bring memories of America back.  We also played a little NBA2k11, the game that Lars had bought.

 

Tuesday saw me start my grad school applications to BYU and the University of Rochester.  Tuesday also saw me begin to hate applying for Grad school.  There is so many little things to get ready, it is just annoying.  It is certainly not helped along by the fact that I am not in the US where I could get a lot of the information a lot easier.

Wednesday started with teaching English like always.  This time it was actually really cool.  The kids were still terrified of the teacher because of how she had punished them last week.  On top of that we were more prepared, so the kids played more attention.  I focused on teaching them how to count the numbers from 10-50, I think they are finally starting to get it.  After that we played a matching game with them, and then after some more review we played some hangman.  The kids were really funny because they started guessing words before there were even letters.  Just like us as little kids.  Man I need to get some of those for myself ;)

Wednesday also saw me finding out that all of the drink shops had stopped selling shakes and bingsha.  I think I nearly started crying when they said that.  I guess I don’t have anything really good to drink for quite a while now.  After I got over my drink withdrawal I went home and really hit the books.  For the first time in weeks I am fully caught up in terms of my homework.

 

Thursday was the culmination of me realizing how much more I have to learn in Chinese.  I know that compared to other learners I actually have really good Chinese, but if I look at my ability more objectively I realize just how much I still have to learn.  I don’t even know how to really go from here, but I know that I will come up with a way to improve my Chinese.  Especially my writing, where I am not even as good as a six year old…

Thursday night was my day of relaxation.  I watched both Iron Man 2 and Knight and a Day.  I thought Iron Man 2 was over produced and didn’t click to well with the first one, but I really liked Knight and a Day.  It was just so off the wall that I loved it.  It was nice to watch them on my TV using the new cable that arrived last week.  Everything looked so smooth and they sounded wonderful as well.

 

Friday I had no classes so I spent the entire day doing more stuff related to applying for graduate school.  I started applications to Cornell and University of Washington.  I also complied a list of things that I need to do for all of them.  The list is actually not really all that bad, it just needs me to go and do it.  I have about a month to finish it, but I am going to try and finish it in the next week.

 

Saturday we had a chance to go Xixia mountain.  It was really beautiful.  The scenery reminded me both of Rochester and of Utah.  The mountainous feeling was one straight from Utah, but the trees were closer to what I would see in Rochester.  I have to admit that it made me really hope that I would be able to get into grad school in New York.  I guess we will just have to see what happens in the end.  Scenery is not the most important think in deciding where I will go for grad school.

From on top of the mountain I could also see Yangtze river.  It was pretty cool.  I could see all of the boats out in the water.  It was really hazy though.  I hear it is really clear in spring, but we missed that time of year by coming too late.  I guess I will have to come back to Jiangsu some other summer to see how it is when the pollution isn’t so bad.

After the mountain we came back and Trevor, Lars, Spring and I all went to eat together.  We chose a restaurant by my house called Bravo.  We went there because they had a new sign advertising 19 yuan pizza.  We ordered the pizza, and I must say they were just as good as any I have had anywhere else in China.  Combined with the prices they currently are, I can’t see why I won’t go back there to get even more pizza.  A 12” pizza is only around 5 dollars.  Not bad at all, and for that you got multi-topping pizzas.  Really quite impressive.  There other food also looks amazing, and I will have to try it out some other time.  It was also really cool because there were games to play while waiting for your food.  Does it get better than that?

After dinner I went and watched Scott Pilgrim with everyone.  The movie was hilarious.  I just loved it.  Obviously it would be hard to follow if you were not born in my generation, but if you were I highly suggest the movie.  It is really funny.

 

And that brings me pretty much up to now.  Below are some of my favorite pictures from the week":

  They certainly didn’t like me taking there picture but you don’t see guns very often in this country.

 

 

  They really need to get better English books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Picture taken with those of us that teach English more regularly.

 

 

 

 

  Don’t have time to pray?  Just write a prayer for the monks to pray for you.  This one is cool because of what she asks for in a husband.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures from the mountain.

The red sun represent grandpa Mao.

 

 

  Lars in his famous tiger pose.

 

 

 

 

 

  Pictures of the Pizza as consumed by Lars and his wife.

 

 

 

 

 

Fun stuff in China if I must say so myself.  My spiritual thoughts were not as many this week.  A lot of them focused on the Lord teaching me more and more about faith.  One scripture I came across as I was reading is of special note.  3 Nephi 17:17 it talks about Jesus Christ praying specifically for the Nephites.  I have a testimony that Christ still prays for us today.  He prayed for them when he was with them because he prays for us when he isn’t with us.  As we come to pray as he does we will come to even know what he prays for us.  We should always remember that Christ is actively participating in our lives.

The second though also had a lot to do with faith.  Namely it was why do we trust so much on the things that we see and hear.  How many of us have come to wrong conclusions based on what we have seen and heard.  If you want to know what I mean watch about any movie and see how a person becomes offended by something they hear or see, where they misunderstand the true motives of the other party.  Why then are we so attached to these senses?

Wouldn’t it make better for us to focus on the gift of revelation, a sense that will never lead us wrong.  It is easy to say, but it is funny how much I still grip to seeing and hearing.  A promise from God is a more sure knowledge that something will happen then even seeing it start to happen.  What we see could be wrong, but what God tells us will never be.  I pray that I personally can learn to have faith unto knowledge, that knowledge obtained from God will always be put higher in my life then those things I learn of my self.

 

At the very end of the week I also started thinking more about humility and pride.  I was forced to realize just how prideful a person I am.  When any of us choose to sin it shows us how truly prideful we are.  We put our will in contention with the will of God, and ultimately choose that we will follow our own will.  There is no single more prideful act in our life.  To think that any of us are not prideful is to misunderstand this terrible fault.

As I was pondering this subject this Sunday I also thought about just what humility is.  Pride is competitive and drives us to try to be better than others.  Humility is completely unconcerned with comparing the self to others, and rather concerned lifting oneself and others at the same time.  Is it prideful to know that you have a talent?  No!  Is it prideful to dwell on the fact that you are more or less talented then another?  Yes.  It is in the act of comparison that this knowledge becomes a hindrance.  To admit our own strengths is not to be prideful, only when we seek to compare them does it become this way.

Ironically as we come to remove competition we come to realize just how week even our strengths are.  Just like I mentioned with Chinese, when I think of it prideful I think that it is marvelous because I am comparing it to others, but when I remove that comparison I realize that there is so much more that I don’t know know, and I see just how week my Chinese.  In another paradox of the gospel it is in recognizing that we are week that we are strong.  When we realize just how week we are we allow the Lord into our lives and he makes us strong.  Not because we are strong by ourselves, but rather his goodness makes up for all of our weakness.  As we remain humble and continue to receive the Lord’s strength, we eventually become as the Lord and are strong in those areas of our life.  This is the path to perfection.

It is for this reason that pride is the most damming of all sins.  Pride keeps us from allowing the Savior into our lives.  It keeps us from having him turn week things into strong things.  We become as the prideful Nephites.  They saw that they were as strong as the Lamanites, a very strong people in war, but saw that they were truly week because they lacked the Lord.  We may go “far” in the world on our own, but we ultimately are weak when we don’t allow ourselves to rely on the Lord.

 

Wow, how I do love the paradoxes that define the gospel!  That’s it for today.  I hope that all of you are doing well.  I am sad to hear that you are not getting more snow, but here is wishing that the weather will get cold soon and shower you with its goodness!