Sunday, July 15, 2012

A lesson in Hospitality !


It never ceases to amaze me, the lessons that HE chooses to teach. This past weekend was one of those times when HE decided to teach me how to be more hospitable. I was invited to a city called HeFei which is in AnHui providence about 2-3 hours away from Wuhan. My friend Chirs invited me and our other friend Jack, so of course I was like “YES, I would love to come” When we got there of course they picked us up and we went immediately to dinner where there were 4 teenagers awaiting to talk to me: -) Talk about feeling like a super star, every place we went there were people who had come from a ways away to talk with me.  After dinner we went back to his house, which is always just an interesting experience. You never know what your going to walk into, air condition or not, toilets or outhouses, beds or rocks, etc. However his house was beautiful, same size as my parents with just as much love. I was remidned that his mother is a believer : -) She had paintings up all over and it was evident that she was living a life for HIM.
The next day we traveled to a small village where his good friend lives. This village was so “CHINA” it was crazy. What do I mean by that? Well what you think of China (if you don’t live here) is what it was like! I loved it! I’m pretty sure I was the first foreigner in that village. We stayed at a hotel and I am for sure that I was the first foreigner in that hotel and also at the place we ate breakfast.. His friends own this huge building where they will open a KTV and Mahjong bar!
I always learn a lot about hospitably, they didn’t ever let me pay for ONE thing, They always wanted to make sure that I had enough food, air condition, and comfort. They went out of their way to make sure I was having a good time. People tried their hardest to speak English OR they tried their hardest to understand my Chinese. They didn’t laugh (to much) when I made a mistake with Chinese.  They put my put my interest before their own. I mean seriously its always amazing to me! Anywho, I will let the pictures below show my love from this weekend. I do challenge us all to daily be willing to learn from whomever we are with, for me I learned how to be more hospitable. 

Chris' Parents, AKA HUA MAMA (Flower mom), & Baba!

Winter, Spring, and Fire... Three Girls waiting for me! 

Funny Chinglish on top of the elevator

Me and Chris at a Museum

Pretty sweet wall at the Museum, it was amazing!

Being a little smaller city there are more factories and wahtnot, hence the fog

Me Jumping with Chirs' little brother I can him DIDI

Everyone Jumping, you could say I got them started on this fad!

1st day in the park/museum, loved this area, soooo beautiful!

Fish, YUM!

Tang Jiaozi!

Corn Pizza, kind of! It was delicious

Funniest thing about the weekend, this kid saw me and then refused to look up. He would just roll his eyes.. hah Actually he started crying at one point, everyone thought it was hilarious

Entrance to the Park, second day

sweet !

Not really sure if your allowed to make fun of these things but, yeah we did!

Hilarious!

I always think these buildings are really cool, yeah its a toilet! haha : -)

beautiful island like thing!

the walk in the village back to the river where we went swimming!



(Sorry the pictures are out of order) this was from the park on the second day, absolutely beautiful!

diving in the river,,, iw as trying to teach them... They had to stop after their 4th belly flop, apparently I'm not a very good teacher.. hahahaha!