A Smidge of Long Beach, A Smudge of China

Greetings from Long Beach and China! I have spent the evening strolling along the beach, reading, and dining on a scrumptous veggie burger. I have spent the last four days mingling among Executive Officers for Home Building Associations across the United States. I truly feel I have one of the coolest jobs available--I get to hang out with some of the funniest, down to earth people in the workforce. Construction people are always ones to know the essence of good times. Unfortunately, I do not have the cord to download the amazing photos I have taken. 

A definite highlight of this trip was a suprise room service delivery Tuesday night. Earlier Tuesday, upon trying to connect to the internet I encountered issues. I called the front desk inquiring as to how to connect. I had a few good laughs with Erin, the front desk worker, about my ineptness and dyfunction with electronics. A couple hours later I received a room service delivery (for the first time in my life!) of milk and cookies. I was on the way out the door to work out--now with a spring in my step and purpose to run those two miles. When I finished sweating, I swung by the front desk to inquire about the mysterious delivery. Erin informed me that she had received a string of calls that were beligerent in nature, and when I called and was nice, it made her night. So she wanted to do something special for me. I responded that she had made my day because I had NEVER received room service before. 

After dunking cookies in milk, my phone rang. Zach is alive and well. His time is China is coming to a close. Friday night the team will board an overnight train bound for Beijing, for a few days of sight seeing before the trek home. He is ready to return, though has loved his time in China. The one dismal spot has been the campus food. I quote Zach in saying "they cook the life out of everything!" He told me that one team mate had oreos for breakfast, oreos for lunch, and oreos and peanut butter for supper. I personally speculate that he put the situation into third person while telling his dietary habits. 

The two posted pictures are of him teaching in China. I chuckle at the first one because that is my family on the screen. I can only imagine the stories he told. I have a feeling that he left out the story of the cousin in the photo that posed for Playboy.

The rest of the Korean story...

As I sit and type this, the Chinese kids are watching the Veggie Tales Jonah movie, and they are giggling about the pirates who don’t do anything. Last you heard, I was still in Korea herding cats, well now you will get the rest of the story. The kids the first week of ESL camp were the spawn of Satan and didn’t listen to anything that we as their counselors had to say. English class was difficult but we moved the two trouble boys to different seats and the rest of the class could not see them misbehaving. Eventually, they realized that no one was paying any attention to them and they began to participate. Class became the highlight of the day for me. I had 20 students who wanted to get better at English, and they tried hard to move their homework grades from Good to Better and hopefully Best. I was no longer spending my entire day in Hell herding cats from wake-up until bedtime, now I was only battling the sithspawn at sleep time and Hey Hey lets go to breakfast time.

A couple of our boys decided that Friday would be a good day to break out of their prison and see the city. They told Daryl, the leader, that they left because I had called them stupid SOBs (not that I hadn’t thought it). The rest of their story has become our inside joke. They said they had been kidnapped by a man with a Pink Adidas shirt and another man with 2 broken legs and a cast on his arm. Now when kids misbehave, someone makes a comment about needing to get out our Pink Adidas shirts.

The weekend came and I was sick. I think that jetlag and exhaustion had gotten the best of me. I was bitter because I was in Korea without my wife, and I was having a horrible time, and to top it off I had a sinus infection. If the leaders had offered me a ticket home, I would have taken it. I have never wanted to quit anything in my life, and this would have been the first time. On Monday, I started to feel better, and one of my problem boys wrote that he wanted to be the best student in the class. I told him that was the best idea that I had heard, and that I knew he could achieve his goal. From them on, he worked hard, very hard.

After the weekend, one of my girls came back with this story…

The Happy Elephant

Once upon a time in Gray Country, King Great was alive. He was a really great king, but he was selfish. He always thought everything was his own. He always shouted, “It’s mine! If you touch mine, I will accuse you! Then you will go to prison!” So everybody didn’t like him.

However, one day at morning, King Great saw his body had turned blue. He was very surprised, and he called his doctor.

The doctor said, “It is a selfish disease, when you are not selfish, then you will return to gray. It’s the only curable way.”

So King Great stopped the selfish things. He began to give his money to the poor and his food too. He is not selfish anymore. Then guess what happened, the King Great returned to gray and he lives very kindly.

The End

She was the first to get a Best. The class clapped and many of them stepped their writing up a notch. I was so proud. The week kept getting better and better, and at the end, I was a little sad to see that the kids were going home. We had bonded over English lessons, Korean soccer, and Ping-pong. After the kids left, we had a dance party, and then Jeff and I watched Stargate for hours. We said our goodbyes on Sunday, exchanged emails and pictures, and then we departed for China on Monday at 6 AM. Half our team remained behind to finish their remaining 2 weeks at another camp, while 8 of us moved to a city near Shanghai.