The warmth of Autumn

Week two of school down and it's going really well. The weather actually warmed up this week so Hai Li and I went to the park with another girl. It was a beautiful perfect day for the park. We played around and climbed on some rocks and we saw these nice statues and rock carvings. Then this old man let me fly this really cool kite, which when I told my dad he totally trumped by saying he flew a plane but whatever I'm in China... still cool. haha

I had some highs and lows this week. Teaching college is slightly different from preschool... who knew!? But in some ways familiar, I was becoming frustrated with the students speaking over top of each other while students were trying

 so hard to speak in English. So

I prayed for this on my walk to class yesterday. When I got to class it turns out the band w/ the 20 large drums, trumpets, and a gong were practicing right outside my classroom window, which are stuck open. I laughed really hard at this because it felt like God was like "don't you think you're focusing on the wrong things". haha So my frustrationsubsided and when the practiced stopped but the students still persisted to whisper loudly in class I just ignored it. I still find this instance rather humorous though. 

This past month I've been doing morning devotion time. Before this I was trying to do devotion in the evening but my schedule is so different in the evenings I never know when

I'm going to be home or how distracted I'm going to be. The mornings have proven to be the best time for this. It's a strong way to start my day too. Before anything just focusing on God, it's nice. Some mornings I wake up with frustrations or distractions and taking that small time to focus on what I should be focused on all day long is a great way to ease those misgivings. It strengthens me and I like that. However, one thing I am missing out on I feel is fellowship time. Sometimes I come upon passages and I want to talk about them, discover what others hear from it. Sometimes I feel I'll read a chapter and specific verses jump out at me and I have no one here to tell me what parts jump out at them. Religious fellowship is something that I am missing out on here but I'm not sure how to remedy that. Maybe instead of remedying that I should just focus more on the blessing of having this quiet time for myself and God and listen more to how he can strengthen me now and work on fellowship later. 

The school is having a big celebration tomorrow. The 50th anniversary of the school. They've decorated the entire campus and it's so pretty and full of energy! I'm excited about all the festivities tomorrow. However they are hindering me from a mountain run that was scheduled but it's ok, the mountain isn't going anywhere. and neither am I.

MOM GETS HERE IN A WEEK!!!! I can't wait to see her! I want to show her my city, and we're going to see Beijing together! I'm so excited. I hope she doesn't get bored here though haha. I've been counting down the days for over a month now! I'm so excited:-)

Ok thats all for now. I will post pictures of the celebration later on. 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ~Romans 8:28