Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Hot Pot and Watering Cement

Have you eaten Hot Pot before? We joined Russian and Turkish classmates for lunch after class today at a fun Hot Pot restaurant. Baskets of vegetables, dumplings, tofu and noodles are continuously dumped into the table's centerpiece, a vat of burning-hot oily liquid. Partakers dig out pieces of food. If you ever eat Hot Pot, you gotta be careful not to drop your chopsticks in there; nobody wants to eat boiled wood sticks.


Titus the big seven-month-old sat in a high chair for the first time.


About Watering Cement...

If you remember, our original plan was for Drew to teach English to Chinese university students. Since we had to/got the great opportunity (sincerely!) to be students of Chinese instead, the focus of our intentional relationships shifted. Rather than investing in Chinese university students, we invest in classmates, teachers, and tutors. Our tutors are Chinese college students. A couple of our team's tutors have been reading the word and seeking, and we meet with them one-on-one for several hours each week. Very cool.

As for classmates...well, our classmates are foreigners, mostly Russians and Koreans. Though we are good friends, these classmates are not hungry like Chinese university students. That is, the soil isn't so great. 

Are we just watering cement? What farmer spends his time cultivating the concrete instead of the fertile soil? 

The fertile soil is most definitely Chinese university students. We've got friends who teach English at this university. They're so swamped with interested students that they plead "anytime you want to hang out with our students...we could really use you!"

just thinking about it,

Drew & Rachel 

1 comment:

  1. That's so interesting that you're finding such vastly different soil among different nationalities. I'm really happy for you guys and the time you're spending intentionally with those who are hungry. I know that J is with you. :)

    ReplyDelete

Hi friend! We like to hear back from you. -- Rachel & Drew.