November Update

Hello Dear Friends and Family.

I know that I have not been keeping you up to date. I apologize. Life seems to just run away from me. 

Our Shine Graduation was now over a month away. So you may be wondering "What have you been up to?"  Well let me share just a few things. I have been working on getting all the evaluations of Shine translated and accumulated to send back to Shine headquarters; I have been preparing the Shine School Program for review by the Government and have been partnering with the Youth Group leaders to plan and organize the annual Youth Conference. I have been working once a week as the Nurse at the Eden Workshop, was involved in a Masquerade Fund-raiser for the Youth Group, and finally but not least I have been preparing to teach on Luke 14:26-33 this coming Thursday and Friday at Youth Group. 

So, I hope that you can see that I have been very busy. However, I also feel very fulfilled. I am working with others to help others as well as encourage Spiritual growth. I am using my nursing skills both in the curriculum I am working on for the Shine School Program as well as once a week in the office with the girls. My Chinese is being stretched as I continue to have 4-6 hours of class a week, work as a nurse with the women who work at Eden, and as I work with my language helper to translate the Shine evaluations. My love of anything social is met by Youth Group, Youth Conference Planning, and going to Eden's office once a week. 

Many days I just sit on my couch working diligently on my computer and I have discovered that I am addicted to the internet. Earlier this week my internet was having major technical difficulties and so I had shut the wifi on my computer off. In the span of a half hour I think every two minutes I tried to  either look something up online or check my email and every time I was like oh yeah no internet. grrrr. But it never failed that I would do it again in another two minutes.  

My drama with the internet company was very frustrating because even after the issue was resolved, one of my Chinese friends was not even able to explain why there was an issue in the first place. He understood that there had been an issue before, but after a half hour on the phone with the company he still did not completely understand why I had to pay additional money. Here is what happened: I pay my internet bill once a year.  

From Oct 2009-Oct 2010 I had no problems. Then from Oct 2010-Oct 2011 there were virtually no problems. Except that in Sept 2011 my roommate moved in with me and it slowed our band width down.  So in Oct 2011 my roommate payed the bill for a year and asked for the service to be upgraded to the next fastest service plan. No problem. That is until Aug, when I got back from a Team Meeting in the States. I found that the people house sitting for me had had to pay extra at the phone company (at the time I had the receipt but had no idea what it was in regards to because it looked nothing like my internet receipt). 

Sept 2012 comes along and suddenly my internet is down.  I had no idea why, so I gathered up all my receipts and go to the internet company. At this point I was prepared to pay the whole next years bill since I was going to the internet company anyway.  So, I got to the company and they basically tell me that I have to pay 100 kuai (15USD) in order to have my next month of internet.  At this point I was confused but I don't care I just want my internet to work. So I tell them that I want to pay for the whole next year's bill as well as this strange additional 100 kuai.  

The man behind the counter was very patient but also very flustered at all my requests and he tells me that I cannot pay the whole years worth of bills yet. He says that I have to come back in a month and pay that. Through the whole event I finally figure out that I actually can pay the whole year's bill now but that it will cost 1600 kuai instead of 1300 kuai in Oct. So I begrudgingly agree to come back in a month. Because 45usd is a lot of money over here.

So Oct comes around but the first week is a National Holiday and I was pretty sure that the internet company would be closed during that time. Which in retrospect I am not sure that they were closed. And by the time I thought they would be open my internet was down again because my bill was due. I truck myself back to the company with all my receipts and the same guy is helping me and he tells me that I cannot just add money to my account. I have to go to the headquarters's office located somewhere else.

The grand humiliation is that in our struggle to communicate everything, he resorts to using the equivalent to Google Translate. Granted most of the vocabulary we were using were things like: broadband, cpu wattage, cable connection. But it didn't matter in my heart-I felt like a baby.  Finally it turns out that my because my account exceeded the year termination time I had to go to the headquarters to cancel that account and start a new account. But I could just reinstate my account with him for a slightly more expensive rate. My stress level were off the chart and I was afraid I was going to cry so I told him I didn't care about the expensiveness I just wanted my internet turned back on. This mentality greatly disturbed him. He really didn't want me to waste my money and I had to assure him and then reassure him that I didn't care about a measly 50 kuai more. 

He began to reinstate my account and to do so he needed my passport and luckily I just happened to have my passport on me. However, some of you may recall that I had to get a new passport in January of 2011. (if you don't check the story out here: Passport story) Because of this new passport and its new passport number my documents didn't match the account in the computer. Therefore, he was unable to process the reinstatement on my account. So in the end I did go to the headquarters and canceled my account and started a new one at a cheaper price.  But I was still very confused about why I had had to pay two extra 100 kuai bills-and that is still a mystery because even my Chinese friend was unable to get a straight-forward answer when he called them.  They did reassure him that this year I should not have that same problem. Sooooooo, we will see. 

But besides random crazy things like that happening making me feel like this:

 I have been getting lots done and tomorrow (Monday, November 26th, 2012-your time would be Sunday the 25th at 9pm) I, along with three Eden teammates, will be meeting with the Educational Head of our province.  He will be reviewing the Shine School Program that I have been working on and I am very nervous about the whole thing. If you could lift us up as we meet with him that would be greatly appreciated.