Well, life has been busy and so this is a month overdue! But, life has been full of excitement, so there's been much to tell. The biggest thing that has stuck out to me in the past week has been the international clashes that are occurring. So many times in America, we experience an awkwardness that comes along with interacting with different people from different cultures. This past week Dad has really shown me how getting to see and meet people from different cultures can be one of the most rewarding experiences in my everyday life. Here are a few of the highlights:
International Day: At ISW, we have one day a year called International Day. This is a day where each of the classes makes a presentation about a country that is represented at our school. The experience of seeing all of the other classes and countries were extremely interesting! My class drew South Korea, however, as the country to make a presentation on. 8 out of my 13 students are Korean, so I saw this as a little intimidating! I knew many of my class' parents would be looking closely at what we did. We ended up performing the national anthem of South Korea and played a folk song on the recorders. While I was worried that the parents wouldn't be very impressed, they loved it and I also learned a lot about Korea in the process!
Thursday Nights: This one needs a little background info. Every Thursday night, I play basketball with the Filipinos in our community in Wuxi. We have been playing since July and I absolutely love it! I've developed some incredible friendships and am really excited about the future relationships I will get to invest in with them. Well, this past Thursday night, we had a tri-culture clash. Some of the Chinese P.E. teachers in our area decided they wanted to play the Americans at basketball. Well, when they came to visit, they had two teams. The Filipinos still came to play, so we ended up having Americans vs. the Chinese on one court, and the Filipinos vs the Chinese on the other. It was interesting because, while we thought it would be easy to beat them, they came with a top notch team and beat us! They had trained and played together, and it showed in how they played us. The Filipinos played the second string team, and Jam (one of my Filipino buds) said they were beating them, but were also struggling to play them too. The night finished off well, but it was totally awesome to see three cultures relating to each other through the simple game of basketball.
Downtown Fellowship: Once a month, our school staff sends a group down to lead worship at the downtown fellowship. This month, I got the chance to go down and be on the team leading. First of all, it was extremely humbling. I felt honored to be able to lead Chinese nationals in worshipping Dad. It also was awesome getting to sing in Chinese! I was absolutely floored at the experience of a Chinese fellowship.
Through all of this, Dad is teaching me how much I can learn and how incredible it can be to interact with people from all different cultures. I hope this can be motivation to everyone who reads this to take advantage of the opportunities Dad gives you...
This is my story...
No comments:
Post a Comment