Day 27

Today is Sunday and I am finally in Beijing again for one so I was able to go to church today. I find it amazing how many Chinese come to worship God. The church has 6 services now, there is still hardly any standing room left by the time the service starts, and the building is bigger than our local churches. At the end of each service, they have all the first time people stand up and both times I have been there are about 60 new people. I asked Geoff if they usually come back. He said almost always. Then he continued on to day that when school starts again the services are going to be too full because most of the students are gone now but there are a lot of them that come during the school year. After church, we went to another market place. It was in your technology sector of Beijing. It is the “silicon valley” of China. There were all kinds of vendors selling every type of electronic possible. The prices were very similar to those in the states. When we left there, it was raining extremely hard. We took an underground walkway to the subway station then got off at a bus station that was covered. So we managed to stay dry until we got off at the front gate of the campus. From there we had about a half-mile walk. Even though the rain had lightened up a lot, all of the streets were flooded so you ended up getting wet anyway. The water was so deep in places that it was up to the middle of car bumpers. The rain was off and on all night. I spent the rest of the day with Lee who is a senior in animal science here. He is also Geoff’s research assistant. He is studying for the “TOFU” test (I am not sure on the spelling) but it is an English test that they are required to pass to graduate. They are required to answer verbal questions and be able to talk for 60 seconds about it. Lee asked Geoff some of the questions. Geoff easily answered but failed it because he answered too quickly. Because Lee is practicing for it, he and Geoff have an English only policy. This is nice because I am able to understand what is being said and Lee has very good English already so I really enjoyed spending time with him.