Dancing and Swimming in the Park

Following a spontaneous dinner with a close Chinese friend (Barbara) the other night, we decided to go to the local park to join in the dancing. One of the most beautiful things about China is their sense of community, and every night in the park groups of people, mostly women, will join together and dance together. It's kind of like the Chinese version of line dancing, except it's traditional Chinese music and not country music, and the steps are completely different. Okay, it's not like line dancing at all :) :) You just pick a spot and desperately try to follow along. I'm not much of a dancer, but nobody cares. To me the steps seem complicated until you get used to the pattern and the traditional dancing continues. I worked up quite a sweat to what looks on the outside like such a simple thing. And that was only after one dance! These ladies will dress up in their very best dresses and go away at it. Young and old together. It is what gives them enjoyment from an otherwise tedious day. It was an absolute delight!

A few days later this same friend invited me to go swimming with her and some others at the local park. The average Chinese person doesn't know how to swim, so they find it surprising that I learned when I was a four-year old in Indonesia (I remember those days as clear as anything). However, more and more people are learning, so these students asked me to teach them on this particular afternoon. Teaching my Chinese friends how to swim was an awesome time! After giving them a pep talk about "how you cannot be afraid of the water, the water is our friend, and that if you go under you'll still be okay"...they began to enjoy the experience. I was trying to teach them to swim backwards (I'm not a swimmer, I don't know the technical words for these things) but it was a struggle for them because they were fighting the water, afraid of going under. But, once they relaxed, they did quite well. Swimming seems like such an easy thing, don't you think? Just a little kicking and moving your arms, right? Then I began to teach it and realized to an adult who has been told you can get STDs from a swimming pool (yeah, that's what I said) and have received hyped up stories of drowning all their lives and are afraid of the water, not such an easy task. What happened to the childlike faith of a four year old? (and how applicable is that in our own LIFE walk? Point to ponder). Needless to say, it was one of the most enjoyable times for me in my whole China experience! By the end of the time, I had been out of the water for awhile, but they didn't want to leave. I thought they were going to turn into fish. Then we played in the kiddie pool and pretended to be kids again :)

The sun was so hot that I got a slight sunburn (that for me always turns into a tan), which I was very proud of and showing off to everybody. But, for the Chinese, the idea is that the whiter you are the better, so when I told them that people in America spend a long time (and sometimes a lot of money) trying to be darker they thought this very strange indeed! :)