Selling Matchbooks for Orphans

There's this little story by Hans Christian Anderson called "The Little Match Girl." In the story, this little girl needs to make a living, so she decides to sell matchbooks. However, the winter (and cold-hearted people who don't want to help) freezes her in the night.

One of my junior students Syen (he made up his English name) was inspired by this story and decided to sell matchbooks for 1 yuan a box (about 12 cents) in order to raise money for the orphanage that Syen visits with us every week. He recruited some of the foreign teachers and friends to stand on a little corner selling matchbooks for 2 and a half hours last night. Thinking it would be inside somewhere, I didn't dress appropriately for the weather conditions. :) Seth offered his guitar skills and the rest of us offered our faces and singing abilities as we sang Christmas carols on a little street corner in the dead of winter in northeast China. We think we helped Syen sell about 500-600 matchbooks! There are people in America who have tons of money and unwilling to give, but it's these students in China who don't have much at all and are willing to give what they can for the orphans. Some students bought ten boxes, not because they needed them, but because they wanted to help in the only way they knew how. I don't remember the last time I was so cold, but it helped me really empathize with people who have no home to go to this season. I appreciate Syen's heart and even though I am now fighting a cold I'm glad he invited us to do this with him.

Right now I am listening to the Christmas album of Steven Curtis Chapman called "All I Really Want for Christmas." Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife adopted three little girls from Asia (one of them from China) and the album promotes adoption (both foreign and from the States, like my dear friends the Guskes who are working on their third adoption with a little boy named Joshua). For little ones like the kids we see every week. The chorus of the main song says:

"All I really want for Christmas is someone to tuck me in

A shoulder to cry on if I lose, shoulders to ride on if I win

There's so much I could ask for, but there's just one thing I need

All I really want for Christmas is a family

All I really want for Christmas is someone who'll be here

To sing me "Happy Birthday" for the next 100 years

And it's okay if they're not perfect or even if they're a little broken

That's all right, 'cause so am I

All I really want for Christmas is someone to tuck me in

Tell me I'll never be alone, someone whose love will never end

Of all that I could ask for, well, there's just one thing I need

All I really want for Christmas is a family."

Ice Skating

I saw the funniest thing the other day, at least to me. I want to give you a picture of how cold it is in these northern parts. What does one do for fun when it's this cold outside? My school doesn't have a pond, not really. So, why not convert the soccer field into an ice skating rink?!? The other day men were spraying a large hose on the soccer field and simply waited a few hours for the water to freeze. Wahlah- now you have an ice skating rink! Granted, the ice is only about an inch thick, but students by the masses rent little ice skates (with particularly long blades) and away they go! It snowed yesterday again, so yesterday the same men were shoveling the snow off their rink. Students asked if I wanted to go, but I reminded them that the last time I went ice skating I ended up in surgery with a cast up to my shoulder. But, knowing me, I just might be on this little makeshift rink in a few days' time. :)