The Chinese Actor and Other Random News

One of our resolutions this year is to teach Joshua more about cultures and race: Not long ago we were in an Indian restaurant having dinner and two guys with full, dark beards walked in. I'm not exactly sure were they were from, but I'm pretty sure they weren't from India. Joshua took a look at them and then asked me why they had mustaches. Before I could respond he answered his own question: "They have mustaches cause God made them that way. We don't have mustaches because we're humans!"

Okay, so anyways, life in China: Apart from our beloved Liza leaving us It's been a fun few weeks for us here in Xi'an. For my birthday we went to Beijing as a family along with the Petersons and had a great time. We ate chimichangas and bacon cheeseburgers like we were coming off a forty day fast, and we brought
back a whole case of root beer. Such gluttons. It was great.

For Christmas we hung out with some friends here and skyped with a lot of the grandparents. Christmas is quite a different experience here, but we were glad to have friends here to celebrate with, and Skype made family feel not so far away.

One new development is that I (Chris) am officially an actor. (!) I've traveled to a few different cities, interviewed government officials, managers and CEOs and got a behind the scenes look at a Chinese pharmaceutical factory while wearing a suit that looked like I worked at the nuclear power plant with Homer Simpson. All that for a ten minute film. On top of that it was pretty much all done in Chinese so I had to act like I understood everything that was being said. It's been a very enjoyable process, surprisingly enough. Look for me on CCTV in about a month. Just kidding, it's only for internal use at the company, fortunately for me.

Other than that it's life as usual- language, language, language, friends, language, soccer and language. We are all still enjoying learning Chinese and feeling very motivated, even as we wrap up another semester.

Joshua is going to school three days a week and he absolutely loves it. His Chinese is progressing like crazy. Everywhere he goes he's singing Chinese songs about love. The taxi drivers especially love it!

Last thing- thanks to airline miles and a great wife, I head out next Sunday for Tokyo to meet up with a snowboard team from the Denver base. I'll be with them for a week and I'm really looking forward to it!

You can go to our website for a super embarrassing language story and some photos of our Beijing trip, including my three birthday desserts!

Much love from all of us here,

Chris, Sarah, Joshua and Zac R E

TFFCast Test Run Three

This is the third test run of our experimental TFF China Podcast, with a brief intro into why we're considering starting a podcast.

If this works like we're hoping, you can simply to subscribe to our podcast through iTunes. If you don't have iTunes you can download it here.



Hope this works!

Beijing Trip 09

Fun times in Beijing! (Posted by Sarah)

For more photos click here.

Im not that (kind of) excited...

Today I went to an office where they make informational videos. They needed someone who speaks American (they have a word in Chinese to distinguish American English from British English) to record a voice-over for a video. I wanted to impress them as they pay pretty well considering the ease of the work, so I dressed a little nicer and went out of my way to perfect the script I was to read. The first run through went alright, nothing special. They asked me to read a little faster and (I think) with more enthusiasm. As their English was pretty limited and so is my Chinese, I consulted the dictionary on my phone to find out the word for "passionate," to make sure that I understood. I found a word whose initial definition looked pretty accurate and showed it to my "boss" to verify. He made a weird face, shook his finger and said "no, no, no." That confused me because then I didn't know what they wanted from me, so I asked him again and he responded the same way, even a little disgusted this time. So I clicked through to the full explanation of the word and here is what I found:

-to get excited
-passionate (thats all I could see when I showed it to him initially)
-aroused to passion (!)
-to fall in love
-in heat (of animals) (!!!!)

No wonder he was disgusted- I had asked if he wanted me to read the script while "in heat" or at least aroused!

Lesson learned!

P.S. They did ask me back in spite of my...forwardness.

P.P.S. I should have known better. In Spanish, if you add an "o" to the word "excited" you have the same meaning as the Chinese word I found. The word you're looking for instead is "emocionado/a". I've messed that one up before too!
 

http://www.tffchina.com

Sunshine Camp 2009

“Those were the best two weeks of my life!”

I was happy to hear that, because I had talked him into coming with me and he had no idea what to expect. But when my little brother Blake and I were leaving the Sunshine Camp I could tell he had made some great friends and had had a wonderful experience. He spent all of his time with his Chinese friends, learning phrases in Mandarin and hanging out with them. He’s already planning his move back to China after he graduates from high school!

I had a great time also, making new friends and reconnecting with old ones. On top of that I had the privilege of speaking at the camp. The first of my talks was about stereotypes and cross-cultural friendships. I brought 150 fortune cookies to show them about stereotypes, and you should have seen the American student’s faces when I pointed out that only five Chinese kids out of over 50 had ever eaten fortune cookies, most of them outside of China! After that I was part of a panel of speakers and we answered questions regarding purpose, relationships, career choices, etc. My final talk was on focusing our energy, not just our time, on the things that matter most in life (which was ironic considering how sick and exhausted I was the morning I gave the talk, thanks to some stomach problems). But the highlight of the time for me was hanging out with Jess and Lisa from our Xi’an crew- it had been five months since I had seen them, which was hard because they are like family to us.

There are some other potential developments that came out of the camp but it will be awhile before we know if anything will materialize. We’ll keep you posted as to how things progress.

We had an offer on our house, but it was withdrawn by the buyer after the inspection for some vague reason. We appreciate your prayers for wisdom and God’s help in the situation.

We leave next Tuesday (the 18th) for China! Joshua asks us pretty much every day when we are going back to China. Soon we can tell him "today!"

With Love,

The Failla Family

What An Entrance!

People look at me funny when they ask to see a picture of the room where Zachary was born and I show them a photo of a bathroom.

At 4:00 AM on May 29th, Sarah started having contractions. At 4:30 she called her doctor to find out if she should head to the hospital or not. At 4:45 she woke me up to tell me that she was waiting to hear back from the doctor and that we might need to head to the hospital soon. So I got up and started getting ready, shaving, etc., while Sarah got her final things together. Around 5:15 we got in the car and began the 30 minute drive to the hospital, Sarah’s pain increasing more and more as we went. About 5:40 we arrived at the hospital, and I asked if we should park or if I should drop her off. “Drop me off!” she said with more urgency than I was anticipating. So I dropped her off and parked as quickly as possible. When I entered, to my relief I saw her being wheeled in a wheelchair. We finally made it to our room and Sarah used the restroom and then changed her clothes. Sarah answered the nurse’s three questions and added “I’d also like to have an epidural.” “No problem,” the nurse replied. The nurse left the room, leaving me and Sarah alone. Sarah used the restroom again and suddenly she yelled to me, with a panic I have never heard come out of her, “Husband, get someone, QUICK!!!!” Picking up that something might be wrong (and being dreadfully hijacked by my amygdala) I responded, “But Baby, I don’t want to leave you alone!” “GET SOMEONE NOWWWW!!!” she yelled. So I did. The nurses read the panic on my face and were right behind me rushing back into the restroom. One of them must have already had rubber gloves on, or she had superhuman glove-putting-on speed. A nurse and I helped Sarah up off of the toilet, attempting to get her to the bed. One problem: there was already a baby’s head showing! It was followed a second later by a baby’s whole head, and finally the whole body, dangling over the toilet in the hands of the nurse! That was 5:48 AM, less than ten minutes after we arrived at the hospital.

What an entrance you made, Zachary Drake, and what a mama you have to give birth like that!

Here is a video of me interviewing Joshua about his new baby brother:



You can see photos of Zack's first day here.

You Spelled "wHoliness" Wrong!

The last two weeks I've been teaching in the Phase 2 Leadership School in Denver, and I had such a good time! The first week was called "wHoliness," a combination of wholeness and holiness. The main idea was how to connect our deepest values with our daily life and how we focus our energy. We talked about how to channel our heart (spiritual), mind (mental), soul (emotional and relational), and strength (physical) into the things that really matter.

The following week we talked about Public Speaking, a topic that everyone loves ;). Instead of spending time discussing techniques and getting technical, we honed in on this idea:

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." (D. H. Lawrence)

The students gave two messages- once at the beginning and once at the end of the week. They did an excellent job, and made me feel like a great teacher! Next week I'm teaching in a different school about "the Kingdom and Justice."