Faith and Geography

So after going to mass again this week at the South Cathedral, I thought I would finally blog about our interesting experience at last week's mass. Each mass we've made sure to sit at the front just cause you feel like a bigger part of it, mostly because that church seating is oddly arranged and has a ton of blind spots. Anywho, luckily we were sitting in the front last week because there happened to be a baptism and confirmation that day. The girl sitting in front of us, middle 20's maybe, was the new Catholic. It was very interesting to see how they did things. It was unusually slow because of the language barrier (everything was done in English, and I'm pretty sure the girl wasn't fluent by any means), the priest seemed to be hesitant about things in English. There also was no baptismal font, replaced instead by a plastic bowl on a table that was brought to the front. It was cool to see something like that in a foreign country.

After the long mass, Regan, a mizzou girl on the trip, and I decided to sit in the courtyard outside the church. It was here we met our special friend "Eric." And I'm only calling him Eric because we bestowed that English name on him since he didn't previously have one.

Within 2 minutes of us sitting down on a bench Eric popped in front of us to ask where we were from. Safe knowing that we were Americans, Eric proceeded for the next 30 minutes to display his vast knowledge of American geography. After mentioning St. Louis, he immediately came back with The Arch (and also claimed there to be an arch in Atlanta, I must have missed that one). Regan and I went back and forth naming States and he would fire back their respective capitals. Eric talked so much we could never get a word in. Like many Chinese I've run into, he wanted to practice or show off his English, and in particular show off his knowledge of American geography. On a couple occasions when he couldn't come up with the capital right away, he would walk away and blatantly consult his book of notes, only to come back and content he knew it all along. We had fun with him for a while and it was cool to see that he knew so much, but there came the time when we just had to say bye and head out. I had every reason to believe that Eric could have kept us there for a couple more hours if we were willing.

That story ties into another story from this Friday night when a couple of us went to English Corner. Located by the East gate of campus, English Corner is held every Friday night from 7pm till the last person leaves. Chinese of all ages gather to practice their English and keep on the lookout for any white person that comes by. I had wanted to attend the previous week, but missed out so I was glad to be able to make it for a couple hours this night. For the 2 hours I was there I had a consistent group of about 5 guys, ranging from 20-55, gathered around me wanting to talk about a wide range of things: including American politics, the Olympics, Chinese VISA issues and the reason why a lazy susan is called a lazy susan. One of the younger guys actually provided me an answer to this last question, when I wasn't able to give him one. Each of the guys spoke a different level of English, all of them trying to get a question in whenever possible. It was a ton of fun to talk with them and even asking them some questions myself. I got some interesting responses when we talked about the Chinese government and freedom of press and recent issues in that one region to the west. They seemed to speak very honestly about the issues which I was glad to see. Per Eric, I could have been kept there all night by my group, but I eventually had to call it a night. They all thanked me for coming and wished me to come back next week. The English Corner is one of the more special things about this place, people so eager to learn English and so excited and fired up when a native speaker comes to talk with them.