This Saturday, I lived. I woke and read with my Father, which was immaculate in that I had a sense of his presense as I studied. and thought upon the word "righteousness." To be honest, the morning time was somewhat "foggy," but He is not a "checklist" either, and He walked with me into watching the redskins vs. Rams football game from six days ago, which Jon and I watched with Bethany. I sipped coffee from my Hale's coffee mug until around 11:30 when I left to go to a baseball game. I rode on my a and was overwhelmed by the sense of great wonder that it afforded me as I beheld the great blessing of living in such a way: riding down the abandoned back roads of Baoding city toward Hebei University, swerving between the bike lane and main road, both of which were virtually empty on this morning save for the farm vehicles stacked mountainously, layer after layer of corn freshly shopped from the fields... the harvest time has COME!

I avoided several husks strewn throughout the road and eventually made my way into the heart of the city, where the green-blue taxis mixed ominously with dirty trucks emitting thick exhaust into the air. I went onto the bike path and made my way ahead another kilometer and stopped at a red light, watching the traffic run around me like a clogged drain: sometimes, it's frustrating to experience Baoding traffic because it just doesn't really run in any patterned way. Sure, there are markings on the road that suggest that "maybe you should stay sometimes near this part of the road," but even those warnings aren't heeded in the heat of the driving sequence. For most drivers, it's not beyond the typical motion to to pass on the left from the far-left lane, leaving the passing car desperately exploring the oncoming traffic or pull out into traffic even with another car coming their way. This is exactly what I caught the brunt of this morning when I realized that the car in front of me in the bike lane had pulled out into traffic without warning, only to be stuck there with no where to go but backwards. Unfortunately, I was behind him. he did not agree with me that this was unfortunate, in that his next decision was to reverse back into the bike lane... where I was waiting... now getting knocked down by his car...now honking my horn... now hitting the back of his car so that he finally realizes I'm present. He got out and raised his hand, bowing at me over and over apologetically. 

"Dui Bu Qi! Dui Bu Qi!" he said, stating his sorrow at not recognizing my presense. 

"Mei Shi," I told him, indicating my forgiveness. All in a day's travel around Baoding, I suppose. 

Perhaps my greatest struggle with this morning was not the drivers around me, but in fact the lack of struggle that I had while I was playing baseball. I love being there with these students, building these relationships and arrived at Da Bai Lo, the dormitory on Hebei Universtiy where foreign students live, and threw some with Qi Hoon, a 26 year-old Korean student. 

"Ni shi wo de di di," he said to me as we left for the game, showing me that he is, in fact, older than me, which makes him my "older brother". Qihoon is one of several Korean members of our team, the Hebei University Tigers; their membership which comprises about half of the players. In addition, we have two Japanese, an Indonesian students named Felix, and one lone American floating in from the West (me). It's such an amazing gift to have been able to play baseball with these students and teachers who assemble in such a regimented way. Our games are less regimented than I'm used to playing in the states (our warm-up, for instance, finds players standing around in cigarette circles more than playing Pepper), but it is truly a great way to share life with people. On this weekend, we won our game, although to claim a lavish victory would be deceiving, as our opponents were somewhat lacking in stature: because there are so few Chinese interested in meeting to play baseball, we sometimes have to face high school teams from around the area, as on this day. 

During the game, I talked with our starting pitcher and first baseman, who came up to me after he'd been taken out of the game. 

"Wo shi shui sheng," he described to me, explaining that he was a 32- year old doctoral student from Hebei University. His studies, he said, were in the area of Ancient Chinese history, which is the perfect subject at Hebei University because of their extensive resources in the Shang Dynasty Resource Center. I love hearing about how diverse the interests of foreign students are here, as I often tend to lump all of "the Koreans", "the Japanese", "the Americans", "the Chinese"... into categories that are caustic to relating on an individual level with people as human beings. As diverse and different as these cultures are sometimes, getting back to the heart of knowing people no matter their cultural background and national affiliation is the greatest challenge I face on a day-to-day level in Baoding. I'm not like all American people; people I meet are not like every other person I've met from the country they are from.