Fall Camp

About two weeks ago, I had the privilege of going on a camping trip with 31 high school students. We roughed it out on the beach with our tents for a night and then hiked a mountain for five hours the next day. Some team-building games were thrown in there, too, along with eating a dinner comprised of any food we could scrounge up, and then breakfast and lunch the following day at a local restaurant. 

The timing of this trip probably wasn't the best—we went on the trip the day after we had a huge audit of our high school—so we teachers were a bit unorganized and tired, yet the students had a good time anyway. Spending time with the students outside of the classroom always serves as a good reminder why I enjoy being a teacher. Those kids need a lot of love! 

Below are some pictures from the trip. Since I don't believe in lugging cameras around, these were taken with my cellphone... so sorry if some of them aren't clear! I didn't include that many pictures of the students for safety reasons, but there are some pretty neat pictures of the beach and the mountains. China really is beautiful!

City kids setting up their tents.

Here was my tent. Never mind the fact that I had to move the tent in the middle of the
night because I staked it too close to the ocean when the tide came in.

Thankfully it didn't rain, even though it looked like it would.

I know this picture isn't the best quality, but it
shows the beautiful full moon that we had.
No wonder the kids were crazy.

Instant noodles cooked over coals. The students were given a limited amount of money
and had to feed their group members (about 10 in total). This group chose noodles.
My group chose to pay a local store to scramble some eggs for us. Pretty smart!

And this was taken at 5:30 in the morning.

The "sunrise" at 5:30.

A fishing boat heading out for the day.

The rest of these pictures are from the 5 hour hike that we had.
It was a pretty challenging hike! Thankfully we only had one lightly-sprained ankle.

And yes, we finished our hike at the top of the rock that has nothing underneath it. 

Some pretty foliage down below. I wasn't willing to get any closer to
the edge, though, since the drop off was steep.

The Busyness of Life

As you may or may not have noticed, it's been a while since we've updated this blog. The intentions were there, but the time was not. In subsequent posts, I'll update you on all that has happened over the past month, but for now, we're going to have a little Chinese lesson.

This is the Chinese character for busy (忙, máng). There are two parts to this character, and they're very significant. On the left stands the radical—radical is just a fancy word that usually means "part of a character that gives meaning"— for heart (心, xīn). Opposite that is the character 亡 (wáng), which means, "to die, to lose, to be gone, or to flee."

While some people state that the right side just gives it a sound and not a definition, I think that the two parts of this character should be taken at face value. After all, isn't it true? When we are busy, our heart is gone, dead, lost.

These past couple of weeks, we have been really busy with lots of people coming to observe our classes and audit our school, along with having to prepare materials for students, such as transcripts and midterms. I noticed a few days back that my heart was not where it should be, that I wasn't living how I should. All I could think about was relaxing and letting my mind go numb so that I could forget all the stress. My heart left, fled, and here I was, living like a robot.

Ironically enough, there is another Chinese character with both the character for heart (心, xīn) and the character for death (亡, wáng): to forget, 忘, wàng. These past few weeks, I had forgotten my priorities... I had lost my heart for doing the Father's will, for showing His love. It's probably fair to say that when we're busy, we forget what is most important.

Now that I have realized my heart was numb, I know that I need to return to the giver of life, the giver of hope, and the rock that I should build my life upon. "For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge is in God." (Ps. 62:5-7)

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

In case you were unaware, this past Thursday was the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节/zhōngqiūjié） here in China. To celebrate, almost everybody takes Thursday off of work to spend time with family and eat mooncakes (月饼/yuèbǐng), along with a lot of other food. 

As with any holiday in China, if you get a day off, you generally have to make it up somehow. This year we got Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off, and so we have to work Sunday through Friday this week, get a day off next Saturday, then work Sunday and Monday. Why? Because we also get October first through the seventh off to celebrate the start of communism in China. While the schedule may get kind of hairy from time to time, we enjoy the different holidays that China has.

On Wednesday night, we celebrated by going over to a fellow foreign teacher's home. We stayed up late talking with him and his wife, playing games with his four children, and sampling eight different types of mooncakes. We tried egg, beef, coconut & milk, pineapple, purple potato, red bean, corn, and concubine mooncakes. Yes, you read that right, concubine mooncakes. We think it has something to do with old legends, but your guess is as good as ours. As Shakespeare once penned, "What's in a name? That which we call a [concubine mooncake] By any other name would [taste much better]."   I thought it tasted like a strange tomato soup, but it probably would have tasted much better if they would have labeled it "Minestrone" or something of the sort.

For the actual holiday, we went with my former Chinese teacher to hike a mountain here in the middle of our city. She has no family nearby, so she took us on a short trek. It was a clear, beautiful day, with very few clouds. And of course, the weather in our city is a little behind on the times- it's still getting up to the 80s during the day- so we were a bit roasty-toasty on our hike. Regardless, we had a great time and it was the perfect day for taking pictures.

The next day, I went with a friend to visit her family in a village two hours outside of our city. Leaving the city of 8 million and heading to the Indiana-like countryside was quite the pleasant change-up. The hospitality in the countryside is also quite different from the city: foreigners are more and more common here in the city, but we are a rarity in the outskirts. So I was welcomed into the house and was given tea and beer to drink, along with some pre-meal snacks... grapes, mooncakes, and fried chicken (what a good combination). Mind you, everyone else was off preparing the food, and I was sitting by myself on the couch. Finally I was allowed to go pick cucumbers from the garden, and I sneaked some peaks at what they were cooking for lunch. 

To honor their guests, the hosts tend to prepare a lot of meat. We had huge helpings of steamed crab,  boiled fish, fried chicken, roasted chicken, and who-knows-how-it-was-prepared pig intestine. Naturally when we all started eating, the plate that was closest to me was the pig intestine, and that was the first thing I picked up with my chopsticks. As I was putting it in my mouth, my friend's husband asked if I knew what it was. I knew it was not anything I would normally eat, so when he told me it was the large intestine of a pig, I wasn't all that shocked. The taste wasn't half-bad, but when I went to swallow it, it was a lot longer/stringier than I was expecting and I started to gag because half of it was down my throat while I was still chewing on the other half. I washed it down with my tiny cups of tea and beer, and thankfully I didn't make a fool of myself. The rest of the meal was great (uneventful, really), and we finished off our time together by looking at pictures. I even got the honor of lying on a traditional northern Chinese bed (炕，kàng) that they heat underneath with a stove, even though it was 80-something degrees out. Now if only we could get one of those in our apartments this winter...

This is a Kang, but the one I lied on was much more modern than this.

Today was the last day of our Mid-Autumn Festival break, and so we enjoyed it by having good conversations with friends over Skype and at a small group. We also prepared for the next six days of work. Though this was a busy break, it was an excellent one; we are so glad that we took the opportunities we did to get to know people better and to explore a little bit of our city.

 

And for inquiring minds...

We figure we should post pictures of our apartment so that you get a feel for what our everyday life is like. This is by no means a standard Chinese apartment; this is the apartment our school provides for us in the foreign (think "anyone who is not Chinese") teacher dorm. It's quite a nice set up for just the two of us!

Our living room. All of the furniture came with the apartment, except for our rockin' purple couch. Notice our AC/Heating unit up on the wall? Three of those cool/heat our entire apartment.

This is our bedroom, with quite the menagerie of furniture. We're hoping to paint it this coming October holiday (yes, we get seven days off to celebrate the start of communism in China). Any votes on what colors we should paint it?

This is our spare bathroom. Our "master bath" is exactly like this one, except we have towels hanging all over the place, trying to prevent mold.

This is our kitchen, though this picture makes it seem a lot bigger than it actually is. We pretty much only have room to wash dishes and cook on the gas stove. Having two people in there is pushing it... three is definitely a crowd.

And this is our dining room, with our lovely oven and microwave that we just recently got. We promise that those two bottles on the counter are just white vinegar, though they look like something else. 

So that's our apartment! You should come visit sometime, since it's much better in person.    

Marching right along...

School started this past week, and though it has been a bit crazy, we are still convinced that this is all a dream. It's so good to be back with the students and with our old coworkers. Granted, we're quite stressed with all of the responsibilities that a new school year brings, but we are excited.  We know that we're not always going to feel like this, so we want to cherish these moments. 

I (Marta) get to teach 7 twelfth graders whom I taught when they were in tenth grade. It is neat to see how much they've matured. My relationship with these students seems to have picked up right where we left off, which is helpful for when we start tackling biology. I also teach 8 eleventh graders three different subjects: literature, integrated science, and SAT math (in the spring, I will get to teach them another subject to prepare them for the Test Of English as a Foreign Language). And to round out the schedule, I teach 18 tenth graders just a basic English course. I have enjoyed getting to know these new students, though it's a bit challenging to gauge where each one is at... and to temper my word choice.

Daniel has the opportunity to teach English to 56 fifth graders, the same students he taught two years ago. He also gets to teach them PE, along with 61 sixth graders. His birthday just so happened to be the first day of school, and I'm pretty sure the best gift he got that day was to see those 56 smiling faces as they reunited for the first time in over a year.  

There is no other profession quite like teaching. While it may be very stress-inducing, I would argue that it is one of the most rewarding jobs out there. (Now hopefully we just remember that in the times we feel burned out!)

A Reprieve

When we arrived in China three weeks ago, stifling heat surrounded us and the humidity was out of control. It reached up to 99°F during the day (though it would feel like 105°-115°, depending on the humidity) and dropped to 80° at night—not much relief.  They sold out of air conditioners in our city, since this was the hottest summer on record for the past 50 years! To top it all off, smog blanketed the entire city, so much so that we couldn't even see the mountains that are less than a mile away. 

[Good thing we're practicing gratefulness in all situations. We're so very thankful that our sweat glands are working properly, along with our olfactory systems!]

Believe it or not, there are supposed to be mountains in the backdrop.

This past week has been so beautiful, such a drastic change from the first two weeks. It's been in the 80s during the day, without too much humidity, and then low 70s at night.  And it's been clear! I had forgotten how beautiful the mountains are.

And this is just the view from our bus stop!

So yes, we've had a break from the heat, and we've had a break this weekend to relax before we start teacher days this next week. We had new teacher orientation last week, which was very helpful; we learned more about the school, Chinese culture, and our new coworkers. Now we just have five work days left before the madness begins September 2.

Changes

Since coming back, we've noticed a lot of change here in the city. They're fixing the road so that traffic will flow smoother (meanwhile, making it all the more congested) and so that we have more frogger territory. The city is also in the midst of constructing a subway system, though that's not going to be done for quite some time. Downtown, they revamped the Starbucks and made a sweet underground mall with an excellent Thai restaurant nearby.

This was the traffic jam we ran into today. After not moving for 20 minutes,
 we decided to get off the bus and just walk home.

They also repainted and re-roofed our school, preparing it for the wear and tear of a new school year. And they've changed more than just the appearance of our school; there have been multiple shifts in staffing, too. Some teachers have left, and new teachers have been hired. Many of the administrative positions are different now, with people being shuffled around and given new titles with new secretaries. This is probably why we're participating in new teacher orientation this week, even though we really aren't new to this school. With all the policies and guidelines that went into effect after we left, it will be somewhat like we're teaching at a new school.

This is our school with scaffolding all over the place.

Though I suppose all of this could be slightly frustrating, we are excited that things are different. If we came back and everything was the same, we would be more likely to fall into our old pattern of living with the same ruts. Now we have the opportunity to form new friendships, new habits, and new understandings of the culture. This is good! We just hope that other people realize that we're not the same as we were before, either. God has done a lot of work in our lives over the past year, and although we may look the same on the outside, our hearts have changed for the better.

We've Arrived!

Thank you Fort Wayne Airport!

Thanks for all of your prayers! We have arrived safely as of 11PM on Monday night (that would be 11AM on Monday morning, EST). All of our luggage arrived safely and intact. Actually, more safely and more intact than we had ever expected...

新疆面！

On Tuesday morning (from here on out, I will be talking in Chinese time), we had to head out early for a health check. Thankfully we had all our paperwork from our American health check, so we only had to get our blood drawn. (That means that we didn't have any traumatic experiences peeing in a cup like the first year....) Then we went out to our favorite noodle place at 10:30 in the morning to eat brunch, since we weren't allowed to eat before the health check. Though I assure you, this meal was worth the wait!

Hot Pot

The past few days have been filled with waking up early (gotta love those 3AM mornings), unpacking, situating ourselves in our new apartment, and visiting old friends.  And let's not forget eating good food and baking bread.

We have heard a lot of 欢迎你回来/huān yíng nǐ huí lái / welcome backs, and people have told us they are happy we have returned to China. Though it was hard to bid farewell to our family and friends back home, we are so glad to be back with our family and friends here. We trust that this is not just the jittery excitement of a honeymoon stage, but rather a joy that springs from following the Father's will. 

The Beginning is in Sight

The joys of paperwork have come to an end, and we finally booked our plane tickets! The beginning of our time in China is in sight. Granted, there will be more paperwork once we arrive there, but it never seems as daunting when there are nationals helping us out with it.

Since I have neglected to blog for the past two weeks, I am going to update you on what our schedule has looked like. I tend to be a bit verbose, so instead of blabbing it all in dissertation-style, here is a calendar with a general outline of our days, starting July 7th and going through August 6th. Hopefully this will be a bit easier on the eyes. (No guarantees on formatting in the email. Here's our blog, just in case.)

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
7 Left for PA! Went to Chuck E. Cheese's!	8 Hung out with the famjam in PA.	9 Hung out with the famjam in PA.	10 On our way back to Ohio, found out there was major flooding; we were delayed.	11 Finished our trip to Ohio, then drove all the way back to Indiana.	12 Saw a friend, rested, and packed.	13 Went to the Peru Circus.
14 Sabbathed	15 Went to the local police office, only to find out we needed state-level clearance. Rushed to Marion to get fingerprints.	16 Called the Indiana State Police, and became besties with one of the secretaries. Went to Rookie Camp!	17 Rocked it at Rookie Camp!	18 Rocked it at Rookie Camp!	19 Got sunburned at Rookie Camp!	20 Tried to recover from Rookie Camp.
21 Sabbathed	22 Drove down to Indy to get background checks from Indiana State Police, and got them sealed by the Secretary of State. Everything went smoothly, thanks to our new best friend at ISP.	23 Finally got our letters of invitation from the Chinese government! Drove to Warsaw to pick up our letters and to split up our trip to Chicago.	24 Left at 6:30 AM to get to Chicago by 8:00. Handed over our letters & applications, only to  find out they don't do same-day service anymore. Spent the night in Chicago.	25 Left the hotel at 7:00 AM, and got our visas by 9:15. Headed back to Indiana. Our boss told us to expect to be in China  by mid-August at the earliest.	26 Got an email from our boss stating that the secretary at the school needs us to be in China before August 7th to handle paperwork. Booked our tickets.	27 Family hangout with the Scotts.
28 Family hangout with the Scotts.	29 Pack! Say goodbye to some friends in Marion.	30 Pack! Have our final small group get-together.	31 Hand in the keys to our apartments & head to Ohio.	1 See family in Ohio.	2 See family in Ohio.	3 Head back to Indiana & get ready for departure.
4 Depart at 6AM!	5 Arrive in China at 10:30 PM.	6 Start recovering from jet-lag. Start the paperwork process again.

As you can tell, we're taking off much sooner than we ever expected, but we're excited (and slightly overwhelmed). Thank you for all of the prayers and support.

And you're right, we will never escape from paperwork. Sing it with me: This is the paperwork that never ends. Yes, it goes on and on, my friends! Some people started filling it out, not knowing what it was, and they continue filling it out forever just because... Too bad it doesn't sound as great as the original, but it's a close second.

I Will Follow

Over the course of the next year, we will miss out on some life-altering events that will happen here in the States: babies will be born, friends will get married, and a few souls will meet their Maker. I am sad to think that we will be absent during such momentous occasions, yet Daniel and I believe that we need to be in China, and we believe that God's timing is perfect.

As I pondered this the other day, "I Will Follow" by Chris Tomlin was playing in the background. The lyrics serve as a good reminder that we have chosen to follow Him, no matter the cost. Below is a compilation I made in 2011 of pictures from our first year, put to that song. Who knew that the song I chose then would still challenge and encourage me even today.

(For those of you who receive this as an email, you will have to come to the website to view the video.)

Fireworks & Freedom

Fourth of July means fireworks & freedom for those of us who happen to be from the United States.

Though I know the holiday is over now, I've heard fireworks the past few nights, which just makes me think of China. It seems as if there is at least one holiday a month in China that calls for a celebration filled with fireworks and firecrackers. Fourth of July pyrotechnics pale in comparison to Chinese New Year's; I suppose that's only natural, considering China invented the smoking fires (烟火, yānhuǒ, is the term for fireworks, and it literally means "smoke fire").

At recent family gatherings, we've had numerous conversations about freedom in China. Most people bring up religious persecution, especially the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, we can never give a straight, one-size-fits-all answer. What proves true in our province may be completely different in another. Joann Pittman, an American who has lived in China since the 1980s, confirms this in a talk titled "Misconceptions about the Chinese Church." (If you follow the link, you can listen to/download the audio. It's around 50 minutes long, but well worth the time!) She argues that persecution is not the biggest problem facing Chinese Christians, unlike what most Westerners think.  While the government still has strict regulations, they are a bit lax about enforcing them, producing a freedom of sorts.

Unlike fireworks, Christianity does not originate from China. However, Chinese history is not void of Christianity. The proof is in the way they write some of their characters, which date back to over 4,500 years ago. In some ways, China had fireworks & freedom long before the United States was even a twinkle in our forefathers' eyes.

Our First Chinese New Year

The Joys of Paperwork

Remember all those steps we listed in our Hurry Up and Wait post? The six steps that need to happen so we can get to China?

We're still on the first one... well actually, we regressed.

Last Wednesday, we got an email from our school saying that as they were handing over our paperwork to the government, they were informed that Daniel and I need to get physicals before the government will accept our résumés. Not only that, but the physicals need to be done by a doctor/hospital that has been approved by the Chinese consulate in Chicago. Our boss emailed the Chinese consulate for names of the acceptable doctors/hospitals in Indiana as soon as she found out, but Daniel and I figured that they wouldn't respond for a while. We tried calling their office, but we couldn't get through to anybody. So we called another branch of the consulate, and talked to a receptionist who gave us his very unofficial, but still welcomed conjecture: try a big-name hospital.

Without further ado, Daniel and I took off to the hospital here in town. They were willing to give us a physical that very day; we were afraid that we would have to set up an appointment for a later date since we had to get a chest X-ray, an EKG, and blood work done, but they were happy to help us. The people at the hospital were so kind and willing to work with us, including the nurse whom we had to beg to notarize the form.

A little background information: We thought we had to have the form notarized because we had to send it off to get an apostille from the Indiana secretary of state. We had to get an apostille because we had to send it off to the consulate in Chicago to get a "great seal," which approves it for use in China. Without those, the government cannot accept the physical... or so we thought.

When we got the paperwork back from the hospital the next day, we had it notarized, then scanned everything into our computer and sent the digital copies to our school just on the off chance that the local government would accept the paperwork without the great seal from the consulate. We went ahead and sent the hard copies to the Indiana secretary of state to get the apostille. Of course we paid the big bucks for express mail, because we were worried about the timing of everything. We were counting on the secretary of state taking a week to get the apostille back to us, and then about two weeks at the consulate. Then we would have had to send everything to China so that we could finally get our physicals and résumés approved. Then who knows how long it would be before we got our Letters of Invitation (LOIs). There was a very real possibility that we wouldn't be able to arrive in China until after the school year started.

But the good news is that God answers prayers. On Friday, two days after we first found out about all this mess, we got an email from the school again saying that the local government accepted our un-consulate-approved physicals! So now they are going through all of our paperwork, step one of the process.



It looks like we're all set to get our LOIs, but we were informed this morning that we will need a background check before arriving in China. When our school first took the paperwork to the local government, they told us there was no need for a background check. I guess things have changed within the past four or five days, and now we do need them. We already have extended criminal background checks for the school we worked for here in Indiana, and we sent a copy of those to the school. Our hope is that the local government will accept those without the great seal from the consulate; if they need the great seal, then we will need to get fingerprinted again so that the Indiana state police can notarize it, so that we can get the apostille, so that we can get the great seal... so on and so forth.

  

Some Insight into Chinese Culture

Rather than writing numerous posts, I've decided to include some videos made by Off the Great Wall to help you get a better understanding of Chinese culture. After all, if pictures are worth a thousand words, then videos are at least worth a million, right? 

(If you have subscribed to receive our updates via email, you may have to come to our website to view the embedded clips.)

The video below is about paying the bill when you go to a restaurant with your Chinese friends. Daniel and I laughed so hard while watching this, simply because some of these tactics have been used against us! 

And yes, that last scene happens at every restaurant we go to. Just kidding, but we really did take some pointers on how to best use stuffed animals while fighting over the bill. 

Ever wonder what you should give to a Chinese friend? Off the Great Wall explains the gifts that you should never give to a Chinese person. Thankfully they do include gifts that are readily accepted, though I fear we may be in trouble when it comes to affording all those. 

This last one isn't so much about culture as it is about the awesomeness of chopsticks. They are more useful than what they're given credit for... especially giant chopsticks.

Well, hope you've enjoyed learning a bit more about the culture that we love! Not everything that happens in China results in Kung Fu (功夫gōngfu), but almost.

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret

While counting down the weeks until our departure, we have been spending what free time we have this summer on studying Chinese and reading more about Chinese history. Sure we have been doing other things, such as helping friends out, visiting family, and hiding under the stairs of our apartment on our three-year anniversary— turns out it was just a dinky little tornado that may or may not have actually touched down south of here— but we want to prepare as much as possible for our transition back to the Middle Kingdom.  We have also resolved to update the blog once a week. Because not much else has developed for the Hurry Up & Wait Game, we plan to inundate you with recommendations for various books, articles, audiobooks, songs, and lectures that we love. While most of them will have to do with China, we make no guarantees!

For our first installment of "Daniel and Marta's Highly Sought-After List of Excellent Reads and Listens" ... no, that doesn't sound quite right, but I like it anyway... we will be talking about Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by Dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor. We have both read it and really appreciate it, not because it's a fantastic piece of literature, but because it talks about a truly inspiring man. Hudson Taylor was one of the first prominent missionaries to China (Note: there are no missionaries in China now! Perhaps we'll write a post on that sometime soon), from about 1853 to 1905. He dressed like the Chinese and cut his hair in the style that was fashionable back then. 

Hudson Taylor

Cool, huh? Not only that, but he pressed on into China's unreached interior and touched many lives through his knowledge of medicine and his heart for the Divine. Nationals wanted to hear what he had to say because he was a foreigner who obviously cared about the Chinese people enough that he was willing to look like them, as much as his European profile would allow. This is encouraging to us, that even though Chinese people nowadays dress much like Westerners, we can still appear like them in our attitudes, with a willingness to use the language and to learn about their country's history.

This book is a quick read, and we suggest it for everyone, even if you know you'll never live in China. His spiritual insights can apply to anyone. And don't worry, you do find out what his "secret" is, so it's not quite a secret anymore! 

Goodbye? See you again?

Chinese happens to be one of the coolest languages, and there are many reasons for that. Take saying goodbye, for instance. In English, we generally have "Goodbye," and sometimes "Farewell." Both seem to have a sense of "who knows if I'll ever see you again" behind them. I suppose at times we do say, "See you soon," but that tends to have a casual ring to it. 

Chinese, on the other hand, has many ways to say goodbye, such as 一会儿见 (yīhuìr jiàn, see you in a while)，马上见 (mǎshàng jiàn, see you super-soon)，明天见 ( míngtiān jiàn, see you tomorrow)，星期一见 (xīngqīyī jiàn, see you Monday). Notice how they all include a specific time word? These are not informal, either, in comparison to the, "See ya later, alligator," that we occasionally offer up to dear friends and small children. 

And for the times that you are unsure of when you will see the other person next, you can use 再见 (zàijiàn). The word that has appeared in all of these phrases is 见 (jiàn), which basically means "to meet." 再 (zài) means "again" with a future aspect to it. So "See you again" would be an adequate translation, and they say it all the time as a formal salutation. There's no hesitation, either; it's not "Maybe we'll run into each other again some day." It's a definite "I'll see you again." 

The traditional characters for 再见

Daniel (see his thoughts here) and I said our goodbyes today to our coworkers here in the States. Too bad that we couldn't say to them what we really wanted to: 再见. Who knows when we will see each other next, but nonetheless, 再见.