I think I finally realized and put into words what relationship I have with the Bible. I know that sounds weird to just come out and say, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and it has really been bugging me.

Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Does this make sense?

Whenever I read something beautiful in it, I underline, I say 'yes,' I am personally reaffirmed of the faith I cling to and claim to be apart of. However there are those moments when I find myself hating it. I hate the way it looks at me sitting on my nightstand. I hate how when sometimes I read it, I want to run away from my conscience after finishing a certain sentence. I hate it for the way it makes me feel sometimes inside, even though most of the time, this is a good way of helping me grow.

But ironically (or paradoxically) I think what I hate the most (and have come to love the most too...if you give me a long enough time) are those times when the words sting so close to home and scrape so sharply at my own life. The moments when I read and can hear the ringing 'this is for you' in my head and heart. I can hear my body ache because of it.

And this may not be pretty and it may make me sound like a looney boy, but I don't mind it really. It's what I've come to accept as me, living the paradox, and its best if I stop pretending it's something that it really is not.

I miss the blogger blogs I used to read.

So Nate, and Chalupa, and Liz....well....I guess you three were my favorite ones (now that Tara has joined xanga:), I hope you can email me your posts or do something so that I can read what is going on in your life.

It sucks not being able to read them here.

The Xanga alternative

Because blogger is hard to post to while in China and even harder to read other blogs from here (I haven't been able to access one blogspot blog while over here---ugh!) I've decided to cave in and write on a xanga blog while in China.

Even though I'll try to keep writing on this one whenever I feel like writing to a different audience, I think that one will be easier to post to. So all your blogspot people, please know that I am still one of you...I just must avert to xanga for a few months.

Here is the web site address:
http://www.xanga.com/nevillekiser

My first day of teaching in China

Last night, I didn't think I was teaching until a week from today. But China had other plans.

At 9:00 a.m. this morning, I awoke to the sound of knocking on wood and soon realized there was someone at my door. It was one of the Chinese teachers and she had my schedule for this week of teaching (not next week). On the contrary, I was teaching this week. In fact, I was starting this afternoon (yes, that means 5 hours from now...I told myself). Did they just forget to tell me this? None of the other American teachers are teaching today or this week!

Oops. Oh well.

Of course I wasn't mad, only a little shocked. But then that wore off and I got excited. Two two-hour classes in the afternoon of sophomore english majors is not a bad thing at all for a Monday, and so, I think---looking back on it---it was a pretty wonderful day.

I learned that in China, students will not leave the classroom---even after the teacher has dismissed them---until the teacher leaves first. So when I dismissed my first class and they all sat staring at me as I put away my things near the front of the room, I felt like I was grabbing one two many cookies out of the hidden cookie jar. Everyone was looking up at me...smiling...and so, I reassured them: "You are free to go! Class is dismissed." One girl picked up her purse and pulled out her cell phone. I think she knew deep down how stupid I was.

And then of course, in the next class I somehow found myself singing the chorus to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." Don't ask me how my students got me to do that, but in the first week of classes at any college---with all the lame introductions and 'my name is' ice-breaker games---something like this is inevitable. And then there was the moment when one student asked, "Do you think you are handsome?" and another asked, "Do you like yourself?" Yes, these questions threw me because they tend to only come up between friends (if ever at all). But I just kept wondering why these two kids weren't psychology majors instead. I mean, come on---what kind of personal, prone-to-self-destruct question is that?

When the second class ended, the sore throat from talking slow slow slow english had went from marginal to a scratchy dry high kind of pain. But despite this, I still couldn't help from smiling. Walking out of the class room with Chinese faces gleaming and smiling at you, and giggles and hand-to-mouth laughs constantly overtaking the entire room made me wonder why I didn't come to teach english in China sooner.