12/14 a Day of Unplanned Adventure

Hello again friends, family and well wishers of Global!

Today I got the opportunity to reflect a little bit on what the true meaning of the Global semester is for me personally. The activities that a small group of us embarked on during the space between Ripley’s class and our last class with Professor Moser afforded me this chance to encapsulate a few of the greatest lessons I have learned during the semester. A group of us excitedly set out from Capitol Normal University on the mission to find an indoor ice rink that Zoe had pointed out to us earlier. We had the basic instructions of which subway stop to get off at, but beyond that we had very little to work with. This being said, we quickly asked for directions. A local pointed us towards the supermall that was a stones throw from where we were. As we entered, we saw no signs for what we thought would be the main attraction of this mall. This caused us to walk through the entirety of  the mall, with no fruits to bear from our labors. We finally asked again, this time one of the store workers, who told us she had no idea what we were even talking about. To say we were disappointed was an understatement. This sparked a half mile walk down the road (because google maps isn’t the best in China) until we hit a hotel where we finally realized that for the third time we needed to ask for help. By this point we were all hungry and starting to lose hope that our dreams of ice skating would ever come to fruition. It was at this moment that the hotel concierge told us he knew what we were talking about and he could give us directions. Our spirits rose and we headed off. Low and behold, we ended up right where we started in the initial supermall. At this point, we stopped every 20 feet to ask for directions until we could physically see the ice rink. After two subway rides, 2 hours of searching and an hour of skating, we were all happy but exhausted.     

On the return journey, I thought about how much of this trip has been exactly like our journey to find the ice rink. We have all gotten lost at some point along the line, whether it being physically, spiritually or emotionally. We may be hesitant to ask for help, even when it is right there in front of us. We struggle through the challenges this trip presents and we get discouraged. But we all have an ice rink that we are looking for. As this trip is coming to a close and this is my last blog post, I wanted to share the idea that the ice rink we are looking for might actually be much closer than we could ever imagine. Even though we may need to ask for help along the way, the struggle to find it makes the rush of flying on sharp skates just that much more satisfying in the end. 

I hope I have made you all smile at least once this semester and thanks for reading :)

Matthew