This was the day to learn more of Beijing, the new and the old. The hotel morning call came promptly at 7, then a nice Asian-oriented breakfast on the 2nd floor of the Rainbow.  Customers in the coffee shop included Chinese (perhaps 70% of the total) who were in Beijing on business or here to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year–the Year of the Dragon– and international tourists. Offerings included an abundance of fresh vegetables, variations on the egg, several types of bread including the steam buns that are a feature in most north China breakfasts.  My impression was that the vegetarians among our group would find plenty to eat at this breakfast!

Read More

Friends and Family:

What I expect to follow is a series of rather brief, informal notes, hopefully prepared on a daily basis as time permits, coming out our January 2012 Bethel College Interterm experience in China.

The theme of this first-ever BC Interterm to the “Middle Kingdom” is a focus on the business and economic enviornment of this fast-developing country, with time taken to see some of its incomparable tourist attractions in and near Beijing, Shanghai and the lesser known sites of Puyang and Daming–locales where Mennonite missionaries served in the 1920- to about 1948 when they were expelled by China’s new communist government. Comments on my comments are always welcome at sgoering@juno.com I alone take full responsibility for any errors of fact, interpretation or judgment of which there will undoubtedly be some!

The substantive content of this Interterm experience is part of Bethel’s Cross Cultural Learning experiences and was developed by Dr. Allison McFarland, Chair of the Bethel’s Economics and Finance Department. The Bethel entourage included, in addition to Dr. McFarland, Bethel’s President Perry White and his wife, Dalene, Jake Goering of the North Newton Community, my wife, Shirley and me and Bethel students Dustin Abrahams, Sean Classen, Jordan Esau, Rachel Evans, Emily Harder, Kyle Howard, Jenae Janzen, Arthur Kauffman, Doug Kliewer, Abram Rodenberg, Matt Shelly and Paul Voran. Perhaps based on travel and living experience in China, Bethel had kindly invited Shirley and me to “facilitate” this initiative.

Read More

For the past two-and-a-half weeks, I have been traveling around Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank with a group of Bethel and Tabor students.  The focus of the trip is on expanding our understanding and awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict and to visit different  sites important to the  Islamic, Jewish, and Christian faiths, as well as other tourist sites in the area.

Thus far in our travels, we have visited Petra (an ancient city hewn out of solid rock), ridden camels (!!!!!), the Church of the Nativity (where Jesus was born), the Wall separating Israel from the West Bank (tragic), the Mediterranean Sea, the Sea of Gaililee, the Dead Sea (we floated!!!), the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques (we were able to go inside, which is HIGHLY unusual), the Western Wall of the Jewish temple destroyed in 70CE, and many, many other sites mentioned in the Bible.

Read More

Today marks the fourth week since I left Kansas, meaning tomorrow I will have officially been in Germany for a whole month! It’s kind of hard to believe my time here is already a quarter over :(. But I don’t want to think about that right now. I’d rather talk about all the fun stuff from this past weekend!I’m going to go ahead and say I think I weigh about 5 pounds heavier after this weekend. First, on Saturday it was the birthday of one of the international students from China, Bin. There were about 10 of us who gathered in his apartment for a sumptuous feast of authentic Asian food prepared by him and another one of our friends, Tan, from Singapore. Though it wasn’t exactly like “American” Chinese food, it was more similar than I had expected, with chicken and sweet and sour sauce and the works. All of us brought something to contribute, preferably something representative of our own country. I brought peanut butter and jelly (of which no one actually partook :)). Valentina, a student from Italy, made real tiramisu, and the usual tradition was kept: we put candles on the cake and sang “Happy Birthday”–only we sang it in 3 different languages: English, German, and Chinese! Surprisingly enough, the Chinese version is to the same tune as the English version. Read More

I’ve never been sure what to think about the spread of the American culture throughout the rest of the world. Some people say it’s a bad thing–that too much spreading of the American culture causes other cultures to be stamped out, ultimately creating a single monoculture for the whole world. I can see why this might be a concern–after all, even though I’m in Germany, I still see/hear many traces of my country here: the movies playing in the theaters, the shows on TV, the music on the radio. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the people I encounter know at least a little bit of English. Read More

Classes will start full swing this week, so I’m actually looking forward to having a little more routine! I’m taking my placement exam for my German language course on Monday, so it’ll be interesting to see which class I’m in. I’ve been a little sick the past couple days with a cold, so Friday I got some medicine from the Apotheke today (that’s pharmacy–here you have to buy any over-the-counter medication at a pharmacy, not just at a grocery store), so hopefully that helps. I explained my symptoms to the pharmacist (yes, auf Deutsch!) and she gave me this powdered Bayer aspirin stuff to mix in water and drink. Fun fact: Bayer is manufactured here in Wuppertal! Read More

Well, it’s been a few days, and I am starting to feel more settled in. My apartment is starting to both look and feel more homey, and I’ve met a couple more people. As I stated in my last blog, Wednesday we went to Cologne. Pia, another Wuppertal-Bethel exchange student currently at Bethel, has a sister here named Marie, so she was kind enough to take us. It was both me and Chris’ second time there (we stopped there on choir tour in January, and Chris went there on a trip over Interterm last January). We mostly just walked around – the weather was wonderful, so it was nice to spend time outside. Across the Rhein River there was a carnival going on, so we went to check it out. It was pretty much exactly like any American carnival – I guess carnies look the same no matter what country you’re in! Read More

Well, the time has finally come: I’ve arrived in Germany for my semester abroad! I am in Wuppertal, a city in the western part of the country. Bethel has had an exchange program with the university here since the 1950’s in which two student from Bethel go to Wuppertal, and two students from Wuppertal go to Bethel. It’s amazing to not only have an opportunity to study abroad, but also participate in such a long-standing tradition. Read More

Hey people!Greetings from Karlsruhe, Germany! It’s a ten-hour bus ride from Leipzig (Leipzig did not have free internet, and this place only has it for twenty minutes at a time in the lobby, so I must be quick), and we also stopped at Buchenwald concentration camp. That hour-and-a-half stop on the way here deserves far more time than I can give it in a blog, so it will have to wait. Read More