Strike

The bad thing about relying on taxis is that sometimes they go on strike. Like yesterday. Guess the drivers thought the gas prices were unsatisfactory, so they took a day to prove their point. I wish they would have waited until summer time. A strike about quadruples your “waiting for a taxi” time, and it’s freezing outside. Yesterday I had language school at our Bible study house, plus I had to ride out to another university to speak at a student meeting. Me, my wife, and St. ended up crammed into a motorcycle with a plexiglass shed built around it (I’m not sure that type of vehicle has a name). Really loud and really cold. And, due to the limited supply, more expensive than a taxi on a normal day. To our relief, the strike was done today, so we’re back to normal.  

Setback with our starting-a-business endeavor today. To start, we need a house owner to sign off on our using their place for our business office. And so our Bible study house owner came by today and heard our case. But apparently it wasn’t his decision, so he called his boss (I didn’t know house owners have bosses, but apparently in this building he can’t just do things without this guy’s consent). And the boss says it’s out of the question. Too big of a risk, I guess. If it turns out we do something illegal (they’re pretty smart), it might come back to bite them. I offered to pay them some kind of extra monthly fee, but the owner says the boss has so much money, he couldn’t possibly care about anything we could give him. Naturally, all these complications inspired me to violence, but there’s certainly no prize-fighting visa, so I restrained myself. Our next shot is our own house. The owner is a neighbor of a relative of a friend. So maybe we’ll get a little further. If not, I’m not sure what our next step is. We may be looking at one more semester on a student visa, which isn’t a real big deal.  

Our weekend starts again tomorrow. My throat has been hurting me for a couple weeks straight now. Not really sure what to do about it. I’m obviously not doing something right. By the end of the second service last Saturday, I was in some serious pain. I guess Chinese is just way more stressful on the vocal cords! One of the students hooked me up with some kind of medicine, which is some good stuff. So I alternate between the medicine and the cough drops all day long, but I don’t really seem to be healing from week to week. Pray I toughen up!