Calling for water....

 

Fire planes scoop up water in front of our window to quench a fire nearby - sucessfully thankfully!

9 Million bicycles in Beijing?

I love the Katie Melua song about Beijing and while I was signing it my friend said " No there are not that many bicycles any more" You could have fooled me I would have guessed more! From the DHL Express man peddalling like mad with 120 boxes tied on the paniers to the bike selling hot rice (a nearby digger kept dropping rubbish on top of the rice!) It was like bike central. One evening there was high wind and rain and in seconds about 80 bikes all stood up on there supports fell down like dominoes in a domino rally. Space is at a premium in a city of 33 million people so the fact that one in 6 people would have a bike is no surprise. The wee postman pat car was obviously a limousine!

Coro en Corea

So what did we like about Korea - well the Choir was good (Coro in Spanish) it was all made up of WECcers, just imagine. They sung in English and Korean with wonderful traditional harmonies, just like the Men of Orkney really - I loved it. The worship times were also special sung by 300 people in 1bout 14 languages, including Spanish. These times were lead by Resonance so were totally ethnic and totally professional. They even used songs we had learned on our ethnodoxology course at Eastwest 5 years ago.  For our welcome concert there were traditional wooden flutes and stringed instruments whose name escapes me, all played beautifully by women from a nearby Unversity and the guy in green who was the Professor's son. She vowed to God if he lived (while he was a very ill baby) she would devote her life to worship music and here he was thriving and with amazings lungs for the flute. The cardboard box was an activity where 14 teams had to answer questions about the last 100 years of WEC. it was designed and built by Miriam Cowpland, Lindsay's cousin - a definite streak of architecture in that family. What a well run event. And below the view from our building!