Baseball 2009

When Gabriel had his final baseball game with the South Boulder Little League "Lugnuts" last year, the coach asked by show of hands who wanted to play with the same team again next year. Gabriel didn't raise his hand explaining that he'd like to but that we were moving to China. I must admit, I was a little depressed when I heard that. Most people know I'm a pretty big baseball fan and Gabriel was really enjoying playing Little League in Boulder. Here I was, coming face to face again with the fact that I was pulling my son away from the anchors of his childhood.

Fast forward to Christmas time. We are in China and working at Yew Chung International School. The head of our Extra Curricular Activities asked me if I would be willing to run an after school program in the spring.

I smiled and said, "Yes...baseball"

Rather than a full on varsity program, we are starting as a 10 week after school activity. Because the school is still quite small we opened baseball up to everyone from Age 10 through high school ( so Gabriel could play ) and I was pleased to see 12students signed up.

We had our first practice today and it was a lot of fun. We don't have a proper baseball field so we walked to some open park space near the school. The plus is that its right near the ocean as you can see from some of the pictures.

Most of the kids were pretty new to baseball so to compare them to the Bad News Bears would be to disparage the Bad News Bears but they played with a lot of enthusiasm and I saw some diamonds in the rough. I just wished we could delay for another couple weeks as the middle of February is still pretty cold here.

We're in the process of ordering some baseball jerseys from the States and my goal is to contact a couple other International schools in Qingdao to see if they are up for a little inter school competition. This may be just a extracurricular activity for now, but my hope is to lay the foundation for a future varsity program

It won't be easy to develop baseball in the middle of China, but we'll have some fun trying.

Chinese New Year

Well, Chinese New Year is just wrapping up and it has been good...and loud!! Fireworks are pretty much legal in China so there is an incredible amount of high octane explosives that go off next to and over our house on a regular basis. The official reason given is that the fireworks ward off the evil spirits.

But I have another theory...

When I see all the young guys setting them off, I figure they are no different than any other guys on the planet...they like to light things on fire and watch them explode:) And like the 4th of July in the States, Chinese New Year is a great excuse to do it!

At the school here we had a Chinese New Year celebration at a local banquet hall. The various classes did different Chinese performances including a dragon dance, songs, and Tai Chi.



Gabriel has a Chinese name now and we are calling him by that name more frequently these days. He is Ao Fei which literally means Flying Proud.

Tammy and I were very proud of our little Ao Fei as he performed Tai Chi with his class. As I watched all of the kids performances I was reminded how blessed we are to be in China at this time and how faithful God has been to us.

So from the Hackmans in Qingdao...Happy New Year!!