Trip to England (Day11)

Today is Sunday. We went to a Mandarin-speaking Chinese church for worship. (The couple we met were from Cantonese-speaking Chinese church. So we couldn't go to their church.) Apparently, the church is quite young and they are still learning. For one thing, their program doesn't have a part where newcomers are introduced. So our presence there remained undetected except by a few people sitting next to us who complimented on our singing. We still enjoyed the worship, though anonymously.

At 5pm, we were on the train again, this time from Manchester to Birmingham to visit my college classmate. He is doing his PhD at the University there. When he greeted us at the University station. I was bit shocked to see how much he had changed: he had lost most of his hair but his standard British accent was very impressive. He had been trying to study abroad since I came to the US, but for some reason his visa application always got rejected. Finally, in 2003, at the age of 45, he managed to come to the University of Birmingham to start his student life again, leaving his wife in China. (And he has no children yet.) Apparently, he really enjoys his studies here, though with a lot of stress, financially, academically and emotionally.
We were quite moved by his hospitality. He cooked dinner for us himself, paid for our first night's hotel bill, and insisted on us not paying him back. He talked on and on about the grand plan of his thesis, while I was worrying about his post-doc life. I tried to preach the Gospel to him, but he always managed to switch the topic back to his thesis. I also made some suggestions to his thesis, of course, hoping he will take my advice to make it less ambitious and finish it sooner.