Days 60 and 61
Sunday was started having trouble with the
electrical in the apartment. The one
plug-in in the bathroom is loose and we can only have the water heater plugged
in or the space heater or the hair dryer.
I was trying to cook potatoes and carrots for the potluck dinner and of
course it went off right in the middle of cooking them. We didn’t know where a circuit breaker was
and why all of a sudden it was kicking it off.
Just as David went out the door to get some help, Pam, who lives above
us and have taught here for 13 years, was coming down the stairs and showed him
where the breaker panel was. We got it
turned on, but it kept kicking it off, so we decided that the heat was not an
essential for this morning. I was able
to finish cooking the potatoes and carrots and then dry my hair. I went in to check the computer one more time
before I left and found the screen was a blank!
I was afraid that the power going off had damaged it. There wasn’t anything I could do then, so I
shut the lid. I was a little upset by
all this, but just knew I had to get to Church and see what we could do when we
got back.
We had another first in our Virtual Branch
today. The Branch President announced
that at 4 p.m. they would be having a Sunday School class in Chinese for those
members that understood in Chinese better than English! I know there are areas that have Spanish and
other languages that do this, but President Britton was quite excited about it
as were we. We also found out that they
would be having a practice for the Primary Program in two weeks. We are all wondering how that is going to go
off, but we do have Primary, YM and YW in our Branch and YSA! It may be all long distance, but it works!
Potluck was fun afterward. We were missing two of our teachers because they
had to judge speech contests on their campus.
One of the brothers had to leave right after we ate to go do that
also. We stayed around and talked for a
while and then headed home. Just as we
were about to get home, Sophia from my sophomore class called me and asked if
we could come join their class party.
She texted me the address of the place so that we could take a taxi and
show it to the driver.
We changed clothes and tried to get a taxi
for about 20 minutes or so and then a car stopped and asked if they could
help. We told them what we were trying
to do and he said that he would take us there when I showed him the
address. His name was Wang Bo and he had
gone to college in Vancouver, BC and he said that he was shown kindness by
strangers in Vancouver to help him get around and he wanted to help us. It was really great of him to do this. He asked if we had gone to Church that
morning and we said that we had. He
wanted to know what the Priest had said.
We said we didn’t go to the Catholic Church and that we were
Mormon. He said he had studied
Christianity but decided he didn’t believe there was a god. He did believe in being kind to others and in
doing good things. I think that is good
in life. He may just need to find something
else to make him believe in God.
We called my students after we were dropped
off and three of the boys came running down to get us and bring us to the
apartment they had rented. They said the
place was a mess because they had all decided to try and cook something. It was funny when we got there because you
could tell there had been a lot of stuff on the floor, but they had gotten most
of it cleaned up.
We started playing Jenga and on the Jenga
blocks are different things you have to do if you are the one who makes it fall
over. David was the first one to make
the tower fall and the dare was to buy drinks for everyone. Not having brought anything with us, we
couldn’t do that, but one of the students brings over two cans of beer and
proudly sets them before us. Gulp! We kindly say that we don’t drink any alcohol
and they all look rather dismayed and even a little embarrassed. It was a rather expensive kind of beer (at
least that is what I have heard here; you buy that brand of beef if you want to
impress someone). There was a little
discussion that went on and a few minutes later, one of the boys comes back
from the store with bottles of orange juice and lemonade. I’m not sure they ever knew that there was
any one in the world that didn’t drink liquor.
We did play some other games. They were hoping that David would bring his
guitar and they could all sing, but we didn’t bring it. We did play another game and had fun with
that. We said we were going to leave
about six and take a taxi back. Four of
the girls and one of the boys were leaving with us. They tried to help us get a taxi, but once
again, no luck in the taxi department. After
about 15 minutes of trying, two of the girls said they were just going to go
catch the bus. The other three would
have stayed and helped us get a taxi, but we said we were okay to take the bus,
so we walked with the two girls to find a bus station. It was rather a long walk and since they were
unsure of the area themselves, they had to stop and ask a couple of people
where the bus stop was. The other three
walked back to campus. We were able to
get home without any problems.
Monday
We woke up to absolutely NO electricity
this morning. Not even lights. Had to eat a cold breakfast and then find out
how to go about getting the electricity back on. We are supposed to have 200 units of
electricity provided to us each month from the university as part of our
contract, but we are toward the end of the month and our little space heater
may have used up more than that, or they may just be giving us 100 units, not
realizing that we have two teachers in this room. Whatever the case, we didn’t have power and
David had to get to class. (No he did not take a cold shower… its bad enough
not having heat in this place until November 15!) That left it up to me to figure out how to
get electricity.
David told me where to find the office of
the liaison for the foreign teachers, but when I got to the building, I went to
the stairs that he said and climbed to the top and it all looked like a dorm,
so I was not going any further. I went to
the desk downstairs because I had a hunch she could help me. I showed her the card that had our apartment
number on it and that I thought was supposed to be used to get power and indicated
that I needed to get the electricity back on.
She took the card and said something about 100 (yi bai- the word for
100) so I took out a 100 Yuan note and gave that to her. She showed me on the calculator 117, which I
thought she wanted more money, but I realized later it meant that it would give
me 117 more units of electricity.
I take the card back to the apartment
thinking that they now just turn the power back on. Not so lucky… I waited around for about 15 minutes. Nothing is happening… I up the stairs to see if Pam is there and
she can help me. No answer. I go down the stairs and try to see if Mrs.
Chen the housekeeper can help me. No
answer. I go down to one other teacher’s
apartment and see if she is there because she had to do this shortly after she
got here. No answer.
I head back over to the place where I had to
buy the power in the first place and see if she can’t help me. Of course, she speaks NO English, and
indicates that there is a place that I need to put the card into. Okay, I go back to the apartment and look for
a place to put the card in. There is nothing in the apartment. I go down to the bottom stairwell and look at
a panel with blinking lights and all out apartment numbers on. I don’t see any way to put my card in there,
but there is a panel to the right of that a ways and there is a slot that the
card might fit in, so I put it in. No
change in the power. I go back up to the
office and the poor gal at the desk is sick of seeing me by now (not really,
she was very kind) and decides to call Mrs. Chen for me. I did understand that much of what she said
for me!!! Yeah me!
So I go back to the apartment and wait by
the panel for Mrs. Chen (pronounced “chun”) and when she comes, she didn’t
quite understand what I needed. She
speaks some English, but not a lot.
There are still a lot of gestures and guessing that goes on between
us. She says I need to go back over to
the office and get them to put money on.
I tried to tell her I had, but she said to go back anyway, so I do. Just as I am about to go back into the
building, Mrs. Chen is riding up on her bike yelling, “Hello, Hello, Hello!” She had not understood what I needed but now
she did because she got the call from the office that explained it. I went back to the apartment and she showed
me where to put the card in and I had power again. It wasted 90 minutes of my time that I needed
for doing school work, but that is life here in China!
We went to lunch on the 4th
floor of the canteen and we found WARM food up there! We were so glad to find warm food. The free teacher buffet (we are given a free
meal for every four hours that we teach) is supposed to be warm. They have these lovely chaffing pans that
they use, but there is no heat under them, so it is cold by the time we get
there. It was okay, but still on the
greasy side. We will probably go there
again, but we have to pay for it. At
least, like I said, it was warm!
We were in need of some fruits and
vegetables, and we had passed by a street that had a lot of vendors there that
looked like they had what we needed. We
walked down there and we were greeted by lots of smiles. After a while, we decided to start
buying. Several people that had their children
or grandchildren with them wanted to show that their child could say “hello”
and “goodbye” in English, so they would get our attention and have the child
say it. That was so fun! We will be
going back there again! It is closer
than the one we had been going to down by the old campus and I think the foods
are just as fresh. They had live fish in
containers and fresh raisins and nuts, it was all so fun!
This evening, David had a square dance group
over and then his class monitors over for a meeting. I showed them how to make cookies. Butter, chocolate chips (well, we used
M&M’s) and vanilla were all new concepts for them. They did seem to enjoy the cookies though,
and David is happy to have his stash refilled.
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