Saturday, December 28, 2013

Day 122 - Cute Girl on a Bus

Day 122 – Cute Girl on a Bus

We were able to chat with Ammon and his children for a little while this morning.  So good to hear them all!  They are growing fast.  Then Gilbert was here to pick us up for our elementary class.

Things went well there but when we were done, we just had Gilbert bring us back because Eva had texted that she was on campus and had the information for me to enter my grades and could show me what to do so I could have one of my students help me.  After she came, we went with her to a place called the “Cultural Market” and bought a nice wool scarf and some better pants for the cold weather we are expecting to experience in Harbin next week.  We drove to Eva’s place to drop off her car and then took a taxi to the market. 

When we were done at the market, we decided to take the bus home.  She looked on the chart and found a bus that would get us close to the Old Campus and then we could walk home from there.  We got to a stop that was close to Eva’s home, so she got off there when we assured her that we knew the way home and would recognize where we needed to go.  As we continued on, the bus kept filling up with people.  We even got to the point that the bus was so full that the driver was not stopping to let people on unless there was someone getting off. 

At one point, a grandmother and her cute granddaughter got on.  We had been on early enough that we had seats all this time.  The girl was right in front of me and she kept smiling at me.  I think she was about seven years old.  I said “hello” to her in Chinese.  She said something to me in Chinese.  I decided to try a few of my phrases that I knew on her.  I told her I was from America.  Then I said I was a teacher at Shandong University.  I tried to tell her my name, but the “Z” sound doesn’t work the same in Chinese.  I think she told me her name and then she went off and kept talking to me.  I finally had to just shrug my shoulders.  The little girl and her grandmother were so friendly.  Then, the little girl digs down in the bag her grandmother is carrying and brings out a little stuffed toy animal.  I start “dancing” the toy on my knee and have it “dance” up her arm.  After a minute, she gets back in the bag and pulls out another stuffed toy animal.  We are playing and “dancing” with them.  We are having so much fun!  After a while, we found we were at a stop that we could catch a bus that would take us right to our campus, so we decided to get off.  I was giving back the toy to the little girl, but she pushed it back to me!  It was her gift to me!  So Sweet!  After we got off the bus, we kept waving at her and she waved back at us until the bus drove off and we couldn’t see each other anymore.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of her.  She had her two front teeth missing which added to her cuteness!

My gift from the little girl on the bus.



We hurried back to campus and picked up David’s guitar and then went to the canteen to meet Stan and Nancy Pace for dinner at the Teacher Restaurant.  We had a nice meal and waited there until John, one of David’s students, met us there to take us to the Chemistry Department’s party.  We were invited to be a part of the program with our singing, and we needed an escort to the place where they were holding the party since we don’t know the buildings names in Chinese. 


Singing at the Chemistry Department Party.
We had lots of praise for our singing and we were given seats of honor (when you are placed on the same table with the head professors, that is a seat of honor) and some snacks and water.  We stayed for most of the performances, but I was starting to fall asleep, so we excused ourselves and left to go home. 

1 comment:

ConservativeTeacher said...

At the celebration/talent show I showed our family picture to a tutor next to me. She was impressed with the size of our family as everyone here is. Then she pointed at me in the photo and said, "You are fatter in the picture." Yup! perhaps I've lost weight here. I don't know, because we do not have a scale that works, and they're all in metrics here anyway.

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