Day 123 – Church by Phone and Wrong Way Taxi

Day 123 – Church by Phone and Wrong Way Taxi

We got a taxi to go to Church.  We had a problem with the bridge and the wifi network that we use to Skype our meetings.  It kept kicking us off.  Wayne Clarke had the most amount of minutes on his phone and he and Libby were to be our speakers today, so we used his phone to call in on.  It did quite well and really didn’t use up that much of his paid for minutes.  The Hanlin Hotel has been doing construction above the rooms where we meet and it was pretty loud.  It was interesting though, because when the Clarke’s started their talks, the noise from the construction stopped for that time.  They started up again almost the minute they were done.  We still have to get through the second hour though, and Steve Schauerhamer was giving the lesson during that time and the banging and jack hammering were pretty loud, so Jim Purnell called the desk and asked if they could stop the big noise until 12 when we would be done.  It took about 10 minutes to get the word up to them from the front desk, but they stopped and we were able to finish the meeting in quiet.

Christmas dinner was the theme for our potluck today.  Lots and way too much good food!  And then, they brought out the desserts!! 

Jim Purnell asked me to arrange for the music for the next year, so I was able to get that all set up.  He said that they hadn’t changed the songs in four years, so they thought it was time.  It reminded me of the days when I was planning the music for Church…

We decided to take a taxi home.  The hotel bellboy helped us hail down a taxi and then he told them that we were going to Shandong University.  The taxi man took off and when he didn’t turn where we expected him to and he moved over to the inside lane, David tried to tell him that it was Shandong University on Shanda Nanlu, but he still didn’t seem to get it.  This university has 7 campuses in the city and there are smaller colleges that also have the name Shandong in them, so he was taking us to one of those universities.  I got out my card and David showed it to him.  He seemed very apologetic and turned the car and started going the right way.  He still charged us for taking us in the wrong direction, but at least he took us almost to our door rather than dropping us off at the South Gate.