Cold Weather and David's Cold

Monday afternoon, David and I made our way to the QianFuShan Hospital to meet with Dr. Tricia.  She had asked us to come last week, but we didn't have time until Monday to come.  Her father is still alive, but now, on top of the liver cancer, he also has lung cancer.  She feels like she has failed her father.  She's a doctor and she is supposed to fix things.

When she first thought there might be something wrong after his last physical, Dr. Tricia decided to get him some health insurance first.  She also decided that if it was cancer, her father would not survive the treatments.  Looking back now, she feels like she made the wrong choice.  She talked to a doctor that specializes in liver cancer and he told her that if they can get treatment for the liver cancer early enough, they have a high rate of curing.  This was told to her a few months after she made the decision to not tell him of the cancer.  Dr. Tricia is ridden with guilt and feels so terrible for not getting him treatment earlier.

Part of what Dr. Tricia wanted to talk to us about was what other fields she might go into.  She still wants to be involved with the hospital, but doesn't feel qualified to be a doctor anymore.  Making the wrong decision about her father has her doubting herself and the decisions she made over a year ago.  We discussed the decision and how looking back, she may have made a different decision had she known some other information, but that she still felt it was the right decision for the time.

The other thing that Dr. Tricia wanted to talk about was heaven.  We have to be careful what we say so that we are upholding the trust that the government puts in us to not proselyte among the Chinese people, but we felt that there were certain things we could say to her that would give her comfort in the face of her father's impending death.  We tried to give as much comfort to her as we could.  We pray for her each day.

After we left Dr. Tricia, we had planned to go to Pizza Hut for my birthday dinner.  They have some really good steaks there and a fruit salad that I love!  It took a while to get there because we were in drive-time traffic, and we didn't get off at the right bus stop, so we had to walk back a way to get there.  It has turned pretty cold this week and Monday had a brisk wind with it also.

We ordered our meal and some fruit drinks.  The young waiter was trying to ask us something about the drink and since we didn't understand the Chinese word for ice, he stopped, thought a moment and then got out the word, "Ice!"  We were so proud of him for getting the word!  Chinese in general don't use much ice.  They believe that hot water is better for you, but they have learned to ask about it now since more and more people are changing.  Dinner was nice.

My steak dinner and the fruit salad.  I chose the Australian Style steak.  The water in the blue glasses is warm lemon water.

This was David steak, French style.  We ended up trading because I liked the French Style better.  The Australian was just a little too spicy.  The food comes on a sizzling hot cast iron and the paper around it keeps the spatters from getting on you. 

There was a Chinese student that had shared Thanksgiving Dinner with us, and he had asked David if he would help him go over his letter of application to Brown and Northwestern Universities.  Yang Xu came over Tuesday evening so that David could read over the letter.  Yang Xu had done a pretty good job on his own, but David was able to give him a few suggestions to make it better.

Wednesday, we had lunch with Eva in the canteen.  After lunch, she went with us to try and change my expensive phone plan to a less expensive one, but the phone store was serving number 1110 and we were number 1141.  Eva asked a worker how long she thought it would be before we were served and she said about a half hour.  Well, after 45 minutes, they had only gotten up to number 1115, we decided that it wasn't going to happen that day and went back to our apartment.

Bob and Anna wanted to learn to make cookies.  They are feeling pretty good about Anna passing the IELTS test and they wanted to learn to make cookies so that they might be able to do that when they get to the US and make friends with their classmates.  We had them come on Thursday afternoon so I could teach them.  Chinese cooking is done more by feel, not exact measures.  Following a recipe is not something they are used to.  We had a fun time and they learned a LOT of new vocabulary as we made the cookies.  They brought some dried pineapple and strawberries and we chopped them up to add to our oatmeal cookies.  We also had some raisins and chocolate chips here.  We divided the cookie dough into three bowls and added the chocolate chips and raisins to one, the pineapple to another and the strawberries to the third.  Those were some GOOD cookies!  We just had so much fun doing this with them.

Anna is cutting up the dried strawberries for the cookies.

I am supervising how they stir the batter.  These two kids are so fun to be around!

When we were done, it was suppertime.  Bob was going home to visit his mother that evening, so Anna came along with us.  David had started to feel a cold coming on and he wanted some chicken broth.  They have some in the canteen, but you have to go to a certain window and ask for it.  Anna helped him get a pot of broth, while I went to different windows and got the food I wanted.  Then Anna got her own meal and sat with us to eat.

Before Bob left, he went with us to the student store and helped me change my phone plan to a less expensive one.  I hope it works for me.  Sometimes I have to use my phone for Relief Society and if I don't have enough money or minutes, we lose contact with the other sisters.  Not good for the Relief Society President to just drop off the face of the earth in the middle of conducting.  Oh, the lovely challenges we face doing church on phone lines and internet here in China!

In our classes this week, we had an activity where they pretended to be ordering food in an American restaurant.  The girl with the clipboard is taking the orders for her group.

In my classes, it seemed like the young men were mostly chosen to be the waiters.  It got to be a little bit of a joke.

David's cold got worse on Friday. It was a good thing that he didn't have classes, but he did have other things to do and he was out trying to do all of those things when he should have been home resting.  He met me after my class and we went to the canteen to have lunch with Eva.  David was dreading the thoughts of doing games in the canteen with his students that afternoon, so Eva and I convinced him that he had to call it off.  He sent a message to his class monitors and let everyone know that he wouldn't be there.  I ordered food from the canteen that I could pick up at suppertime so David didn't have to go out again that night.

All this week, the road in front of the gate for our apartment has been torn up so they could repair a water line that was leaking.  They had to shut off our water on Thursday morning, which didn't bother us because we were in class.  We were later informed that they would be turning the water off on Saturday for 3-4 hours to finish the repair.  I didn't have to worry about it because I was gone, but David did.  The road is still torn up, but we have a lot better water pressure now.

Saturday, we spent the morning grading papers and other things for school.  We will be singing on Christmas Eve at the Jing Si Lu Church with the rest of the BYU teachers.  They were having a dress rehearsal that afternoon, but David and some of the others were not able to go.  I made my way there after explicit instructions from David.  He was very concerned that I wouldn't make it.  One of the other BYU teachers made it along with Arron, the Vietnamese student that meets with our group.  It was a good thing he came along.  We had been told that there would be someone there that could speak English, but there wasn't.  We needed to give them information about what we would be singing and how many of us would be there.  Arron was able to do that for us.

 After watching two children's groups perform, we decided that we better get going home.  I got the bus I needed and they took a different bus back to get them home.  I had to make a bus change, so I got off where I knew I could catch the other bus that I needed.  There was a store near there that sells nuts and I bought some nuts before catching the other bus.

I got off near the campus and stopped to pick up some bread and then go to the fruit and vegetable store that was close to the west campus gate.  David was going stir crazy in the apartment, so he bundled up and wanted to meet me.  After getting what I needed, we finally met on the campus, a little more that halfway from our apartment to the gate.  We walked back so I could drop off my purchases and warm up for a few minutes before I headed out in the cold again.  The fruit and vegetable store did not have the celery that I was looking for so I could make a Waldorf Salad for the lunch on Sunday.

I left David at home and headed back out in the cold.  After getting the celery at the fruit and vegetable store south of campus, I started to realize that I was starting to get tired.  I had walked several miles today and in the cold air, I was walking briskly to keep warm and it was finally catching up with me.  However, I knew that the only way to be able to rest was to get home, so I kept up the fast pace until I arrived.

Today was Church and a wonderful lunch and restful visit with the others afterward.  Sunday's are such a peaceful calm day.