December 28 - Last of the Finals, Alan Ding, Coming Home

Carol Wang had bought some Lego-type toys for us that we hadn’t been able to find, so when we went for our Massage on Monday, she brought them to us.  David and I were both so tired that we didn’t linger long and talk much afterward.  It had been a long day after a short night before.

We didn’t have time to rest as we had to go to the Red Cross Church that evening to sing at their Christmas Eve program. We met Tresa and Jay Wilkins at a bus stop, so we could get on the bus that we needed to go there.  We hoped that all the others would be able to make it on time.  They had reserved some seats for our group in the front, and if we didn’t have at least some of us get there bey 6:30, they would release those seats.  Our group made it with three minutes to spare.

The buses were all quite crowded.  We were fortunate that people give up their seats for older people.  At first we didn’t get seats, but as people got off, we were able to get some empty seats for all of us.  The bus that the others had to take from the Hanlin Hotel were so crowded that they couldn’t even fit anymore in it!  They ended up getting a taxi and made it before the program started at 7 p.m. 

 

The ladies in their costumes waiting for the program to start.  They were happy we were taking their pictures.

The program was shorter this year than last, and we were number three on the program.  It was all very nice, and there was such a great spirit of friendship and love in the room.  We made some new Chinese friends, too.  Catherine, a Chinese friend, wanted to come up and sing with us, so we needed someone to take pictures and video for us.  The lady sitting behind us and next to Catherine and Sue Stubbs agreed to do it.  Then there was an exchange to make WeChat friends, and now we have a new connection.  

The director of this choir is about ninety years old.  He has been leading this group for a long time.  They even sang the "Unto Us a Son is Given," and"Hallelujah Chorus."   

This is our group singing "Joy to the World," and "Angels We Have Heard on High."

 

The man sitting down is the man that organizes the program.  The women in the beautiful dresses are waiting to go on to perform their dance.  

This woman is an opera singer that sang for us.  Her dress was very sparkly and colorful.

Getting on the bus back to campus after the program went well.  We were at one of the first stops for the bus, so there were plenty of seats available.  Jay Wilkins has a mustache, and if he grows out his beard could pass for Santa Claus.  He and Tresa had ordered some candy canes through Eva, and he was passing them out on the bus.  Several people wanted to talk to us, but with limited language skills, it was really  tough.  When we got off the bus, we called “Merry Christmas” and “Shen den quai le” (Chinese for Merry Christmas, but I’m not sure of the pinyin Chinese for all the sounds.)  It made quite a hit and the mood of the bus was quite joyous.

Christmas Day was final exams in the morning.  A tradition that has recently started in China is to give an apple at Christmas.  The Chinese word for apple (ping guo), also has the same sound as the word for “peace.”  So it has become a tradition to give an apple to someone for Christmas.  Between David and I, we were given about twenty apples in the last two weeks of finals.  We ate as many as we could, but still had a LOT of them by Wednesday afternoon.  We had dinner with Jay and Tresa on Wednesday evening, so we gave them a bag with about a dozen apples.  We also gave our cleaning lady a bag with five apples in it.  She seemed please to get them.  That left three apples for us.  One for lunch on Thursday and two for lunch on Friday.  We love apples, but that was a lot!

 

This beautiful necklace was given to me by two of the girls in one of my Tuesday classes, Alexis and Bella.  I was wearing it when Bella came for her final and she was so pleased.  I was glad that I could thank her in person for it.  When she gave it to me, she walked in the room while I was interviewing another person and just set it on the desk by my stuff. It opens and there are some fragrance seeds that you can put in there.

Dr Yang, David’s Chinese oncology doctor, invited him to lunch on Tuesday.  David was finished with his final by 11 a.m., so he was able to go, but I wasn’t finished until almost noon, so I didn’t go.  Dr. Yang was sponsoring a Christmas party for some of the cancer patients at his hospital.  Most of these cancer patients are from small villages and have never seen an American.  David went around and shook all their hands, then Dr. Yang had him tell them a little about Christmas.  They gave him a lovely bouquet of 18 roses.  Later there was lunch with pizza.  Then one of the nurses and Dr. Yang’s assistant brought him home in their car

 

David with Zhang Xiao Li, Dr. Yang, and his head nurse Li Ling.

David with some of the cancer patients.  These are poor people and they come from the countryside.  None had ever met or seen an American before.  

Dr. Yang's staff.

We had also planned to see Dr Tricia on Tuesday, so we could get some more of the medicine that we have been getting for my arthritis and also say goodbye.  We also needed her to fill out our medical record books, so that we could get the receipts turned in for the insurance to reimburse us if they will.  I had planned to take the bus and meet David at the hospital, but the nurse that was driving him home, drove him first to our apartment and then to the hospital.  It was nice to not have to walk to the bus station in the cold.

Alan Ding, the boy that David had tutored five years ago and is now attending the University of Texas, is home for the holiday break.  He wanted to visit with us, so he offered to take us out for dinner Christmas evening.  He has grown a lot, and it was great to catch up with him.

The last of the finals was on Thursdays, so we got the grades all finalized, entered them on the spreadsheet with the students numbers and information and got them ready to send to Eva.  She and Alina wanted to come say goodbye, so we were able to give her a copy of all the grades from our classes.  They stayed and talked while they warmed up.  Jinan has turned really cold the last few days.

Several of my students mentioned a picture that they had seen on a school blog with David and me in it.  One girl even printed off the picture and gave it to me as a gift.  I asked for the blog website, and one girl sent it to me.  I know our students see us all over campus, and we are holding hands, and they think we have such a great love (and we do!).  So this is the picture and the poem that was written about us.

This is the picture that was on the blog.  The poem is roughly translated to: "The leaves are colored like candy, will you come and take a walk with me."  

We will be home for the next six weeks, so I won’t be posting about China during that time.  I may put some family memories on though. 

December 23 - First Week of Final Exams, Parties, and Christmas Cookies

Some of the dozens of Christmas cookies that I spent all of Saturday making.

More of the cookies.

It is always so very rewarding when we do final exams with our students!  We have to do a five-minute interview with each student, so with our large classes, that takes two weeks to get it all accomplished.  David had to even add an afternoon session for one of his classes, because it is so large.  We have been given a few lovely gifts and lots of compliments on our teaching.  (At least we hope it all isn’t just to get a good grade…)

We wanted to go shopping for some more items on Tuesday afternoon at the outlet mall on the west side of Jinan.  On Sunday, Nancy Rounds was talking about getting Aaron to help her, but he didn’t seem to have any free time, so we said that she could tag along with us.  Nancy was able to find several things that she wanted, but we were not successful.  We also wanted to check out where the church was that we will be singing at on Christmas Eve, especially so that Nancy would know and could get there.

Tuesday evening, David held one last English corner the students.  It was a fun time for them.

As the semester nears to the end, you find students that set up these "study stations."  I'm not exactly sure why they do it but some of the reasons might be:  closer to their classrooms, their dorm room is too cold or noisy, they can't find a seat in the library, etc.  This girl has claimed her area near the window on the landing between the stairs in the building we teach in the most.  She is able to just leave her stuff here and it will be there when she comes back.  They will stand there and memorize and repeat over and over and over again.

 While we were at our massage on Wednesday, Carol Wang was there, and we mentioned that we were having a hard time finding the Lego knock-off toys that we were looking for.  She started looking on her phone while we were there but didn’t find anything that pleased us.  The next day, Carol went to several toy shops and even a whole-sale shop to look for us.  That was so sweet of her to put so much effort into our little problem.  She was able to find something that will be good enough.  What we were looking for was last year’s models, and they were not to be found at all this year.  Sad.

If you can't find a seat on the bus, bring your own!

Friday was a very busy day for us.  We had to make a trip to Carrefour to get some last items to get us through the next week before we go home.  We hurried through the store getting all the items as quickly as we could.  Then we got up to the check-out lines.  They were ALL extremely long lines, anywhere from six to ten people long!  We have never seen it like that, but then, we seldom shop there in the morning, and I think that is when most Chinese try to shop.  They try to get the freshest eggs and vegetables at that time.  It took as 20-25 minutes to get checked out.  

We had a list of other items that we wanted to get at some other places, but David also wanted to get back to the campus to observe an activity that Eva was doing in her class that day.  I told him to head on back to the campus, and I would go to Baotu Springs Park and get the other items we wanted.  Whenever you want real touristy items, go to the parks for them.  David had been searching for some porcelain birds and hadn’t been able to find them anywhere else.  I remembered the gift shop at Baotu Springs had a lot of cute items, so we wanted to go check there for the birds. 

I made it to Baotu Springs, found the birds there, plus some other fun items and then headed back to campus.  We had planned to have lunch with Eva and her daughter, Alina, after Eva was done teaching her class.  Instead of walking all the way back to our apartment, I waited by the canteen because I had arrived back at the campus just in time for lunch.  

Lunch on Friday with Eva and Alina.

When David and Eva finally came, they had decided not to eat in the canteen, but to eat at a restaurant outside of campus.  We picked up Alina on our way out of campus.  We went to the restaurant where we had been for my birthday party and had a nice meal.  We had ordered too much food and got really full.  We stayed there talking so long that we were the only people left in the place.  It was fun.  

After that, we had to catch a bus over to the Hongjialou campus to meet Kang Ming in the Foreign Affairs Office.  The university had a gift for us that we needed to pick up from there.  We only stayed for a few minutes, because we had to hurry home for our tutoring students.  

David got a text from Eva as we were walking to the bus, asking if we could pick up some papers at the Graduate Students’ Office.  David headed back to get the papers, while I went to catch a bus home and hopefully beat our tutoring students there.  I got on a bus 16.  As it was driving past the south gate of the campus, I saw David almost out of the gate.  He got on a bus 1.  He beat me home.  The reason he beat me home was because my bus passed by an elementary school that was just letting out.  Parents and kids and scooters all over the place! 

Our three tutoring kids, Michael, Doris, and Stone came at four p.m.  We had wanted to make Christmas cookies with them.  David sang some Christmas songs and read them a story while I hurried and got all the supplies gathered together.  They had fun and loved their Christmas cookies that we sent home with them. 

Celebrating Tresa's birthday on Friday evening.  

We had a few minutes to rest, before we had to go out to the north gate and meet Eva, Alina, and Jay and Tresa Wilkins.  It was Tresa’s birthday, and we wanted to go celebrate eating at Lydia’s, an Italian restaurant, that is close to our campus.  We had a fun time.

When we walked into the restaurant, I was greeted by several of the girls from one of my classes.  Their professor had invited them out for a dinner and they had chosen that restaurant also.  It was fun to see them.

 I spent the majority of Saturday baking and frosting Christmas cookies.  I thought I would need a good amount of cookies, because I was bringing some to the Foreign teachers’ Holiday party that night and also for our dinner together on Sunday.  It takes a long time to bake a batch of cookies that normally makes about six to eight dozen cookies in a small toaster oven.  The rest of the time was spent decorating them.  I had about 15 minutes left to get dressed before Eva and the Wilkins came to go to the party together. 

At the SDU foreign teachers party, the Vice President of the University speaking.  It was an important enough party that we had three important officials there.

David and Zina singing at the SDU Foreign Teachers Party.

Our dinner companions.  They came from China, South Africa, Scotland, Netherlands/UK and the US.

 Eva decided to drive us all there in her car, which was nice, except the traffic to get out of the campus was a nightmare!  That took more time than it did to drive to the hotel where we were having the party.  The party was fun.  David had suggested that we sing some songs, so he brought his guitar along, and he and I sang some songs, with people joining-in on the songs they knew.  We had teachers there from the US, England, Scotland, Russia, Iran, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, and a few other places that I don’t remember now.  We had some of the big wigs from the campus there also.  All in all, it was a very enjoyable time together

Looking at the other two tables at the party.

One of the dishes at the SDU party.  Anyone up for some cooked larvae?

One of the larvae up close.  I did try it, but it was really spicy, so the one small taste was all I had!

Sunday morning was a rush for me to get everything together and ready for our dinner after church.  David and I both read different scriptures about Christ’s birth.  Our group sang “Angels We Have Heard on High.”  Afterwards was a delicious dinner.  The Kellie’s from Weihai, Jurgita and her husband, Huang Songsong, came from Zouping, Catherine, Patty and Summer (all Chinese friends) joined us also.

After our Christmas dinner, we practiced singing for our performance at the JingSiLu Church on Christmas Eve.

All semester long, we have been trying to get together with Eva’s friend, Yi Bing.  She is Bob’s mother, the young man that we tutored, along with Anna, last year.  They wanted to take us out for dinner tonight, so we met them at Cafe 56, it’s near our campus. Alina came along with Bob’s mom and dad, and Eva.  We had a great time talking with them.  What was really neat was the connections we made with them as we told our engagement story, and how it mirrored their story in a lot of ways.  It was a very fun evening.

Dinner with Eva, Zina, David, Alina, Yi Bing and her husband.

December 16- 36 Hours of Birthday Celebration, Gifts from Students

This is the birthday cake that Eva bought for me.  It was a nice sponge cake with fruit filling, whipped cream frosting, almonds all around the sides and more fruit on the top.  

 A lot of our time this week has been taken up with reading and grading an interview summary that we gave to our students.  It was due last week, so we have felt swamped trying to get them all read this week. Here are a few samples of the students’ other writings that kept us smiling.

1. On a report about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the student called “Sitting Bull”, “Sitting Cow.”  I think that is how it translated from the Chinese.  I wonder how he would have felt about that translation…
2. From a student’s report about a Chinese student who is living in England, “Men in England lose their hair because of the water, so I use conditioner on my hair.”  !!! Wonder where he got that?

At least some of the papers kept us awake enough to finish them!  

Our week was pretty usual but there were a few other interesting things.  I was riding the bus on  Friday morning to go to the appointment with the orthopedic doctor.  I take two different buses to get there.  After I got on the second bus, a woman behind me kept peering around at me.  I turned and smiled to her and then turned back.  She peered around at me again, so I looked back again, and this time she said in halting English, “Where are you from?”  I told her America and said in Chinese, “I am a teacher at Shandong University.”  I smiled at her and then turned around again. 

She waited a few moments, then peered around at me again, and when I looked at her, she started speaking in Chinese to me, as if I would understand her.  Then she put her fingers on her wrist like she was taking a pulse and gave me a card.  I took it, even though it was all in Chinese.  After a moment’s thought, I dug out one of my BYU cards with my information on it and gave it to her just as we were both rising to get off of the bus.  She stood there and tried to decipher the words on it, but then it was time to get off, and I didn’t see her again after I got off. 

This was the card that the woman on the bus gave to me for medical care.  I began to wonder if I looked sick or something...

After I had seen the orthopedic doctor and had the injection in my knee, Dr. Tricia and I were sitting there talking, so I got out the card, that the lady had given to me, and asked her to tell me what it said.  She quickly read it and then said, you don’t need this, and started to put it in her pocket.  I asked her what it said, and she just said, “I’ll tell you later.”  I think she was hoping that i would forget to ask her.  

After lunch, as she was taking me out to the taxi that she had ordered for me to take me home, I asked her again about the card.  She explained that it was from a private clinic, and the woman was trying to get business for her clinic.  She was rather disgusted about it and kept saying, but you don’t need that.  It was rather cute the way she is so protective of me.

When we were shopping with Tresa and Jay Wilkins last week, Tresa tried on this coat.  I thought the design was gorgeous!

This was our last week of classes  with our students.  We start doing oral final interviews this week.  It was kind of bittersweet, because it means that we will be  going home soon, but also that we will miss some of these kids that we have grown to enjoy and love.  One girl that really struggles with English, brought me a gift.  It was a print of Confucius that her boyfriend’s brother had made.  I was very touched, because she thought it was so special to give to me.  Confucius is considered the epitome of a great teacher, and I think that is what she wanted to convey to me through her gift.

This is the print of Confucius that Emily gave me.  

David and I both carry two cell phones.  One for China and one for the US.  I sometimes carry both of them.  On Monday morning, I was hurrying to get my coat on so we could get to the bus stop and go to Qianfoshan Campus.  I had my US phone in my hand, and it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor.  I have a really good shatterproof cover on it, but it landed on a corner and didn’t seem to be harmed by the fall to the tile floor in our apartment.  During the day, everytime I tried to get that phone to hook up to WiFi (that’s how I use it here in China) it wouldn’t get on. I chalked it up to the fact that the internet in China is less than wonderful.  Late that afternoon when we arrived home, and my phone still wouldn’t get on the internet, it became evident that the fall that morning had damaged it.  

Tuesday morning, after my first class, my class monitor, John, had come to ask me a question.  I noticed that he had an iPhone, so I asked him if he knew a store where I could go to get it repaired, or see if it could be repaired.  His friend was right next to him, and he seemed to know more than John did.  They talked about it, and we discussed a time when we could go see about getting it fixed, if it could be fixed.  

Wednesday afternoon, I went to meet John at the store.  I knew the approximate area, but not the exact store.  As I neared the area that I thought it would be, I couldn’t see a store for Apple.  I stopped a young couple walking on the street and showed them the store on the map that John had sent me.  The young man looked at it, jerked his head up, looked all around, and then pointed across the street, where sure enough, there was a big white apple glowing on the side of the store.  

After I crossed the street and started toward the store, John met me and we went in.  He had been in there earlier to find out who to talk to about my phone.  After we approached the man, he told John that there would be a 4-5 hour wait!!  I didn’t have that kind of time, but the man did say that there were other authorized locations that weren’t as busy as this main store was. 

John got the location, and we headed out the door.  He wondered if we wanted to catch a bus or walk. I asked how far it was.  He said it was about a kilometer.  I thought, I can walk a kilometer, so we started out walking.  Then we walked, and we walked, and we walked, and we walked.  I was beginning to think he didn’t really know where the store was.  He finally stopped to ask a building guard, and the man indicated a little further down the street. 

We found the repair place.  It wasn’t near as busy, but it did have several people waiting.  John found out how much it was going to take to possibly fix the problem.  Just to look at it was going to be 199 RMB ($28 US), and they would run a diagnostic on it to see if it could be fixed.  If they couldn’t fix it, I was out the 199 RMB.  If they could, then it would be fixed for 199 RMB. 

After about 10 minutes, one of the workers came out to me and told John that the VPN was causing problems with diagnosing the problem.  I wasn’t sure how that could be, but told them they could remove the  program if necessary.  (I knew how to get it back on after they were done.)  After a half hour, they brought me the phone, and it connected up to the WiFi just fine.  I was rather happy to have it up and working again, as I had a lot of Church stuff on there that I needed to connect with people here in China.

This was available on the menu of a restaurant we went to last week.  YUM! 

John and I rode the bus back to campus.  I was to meet David, Eva, and the Wilkins at a restaurant not far from the bus stop for my birthday dinner.  David and I had gone out to an Italian restaurant the night before to celebrate my birthday by ourselves, but Eva couldn’t be there, to she wanted to do something Wednesday evening.  We had a nice dinner and Eva bought me a lovely cake.

Ready to blow out the candles on my birthday cake.

 After all the walking on Wednesday and also a fair amount of walking on Thursday, my knee was starting to ache.  Friday after my shot in my knee, it started to swell and get stiff.  It was hard to walk, and I had to take a pain reliever to sleep.  The next morning, it was still pretty sore, so we didn’t go anywhere during the day, just stayed in and tried to finish reading all the student papers, which I was successful in doing.  

Friday evening David had English Corner.  I had planned to go with him because he was taking his guitar to sing Christmas songs with them.  My knee was hurting so much, and I still felt so much stress from the papers that still needed to be graded, that I didn’t go with him.  He had a pretty good group there, and they had a lot of fun.  They gave him a nice bouquet of flowers and a fountain pen.  It was a nice evening for him, just wish I could have gone also.

David with his guitar singing at English Corner.

English  Corner students.

The group photo after English Corner.

Gifts to David from the English Corner students.

Saturday evening was a birthday party for those of us who have birthdays in December.  Tresa Wilkins and I were the celebrants.  It was a fun party and Bonita Quillin made a wonderful carrot cake for me and cheesecake for Tresa.

Zina and Tresa with our birthday cakes.

Enjoying the evening with the Jinan group for our December birthday party.

Sunday was church and then dinner afterward.  Besides Patty and Catherine, who join us regularly, Lily also asked if she could come have dinner with us.  It was nice to have all of them.  My knee is also feeling better.

I sent David to the market on Saturday while my knee was hurting and he captured these photos of the finished murals along the street.  So much nicer looking than the moldy cement of the buildings before.

He just needs a name tag and he would look like a missionary.

More of the murals.  The girl in the coat almost looks 3-D.

Last of the murals.

December 9- Ice Cream Ring and Christmas for Eva's Class

Monday and Tuesday didn’t have much to say for themselves this week, so we move on to Wednesday.  We usually go for massages on Wednesday afternoon, so after lunch, we catch the bus we need and make our way to southwest Jinan.  

The girl who usually works on David had been gone the last few times, but she was back today.  The massage starts with them pushing on our abdominal area.  As David’s masseuse started working on him, she paused to say something into her phone translation app and then played it for David.  It said, “You have lost some of your ice cream ring.”  We paused for a split second and then realized that she was telling him that he had lost some weight!  We laughed for a long time over that.  Now we refer to his midsection as his ice cream ring!

This was the second class we were singing to that day.  The girl in the middle is getting her "heart" into it.  I'm surprised that more of them don't have their peace sign up.  It just seems if you put them in front of a camera, that's what they do.

 We have been really busy this week with reading and scoring papers.  This is the week that the students had to turn in a summary of an interview that they were required to do.  They had to interview someone in English that either worked in the area of their major or else someone who has lived abroad.  It takes a LOT of time to correct these papers, even though they are just one page, but I have 275 students and David has 280 students!  We spent a lot of time in the apartment just reading them and giving a grade.  And that was in addition to the listening quiz and vocabulary quiz we had to correct!

Thursday was English Corner for David.  He had about 30 students attend.  He divided them into groups of 4 and had them do Talking Cards.  

Eva had asked us to come and participate in a party with her students.  They were having a party for the end of the semester, and she wanted us to be a part of it.  We brought the guitar along and sang some Christmas-y songs.  Then they played a game of trying to guess some English words.  Eva had David go help one team, and I helped the other.  It was fun.  

This was the first class that we sang for.  Eva is in the red shawl on the left.  More peace signs here.

 When her next class came, we just sang some songs for them, and then we had to leave.  I needed to get to the hospital for another injection in my knee, and David had some errands to run.  We had to get pictures of all the students in both classes of course.

Singing "Winter Wonderland."  

Jay and Tresa Wilkins had not brought heavy winter coats with them, and this week has been VERY cold (11ºF one night)!  They wanted us to take them to the market where we were last Saturday with Eva and help them get some good coats.  The people that we had bought from in some of the stores were very happy to have us back.  David helped Jay buy a hat like his, and I helped Tresa in finding a coat and a sweater.  She was able to negotiate a good price for her sweater, but they didn’t budge on the price for the coat.  Tresa and Jay were happy with what they paid for their coats.  Jay also found a pair of boots.

David was getting his "clicker" turned on so that we could move between the slides of the PPT. 

We did a little more shopping, because I was trying to find some gifts to take home. The shops that had been there last spring were gone, and we weren’t as successful as I had hoped.  We were getting tired, so we found our buses and went home.

Sunday is always nice to go to church and have lunch with our fellow BYU teachers and friends.  All in all, it was a good week, just not really exciting.

December 2 - Shopping, Shopping, Decorating!

David took this picture of one of the beautiful leaves on the Qianfoshan Campus.

There really isn’t much to say about Monday, so we’ll move on with the rest of the week.  Nancy Rounds wanted to shop at Carrefour after our very successful trip with Bonita the week before, so we decided that Tuesday afternoon would work for both of us.  She didn’t know what bus to take, so we took bus 16 up to the stop near the Hanlin Hotel and met her there.  We then got on bus 79 that would take us to Carrefour.

Sometimes we go to this market for food.  It used to be that people would park their trucks and vehicles on the side of the road and sell right from their vehicle.  It was pretty messy all the time.  We decided to stop there earlier this week and saw how they had cleaned it up.  They were also in the process of painting these murals on the buildings.  It looked like they had a set of templates that people could choose from for what they wanted their side of the house to look like.  

We found a lot of things that we wanted, and David and I wanted to go over to a market that has some souvenirs that we were looking for, so we invited Nancy to tag along with us.  We found some of what we were looking for, but not all.  We had a fun time and then rode a bus back to where Nancy could catch her bus home, and we could continue home.

 

Our bus ride to the Hanlin Hotel takes us by this scene that they have been working on for the last few weeks.  For some reason, they feel they need to protect these bushes and some trees during the winter, so they build this lattice work and then...

Cover them like this...

And this...  There are even some small trees that they build a little cocoon for.  Just can't seem to get a good  picture of them.

On the bus ride to the Hanlin, we were sitting behind two nice ladies that were chatting away with each other.  I noticed that as we got near to a certain stop, they were starting to get a little more animated, and they talked to the person sitting in front of them by a window that could open.  

At the next stop, the window opened, the ladies, with the help of the man by the window, handed down a sack of something, and a bagged box was handed in to them.  It was all done quite smoothly in the time that we waited at the stop.  David and I applauded them, and they looked back at us, and we all had a good laugh.

 

This little cutie caught David's eye while he was waiting for Nancy and I to shop in the nuts and dried fruits shop.

Wednesday evening, David had English Corner.  He tried out a new game with them and got some feedback.  It was a harder game than the Heads Up game.  It is similar in some ways, but with idioms instead of pictures.  We had wanted to use it in the coming week if it worked out, but it takes too much time.  We can’t seem to find a way to work out the difficulties, so we are not going to use it this week.

 

We played the Heads Up game in our classes this week.  It was SO FUN!!  The students started out slow, because the rule was you can only give clues and answers in English.  By the end of the game, their words were coming easier and the laughter was abundant.

More Heads Up.

It is a little awkward with the desk situation.  They are bolted to the floor, and so it is hard to get around in a circle, but they do the best they can.

Both David and I went to Dr. Tricia on Friday.  His right knee has started bothering him so he wanted to have the orthopedic doctor check it out. The doctor just told him that he was getting old and losing the cartilage.  He gave him some of the same pills that I am taking that seem to help with arthritis.  I hope it helps him.

After the doctor checked him out, David left so he could go have lunch with Eva.  I stayed so that I could get the shot in my knee and have lunch with Dr. Tricia.  She wanted to talk about some English words and what the difference was between them, like trousers and pants, shirt and blouse.  She sure loves learning English!

We left fairly early on Saturday so we could meet Eva and go do some shopping.  Last year, she had taken us to a shopping mall that we found a lot of great bargains at, and I wanted to go back there to look for some more bargains.  We had a fun day of shopping and made some new friends along the way.  As I was trying on some coats, people would stop and stare.  Some would ask questions and Eva would answer them.  Some asked if I was a movie star! 

 

This girl is ten years old, and she was brave enough to speak a little of her English with us.  So sweet!

After I had made my decision on what to purchase, the ladies of the shop wanted pictures with us.  The girl had her arm around my waist.  Her mother is behind her.  I think the other woman is a relative also.  

Mother and daughter with Eva in the background and me sitting.  They insisted that I sit at this point.  They also gave me two free scarves with my purchase.  They wanted to sell me some shoes, but I lifted up my foot to show them what size shoe I would need.  They laughed, because they don't carry ANYTHING that big. 

One more picture.  These little stalls of goods to sell are packed in every inch with products.  

I still had some purchases to make, and David was getting loaded down with all the bags, so we found him a place to sit with all the old people and went off to make the last purchases.

After all the shopping, we headed to one of Eva's local restaurants near her home.  They had this minced pork sandwich that was cooked like a panini.  Very tasty! 

Eva enjoying her panini and our soup.

The owners were so thrilled to have some Americans eat at their restaurant, that they had to get pictures!  He told Eva that he was going to frame it and put in on the wall at the front of the store.

After Church on Sunday, we had a great lunch and visited for a while.  David was given tickets to a concert by one of his students for Sunday evening.  She even took the time to translate the program for us so that we would know what was going on!  

 

One of the sweaters that I bought for myself.

David enjoyed buying some new "finery" for himself.  I think he's ready for Christmas.

We went to the concert and it was rather noisy, and we didn't have anyone to interpret anything for us.  David's student wasn't performing until the last act and we were kind of bored and tired of not knowing what was going on, so we left after a little more than an hour.  We stayed for this violin performance.

This is called a "Cross-talk."  One of them is the main story teller and the other person plays off of him.  If you know the kind of routines from "The Smothers Brothers." it's rather like that.

The violin performance.

They had some great graphics to go with each performance.