Frustration, Shopping, Hospital Visit, Easter Dinner, and More Flowers

A beautiful bush with the prettiest purple flowers.  We find it strange that the flowers even bloom all along the branches.

Still haven't found a name for this plant.

Wisteria is in bloom.

The flowers keep on blooming on campus.  The path that we walk to the West Gate of the campus has an area with lilacs and another flower that I don’t know.  One day we walk by and the blooms are not quite out yet, but the next day BOOM!  They are all out and the heavenly scent just makes your heart happy!

David had a very frustrating day on Wednesday.  His first class is a class that seems to not care to be there.  They don’t really pay attention and they don’t do well on quizzes and put very little effort into their performances.  The second class is a joy to be around.  They do some of the best performances and they put effort into the class.  They laugh and are really engaged in learning.  After we had lunch with Eva and I left for my class, David was trying to get help from Eva and another Chinese English teacher to get things set up so that he can use the bike rental system they have here.  It would speed up little errands that have to be done. 

He had to go to the bank, get his WeChat account set up with the bank, and then try to get the app ready for using the bikes.  You have to put down a deposit of 99 RMB and then it is 1 Yuan to use the bike for up to an hour.  In order to set up the WeChat account with his bank account, he needed his passport – not the picture of his passport that he carries around all the time- but the actual passport.  Eva explained to the guy what David wanted and she left while he went back to the apartment to get his passport.

After getting back to the bank with the passport, it seemed like it took forever to get it all set up.  He finally thought that it was all ready go, so he goes out to a bike, tries to scan the QR code, and his phone isn’t working right.  We bought the cheapest phones we could when we came to China, thinking it wouldn’t matter, well it does.  There is such a thing as too cheap. 

At some point, he got the QR code to work, but he didn’t know how exactly it would unlock the bike.  He started pushing some buttons on the phone and suddenly it pops up with, “Do you want to end this ride?”  Then the app wouldn’t let him push any other buttons except, “Yes.”  He finally had to give up for the afternoon because he had other things to do.

This was one of the things on the menu at the canteen on Friday.  French fries with squid tentacles and spicy spices.  The tentacles were kind of crispy, but I couldn't handle how spicy they were.

Friday afternoon, one of the teachers that we have lunch with was able to help him finish getting things set up to rent a bike.  It still wasn't not working all that well, so he asked some students to help him with his phone and the bike rental showed David some other things about WeChat, so all is good now.  It’s so much to do things when they aren’t in your native language and you have very few clues about the language of the country you are living in.

We finished out the Reader’s Theaters in class.  Some were better than others.  My Friday classes are so fun because they just put so much into their performances.  Whenever they get overly dramatic, the students really love it and applaud and cheer.  Some groups though…  we just had to endure. 

The scene below David's classroom window.

On Wednesday morning, I went to see Dr. Tricia.  I had forgotten to get potassium pills to bring with me, and only had a few here.  If I don’t have potassium to go along with the magnesium, I start to have problems with muscle cramps.  I was starting to have some problems.  We had gone to a local pharmacy to see if we could get them as a supplement, but the largest size they can sell you without a prescription, is 10.5 mg.  I usually take 99 mg.  I told Dr. Tricia about my problem and she said she would get me a prescription for them in a larger size, but suggested that I also have a blood test to see if I was low on the electrolytes and test my thyroid to see if it was low also. 

I arrived at the hospital and went to the area that she said she would be in, but I didn’t know what room to go to.  I looked around me for a minute and then decided to bring up Dr. Tricia’s name in Chinese that she had sent me and show it to the guard.  He looked at it, called someone over that was working at the check-in machines, and said something to him.  I think the guard thought that he might be able to speak some English to me, but he couldn’t.  The guard took one more look at me, and then motioned me to follow him.  He led me down a hall and then around the corner and there was Dr. Tricia’s clinic office! 

Dr. Tricia couldn’t leave her office at the time, so she was able to find a woman to come to the office and take me around to the places I needed to go.  After paying for the procedures I would have done that day, the next stop was to the phlebotomy area.  There were set up about 6 windows of people that do nothing all day but take blood samples.  We didn’t have to wait long for my number to come up.  The woman that was to take my blood asked it I spoke Chinese.  Since I couldn’t, she was able to tell me that the results would be ready at 3 p.m. that afternoon.  That’s all I needed to know.  I also have to say how great she was!  It has been years since I have had someone be able to find my veins on the first poke, not blow through the vein, and then hardly even leave a mark so that I don’t turn black and blue afterward.

Next stop was the imaging department.  Dr. Tricia wanted a sonogram of my thyroid to make sure it was okay.  We had to make an appointment and it looked like it was going to be about 11 or so before my number would come up.  They were on number 160 and my number was 190.  The woman took me back to Dr. Tricia’s office, where she had a breakfast waiting for me.  She had brought me a container of milk and some “cookies,” because she had heard that American’s liked a “sweet” breakfast.  The cookies really weren’t that sweet and that was okay with me.  I would rather have bread and eggs anyway, but I dutifully ate two of the cookies (rather dry and crumbly, they were).  When I had finished my breakfast, it was time for me to go back to the waiting room for the sonogram, so the woman accompanied me there.

We still had to wait for about 20 minutes or so before my number came up.  I went down the hall to the room number that the sign said to go to.  I think the technicians were warned about an American being the next one.  They indicated to have me lay down on the bed, and then to scoot down some because I needed to be where they could get to my thyroid.  The technician did the scan and then indicated I was finished, so I opened my eyes and the first thing I see, is the technician’s assistance taking my picture.  It’s not everyday you have an American come for tests in your department…

I needed to get back to campus to meet David and Eva for lunch and get my stuff to go to my painting class, so the woman guided me back to the entrance of the building.  I had David bring my art supplies to the canteen, because I just barely got back in time to meet David and Eva for lunch.

We came home from class on Thursday to a very wet floor in the bathroom.  Our toilet has been having problems with not shutting off after we use it, so we must stand there to make sure it will shut off. We had waited long enough before we left for class that it seemed like it was going to turn off.  Well, it stopped running in the toilet, but then the float never told it to stop putting water in.  It had overflowed from the top of the tank.  We got it stopped and cleaned up.  Soon after the maid came to clean, she came running in to get me because the toilet had done the same thing again.  David went in and got it stopped, but we knew we needed to have it repaired right away, so he texted Mr. Liu about it.  Mr. Liu told him to go to the west desk in the Foreign Students Administration building and tell the duty guard.  That’s all fine and good if you can speak Chinese, but not if you don’t speak Chinese, because the duty guard ONLY speaks Chinese!  David went over anyway and tried to get someone to help.  The duty guard sent a worker up and we tried to tell him the problem, but once again, the worker only speaks Chinese, and we don’t. 

Our neighbor below us is a Chinese man that now has Canadian citizenship and speaks English quite well, so we asked him to come up to help us communicate with the worker.  Raymond and the maid explained it to him, but the worker just said something to the effect, “Well, if it happens again, call me.”  Sometimes China is frustrating.

Closer view of this bush.

Saturday, I had planned to go with Sue, one of the BYU teachers at the other university, to show her one of the markets we had gone to.  David and I had to do some shopping for groceries first and then he planned to ride with us and help make sure we found the market.  The bus route changed the last time I went there with Kayce and Deneice and we had the fiasco of trying to get to the market after the bus dumped us off at the bus station at the end of his shift. 

We were successful in arriving at the market.  David got off the bus, walked to the other side of the road and got on a bus that would take him back to our campus.  Sue and I walked through a lot of the market, stopped and shopped and bought a few things, then found our way back to the bus stop.  Sue had also never been to the “baking store,” so we got off the bus at the right stop for that and walked to the store.  It was like seeing a kid in a candy shop, because Sue was seeing all the things that she needed.  She was very excited.  Then we walked to a bus stop and I caught the bus I needed, and she caught the bus she needed.

Sunday lunch was very fun.  We had a special lunch for Easter Sunday.  We had four different religious views; LDS, Jewish, Muslim and Chinese (I’m not sure she had a religion, but I know she is good and kind.)  We also had several nationalities; American, Australian, Vietnamese, India Indian, and Chinese. 

Our truly international Easter dinner.

After lunch, David, Kayce and I went over to the hospital to visit Deneice.  Yes, she is still in the hospital.  Her pneumonia was very bad, and the doctors don’t want her leaving the hospital until her lungs are mostly clear.  She will have another CAT scan on Monday, to see if she can go home yet.  We are all fervently praying for her.

 

The view from Deneice's hospital window.  That Buddah is huge!

This evening, I had one of my students that I taught four years ago come over for supper with one of the girls on her basketball team.  She had tried to get some of the other students to come, but they all had other things to do.  I made BBQ pork, sweet carrots, apples and some chocolate cookies.  It was so fun to visit with her and find out how she is doing and get to know her friend. 

When they left, Bob and Anna came over to get some help with a letter they needed to write to Duke University to accept the invitation to come to their school.  So many little things to learn about English to do well.