Sept 16 Food, Friends, Teaching and Springs

Pizza Hut Pizza made with Cuddlefish in the crust.  Cuddlefish makes it black.  Tasted kind of fishy...

This whole week has been so hot and muggy.  It feels great to get back in our apartment each time after we go out, so I can turn on the fan and try to cool off and dry out at the same time.  

Monday we went to our massage in the morning.  We are getting more used to the Chinese massage, and we feel like it is doing some good for our old bodies.  We were going to be a little late, so we were moving pretty fast for the hot weather to get there.  After the woman who does my massage moved to work on my head, it was still a little damp from hustling to get there that she made some exclamation, wiped off my forehead and then went to work.  

After  lunch at home, Eva picked us up and drove us to the Qianfo campus, where we will be teaching on Mondays.  We hadn’t been on that campus before, so we wanted to know where our building and classrooms were.  We met the two men who will be opening our classrooms and helping us get set up.  They almost always keep the classrooms locked, so you either have to have a key or have someone open the room for you. 

Our classrooms are on the fourth floor in a building without an elevator… again.  I will get used to it after a while, but that’s a long climb.  David and I teach just a few doors away from each other.  It will be nice to be on that campus together.  We plan to go eat lunch after we are done teaching for our four hours, then go for our massages, and then go home.  It’s going to be a long day, but it’s okay.

I was exhausted when we finally got home, so David went to Subway and picked up some sandwiches for us for supper.  We had done a lot of walking that day in the heat and humidity, so I was happy to get off my feet for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, David met with Rita, who works for the English training group that hires him to teach five or six days each month before they send a group of workers out to other countries for work.  This time it is a group of eighteen accountants. 

Wayne and Libby Clark invited us to have dinner with them Tuesday evening.  LIbby was meeting three or four of her former students and said we could come along.  We had a fun dinner, and we are now WeChat friends with Libby’s student, Ivy.  It was a fun evening.

 

A seal at Baotu Springs.  They are fun to watch.

David had his first day of teaching the Accountants class in the morning, and then David and I were invited to lunch with Tony, the man who heads up this program for teaching people English for the China construction company.  It was a nice meal, but again, I just couldn’t eat the sea cucumber.  We were finally able to excuse ourselves at 1:30 because we needed to get to the grocery store for some supplies.

 

Lunch with the boss, Tony, Mr. Ding from SDU, Zina.

Eating lunch with Patty and Rita.  They help train the accountants in other classes.

Thursday was another massage (They’re much cheaper here!), and then we had to hurry back to meet Aaron at our campus.  We needed to get train tickets for our cruise during the National Holiday, so we asked Aaron to come help us get them.  We didn’t have any trouble getting the tickets to Tianjin, but the tickets back were a scarce commodity, unless you want to get back way late at night.  We took the tickets for the latest train on Saturday night.  After we got home and checked on the information for the cruise, we don’t get back until Sunday morning!  Yikes! 

The next day, Aaron came again to help exchange the tickets for something on Sunday, but we couldn’t do it here on our campus.  The only way to exchange them was to go to the train station and change it there.  It was a relief to have Aaron be able to help us and get that change made to Sunday afternoon.  

One of the accountants the David was teaching asked him if he was “Mormon.”  David asked him how he knew about Mormons, and he said he has a friend who joined and who is going to go to BYU.  He then remarked that he doesn’t think he could give up drinking tea to join any church.

Friday afternoon was a lecture being presented from the British Ambassador to China, and David wanted to go listen to that.  She was critical of the US trade dealings, but then, the British are as guilty as some other nations are of taking advantage of the US in trade deals.  

We are tutoring three students this year on Friday afternoons.  One girl and two boys that are in fourth grade.  Michael is the son of Ms Jing, a Chinese English teacher here at SDU.  We had met Michael before when we were invited to present at a Halloween party last year.  Michael, Doris and the other boy (he doesn’t have an English name that he remembers - he even tried to spell it for me, and he couldn’t remember that either), have some fairly good skills.  Michael spent a year in the US with his mom when she was going to school there, but the other two aren’t as good as he is.  He wants to keep his English up, so he asked his mom to see if we would tutor the three of them this year.  After being in school all day long, they got a little squirrely toward the end of class.

On Saturday, we took Tresa and Jay Wilkins to see Baotu Springs and Five Dragon Park.  We had a nice time getting to know them better and also showing them the parks.  We met Eva and her daughter, Alina, at a shopping area so we could have lunch together.  We had planned to just eat a lot of the snacks that are available there, but it was sprinkling and raining a little, so we opted for a restaurant that we had eaten at when we were there with Eva last winter.  The owner remembered us, and even though he didn’t speak English, he told Eva that he remembered and welcomed us back to his restaurant.

 

One of the buildings at Bauto Springs.

Five Dragon Park.  These are the five dragons that saved the city from a drought.

I loved the matching shirts this family had.  It reads, "Family Intimate."

A little girl in a traditional costume getting professional photos.  The parents were okay that I took a picture also.

We sat and talked for some time and then decided to go get a cheese pie.  I love the cheese pies that we can get there!  It is more like a cheesecake tart, but tastes better.  Then we wandered around the area some more.

 

A group of kids noticed that David's and Jay's arms were hairy.  They wanted to touch the hair on their arms.  They let them and then David showed them pictures of our family.

The mother was in awe of the family picture also.

Lunch with Tresa and Jay Wilkins, David, Zina, and Alina.  Eva took the picture.

This was our lunch. The restaurant is called "Dancing Vegetable Rolls."  When you walk into the restaurant, they hand you a silver bowl with handles and  you go to a wall where there are meats, veggies and tofu all cut up.  You choose the foods that you want in your roll and take it to the counter where they weigh it.  You can also add an egg, either chicken or duck, and they cook it, put it in the wrap and bring it to you on a tray.  It was delicious!  We will go again!

I was starting to get pretty tired, so David and I went back to our apartment while Eva and Alina showed Jay and Tresa the Black Tiger Springs, which was right across the road from where we were.  

Alina with her mom, Eva.  Life is much easier in China for us with friends like these!

The parents wanted to take a photo of their son with the Americans.  The boy wasn't going to have any part of a picture with these strangers.  Jay was trying to coax him over, but he flatly refused. 

Since the little boy wouldn't cooperate, the adults all wanted pictures with us.  They would take a picture and then replace some of the people with others so that they all had a chance to be in the photo with these Americans.  

We were up bright and early on Sunday morning, because we needed to be over at the bus stop by Jay and Tresa’s campus.  We needed to show them the way to church, so we met them there and got them on the bus with us. 

Church and the meal after were great.  We stayed for a long time after.  The other new teachers wanted us to answer some questions for them, so we stayed until almost 4 p.m.  David had to be back to teach the Accountant’s class again tonight.  He’s glad that he only has one more night of teaching.  He’s a little tired.

 

We saw the world's smallest watermelons in a store.  I assume you just pop them in your mouth, but I wasn't about to pay 500 Yuan just to try them!