November 25 - Guasha, Thanksgiving, and 100 Flower Park

There was no explanation of what these stone statues were for, but they were near the opening to the children's play area.

Mondays always seem long for us.  We have to be up early, ride the bus to the other Qianfoshan Campus, teach for four hours, get to the canteen to eat lunch before it closes down for the afternoon, and then we wait around for about an hour before we can go get our massages.  Depending upon how many people are ahead of us at the massage place, we usually get home about an hour before we can eat supper at the canteen.  We really aren’t crazy about having both lunch and supper at the canteen, so we usually pick-up some subway sandwiches or have a pizza delivered.  We still have students work to correct and enter grades, so we don’t like to take the extra time that would be needed to go back out to the canteen either.

David had English Corner on Tuesday evening.  Since Thanksgiving was this week, he wanted to do something with a Thanksgiving theme.  We asked our children for some ideas, and they came through big-time!  We had two different game ideas that were easy and fun.  The first was a set of Thanksgiving riddles.  As the students sat in groups at tables, they had to figure out what answer matched what riddle.  There were prizes for those who answered them all first, most did!  Some of them got really competitive about it, it was serious business!

The other idea was from a game called “Headbands”.  You have a card with a picture on it, and the students have to give one word clues to help the student that is holding the card up to their head to guess what the picture was.  We call it “Heads-Up” for our students.  The English Corner was very successful and even went about a half hour past the time, because they were all having so much fun.  Now the only problem is, what do you do to top that next week?

There are still some trees with color to them.

Our friend, Carol, who helped us get set up with the massage place, talked us into trying a procedure called Guasha.  I thought we were just going to be doing a moxi combustion thing like they did on my left leg after my fall, but it turned out to be a whole big thing.  Guasha is scraping of the skin (like A-stem that physical therapists do) to get an even deeper massage and stimulate the metabolism.  It was very painful!  They then put on some herbs on the areas they scraped and added heat to it.  I don’t know how long we laid there with the heat and the herbs on us, but it seemed like it was about a half hour.  By the time we left the massage place it was about 5 p.m..  We were sore and hurting.  We had some serious bruising going on.  Most of it has cleared up fairly quickly, but I still have tender spots on my arms from the experience.  I don’t think we will be doing that again.  Some people here do it every week.  Carol said that after the third time it doesn’t hurt anymore!

This is what it looked like.  I'm not going to show you the bruises.  Inside of the box that David has on was the moxi combustion.

I don't know what trees these are, but they park keepers for some reason feel that they need to be painted from top to bottom with a white chalky paint.  

China does not celebrate Thanksgiving as Americans do, but we made plans to go to the Hanlin Hotel buffet like we did last year.  They had turkey there last year, and we were hoping that they would again this year.  Several of the BYU teachers, Carol, another teacher from SDNU, Christian (from Florida) and Aaron joined us there.  We were a little disappointed that there wasn’t turkey (Aaron said that they had it on Halloween and didn’t want to serve it again), but we had a delicious meal and good company to make up for it.

Thursday Thanksgiving Dinner group at the Hanlin Hotel.  From the left, Jay Wilkins, Christian from Florida, Tresa Wilkins, David, Zina, Aaron, Nancy Rounds, Bonita Quillin, and Carol.

On Friday, I headed back to the hospital for more treatment on my knee, but the orthopedic doctor wasn’t available, so Dr. Tricia and I just talked, and she got me some more medicine and, after lunch, sent me home in a taxi.  David got copies for next week’s classes and had lunch with Eva at the canteen.  After I got back we went grocery shopping and got back just in time for our tutoring students to come.

I don't know why this walkway was decorated like this, but it sure was pretty.

Jay and Tresa Wilkins wanted to go to Hundred Flower Park with us Saturday.  We met them at the gate and walked in the park.  There was so much going on!!  Dancing, singing, people jogging, playing various musical instruments and children playing.  We walked all the way around the park on the main path, and when we were coming back to the area that we had first come in at, we decided to go up on the raised “square” area.  It all looked so fun.  We stopped and watched several groups.

A mother and her two sons let us take their picture.  The older brother was enjoying pushing the carriage with his brother.

The men sat around and played poker, but the women were playing this other game.  It was interesting to watch, but I didn't catch on how to play it.  The woman with her hand by her face in the white hair was the winner.

As we got to the square, you could hear all kinds of music going on from different sections of this area.  I decided to capture a little bit of it on film.  I loved how the little lady in the purple coat was just dancing to a tune in her head.

I love the look on their faces. 

Tresa was invited to dance by this man.  She seemed to be having a great time.  I think he enjoyed it also.

This dad was dancing with his little daughter.  It was so cute!

As we walked around, we saw a couple of choir singing together.  I don't know if they rehearsed for anything in particular, but they were enjoying their singing.  After they finished this song, the head man came over and shook my hand.  He seemed very pleased that I was enjoying the music they were making.

The woman in the brown coat was singing and the woman in the pink coat just came up and took the microphone from her and started singing.  She handed it back, but it just seem strange to have that happen.  I guess they do this all the time.

This woman was doing a more traditional style of Chinese singing, the one where it seems more screeching than singing, so I just got her picture and not the music.  It hurts my ears.

No better place to be than with the one I love!

After the park, we had planned to have lunch at Pizza Hut, but it was packed and had a waiting line almost out the door.  We decided to try KFC.  Not as long a wait, and still fairly good food. 

When we finished eating, we went to RT Mart to do a little shopping.  The Wilkin’s needed us to show them where some good milk was.  Most of the time the milk here is either soy milk or the packaged shelf stable milk.  That wasn’t going to work for what Tresa needed it for, so we showed them the area where the best brands of real milk are at.  Then we hurried and finished our shopping and went home in time for a “virtual” tithing settlement with our Branch President.

All ready for Thanksgiving Dinner on Sunday.  David, Aaron, Patty, Deneice and John Kinghorn.

 Sunday, we had planned to have Thanksgiving Dinner after church.  Bonita and Sue both made chicken (turkey is really hard to find in China, and the one we had last year was tough and stringy), Tresa made mashed potatoes, Nancy made stuffing and sweet potatoes, and Deneice brought veggies.  We had a teacher from Brazil, Annie, who is the girlfriend of Christian that was at our Thursday dinner, and a Spanish teacher from SDNU, Samuel also come.  Annie made an apple pie (her first time making a pie), and it was excellent.  I made two pumpkin pies and Bonita made a pecan pie and a lemon meringue pie.  We also had three extra visitors, Daniel Kelly and wife, Jamie, and baby, Lucy, from Weifang.  He wanted to visit Jinan, because he has to come back in two weeks to take the GMAT test at our university, and wanted to find out where to go.  

It was a great dinner and even better company.  No one seemed to want to leave, but we all finally did.  The Kelley’s went to the Hongjialou Campus with the Wilkin’s because that is the campus where the test will be administered.  Jay and Tresa were going to show them around on the campus and let them stay at their apartment until they needed to leave for the train back to Weifang.  I love Thanksgiving, and if I can’t spend it with family, I am so grateful to spend it with the wonderful people I have the privilege to know here!

It wouldn't be a proper Thanksgiving without the pies!  I even made whipped cream, which John thanked me profusely for bringing.

November 18 - Dinner with Malan's, Essay Contest, Shopping with Bonita

Saw this unusual bird outside our apartment on the way to classes.  We think he is in the woodpecker family because of the unusual crest.

We were really busy on  Monday between classes, our massages, and David doing English Corner.  Helena, who is studying for the IELS test on Saturday, came over while David was gone and we went over some tips and some things that might help her get the score she needs in order to go to Bath, England for further study in literature.  

After our classes on Tuesday, David and I went to the hospital so that he could get a chest CT Scan.  Last April, David had a chest CT scan that showed a “spot” on his lungs.  This was a follow-up scan to see if it had changed at all.  The good news is that it hadn’t changed at all in the seven months since that last scan, so it is probably nothing to worry about. 

The Malan’s had heard of all that Dr. Tricia had done for the BYU teachers for the last ten to twelve years or so, and wanted to meet her and thank her for all she had done.  Since we were going there for the CT scan, the Malan’s and the Kinghorn’s met us at the hospital, and we all went to Dr. Tricia’s office, where they presented her with a nice bouquet of flowers.  She was so pleased!  

John and Deneice Kinghorn, Zina, Dr. Tricia, David, Kim and Alan Malan with the flowers for Dr. Tricia.

 Dinner was a fun affair.  We have some real story tellers in our group, Jay Wilkins, Daniel Quillin and Alan Malan.  We had so much fun laughing at their stories. The food was good also. We invited Aaron Tran to eat dinner with us.  He has been a valuable asset to the teachers here, because of his ability to speak Chinese, and he can order things for us also.

Dinner with the BYU group.

Wednesday and Thursday were uneventful.  Friday I had to go back to the hospital to get more treatment for my knee.  While I was there I also picked up a copy of David’s CT scan. I had lunch with Dr. Tricia, and then she wanted to nap, I followed her to a small room with some beds in it, and we lay down for awhile.  She actually went to sleep. When two women came into the room shortly before 2 p.m., we got up and got the images for David that he needed, and I went home.

Jay and Tresa Wilkins wanted to take the trip to Beijing with the other BYU teachers, but Jay had a class to teach on Friday afternoon that prevented him from going.  David offered to teach it for him, since it was an oral English class, and the school agreed. He had a good time with the class and then came home to help teach our tutor students.  

Thursday, David received a text from Ya Wen (she went to Zhengzhou with us from the International Office), asking if we would judge an essay writing contest.  We decided we could do it. They sent us the essays by email on Friday evening. At first, they sent us a zipfile that we couldn’t open because it was from QQ, China’s main email, and we don’t have QQ accounts… it’s all in Chinese.  We sent a message back, and later they sent a file that we could open. There were about 30 essays in it! We started to panic that we wouldn’t be able to get it done in time. They wanted it done by Sunday evening, but we didn’t want to do any of it on Sunday, so our deadline was on Saturday evening.  

We started going through the essays, and then through the criteria for judging each one, and it just seemed like it was going to take forever.  We started to panic a little because we had plans for Saturday that would take away from time to work on this. By the time we went to bed, we had about 6 essays done.  We had to stop, we were just too tired to finish.

Saturday morning, we started right after breakfast.  I had put in some clothes to wash and we planned to leave about 10 a.m. and meet Bonita Quillin to take her shopping at Carrefour.  She had never been and was looking for some items that I was pretty sure they would carry there that she hadn’t found anywhere else.  The washing machine kept wigging out, and it took about an hour longer to get the clothes washed so I could hang them out, but we got more essays judged!  

It was almost an hour later than we had planned to meet Bonita, but we met and went to Carrefour.  We shopped for over an hour, and she was successful in buying almost everything on her list! David and I had wanted to go to a different shopping area and invited Bonita along.  She is a fun person to shop with, and she wanted to try the wraps at the Dancing Vegetables restaurant also. We rode the bus over there and found the restaurant. It was busy as usual.  I think a lot of people like it. As soon as we walked in, one of the cooks started waving frantically at us! She was so happy to see us! When we went to get the bowl to put the vegetables in, the owner was handing them out and let us know he was happy to see us again.  Of course, the wraps were as good as they had been the last time. We walked around a little more and bought a few other things. Finally, David and I decided we had better get back home and finish those essays.

Lunch at the Dancing Vegetables Restaurant.

.We got back at the essays and by 6 p.m., we had them all finished.  At first, we didn’t think we wanted to send them back to the International office until the deadline Sunday evening, but in the end, we just decided to get it over with and send them back.  All done, don’t have to think about it anymore.

We were almost late getting to church on Sunday.  We had to wait for a bus that took forever to come.  Lots of buses from other routes came, but not the bus #16 that we needed.  We walked in with a minute to spare. 

Lily was in Jinan and wanted to have dinner with all of us.  She also had her nephew and his girlfriend that came.  They ate, but didn’t stay very long.  We also had to leave early to get back to our apartment for a Branch Council Meeting, so when we left, Lily got a taxi for us.  It was nice to get home so quickly, and to see Lily again.  Sundays are good.

The heat was turned on this week.  November 15 is the official day that the government says the radiators can be turned on.  Yay for heat!

November 11 - Back to the doctor, Red Leaf Valley

This is what happens when I don't go with David!  All these women gathered around him!

We had our usual classes on Monday and then went to get our massages after lunch.  We had to get back quickly, because David needed to be ready to teach what we thought was going to be the last Engineers class.  They sent him a message on Tuesday morning during class to ask if he could teach again on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. The teacher they had lined up for those days came down sick.  He told them he could on Tuesday, but we already had plans for Wednesday.  He is glad to be finished with this round of teaching for this engineers group.  They wanted him to do something different, but after taking time to plan some other lessons, they told him to go back and do the lessons that he has always done.  It has been a little frustrating for him.

Between my two classes on Wednesday, a young woman approached me.  She was good enough in her English skills that she could skip taking the class.  She was really happy about it at first, and then she started to get nervous about taking the IELTS test.  She wants to go study in Bath, England and needs a score of 7 in order to be ready for that.  Her last score on it was 5.5.  As the test is getting closer, she wanted to practice speaking and listening with me to get ready for the next test on November 17.  I told her I was free that evening, if she wanted to come over and do that.  We had a nice visit, and then we set up one more visit for the next week to help her again.  She painted me a picture to show her appreciation.

I thought it was a pretty good water color for someone who hasn't had any lessons.  This is the painting that Helena gave me.

Shandong Airlines asked us to judge a speech contest, like the one we did last year on Thursday afternoon.  We had everything set to go, but David got a message from them during class that said they had to postpone the contest. The manager had cut his hand badly, and was going to need surgery.  They didn’t know when they would be rescheduling, they will let us know.

That actually gave David time to sit down and look over future lesson plans.  He discovered that we needed to consolidate a lesson with another one to make certain that we got them all in.  It was good that he had that time to do it.

Friday was the day to go back to the hospital and have another check-up on my knee.  It had improved a very tiny bit, but not enough to feel like it was going to make it the rest of the semester. This time the orthopedic doctor did a little bit more pressing on my knee and then tells me that I also have ligament damage from when I fell on October 8! So now, besides the injections of the fluid in my knee to help cushion it, I also needed to have some “shock wave” therapy on it.  

The colorful leaves were gone from Red Leaf Valley, but the view is still great.

At the top of Wan Ye tower.

View from the top of Wan Ye.

I had arrived at the hospital a little before 10 a.m., and when I got there, Dr. Tricia had me go down to wait in her office on the 2nd floor because she had just gotten a new patient and had to take care of that. I waited about 45 minutes for her.  Thank goodness I had pretty good wifi or I would have been EXTREMELY bored!  After Dr. Tricia got down there, then she ordered some lunch, and we waited for the orthopedic doctor, Dr Li, to come.  She didn’t want to eat until after he had come, so when the food came, she put it aside until after he left.

My shock wave appointment was for 2 p.m., so we had time to eat a leisurely lunch and talk.  The shock wave was rather painful.  I will probably have to have a few more treatments to get the ligament all better.  Needless to say, I am not looking forward to them.  They are effective though, so I will endure it.

That night, my knee had swollen up, and I was in a lot of pain.  I went to lay down on the bed for a while, and when I went to get up, I couldn’t lift my leg off the bed.  The pain was very intense.  I took a prescription naproxen that David had brought with him, and then I had to have David help me lift my leg, so I could get into bed.  It was still hurting in the morning, but as the day went on, it did improve a lot.

Chrysanthemums at Red Leaf Valley.

I had planned to go shopping at Carrefour with Bonita Quillin when I was finished at the hospital.  There are some items that she is looking for that, I have been able to buy there, so she wanted to know where to find them.  She has never been to Carrefour.  It is a French based grocery chain store and has quite a good supply of foreign food products.  However, after the shock wave treatment I didn’t feel like going because of the pain, so we decided we would do it some other time.

David and I had our tutoring with our three young rascals Friday afternoon.  They were a little better behaved from last week.  Doris, the only girl, got a little upset when we were having a little competition game and Michael seemed to keep getting in her way.   She couldn’t see the computer screen, so she sat back and refused to play anymore.  We had warned Michael several times to sit back, but the heat of competition is strong in these three, and he kept forgetting. 

The gate to Red Leaf Valley. The writing at the top is in the ancient Chinese characters.  It says, "beautiful mountains and water."  It reads from right to left.

Last Sunday, we had been talking about going to Red Leaf Valley to see the colors.  Several of the teachers said they were interested, so we talked to Eva and had her get information about the costs and where to meet the tour bus.  I didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to go, because you have to climb a lot of stairs at that place.  At first, Aaron and Patty said they could go, but they found out they both had to work, which which caused us to lose our Chinese speakers.  David put out a call to all his class monitors to see if there was a student that would be willing to go with our group, if we paid their way.  By Wednesday, we had a girl, Emma, who said she would.  They set up the tickets and a guide for the tour bus, so they were all set.

The group that went to Red Leaf Valley.  David, Jay Wilkins, Nancy Rounds in the back.  Daniel and Bonita  Quillin, Tresa Wilkins and Emma in the middle row.  Kim and Alan Malan and Samuel, a Spanish teacher at SDNU.   If you take one look at the stairs going up to the gate, you will know why I didn't want to go with my sore knee!

David left at 6:45 a.m. to meet Emma at the north gate of campus.  They met all the rest at the Hanlin Hotel, and then headed down the road to get the tour bus.  It all went smoothly that day, especially with Emma along to help order food, talk with the tour company, and explain some interesting facts.  Everyone said they enjoyed the day.

My wonderful David. 

Alan Malan after the visit to Wan Ye Tower.

David inside a tree.

David and Emma by the tree houses.  You can rent these tree houses to stay in.  Not sure the cost and I don't know what comforts they would actually have, but it sound like a fun idea.

When the trees are all leafed out, you can hardly find these tree houses,  You have to know where to look for them.

The walls as you go down the road.

I, on the other hand, HAD to make a trip to the store by myself, because David would not be back in time to go, and there were some things that we needed for Sunday.  Walking wasn’t so bad, and I felt like I should do some walking to help  my leg heal.  I made it to the bus stop, to the store, back to the bus, and back to our apartment, all without David’s help.  And, my leg was okay to do what I did.

Saturday evening was the Adult Session of District Conference.  David was just getting back from Red Leaf Valley, so I picked up a Subway sandwich for both of us and met at the Hanlin to meet the others there.  It was a nice conference and a good  time had with all of those that came. 

Sunday we were off to church and then dinner afterward with all of us.  Alan and Kim Malan, the Deputy Directors, of the BYU China Teachers program, our direct supervisors, are here in Jinan, meeting with the universities where BYU teachers are at.  After lunch, David and I met with them at their hotel room, to talk over concerns that we had about our work and the university here.  It has been a nice day.

November 4 - Party, Engineers Class, English Corner, Shopping, Choirs

I would love to have bought this China plate!  It fits my decorating scheme, but not at 11000 RMB (almost $1600 US!) 

Our Monday was a pretty usual Monday for us. We had classes on Qianfoshan Campus, had lunch there and then went to our massage.  We stopped at Subway for sandwiches for supper.

We noticed some men working on this camera today.  I don't remember if we had seen it before.  It points toward the gate to our apartment building, takes pictures of everyone that comes through it.

We had invited the others from our church group to come have a pizza party and play games on Tuesday.  We tried to order pizza from our usual pizza guy, but we weren’t getting a response from him. It was getting too close to the time that the others were going to be here so we were pretty nervous.  Aaron had come early, and it was a good thing that he did.  He did a search for a different pizza place.  Our problem with using the ordering app is that it’s all in Chinese.  Our other pizza guy reads some English and has a menu in English.  We have never met him.  We order by WeChat text, and he sends it. 

The pizza arrived about the same time that all our guests did.  Besides Aaron, the Wilkins, Quillins, and Kinghorns all came.  It was a houseful, but we had enough room to play a few games and had a fun time talking.  They all had to leave by 8 p.m. to catch a ride home on the bus.  It was a great time!

I couldn't help getting a picture of this vehicle loaded down and the woman riding on top.

Thursday was David’s first night teaching a new engineers class of English.  He was told that these guys had better skills than the other classes he has done, and he should use the material from two books that the big boss, Tony, had given him.  He struggled to put together a lesson that would not be totally boring and would provide what Tony thought this group needed.  The textbooks had a lot of Chinglish!  We were reading though some of the material and just shaking our heads.  

After struggling, but successfully pulling off what Tony thought the engineers needed, he and his assistant, Doreen, came back to him the next day and said to go back to his original lessons that he has taught before.  Their skills are not as great as Tony said and after studying all day in the books, they needed something fun to help them better their skills.  That is a relief for David so that he can use his original lessons.  Less prep, but still a lot of work.

I have wanted to get a picture of some electrical wiring.  I have seen worse, but this is the time that I remembered to photograph it.  

David had planned to do an English Corner with his students on Thursday evening.  He had told the engineers group that he couldn’t start on Thursday, but there was a miscommunication, and they started the engineer’s class on Thursday.  I volunteered to take over the English Corner.  Because he is doing it in the evenings now, the students are more free to come.  We had about 25 students to start, so we divided them up into six groups. As we kept going, more and more students kept coming.  I think we ended up with about forty students.  I got most of them started on an activity called, “Talking Cards.”  With a deck of cards and a list of questions that coordinate to each card, the students respond to the question on the card.

David suggested that I start some of the groups learning a game called, “Sevens.”  After teaching one group, and then talking for a while, I moved on to another group to teach them.  As we sat there learning the game, we were waiting for the next person to deal the cards, and I had the idea to ask them a question.  I asked, “What is the farthest from your home that you have traveled?”  It really sparked some great conversations.  We ended up going about fifteen minutes overtime.  It was great fun.

We had our three nine-year-olds for tutoring on Friday.  They were a little more squirrely than usual.  It was hard to get anything done.  David texted the mom of one of the boys, and she came up when it was time to leave.  We had to hurry off to dinner because David had to go teach the engineers, and after we came down the stairs, the mom was still giving the kids a lecture on how to behave in our tutoring class.  They do know some English, but not really enough to understand us when we need to discipline them.  I hope next Friday is better.

We had planned to go shopping with some of the other BYU teachers and Aaron on Saturday.  I wasn’t really looking for anything, but I wanted to be a part of the group.  David tagged along, because I was going.  When we started out, we were pretty sure of the market that we were going to, but not 100 percent.  It turned out that I was right as to the market we were all meeting at, so that was a relief.  

Aaron, Bonita, David, and I wandered around looking for the items that Bonita was looking for.  We found some of them, but not all.  I found a few items that I had been looking for at other markets, so it was successful.  

Aaron's Vietnamese friend and her husband in their shop.

 Aaron was taking us to lunch at a sandwich shop that his Vietnamese friend and her Chinese husband had recently opened.  We were meeting Patty there.  David had made plans to go watch a choir competition that was happening on our campus, so he went home, while I stayed with Aaron and Bonita.  

The sandwich was really good.  Because of the history that Vietnam has with France (it was once controlled by them), the bread she used was a baguette.  Fresh made that morning, the meat freshly made and fresh vegetables.  I think we may go back there, but we’ll need Aaron with us, because is was in an area of Jinan that I had never been in before.  We finished our sandwiches, took pictures, and said good-bye.

Of course the group photo is ALL important!

This sculpture is outside of the tea market.

 Patty came with us.  Bonita was in search of tea sets.  It just so happens that there is a market, not too far from where the sandwich shop was located, that is totally dedicated to anything and everything that has to do with tea!  Special tea tables, all kinds of tea sets, tools for making the perfect tea, EVERYTHING!!

We shopped at several places, but the prices were pretty high, at least higher than we were willing to consider.  Then we went to one shop that had some beautiful bowls and some beautiful tea sets, and some beautiful plates!  AND at a price that I was willing to pay! I saw a set of bowls that were too tempting to pass up. Patty did a little bit of bargaining for us and got an even BETTER price!  Bonita decided to buy a set of the bowls also.  We shopped a little more and had a great time, but decided that it was time to head home.  We parted ways at the bus stop, where I caught a different bus home.

Meanwhile, David had headed back to campus to watch the chorus competition.  They have beautiful costumes, lighting effects, and okay voices.  Most of these young people have not had any training in music or vocals, and it shows.  They still did a great job, just could have wished for a little more of them on tune.