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!