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.