David & Zina Cox: December 16- 36 Hours of Birthday Celebration, Gifts from Students

This is the birthday cake that Eva bought for me. It was a nice sponge cake with fruit filling, whipped cream frosting, almonds all around the sides and more fruit on the top.

A lot of our time this week has been taken up with reading and grading an interview summary that we gave to our students. It was due last week, so we have felt swamped trying to get them all read this week. Here are a few samples of the students’ other writings that kept us smiling.

On a report about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the student called “Sitting Bull”, “Sitting Cow.” I think that is how it translated from the Chinese. I wonder how he would have felt about that translation…
From a student’s report about a Chinese student who is living in England, “Men in England lose their hair because of the water, so I use conditioner on my hair.” !!! Wonder where he got that?

At least some of the papers kept us awake enough to finish them!

Our week was pretty usual but there were a few other interesting things. I was riding the bus on Friday morning to go to the appointment with the orthopedic doctor. I take two different buses to get there. After I got on the second bus, a woman behind me kept peering around at me. I turned and smiled to her and then turned back. She peered around at me again, so I looked back again, and this time she said in halting English, “Where are you from?” I told her America and said in Chinese, “I am a teacher at Shandong University.” I smiled at her and then turned around again.

She waited a few moments, then peered around at me again, and when I looked at her, she started speaking in Chinese to me, as if I would understand her. Then she put her fingers on her wrist like she was taking a pulse and gave me a card. I took it, even though it was all in Chinese. After a moment’s thought, I dug out one of my BYU cards with my information on it and gave it to her just as we were both rising to get off of the bus. She stood there and tried to decipher the words on it, but then it was time to get off, and I didn’t see her again after I got off.

This was the card that the woman on the bus gave to me for medical care. I began to wonder if I looked sick or something...

After I had seen the orthopedic doctor and had the injection in my knee, Dr. Tricia and I were sitting there talking, so I got out the card, that the lady had given to me, and asked her to tell me what it said. She quickly read it and then said, you don’t need this, and started to put it in her pocket. I asked her what it said, and she just said, “I’ll tell you later.” I think she was hoping that i would forget to ask her.

After lunch, as she was taking me out to the taxi that she had ordered for me to take me home, I asked her again about the card. She explained that it was from a private clinic, and the woman was trying to get business for her clinic. She was rather disgusted about it and kept saying, but you don’t need that. It was rather cute the way she is so protective of me.

When we were shopping with Tresa and Jay Wilkins last week, Tresa tried on this coat. I thought the design was gorgeous!

This was our last week of classes with our students. We start doing oral final interviews this week. It was kind of bittersweet, because it means that we will be going home soon, but also that we will miss some of these kids that we have grown to enjoy and love. One girl that really struggles with English, brought me a gift. It was a print of Confucius that her boyfriend’s brother had made. I was very touched, because she thought it was so special to give to me. Confucius is considered the epitome of a great teacher, and I think that is what she wanted to convey to me through her gift.

This is the print of Confucius that Emily gave me.

David and I both carry two cell phones. One for China and one for the US. I sometimes carry both of them. On Monday morning, I was hurrying to get my coat on so we could get to the bus stop and go to Qianfoshan Campus. I had my US phone in my hand, and it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. I have a really good shatterproof cover on it, but it landed on a corner and didn’t seem to be harmed by the fall to the tile floor in our apartment. During the day, everytime I tried to get that phone to hook up to WiFi (that’s how I use it here in China) it wouldn’t get on. I chalked it up to the fact that the internet in China is less than wonderful. Late that afternoon when we arrived home, and my phone still wouldn’t get on the internet, it became evident that the fall that morning had damaged it.

Tuesday morning, after my first class, my class monitor, John, had come to ask me a question. I noticed that he had an iPhone, so I asked him if he knew a store where I could go to get it repaired, or see if it could be repaired. His friend was right next to him, and he seemed to know more than John did. They talked about it, and we discussed a time when we could go see about getting it fixed, if it could be fixed.

Wednesday afternoon, I went to meet John at the store. I knew the approximate area, but not the exact store. As I neared the area that I thought it would be, I couldn’t see a store for Apple. I stopped a young couple walking on the street and showed them the store on the map that John had sent me. The young man looked at it, jerked his head up, looked all around, and then pointed across the street, where sure enough, there was a big white apple glowing on the side of the store.

After I crossed the street and started toward the store, John met me and we went in. He had been in there earlier to find out who to talk to about my phone. After we approached the man, he told John that there would be a 4-5 hour wait!! I didn’t have that kind of time, but the man did say that there were other authorized locations that weren’t as busy as this main store was.

John got the location, and we headed out the door. He wondered if we wanted to catch a bus or walk. I asked how far it was. He said it was about a kilometer. I thought, I can walk a kilometer, so we started out walking. Then we walked, and we walked, and we walked, and we walked. I was beginning to think he didn’t really know where the store was. He finally stopped to ask a building guard, and the man indicated a little further down the street.

We found the repair place. It wasn’t near as busy, but it did have several people waiting. John found out how much it was going to take to possibly fix the problem. Just to look at it was going to be 199 RMB ($28 US), and they would run a diagnostic on it to see if it could be fixed. If they couldn’t fix it, I was out the 199 RMB. If they could, then it would be fixed for 199 RMB.

After about 10 minutes, one of the workers came out to me and told John that the VPN was causing problems with diagnosing the problem. I wasn’t sure how that could be, but told them they could remove the program if necessary. (I knew how to get it back on after they were done.) After a half hour, they brought me the phone, and it connected up to the WiFi just fine. I was rather happy to have it up and working again, as I had a lot of Church stuff on there that I needed to connect with people here in China.

This was available on the menu of a restaurant we went to last week. YUM!

John and I rode the bus back to campus. I was to meet David, Eva, and the Wilkins at a restaurant not far from the bus stop for my birthday dinner. David and I had gone out to an Italian restaurant the night before to celebrate my birthday by ourselves, but Eva couldn’t be there, to she wanted to do something Wednesday evening. We had a nice dinner and Eva bought me a lovely cake.

Ready to blow out the candles on my birthday cake.

After all the walking on Wednesday and also a fair amount of walking on Thursday, my knee was starting to ache. Friday after my shot in my knee, it started to swell and get stiff. It was hard to walk, and I had to take a pain reliever to sleep. The next morning, it was still pretty sore, so we didn’t go anywhere during the day, just stayed in and tried to finish reading all the student papers, which I was successful in doing.

Friday evening David had English Corner. I had planned to go with him because he was taking his guitar to sing Christmas songs with them. My knee was hurting so much, and I still felt so much stress from the papers that still needed to be graded, that I didn’t go with him. He had a pretty good group there, and they had a lot of fun. They gave him a nice bouquet of flowers and a fountain pen. It was a nice evening for him, just wish I could have gone also.

David with his guitar singing at English Corner.

English Corner students.

The group photo after English Corner.

Gifts to David from the English Corner students.

Saturday evening was a birthday party for those of us who have birthdays in December. Tresa Wilkins and I were the celebrants. It was a fun party and Bonita Quillin made a wonderful carrot cake for me and cheesecake for Tresa.

Zina and Tresa with our birthday cakes.

Enjoying the evening with the Jinan group for our December birthday party.

Sunday was church and then dinner afterward. Besides Patty and Catherine, who join us regularly, Lily also asked if she could come have dinner with us. It was nice to have all of them. My knee is also feeling better.

I sent David to the market on Saturday while my knee was hurting and he captured these photos of the finished murals along the street. So much nicer looking than the moldy cement of the buildings before.