December 23 - First Week of Final Exams, Parties, and Christmas Cookies

Some of the dozens of Christmas cookies that I spent all of Saturday making.

More of the cookies.

It is always so very rewarding when we do final exams with our students!  We have to do a five-minute interview with each student, so with our large classes, that takes two weeks to get it all accomplished.  David had to even add an afternoon session for one of his classes, because it is so large.  We have been given a few lovely gifts and lots of compliments on our teaching.  (At least we hope it all isn’t just to get a good grade…)

We wanted to go shopping for some more items on Tuesday afternoon at the outlet mall on the west side of Jinan.  On Sunday, Nancy Rounds was talking about getting Aaron to help her, but he didn’t seem to have any free time, so we said that she could tag along with us.  Nancy was able to find several things that she wanted, but we were not successful.  We also wanted to check out where the church was that we will be singing at on Christmas Eve, especially so that Nancy would know and could get there.

Tuesday evening, David held one last English corner the students.  It was a fun time for them.

As the semester nears to the end, you find students that set up these "study stations."  I'm not exactly sure why they do it but some of the reasons might be:  closer to their classrooms, their dorm room is too cold or noisy, they can't find a seat in the library, etc.  This girl has claimed her area near the window on the landing between the stairs in the building we teach in the most.  She is able to just leave her stuff here and it will be there when she comes back.  They will stand there and memorize and repeat over and over and over again.

 While we were at our massage on Wednesday, Carol Wang was there, and we mentioned that we were having a hard time finding the Lego knock-off toys that we were looking for.  She started looking on her phone while we were there but didn’t find anything that pleased us.  The next day, Carol went to several toy shops and even a whole-sale shop to look for us.  That was so sweet of her to put so much effort into our little problem.  She was able to find something that will be good enough.  What we were looking for was last year’s models, and they were not to be found at all this year.  Sad.

If you can't find a seat on the bus, bring your own!

Friday was a very busy day for us.  We had to make a trip to Carrefour to get some last items to get us through the next week before we go home.  We hurried through the store getting all the items as quickly as we could.  Then we got up to the check-out lines.  They were ALL extremely long lines, anywhere from six to ten people long!  We have never seen it like that, but then, we seldom shop there in the morning, and I think that is when most Chinese try to shop.  They try to get the freshest eggs and vegetables at that time.  It took as 20-25 minutes to get checked out.  

We had a list of other items that we wanted to get at some other places, but David also wanted to get back to the campus to observe an activity that Eva was doing in her class that day.  I told him to head on back to the campus, and I would go to Baotu Springs Park and get the other items we wanted.  Whenever you want real touristy items, go to the parks for them.  David had been searching for some porcelain birds and hadn’t been able to find them anywhere else.  I remembered the gift shop at Baotu Springs had a lot of cute items, so we wanted to go check there for the birds. 

I made it to Baotu Springs, found the birds there, plus some other fun items and then headed back to campus.  We had planned to have lunch with Eva and her daughter, Alina, after Eva was done teaching her class.  Instead of walking all the way back to our apartment, I waited by the canteen because I had arrived back at the campus just in time for lunch.  

Lunch on Friday with Eva and Alina.

When David and Eva finally came, they had decided not to eat in the canteen, but to eat at a restaurant outside of campus.  We picked up Alina on our way out of campus.  We went to the restaurant where we had been for my birthday party and had a nice meal.  We had ordered too much food and got really full.  We stayed there talking so long that we were the only people left in the place.  It was fun.  

After that, we had to catch a bus over to the Hongjialou campus to meet Kang Ming in the Foreign Affairs Office.  The university had a gift for us that we needed to pick up from there.  We only stayed for a few minutes, because we had to hurry home for our tutoring students.  

David got a text from Eva as we were walking to the bus, asking if we could pick up some papers at the Graduate Students’ Office.  David headed back to get the papers, while I went to catch a bus home and hopefully beat our tutoring students there.  I got on a bus 16.  As it was driving past the south gate of the campus, I saw David almost out of the gate.  He got on a bus 1.  He beat me home.  The reason he beat me home was because my bus passed by an elementary school that was just letting out.  Parents and kids and scooters all over the place! 

Our three tutoring kids, Michael, Doris, and Stone came at four p.m.  We had wanted to make Christmas cookies with them.  David sang some Christmas songs and read them a story while I hurried and got all the supplies gathered together.  They had fun and loved their Christmas cookies that we sent home with them. 

Celebrating Tresa's birthday on Friday evening.  

We had a few minutes to rest, before we had to go out to the north gate and meet Eva, Alina, and Jay and Tresa Wilkins.  It was Tresa’s birthday, and we wanted to go celebrate eating at Lydia’s, an Italian restaurant, that is close to our campus.  We had a fun time.

When we walked into the restaurant, I was greeted by several of the girls from one of my classes.  Their professor had invited them out for a dinner and they had chosen that restaurant also.  It was fun to see them.

 I spent the majority of Saturday baking and frosting Christmas cookies.  I thought I would need a good amount of cookies, because I was bringing some to the Foreign teachers’ Holiday party that night and also for our dinner together on Sunday.  It takes a long time to bake a batch of cookies that normally makes about six to eight dozen cookies in a small toaster oven.  The rest of the time was spent decorating them.  I had about 15 minutes left to get dressed before Eva and the Wilkins came to go to the party together. 

At the SDU foreign teachers party, the Vice President of the University speaking.  It was an important enough party that we had three important officials there.

David and Zina singing at the SDU Foreign Teachers Party.

Our dinner companions.  They came from China, South Africa, Scotland, Netherlands/UK and the US.

 Eva decided to drive us all there in her car, which was nice, except the traffic to get out of the campus was a nightmare!  That took more time than it did to drive to the hotel where we were having the party.  The party was fun.  David had suggested that we sing some songs, so he brought his guitar along, and he and I sang some songs, with people joining-in on the songs they knew.  We had teachers there from the US, England, Scotland, Russia, Iran, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, and a few other places that I don’t remember now.  We had some of the big wigs from the campus there also.  All in all, it was a very enjoyable time together

Looking at the other two tables at the party.

One of the dishes at the SDU party.  Anyone up for some cooked larvae?

One of the larvae up close.  I did try it, but it was really spicy, so the one small taste was all I had!

Sunday morning was a rush for me to get everything together and ready for our dinner after church.  David and I both read different scriptures about Christ’s birth.  Our group sang “Angels We Have Heard on High.”  Afterwards was a delicious dinner.  The Kellie’s from Weihai, Jurgita and her husband, Huang Songsong, came from Zouping, Catherine, Patty and Summer (all Chinese friends) joined us also.

After our Christmas dinner, we practiced singing for our performance at the JingSiLu Church on Christmas Eve.

All semester long, we have been trying to get together with Eva’s friend, Yi Bing.  She is Bob’s mother, the young man that we tutored, along with Anna, last year.  They wanted to take us out for dinner tonight, so we met them at Cafe 56, it’s near our campus. Alina came along with Bob’s mom and dad, and Eva.  We had a great time talking with them.  What was really neat was the connections we made with them as we told our engagement story, and how it mirrored their story in a lot of ways.  It was a very fun evening.

Dinner with Eva, Zina, David, Alina, Yi Bing and her husband.