December 9- Ice Cream Ring and Christmas for Eva's Class

Monday and Tuesday didn’t have much to say for themselves this week, so we move on to Wednesday.  We usually go for massages on Wednesday afternoon, so after lunch, we catch the bus we need and make our way to southwest Jinan.  

The girl who usually works on David had been gone the last few times, but she was back today.  The massage starts with them pushing on our abdominal area.  As David’s masseuse started working on him, she paused to say something into her phone translation app and then played it for David.  It said, “You have lost some of your ice cream ring.”  We paused for a split second and then realized that she was telling him that he had lost some weight!  We laughed for a long time over that.  Now we refer to his midsection as his ice cream ring!

This was the second class we were singing to that day.  The girl in the middle is getting her "heart" into it.  I'm surprised that more of them don't have their peace sign up.  It just seems if you put them in front of a camera, that's what they do.

 We have been really busy this week with reading and scoring papers.  This is the week that the students had to turn in a summary of an interview that they were required to do.  They had to interview someone in English that either worked in the area of their major or else someone who has lived abroad.  It takes a LOT of time to correct these papers, even though they are just one page, but I have 275 students and David has 280 students!  We spent a lot of time in the apartment just reading them and giving a grade.  And that was in addition to the listening quiz and vocabulary quiz we had to correct!

Thursday was English Corner for David.  He had about 30 students attend.  He divided them into groups of 4 and had them do Talking Cards.  

Eva had asked us to come and participate in a party with her students.  They were having a party for the end of the semester, and she wanted us to be a part of it.  We brought the guitar along and sang some Christmas-y songs.  Then they played a game of trying to guess some English words.  Eva had David go help one team, and I helped the other.  It was fun.  

This was the first class that we sang for.  Eva is in the red shawl on the left.  More peace signs here.

 When her next class came, we just sang some songs for them, and then we had to leave.  I needed to get to the hospital for another injection in my knee, and David had some errands to run.  We had to get pictures of all the students in both classes of course.

Singing "Winter Wonderland."  

Jay and Tresa Wilkins had not brought heavy winter coats with them, and this week has been VERY cold (11ºF one night)!  They wanted us to take them to the market where we were last Saturday with Eva and help them get some good coats.  The people that we had bought from in some of the stores were very happy to have us back.  David helped Jay buy a hat like his, and I helped Tresa in finding a coat and a sweater.  She was able to negotiate a good price for her sweater, but they didn’t budge on the price for the coat.  Tresa and Jay were happy with what they paid for their coats.  Jay also found a pair of boots.

David was getting his "clicker" turned on so that we could move between the slides of the PPT. 

We did a little more shopping, because I was trying to find some gifts to take home. The shops that had been there last spring were gone, and we weren’t as successful as I had hoped.  We were getting tired, so we found our buses and went home.

Sunday is always nice to go to church and have lunch with our fellow BYU teachers and friends.  All in all, it was a good week, just not really exciting.