March 17 - English Salon, Pi Day, DaMing Lake, Botanical Gardens

The first week of readers theaters is over.  I’m not sure why, but it seemed that our 8:00 classes hardly did more than just read the words.  Very little acting or props, just read the words.  The 10:00 classes were all much better, and we had a lot of fun watching them.  Maybe 8:00 was just a little too early for them. 

 

This girl made a beautiful poster to show the queen's palace in the readers theater play, "The Golden Fish."

During the readers theater of "Lenka's Little House" the students put up this slide in place of the father embracing his daughter.  So funny! 

The guy in the pink cape was the fairy in "The Three Wishes."  Their costumes are so creative.

In the play, "Boots and His Brothers,"  they have to try and chop down a magic tree that only gets thicker as the ax cuts into it.  I loved how funny this one was!

And here is the demise of the magic tree cut down with the magic ax.

After our massages on Tuesday, we decided to go over to the Wilkin’s and see how Jay was doing.  He had surgery on his nose last Friday and was able to get out of the hospital on Tuesday.  He seems to be doing well and planned to go back to teaching on Wednesday.  We got some groceries at InZone after we left their place.

Dr. Yang is David’s Chinese oncologist, and he asked us to come be a part of the English Salon that he has set up at Qilu Hospital.  Salon is an old term that used to mean a room in a home for a gathering of people, usually to discuss topics that they shared an interest in.  The topic at this salon is English. 

 

This is me with my former student, Joy.

Pictures after the English Salon.  I don't know who the woman on the far left is, but next to her is Ling Ling and Dr. Yang on the far right.

Dr. Yang’s head nurse, Ms.Ling Ling, and his main assistant, Dr. Liu, came in her car to pick us up.  We arrived plenty early, so they took us to the private dining area for doctors and nurses at the hospital.  It was interesting getting to this area, because the cafeteria is in the deep basement of the hospital.  There were big heavy doors that looked as if this area was once used for a bomb shelter.  As the hospital has been built onto, you can only get to certain places by certain elevators. 

They gave us some fruit and a chocolate dessert while we waited for the time for the salon to start.  I think there were about 30 people that had come to listen to us.  We told them about our home, talked about idioms, sang for them, and answered questions.  It turned out one of the girls that was there had been in my class five years ago as a sophomore!  Joy was her English name, and she had come to see me!  It was so sweet!  We  had a great time.  They had bought some pizza to eat after the salon was over, but we ended up taking most of it home, because we couldn’t eat that late at night if we wanted to sleep.

Thursday was Pi Day.  We had seen a sign at McDonald’s that was advertising Pi day.  I couldn’t read the Chinese, but I know when I see “3.14” with the yuan sign and then a number after that, I knew they were having a special for this day!  We decided that we would go there for supper after our massages on Thursday. We rarely go to McDonald’s, but we wanted to celebrate Pi Day!  The pies were Taro.  We tried to order the pineapple ones, but the language barrier was a little too high to get that through.

 

As we were coming home Thursday, I had noticed these three men trying to fit on this little electric bike.  They made it!  We had to wait for another bus, so I had my camera ready to catch a picture of them laughing away as they went down the sidewalk. 

The Wilkin’s and David wanted to go to DaMing Lake on Friday, so we all went together.  They don’t have classes on Friday and neither do we.  My knee has been feeling pretty good with the treatments I have been getting at the massage place, so I decided I wanted to go along with them.  We were looking for the first flowers of Spring.  I rested whenever I felt that I needed to, but as we were going back to our apartment for lunch, my knee was giving me a lot of pain.  I guess I overdid it.  I didn’t go anywhere the rest of the day.

 

We decided to go for a boat ride at DaMing Lake and so we bought our tickets and as we were getting on, this little girl came up to us and said, "Hello."  Most little kids won't do that.  Then, the whole family got on the boat with us  This little girl just loved David!

David wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens on Saturday, and so did the Wilkin’s, so they all went, and I stayed home and looked at the pictures David sent to me.  There weren’t as many blossoms as they had hoped to find there, but they had a nice time.

 

Botanical Garden.

Boats in the pond at the botanical garden.

Top of a hill near the botanical garden.

Botanical garden again.

Ferris wheel at the botanical garden.

This is the entrance to the botanical garden.

There weren't a lot of blossoms, but this magnolia tree was ready for Spring!

The engineers group that David was teaching last semester, asked him to help them for a few hours, so he went there Thursday to their opening ceremony for a short presentation.  They hadn’t been able to find another native English speaker to hire, so they asked David if he could do a little more for them.  He agreed to Saturday evening and then a couple of evenings next week.

 

The engineers group.  Notice the only one with the hat.  All the rest have hair...

David speaking at the opening ceremony of the engineers training.

Sunday we went to church as usual.  The Kelly’s from Weifang were here visiting with us.  They have a cute little one and a half year old girl that made church more interesting with her cuteness.  

After lunch, we went to the hospital to visit with Dr. Tricia for a little while.  She is helping to do some evaluations on foreign medical students and wanted to make certain that her English on the paper was clear for the students.  It’s nice that they give them an evaluation in English, even though that may not be their first language either.  Chinese is still harder for them.  Dr. Tricia always gets a taxi for us to go home.  Sure makes the day easier.