Day 9 - Home Sweet Home for 10 Months

A much quieter day today.  David had a meeting with his department at 9 a.m. and then he went to his classroom and learned how to run the equipment.  It is all in Chinese, so he will need a helper who speaks Chinese!  I left for my meeting just as he got back and a woman named Lily gave me my class list for my first class of Juniors and also what lessons I should be covering during the semester.  We both worked on our talks.  Later in the afternoon, we walked to some shops and bought a microphone for the group computer for Sunday, some cardstock paper and some pears.  I made pizza for supper, trying to learn how to use this toaster oven.  It took a little bit to learn what heat I needed, but we had a great tasting pizza.  Then we worked on our talks some more.  Now to get busy on the lessons for next week.

Here is what our apartment looks like:

Living room.  Anyone recognize the people on the wall?

Can you guess where this is?  Yes, we are about the only ones in the complex with a tub. .. a big selling point for this unit,  We also have a western style toilet.  I'll get pics of a Chinese toilet sometime... You'll love it!

Water heater in the bathroom.  We plug it in a few minutes before we want to use it.

Sink in the bathroom.  

David in the office.  The door leads to the small balcony where we hang our clothes to dry.  No clothes dryer but the sun and the air.  A little concerned for how it will work in the winter, but we'll deal with that when it comes.

Our bedroom.  The bed was extremely hard, so we were able to go back over to the old apartment and get the foam that was on that bed and it made it a lot better.

The wardrobe in the bedroom.  I was really frustrated because the of inability to organize out clothes better, so we bought some baskets and that has helped a lot.  This was taken before the baskets.  You can see the kitchen on the other side of the hall.

Second bedroom, or office.  David loves having his picture taken!!

Our tiny kitchen.  The sink does not have hot water, so I boil it in the tea kettle and wash the dishes with that, and sterilize them, too.  The yellow topped thing is the clothes washer.  I felt so proud of myself for figuring out how to do it when all the instructions are in Chinese!

The kitchen from the doorway.  Yes, the frig is as small as it looks....  The stove is just a one burner deal.  Not conducive to making great meals, but we get by.  There is a toaster oven and a microwave that are centuries old too, but they work.  The table will fold up and can be put away a little bit.  David has to bring in a chair from the office when we are ready to eat.

Living room.  We have a TV.  It has two English channels.  One is news the other is movies.  Notice the water cooler.  We do NOT drink from the tap around here.  Not even the Chinese do if they can help it.  

View of the door to outside.  There are two doors and two locks.  Don't know if they want to keep us in or keep others out.  We leave the door open and feel safe in the other room though because of it.  

Down the hallway to the other rooms.  Bathroom is at the end of the hall.  The light switch is on the outside, so if David wanted to be mean, he could....   Kitchen to the right, bedroom and office to the left.

It is a cozy little place and we have all that we really need here.  Learning to live with less is okay.

Day 8 or How I Became a Chinese Movie Star

This morning we had planned to go shopping with Daniel, David’s co-teacher, to show him where to get an adapter for his electronics.  We made a quick trip there and stopped at the UniMart (compare to a 7-11) and grabbed a few things.  As we approached our apartment building, three men approached us.  One man kind of spoke English and asked if we would be interested in having our picture taken.  Because of the language barrier, it took a while to figure out what it was they wanted for sure, but after we called our friend, Eva, it all came out that they were making a commercial and needed an Anglo couple for the film.  The guy in charge of the production was a friend of the manager of our apartment building, and I suspect that when the movie maker mentioned that he needed an American couple for his commercial, he thought of us.  Eva talked to the manager to find out where we were going to be making the commercial and we also wanted to know if the University would have a problem with it if we did.  She said there was no problem there, so we decided it was okay to go with these men and make the commercial. 

They bought us lunch at a KFC on the way out of town and we drove to the factory in a neighboring county, the China National Heavy Truck Company.  They had set up what looked like a business meeting and brought in some of the engineers and we sat around and had to look like we were cooperating with them and learning about their trucks and talking with them.  Two of the engineers could speak a little English and there was a young woman that they had brought in from somewhere in the plant that had a better command of it than all the others and she would interpret the instructions from the director to us.  When they were done with all the filming, they took group pictures and said they would email the pictures to us.  Then they drove us home, paid us 1500 RMB (about $240), and said they might call us again.  So that is how we became Chinese movie stars!!

This was the view from the outside of the Chinese National Heavy Truck Company.  

President Britton, our Branch President called us tonight and officially asked David to be the Group Leader for our Jinan Church Group and asked me to be the Relief Society Group Leader.  We just happen to be the two youngest of our Group, so it is a little intimidating to me.  I’ll do my best though.

China Day 7 - Foreign Expert Passport

Day 7

This morning was a wait around for the University morning.  We got up and ready to go by 8 a.m. in case they got our paper work done and we could drive with Eva to the police station that is in charge of all these things to take care of it.  She was hoping to get an early start and hopefully beat all the lines, but when she got here about 9 and started making sure that all the papers were there, she found that David’s medical record was not among the papers.  They had a copy of it, but not the original.  Because they had a copy, it meant that the original was in Dr. Hu’s office. (Yes, Daniel, it is pronounced “Dr. Who.”). 

We had to wait for the office to find it, so we decided to go look for a vegetable market that was closer to the campus than the one that Eva had taken us to on the first day here.  There are little markets and farmers selling things all over the city, but some are better to go to than others, according to Eva.  We found two small ones that sold good vegetables, fruits and meats that were of good quality.  We got back to Eva’s car and we were getting ready to go see something else to pass the time, when Eva got a call from Dr. Hu and he had found David’s medical record.  How glad we all were.  He met us at the gate and we were off to the police station.

It is strange sometimes how the Lord works.  The lost papers put us behind schedule by about two hours.  One of the things that we wanted to avoid was a long wait time.  We got to the police station, got our number and we were immediately called up to the desk.  Within a half hour, we had all the papers we need signed and we were given our “Foreign Expert Passport” that allows us to stay in the country.  It was all so easy!   We were saved the hassle of waiting in the office for a long time because of the delay.  The man behind the desk showed us the stack of papers that had come in that morning, about 12-15 applications were in that stack, and it had all happened before we got there. 

It is hard to believe that we have been here a week.  Things are going well and we are settling in.  

Day 6 China - Beware Red Things in Chinese Food

Day 6

David met with his supervisor for the Graduate Students this morning.  One of his co-teachers had arrived late last night, so Ren Shafong showed them both their classrooms and where they would be teaching.  David will be teaching Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings from 8 to noon.  Then she invited us and the new teacher to lunch at a nice restaurant.  There was a cabbage dish that we were all served and I innocently took a bit, not knowing there were EXTREMELY HOT PEPPERS IN IT!!!  I was trying not to gasp for air and cough, so I quickly grabbed some water and drank to quell the heat.  Zowie!! It was hot!!!  After that, I just quietly pushed the peppers to the side and finished the dish.  Lesson here… beware of red things in authentic Chinese dishes!

Eating lunch with our chopsticks.  Hey, we are getting pretty good!!!

The co-teacher that arrived is a young man, named Daniel, from San Diego, CA.  We had planned to go shopping at the RT-Mart (compare to Costco or Sam’s Club), so we invited him along because of all the things that he found he needed in his apartment once he got here.  We figured out the bus to ride to get there and decided that after we got done, we would just get a taxi to help take all the stuff home.  We had quite a load and after several taxis passed us by, one pulled over close to us and told us, through gestures, no taxi would take us because of all our stuff.  We were deciding what to do, whether to have David take the big drying rack and walk home while all the rest of the stuff would go with Daniel and I in the taxi or maybe try and take it all back on the bus anyway, but just then, a little old man driving a motorcycle truck (not sure what else to call it), stopped and said he would help us, but could only take two people and our stuff.  We were okay with that because David knew the way to walk and we were not going to put Daniel out on his own, so we loaded up all the stuff and climbed on the back on the board that the man set across the back.  I showed him the card that we had made up with the address of the University campus on it and he said he would take us.  After a while, he stopped and rearranged things in the back and had me climb in to be closer to him to tell him where to go once we got on the campus.  He was a sweet old guy and we paid him more than a taxi driver would have been paid because it was worth it to us to not have to haul all that stuff back. 

Daniel and I riding in the back of the motorcycle truck.  I know I am wearing socks with sandels.  I got a blister on my foot and do not want dirt getting in it.  I would rather not be wearing the socks either, but I don't want infection.

I got this image off the web so you could see more of what it looked like.

What an adventure we had today.  Even Daniel said it was something to write home about!

Days 4 & 5 First Skype Church and Scavenging the Old Apartments

Sunday a girl called, Lily, who was a friend of some of the past BYU China Teachers, help us get to the Hanlin Hotel for Church.  We meet in one of the rooms of the teachers there.  Yes, we go dressed in proper Church attire!  Their rooms are nice and luxurious compared to what we have, plus someone comes in once a week to clean for them.  It was sad to think of but, we are glad that we have something this nice, it could be worse!

Church is broadcast over Skype for us.  We listen to one hour of Sacrament Meeting and since we are a “larger group” (eleven of us), and we have Priesthood, we get to have the Sacrament blessed and passed to us.  The second hour was for Relief Society and one of the Presidency had the lesson.  When we listen on Skype, most of the time we have the microphone on mute so that the sounds in the rooms don’t come through and disturb the speakers or the prayers.  During the lesson, we can unmute the computer and add to it, much as we would if we were all together in one room.  Sometimes the feed is not very clear, but we still get the gist of most of it and you can still feel the Spirit. 

After the meetings were over, we sat down in one of the other hotel rooms that BYU teachers are in and had a potluck dinner.  It was interesting that we had so much variety!  A couple of main dishes, fruit, a salad and a dessert!  The best part was spending the time together and talking over our experiences so far in China and getting to know each other better.  Then it was back on the bus and a ½ hour ride and then a 25 minute walk to the apartment. 

Monday was kind of a wait around day.  We were expecting that we would be going to the police station to get our resident permits, but that didn’t happen.  We decided along with the Stan and Nancy Pace, the BYU teachers that we live closest to, that we needed to go back to the other apartment that they were supposed to be in and get more of the stuff that was supposed to be saved for us from last year’s BYU teachers.  Our angel, Eva, came for us about 2:45 (they had set up a time of 2:30 to meet there with the manager) and we got what we felt was needed.  Don’t know what will happen to the few odds and ends that we did leave there.  Guess I can’t worry about it now.  David also picked up the bike that we had bought so he could use it to get to classes and back and rode it to our place.  Eva was scared for him and we watched for him all along the route, but he made it safely back, through all that crazy traffic before we did. 

Eva took me to the office and I picked up my teaching materials and then she showed me where my classes will be held.  I also found out that I have one class that are Sophomores and the other 6 classes are freshmen.  The freshmen are at military training right now and won’t be back until the first week of October.  So for a month I will be teaching only 2 hours a week and then I will have a full schedule of 14 hours.  I have 4 hours on Tuesday, 6 hours on Wednesday and 4 hours on Friday.  Sounds great to me, but I know it will be work and I have time to prepare for it.  

China Day 3 - Guitar and DaMing Lake

Boats on DaMing Lake

Power walking group at the lake.

China – Day 3

Our University liaison, Eva was back again today to help us.  We had left the apartment to meet with another couple that came to Jinan with us and saw Eva as we were about to leave campus.  We weren’t sure that she would come to help us on Saturday, but she was there.  We had no success getting David’s iphone unlocked to use in China, so we had to go buy two cell phones.  Some of the apps are in Chinese, but since you can choose a language on there, most are in English.  

Then, we saw a place that sells guitars and since David planned to get a cheap guitar here rather than transport his expensive one from home, we found a guitar store and bought a nice one for about $100.  It has a nice sound and they threw in a strap, capo and case for that price.  We felt like it was a good deal.  As David had to try out the guitar, he was strumming and playing some of our favorites.  At one point, we had a little crowd gathered around on the outside to hear us.  The guys in the store loved to hear us sing and play and one of them wanted to give us the gift of this nice little electronic tuner because he liked us so much.  It was a fun time on the streets of Jinan. 

Eva helped us get the rest of the teacher things moved over from the apartment that we had left yesterday.  Then we picked up Stan and Nancy Pace and she drove us to DaMing Lake here in the center of Jinan.  We spent an hour or so walking the free part of the park and it was beautiful.  Notice the pictures!  We plan to sometime take a ride on the boats that are there.   The large building was built during the Yuan Dynasty and a famous Chinese poet lived there for a long time.    

At the park, we were standing in a square admiring the lake, when all of the sudden a guy leading a rather large group of people that were walking fast and two by two motioning for us to stand back.  We did when we saw what was about to descend upon us.  They were not menacing in anyway, they were exercising!  They probably walk this square every night and some of them had fun each time they walked past at first saying “Hello” to us and we said “Ni Hao” back to them.  They thought it was great that we were responding to them.  As you can see, I got their picture.

We did some shopping on our own today without the assistance of Eva and we are starting to feel a little more confident.  We saw some steamed buns that people were buying and Nancy wanted to know what was in them.  We asked some young people near us.  They didn’t know the words for pork and shrimp, so I brought out my little cue cards and pointed to the words that I thought they were saying (it was pork) and then we had to find the word for shrimp!  It was a fun adventure and I am sure if they write in their journals as I do in my, this incident will be recorded by them as well as me!

Supper turned out to be KFC and that was another fun experience in ordering.  They have a plastic covered menu at the counter.  I was able to point to what we wanted (they only had pepsi to go with a combo meal and we wanted some of the black current juice that they also offered for a little price more), so I was able to make our choices.  There was a problem with what we chose in that if was going to take 10 minutes to cook.  They wanted to let us make a choice of either ready-made chicken sandwiches or to wait for it.  The girl was totally frustrated in not being able to tell us that and not finding someone who worked there that would talk to us, she took out a napkin, wrote “10 min” on it.  I totally got it and we were so hungry by this point that we just took the ready sandwiches.  Communication may be frustrating at times, but if you are patient, you can do it!  Kind of a metaphor for life…

Shandong University - Central Campus where we will be teaching.  I have one class in this building and I am hoping it is not on the top floor unless they have an elevator in this building.  One of our colleagues on another campus has to climb 7 flights of stairs to get to her classrooms.

Pagoda at DaMing Lake.  

Visitor Center at DaMing Lake

Part of the lake.

Building that was on the east side of the lake.

All the little children that are not potty trained wear these pants that are open on the bottom.  Not sure what they do when they are just tiny and have to go, but this is what they do here.

The new gymnasium on our campus.  Haven't been inside yet, but they say it is huge with a lot of amenities.

Interesting tree in the park at DaMing Lake.

China Days 1&2

Dear Everyone!

We finally have internet to let you all know that we have survived our first two days in China!  We were super tired after 24+ hours of travel.  We found the bed in our apartment fairly comfortable.  At first, we were okay temperature wise, it is very humid here and very warm, but then the electricity went off and we sweltered for what was left of the night.  We came to find out that you have to pay for your electricity in advance.  We are not quite sure why it came on when we were first there, maybe there was enough left from the people who had used it before to run for a few hours, but we had to buy some more before the end of the next day. 

The next morning we had to be ready to meet our liaison from the college at 9 a.m.  We were glad that we had thought to bring some breakfast bars with us so we had something to eat.  Eva (aka Zhuang Xinhong) was there right at 9 and she was going to take us to the local police station so that we could get registered and there for be in the country legally.  When we got to the police station, we were informed that the person who handles those things would not be in today and we would have to wait until tomorrow.  After that, Eva showed us where to go and how to go shopping for food and other things we would need.  She went above and beyond the call of duty by staying with us the entire day.  (Some of the other couples only had a few hours of their liaison’s time, glad that wasn’t us!)  We had lunch at a KFC and then for dinner, after she showed us the campus, we went to a REAL Chinese restaurant.  The menus were in pictures and Chinese characters, so Eva read off everything to us.  It was actually a Suzhan style restaurant where ALL of the food is spicy!  She helped us choose dishes that were less spicy (thank goodness!) and then we had a nice meal.  Different regions of China are known for different styles of cooking. 

Maybe we were rather naïve, but we didn’t take a lot of cash money with us but we were also told that we could use our ATM cards in the airport and get Yuan there.  I’m not sure if we were told the wrong information or if we just didn’t find the right place to do it, but we could not get them to accept our cards and they did not have an ATM machine that we saw.  (Of course we were working on little or no sleep at the time and the people directing us to places in the airport were only concerned that we got on the correct next flight or to a hotel), but we left Shanghai before we could find an ATM and there were none in the airport in Jinan.  The people that were there to meet us from the university were mostly interested in getting us to our apartments and then getting home themselves for the night.  So the next day, we also set out to find a way to get money, but all the banks we went to turned us down.  Eva lent us some and the next day the university forwarded us some to be paid back when we get our first pay from them.   So, we are set for a little while now. 

We were supposed to be living in a complex for foreign teachers and have another couple from the BYU China Teacher Program living below us, but their university decided to have them live on campus (and in much poorer conditions than the apartment would have been.  We were concerned about where they were and Eva was able to find out where they were located.  The apartment they were supposed to go to contained a lot of things that had been set up and saved for those in the program (cell phones, printers, cooking equipment, linens, etc.), so we got the manager for the apartment to let us in to get some of the stuff.  We were hurriedly trying to get everything we thought was most useful out of the apartment and into ours, when the manager (doesn’t speak any English at all) told Eva that there was an apartment on our campus that was available.  We were first told months ago that there were no apartments large enough on campus for a couple, only singles, so that is why we were being sent to the complex that we were sent to.  We went to look at this apartment.  It was a little smaller than the one that was set up for us originally, but it still had two bedrooms and enough room for us and it would also make it easier for them to register us on the campus than off the campus, so with all things considered (the traffic for the commute to the campus probably being the biggest one) we decided to move to the one on the campus that we are teaching at.  That process took most of the day today.  If you EVER see the traffic in China, you will thoroughly understand why we decided to forgo the commute to campus every day!  I will try to get a video of it sometime.   I am learning not to scream while riding in the car-…