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.