Day 106 - To Market, To Market...

I spent the majority of the day on school work after having a video chat with Caleb, Bethany and Aleeyah this morning.  David and I did meet Eva and Jane at the Teacher Restaurant for lunch and talked over a lot of things.  Then David showed them the place where he can now do square dancing with his students out of the wind and the cold.  They didn’t know the place existed before he showed them.  The students know all those kinds of places though…

Eva finished with her meeting early and wanted to know if we would like to go to a market place here in Ji’nan that we could get some clothes and household things.  We had gone to this place with Wayne and Libby Clarke before, but we were still new to China then and the “bargaining” way, so we didn’t get much then.  However, today we bought a fair amount. 

First, we decided to get David a rolling carry-on bag because his other one gets really heavy when you have to do a lot of standing around.  We were able to get what we thought was a good price on one, but Eva thought we should have held out for a better price.  I was on a phone call at the time, so I wasn’t in on the price bid and when I came back, David told me the price and I thought it sounded pretty good, so I said yes.  Oh well. 

We were mainly in search of clothes so we got some better gloves for me, a better winter coat than the one I had brought with me, three sweaters and a pair of warm boots.  They only had them in men’s sizes because women’s sizes only go up to a 40 here and I need a 44 for my big feet.  I couldn’t get the cute pair that I first found, but what I got looks good enough and not that masculine.  I basically paid $15 US for them.  They are like UGGs.  I felt pretty good about the purchases.  David just doesn’t like to spend any money, so he was grumbling about it until I reminded him that 100 RMB was only about $17 US.  He stopped grumbling…

We ate a quick supper before Alan arrived at 7 p.m. for his tutoring.  Then at 8 p.m. a student who had contacted me in my class on Tuesday came over and we talked.  Eric wants to go to UCLA in a pre-PHd program next summer and they have accepted his application and he is now worried about the face-to-face interview he will have with the directors of that program.  We talked about things he could do to improve his English on his own and he also wanted to know if it was okay to come to my class and sit in.  I told Eric that it would be okay, the problem being, I start final exam interviews after next Tuesday.  We may have him over for a few things, but we will see how that goes. 

David was given a Chinese painting by several of his students today after class.  He will be starting finals also, so they gave it to him today.  When he showed it to Eva and Jane at lunch, they were quite impressed with the value of the painting.  Can’t wait to take it home and have it framed!  It’s beautiful!