Day 192 – Hiking on New South Campus

David and I both had our classes today.  Mine went well, he was frustrated with his.  Their English skills are really low and they couldn’t seem to follow his directions at all.  They will start to get it soon.

We hurried our lunch and then met Eva so that we could go out to the New South Campus (Xinglongshan Campus).  She had arranged for some of her students to show us around the campus and also take us hiking on the “mountain” that was near the campus. 

When we arrived at Eva’s class, we introduced ourselves.  They didn’t have any questions for us, but were pretty excited to meet us.  Five students had volunteered to take us for the first two hours.  They led us up the mountain, which really looked more like a tall hill, but it was a pretty steep climb and we had to stop and catch our breath several times.  The students were thrilled to talk to us and use their English.  They would ask us some questions about the US and about colleges and after we answered their questions, there would be silence for a little while.  Then I noticed that they had little notebooks in their hands.  They were consulting the books for the questions they had written down that they wanted to ask us.  Well prepared for the day, I would say! 

 

A view of the campus from on the hill.  This is the library in front of us.

The dorm area.  The house a lot of students here.  No one could give us an answer, but it is a lot.

The view to the southwest of the hill.  

Our first group of guides.  From the left: Winston, Scott, David, G, Becky and Cherry.  Fun kids to be with and very intelligent.  Becky had never hiked before and decided that she could wait to do it again for a long time!  G also wants to study in the US, so she works hard on her skills in English.

After hiking up for about an hour, we started back down and it didn’t take us quite as long to go down as it did up, so we had some extra time to look at some other things, so we wandered around the campus.  As we were looking at the lake, their young man who was going to replace them came up to us.  The rest had to go back for classes during the next two hours.  Jerry asked us if we wanted a rest and we said yes.  We looked around and found an empty classroom and sat there and talked with Jerry some.  He was also very excited to be able to talk to Americans, but didn’t have the prepared questions like the other students. 

Here we are with our second guide, Jerry.  He said it was such an honor for him to spend time with Americans.  It was also his first time, and he was a little nervous at first.

After a rest, we went on more of a tour of the campus.  Jerry even took us in for a look in his dorm room.  The dorms on this campus are much nicer than on any other campus, because this campus is the newest one.  There are only four to a room, not the usual six or eight, and they have storage and a personal study area.  The old dorms only have a table in the middle of the room.  They also have a place where they can hang their laundry to dry (a clothes dryer is almost an unheard of item here).  Jerry will have to move to the Central Campus, where we live, next year and he is not excited about it because he will lose all the space he has there.

When we had seen pretty much all of the campus, we still had about 45 minutes before Eva would be done with her class, so we found another empty classroom and sat down.  David was yawning so much that he put his head down and Jerry and I talked.  He seemed to feel more comfortable asking me the questions he wanted answered about the US.  He wants to study there in a few years, so he is working hard on his English.  We had a good talk and then David woke up and it was about time to go wait for Eva by her classroom.

When her class let out, the student that had taken us around, invited us to eat dinner with them at their cafeteria.  We accepted and had a nice talk during dinner.  We talked until the guy who was mopping the floors came around and asked us to leave so that he could mop our area.  We slowly walked back to Eva’s car and the students got our email addresses and phone numbers so that they could contact us again. 

Eva was nervous driving us back to the city because she doesn’t see well in the dark (near-sighted and doesn’t want to wear glasses for it).  We did make it back safely, but not without our fair share of horns honked at us. 

We had the sad news that one of the BYU teacher couples that is here with us will have to leave and go back home because of health issues that have come up.  After many months of testing, they have found something that he needs to return to the States for to have treated.  We are sad that they have to leave us, but realize it is better for them to be where they have family and the treatment by doctors that they can communicate with and not need an interpreter.