Classroom Switch Ups, Five Dragon Springs and Furong Street

David's first day of teaching went well and then we get to Tuesday when we both head to classes.  We were supposed to be teaching in classrooms next door to each other, but when we get up there, one of the other foreign English teachers informs me that she is in the classroom that I am supposed to be in.  I don't know what to do, so she says she will run down to the next floor and see if there is a classroom that I can use.  She pops up in a few minutes and says that a classroom one floor down is supposed to be mine. (We suspect that she knew all along about the classroom change, but tried to play innocent.)  That made us have to change our plan a little bit because we were going to put our classrooms together for a few minutes and sing, "Country Roads" for them.  I was scrambling a little bit to find things to fill in that time that the song didn't take up.  I was supposed to have a class of 36 students, but it turned out to be only 23. It makes a BIG difference in what you can do with a smaller class compared to a larger class.  The rest of my classes this week have been 31 to 47 students.  David's classes range from 29 to 44 students.

I thought I might let you know what our typical day is like.
      6:00 a.m. Alarm goes off.  Read scriptures. Shower. WeChat with Alisa or some other of our children.  Breakfast. Gather what we need for the day.
      7:30 a.m. Leave the apartment to walk 10 minutes to our classroom building that is across campus.  Leaving that early makes it so we can usually catch the elevator before it gets jam packed with students.  We teach on either the 5th or 6th floor, depending on the day of the week.
     8:00 a.m.  Start teaching our first class.  There is a break from 8:50 to 9:00 and then the class ends at 9:50.  There will be a 20 minute break between classes.
     10:10 a.m.  Second class starts.  There is supposed to be a break at 11:00 to 11:10, but if the students agree, we can skip it and get out of class at 11:50.  This extra 10 minutes can be important for the students because it will put them ahead of all the others in line at the school canteen.  The lines get really long in a short time.
     Noon - We sometimes go to the canteen for lunch.  For every 4 hours that we teach, we are given a free meal at the teacher canteen which sometimes runs out of food if you aren't fast enough getting there.  We also go home sometimes for a sandwich and some yogurt.
     Most of the time after we finish lunch is divided into things like entering grades, shopping, lesson planning or meeting with students.  We sometimes enlist the help of some students to do things like banking or phone bill paying,etc.  When we were here before, we did all our apartment cleaning ourselves, but we are going to hire a service to do it this time.  It costs about 50 Yuan ($8-10 US) for someone to come clean the floors.  We have to do our own dishes and toilet, but it's nice to have the sweeping and mopping done by someone else.
    Dinner time will either be here or at the canteen or if someone wants to take us somewhere to eat. Evening activities will include either more school work, taking a walk or visiting with  some of our Chinese friends or more video chats with the kids.

Saturday, we took Kayce (SDNU teacher) along with us as we went to Five Dragon Springs and to Furong Street.  It was another very hot day in Jinan.  We went through the Five Dragon Springs and then we were hot, sweaty, tired and hungry, so we found a nearby Pizza Hut.  I really like the Pizza Huts in China.  They have great pizza, great steaks and salads and refreshing fruit drinks.  AND THE AC WAS TURNED UP FULL BLAST!!  It felt so good to sit there and get cooled down.  The staff seemed to appreciate us coming to their restaurant also.  It is a little more expensive than most Chinese Cuisine, but it was so worth it.

This is the dragon motif at the entrance of Five Dragon Springs.  Can you pick out the five dragons?

People are feeding the fish from the overhanging balcony.  This pond if filled with hundreds of fish and some are very huge because they are so well fed.

Some of the pretty koi in one of the ponds.

David at the Five Dragons monument.  The story about this spring is that there was a great drought and famine in the country.  The five dragons came and made these springs for the people so they could have the water. 

Furong Street is an old traditional Chinese street the way it would have been 100 years ago.  They had some cute shops and TONS of places to eat unusual foods.  It was so fun to walk through.  Anyone that knew how to say, "Hello" or "Hi" did.  You really stick out as different here in China when your hair is not black and your skin a lighter color.  The people who live in this area live in the dwellings and they are still traditional in their homes.

This was a cute entrance to a mall area before we got to Furong Street.  We didn't go in, but it was so pretty with all the parasols and the cute statues.

Some of the foods that were available on Furong Street.  Yummy!!  If you notice toward the tip left of the picture, it looks like rocks.  It's not. It is something that they cover in mud and bake it.  I don't know what it is.  There is Korean man here that meets with us on Sundays for Church and he plans to go with us sometime and we'll see if he can tell us what is in some of these foods.  

On the tray to the left of the picture you will see the long pig tails on the stick.  The man in the booth had just cut off a roasted tail for someone that wanted one to eat.  I don't know if I'll ever try one though.  The other food there was pick hocks, roasted to perfection and ready for eating, skin and all.

These are squid.  They open them up, fillet them and flatten them, then they bread them and fry them.  I don't think I could get past the tentacles.

There are so many other kinds of food available.  We do plan to go again some other time and make it our first stop for either lunch or dinner! (Except for the squid and the pigs tails.)