Last Week of Classes, Engineers Class

After my classes on Monday, I went to the hospital to see what the latest tests showed for Sister J and to get them checked out of the hospital.  I was coming down with a cold and wished that I could have taken a nap instead, but I was needed, so I went.  Sister J and H were getting anxious to get home, and there was a time crunch for them to catch the last bus out of Jinan for their town.

The tests showed that her infections were clearing up, but she still needed more antibiotic, and her blood pressure was still too high.  The doctors sent her home with an antibiotic and the medicine for hypertension, with instructions for her to come back in a week so they could check her and see if the medicines were the right dose.

After they left for the bus station, I still had to get them checked out of the hospital and get the money back that had been paid toward their bill that was left over.  In the Chinese health care system, you pay money before hand and then get treatment. After you are released, you go get the rest of your money that wasn’t used back.  When I finished with that, I went back up to Dr. Tricia's office, and we visited for about a half hour before she had to leave for an appointment with a patient. 

All through Jinan, we have seen people painting these electrical power boxes.  It really adds a nice touch to something so industrial looking.  Most are scenes of trees and flowers.  I wish I had a picture of the one I saw today with lotus leaves, blossoms and gold fish.  Maybe next week.

All this week, David has been holding English Corner in the canteen from four to five p.m. each day.  Some of the students wanted to get extra practice in before the finals that are coming up next week.  He had a pretty good turn-out of students each day. I stopped in after my painting class on Wednesday, and one of the students there looked very familiar.  He stood and asked if I remembered him.  I said he was familiar, but that I didn't remember his name.  He told me his name was Stone, one of my students from last semester.  Stone wants to go study in the US and needs to practice, so he can take the IELTS test.   One of his roommates has David for a teacher, and so he came along with him for the practice.  It was nice to see Stone again.  I think he is a promising young man.

Dr. Tricia had invited me to come have lunch with her on Wednesday.  The last few Wednesday's, we have tried to have a private lunch, but she has had "working" lunches that have come up each time.  That doesn't give us much time to talk.  She didn't think she would have one this Wednesday, so she had ordered a special Dezhou chicken for our lunch.  Just as we were getting ready to leave her clinic office to go have lunch, her intern called to say that there was another "working" lunch today.  Dr. Tricia had already ordered the chicken, and it was brought to the lunchroom, but the lunch had been provided by the pharmaceutical company. She asked if my painting classroom had air conditioning.  I told her it didn’t, but she sent the chicken home with me anyway.  She didn’t want to believe that my painting classroom was not air conditioned, so she sent the chicken home with me convinced that it would stay good until I got home.

After riding the hot bus (it was almost 100 degrees F), sitting in the classroom for two hours, riding the hot bus home for 45 minutes, I was very leery about even trying to eat the chicken, so after we ate dinner in the canteen, the chicken came out of my bag, and was dumped into the garbage with the leftovers.  I'm sure that the Dezhou chicken is very tasty, but I wasn't going to risk adding food poisoning to the list of my experiences here in China.

 

We walked by this tree and just had to stop for some pictures!

Wish we knew what it was called.  Very pretty!

Friday afternoon, I had planned to go shopping with Eva.  There were some special gifts that I wanted to bring back from China, and I needed a Chinese speaker's help to get what I wanted.  While we were eating lunch together in the canteen, David got a text from Kang Ming, the head of the International Relations Office.  She said that we had to take our documents over to the police station this afternoon so that we could get our passports back in time to go home on the date we have our plane tickets for.  It wasn't what we wanted to do, but Eva drove us there, instead of the market that we had planned to go to, and we got the documents turned in.  Now we will have everything back by the day that we plan to go home.  It takes ten working days to get the documents back. 

David is busy teaching the engineers that are going to a foreign country again.  He started on Saturday morning.  The owner of the company, and the main guy in Jinan, Tony, invited both of us to lunch that afternoon.  The lunch is made up of about twenty different dishes, starting with very expensive sea cucumber soup! I tried, but after watching a video that our daughter, Rachel, had posted on Facebook earlier that day, I just could not even TRY to put it in my mouth!!  I have tasted it before, it’s okay, but that video really made it very unappealing!

At the lunch, there was the big boss, the area boss (Tony) another boss of some sort (I think he was introduced as the HR director), the young woman, Jasmine, who was interpreting that day, David, and I.  When the wine was being poured, David and I turned it down, and Jasmine tried to turn it down, but the bosses insisted that she have some. She confided in me that she doesn’t care for wine and would have liked to have some orange juice like we had.  When the toasts started, Jasmine sipped on her wine to complete the toast.  The bosses didn’t seem to like it, so they told her to make a toast and then she had to drink what was left in her glass down.  I know she felt like her job and future in interpreting was on the line, so she did. 

 

Fruits from our lunch on Saturday.  The watermelon, I'm sure, is very familiar to you.  There are some cherries in the back by the watermelon.  The lighter red fruit it lychee.  You peal it and eat the white center.  It has one semi large pit inside.  The darker fruit was one that I had never seen before.  It is called "yangmei," or bayberry.  I have had it in fruit drinks that I have ordered, but never eaten just the fruit before.

The inside of the yangmei (bayberry).  It is a little tart and dry to the taste, but it was good.  Also has a pit about the same size as the lychee.

Her glass was refilled halfway one more time, and with a few more toasts, it was empty again.  The wine seemed to affect her quite quickly, her actions changed some.  The man who was the HR director, seemed to notice.  After the first small glass of his wine, I noticed that he filled his wine glass with the tea and kept refilling it.  It was like he didn’t want them to even think that he was open to drinking anymore wine.   David’s orange juice was gone, so the HR director quietly went over to the server waiting on us and had her refill our glasses with orange juice and told her also to fill Jasmine’s glass with orange juice.  Personally, I was rather peeved that so much pressure had been put on Jasmine to drink the wine, but pleased that she didn’t have to have anymore, thanks to the actions of the HR director.

We had a fun lunch after Church today.  Marylin, a teacher from Maryland that lives next door to the Kinghorn’s, has been joining us for lunch these last few weeks.  She is a fun, delightful, and perky person.  She invited two Chinese people that she works with to join us for lunch today, Jason and Daisy. We had a great time getting to know them.  Jason spent a lot of time talking with David about education and politics.  Patty was also there.  Patty has been there many times, but lately, she has been too busy, because she was getting everything finished to graduate with her master’s degree.  She is finished now and has the time to join us again.  We all had silly pictures taken of us, and then she put on her graduation gown, and had more pictures taken.   

Patty in her graduation gown and hat.

Patty with David and I.  She decided that I needed a Chinese name today.  It is Pei Ying.  The Ying has to do with a kind, gentle person who is intelligent and smart.  The Pei is a Chinese surname that sounds closest to my maiden name.

Our group with Patty.  From the back L-R, Aaron, Kayce, Zina, David, Sue.
Seated on the couch, Marilyn, John, Parry, Deneice and Bonnie.  We all feel like family!