David & Zina Cox: Sept 9 - Back to China, Old Friends, New Friends.

We made the flight from Salt Lake City to Jinan on September 4-6. It is such a long flight. We made our connections without problems, and had plenty of time to get where we needed to go. Our first flight was to Seattle, then Shanghai, and then Jinan. It took us about 28 hours to complete out travels from home to our apartment in Jinan. As we were waiting for the plane to take off in Shanghai, the pilot announced that there would be about a fifteen minute delay coming from the air traffic control tower. I was so tired at this point, and all I wanted to do was get to sleep and stop moving, that I had a few tears.

John, a teacher we know from the university, met us at the airport. He didn’t realize that we would have four huge pieces of luggage plus our carry-ons with us, and he only brought a driver that had a sedan automobile. They took the two biggest pieces of luggage and one of the carry-ons and got those in the trunk. I was allowed to sit in the front with the driver. David was in the back with a suitcase on his lap, John was on the other side with a carry-on under his legs and a suitcase partially on his lap and partially on the console between the driver and me. We made it…

We had a little bit to do before we could go to bed, so it was closer to 3 a.m. before we crawled into bed. David went to sleep almost immediately, but I had a hard time, even as tired as I was. I got up for a little while and did something about one problem that was keeping me awake and then tried again to fall asleep. This time I was successful at about 4, but we both woke up about 6 a.m.

After breakfast, we did some unpacking and then had some time on the computer, but David’s VPN wasn’t working, so I had to spend some time with a tech at the company trying to get it going. We had made an appointment with Eva and her daughter, Alina, to have lunch at a nearby restaurant, and I wasn’t successful getting the VPN working before we needed to go, so we just left.

Lunch was fun. We ate at a restaurant called “Cafe 56.” They serve a “Hong Kong” style of Chinese food. I don’t really see that much difference, except that they do their dishes really fancy, but it still tastes like Chinese, and it is still good. After about two hours for lunch, they could tell that we were starting to have drooping eyes, so we started for home. As we were leaving the restaurant, Eva told us that it was her birthday that day! Sure wish she had told us sooner!

Alina and Eva. Hard to believe the Eva has a daughter that is 21! She always looks so young to us!

We took a nap that afternoon. I slept for about an hour and David slept a little more. Then we worked on getting David’s VPN working and on unpacking.

Tresa and Jay Wilkins are new to our university through the BYU China Teachers Program and they had arrived the day before us. We went over to their apartment to check on their arrangements and see what help they needed. They had been busy most of the day with their Chinese helper assigned from the university getting paperwork done and unpacking. They hadn’t had any food because their Chinese helper didn’t help them with that. (Insert an eye roll here…). We talked with them at their apartment for awhile, and then we went to show them how to shop, get a bus card and get some supper. Pizza Hut was where we decided to eat, because it was a little more like American food than some of the other choices. After we ate, we went to RT Mart, grabbed a few cleaning necessities they needed, and then they went home and so did we. Both of us were exhausted.

Friday morning, we went for a Chinese massage. Our friend, Carol, took us to the place that she goes. They were a little nervous to work on us, I think, but they did their thing. They do a really deep massage, and I have the bruises to prove it! I bruise easily anyway, but now I have more. We hope that this will be good for our aging bodies. My back gets really messed up with the long travel over here, and I don’t have physical therapy to go to, so we think this will be the next best thing.

The people at the Chinese Massage place. The two men on the left didn't work on us, just the two women on the right. We should have gotten a picture with Carol in it, but she was taking the picture and there wasn't anyone else there.

In the afternoon, Eva offered to take us over to RT Mart so that we could get some groceries, but also, we took the vacuum cleaner over to the Wilkins. Their apartment was pretty dirty. No one had bothered to clean it before they came. We also brought some extra cleaning supplies that were at our apartment, and we weren’t using. (I have a problem breathing with most spray cleaners, so I don’t use them). We talked with them for an hour and then went to RT Mart to get our groceries.

We went over to the Hongjialou Campus, so that we could meet Eva and get a ride back to our campus. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, after 45 minutes and no answer from Eva, we decided to go get a bus ride home. Our butter was getting soft and the yogurt and milk warm.

Eva contacted us as we were riding the bus back and told us that after the lecture that she had attended, she was talking to the dean about some problems, and she couldn’t get away or even contact us until they were done discussing it.

We went to the canteen to get supper after we got back, and when we went to pay for it with the money on our SDU cards, we found that they had erased everything that was on our cards! We had specifically put money on the cards when we left, so that we would have some to use right away. They even erased our names from our cards! We are trying to get that all taken care of, but we don’t know yet if they can restore the money on the card. (Sorry, but another eye roll is going in here…)

Saturday we went to the Hanlin Hotel to meet with Wayne and Libby Clark. They had come to teach at SDU the same time we did in 2013, and we were excited to have them come back for a visit (along with several other of their friends here in China). We went to the Cultural Market at Hero Mountain. They were looking for some specific souvenirs to take home to family. It was very crowded! Wayne and I got caught behind some people trying to take their bikes through the crowd, and because I didn’t want to get my legs banged up, I decided to just stay behind them, no matter how slow they were going, to protect my legs from damage.

We found the items that we wanted to purchase that day and then caught the bus back to our apartment. After visiting for a while, we walked with them to the Gate Coffee Restaurant, and we each got a smoothie for lunch. It sure tasted great after being so hot at the market! The Clark’s needed to get back to the hotel to meet someone at 2, so they left, and we went back to the apartment.

We had made plans to do a cleaning project at the Wilkins’ apartment that afternoon. It had been planned for the morning, but they got word from Kang Ming in the Foreign Teachers Office that they needed to be at her office in the morning. I was very tired from the morning and Tresa and Jay had been able to get a lot of the cleaning done by themselves, that they said they didn’t need the help, so we called it off. David went over anyway and took a bag of clothes hangers to them, but also brought them back to show them around our campus. They had a meeting here on Sunday morning and didn’t know how to get here, or where anything was. (Another eye roll here because, they just tell them to be somewhere and don’t give them any help in how to do that.)

Saturday afternoon, Lily came with her husband, mother, and 22 month old baby boy so that we could all go to a restaurant with the Clark’s and have dinner and enjoy the time together again. It was a great dinner and a good time.

Libby and Wayne Clark, Lily and son, John. Her mother is kind of hidden behind the waiter. He was trying to show us some more dishes to order because he didn't think we had ordered enough.

Lily's mom, Lily, John and Lily's husband.

Zina, Libby and Wayne.

Sunday, we went to Church at the Hanlin Hotel with the others. Business during church included creating the Shenyang Branch! There are now five Branches in our Central China Independent District, we are growing in China! Jurgita and her husband came from Zouping so that we could celebrate her birthday. I made a cake and decorated it for her. After Church, we had lunch and then sang to her and ate the cake. It was a nice time together with the others today.

This was our group at Church. Zina, Dan and Bonita Quillen, Deneice Kinghorn, Sue Stubbs, Linda Jonas, Jurgita, Wayne Clark, Huang Song Song (Jurgita's husband, Libby Clark, Aaron Tran, John Kinghorn. It was exciting because we usually don't have this many people in the same physical location for Church. We are scattered ALL over China and have our meeting on the phone line.

Jurgita's birthday cake. I can't bake a pan larger than a 9x9 in my little toaster oven, so it was two cakes. If you notice the little spot taken out of the square cake in the lower corner, we had to make sure the cake was edible before we took it over. I had made a mistake, Alisa called and I forgot to put in the eggs... I didn't realize it until after the first cake had baked and I was making the caramel topping for it. I opened the refrigerator to get the butter out and saw the same amount of eggs still in there! Didn't bother the moistness of the cake at all. I want to try the recipe for this Apple Cake again and see what a difference the eggs will make. It tasted great!