November 25 - Guasha, Thanksgiving, and 100 Flower Park

There was no explanation of what these stone statues were for, but they were near the opening to the children's play area.

Mondays always seem long for us.  We have to be up early, ride the bus to the other Qianfoshan Campus, teach for four hours, get to the canteen to eat lunch before it closes down for the afternoon, and then we wait around for about an hour before we can go get our massages.  Depending upon how many people are ahead of us at the massage place, we usually get home about an hour before we can eat supper at the canteen.  We really aren’t crazy about having both lunch and supper at the canteen, so we usually pick-up some subway sandwiches or have a pizza delivered.  We still have students work to correct and enter grades, so we don’t like to take the extra time that would be needed to go back out to the canteen either.

David had English Corner on Tuesday evening.  Since Thanksgiving was this week, he wanted to do something with a Thanksgiving theme.  We asked our children for some ideas, and they came through big-time!  We had two different game ideas that were easy and fun.  The first was a set of Thanksgiving riddles.  As the students sat in groups at tables, they had to figure out what answer matched what riddle.  There were prizes for those who answered them all first, most did!  Some of them got really competitive about it, it was serious business!

The other idea was from a game called “Headbands”.  You have a card with a picture on it, and the students have to give one word clues to help the student that is holding the card up to their head to guess what the picture was.  We call it “Heads-Up” for our students.  The English Corner was very successful and even went about a half hour past the time, because they were all having so much fun.  Now the only problem is, what do you do to top that next week?

There are still some trees with color to them.

Our friend, Carol, who helped us get set up with the massage place, talked us into trying a procedure called Guasha.  I thought we were just going to be doing a moxi combustion thing like they did on my left leg after my fall, but it turned out to be a whole big thing.  Guasha is scraping of the skin (like A-stem that physical therapists do) to get an even deeper massage and stimulate the metabolism.  It was very painful!  They then put on some herbs on the areas they scraped and added heat to it.  I don’t know how long we laid there with the heat and the herbs on us, but it seemed like it was about a half hour.  By the time we left the massage place it was about 5 p.m..  We were sore and hurting.  We had some serious bruising going on.  Most of it has cleared up fairly quickly, but I still have tender spots on my arms from the experience.  I don’t think we will be doing that again.  Some people here do it every week.  Carol said that after the third time it doesn’t hurt anymore!

This is what it looked like.  I'm not going to show you the bruises.  Inside of the box that David has on was the moxi combustion.

I don't know what trees these are, but they park keepers for some reason feel that they need to be painted from top to bottom with a white chalky paint.  

China does not celebrate Thanksgiving as Americans do, but we made plans to go to the Hanlin Hotel buffet like we did last year.  They had turkey there last year, and we were hoping that they would again this year.  Several of the BYU teachers, Carol, another teacher from SDNU, Christian (from Florida) and Aaron joined us there.  We were a little disappointed that there wasn’t turkey (Aaron said that they had it on Halloween and didn’t want to serve it again), but we had a delicious meal and good company to make up for it.

Thursday Thanksgiving Dinner group at the Hanlin Hotel.  From the left, Jay Wilkins, Christian from Florida, Tresa Wilkins, David, Zina, Aaron, Nancy Rounds, Bonita Quillin, and Carol.

On Friday, I headed back to the hospital for more treatment on my knee, but the orthopedic doctor wasn’t available, so Dr. Tricia and I just talked, and she got me some more medicine and, after lunch, sent me home in a taxi.  David got copies for next week’s classes and had lunch with Eva at the canteen.  After I got back we went grocery shopping and got back just in time for our tutoring students to come.

I don't know why this walkway was decorated like this, but it sure was pretty.

Jay and Tresa Wilkins wanted to go to Hundred Flower Park with us Saturday.  We met them at the gate and walked in the park.  There was so much going on!!  Dancing, singing, people jogging, playing various musical instruments and children playing.  We walked all the way around the park on the main path, and when we were coming back to the area that we had first come in at, we decided to go up on the raised “square” area.  It all looked so fun.  We stopped and watched several groups.

A mother and her two sons let us take their picture.  The older brother was enjoying pushing the carriage with his brother.

The men sat around and played poker, but the women were playing this other game.  It was interesting to watch, but I didn't catch on how to play it.  The woman with her hand by her face in the white hair was the winner.

As we got to the square, you could hear all kinds of music going on from different sections of this area.  I decided to capture a little bit of it on film.  I loved how the little lady in the purple coat was just dancing to a tune in her head.

I love the look on their faces. 

Tresa was invited to dance by this man.  She seemed to be having a great time.  I think he enjoyed it also.

This dad was dancing with his little daughter.  It was so cute!

As we walked around, we saw a couple of choir singing together.  I don't know if they rehearsed for anything in particular, but they were enjoying their singing.  After they finished this song, the head man came over and shook my hand.  He seemed very pleased that I was enjoying the music they were making.

The woman in the brown coat was singing and the woman in the pink coat just came up and took the microphone from her and started singing.  She handed it back, but it just seem strange to have that happen.  I guess they do this all the time.

This woman was doing a more traditional style of Chinese singing, the one where it seems more screeching than singing, so I just got her picture and not the music.  It hurts my ears.

No better place to be than with the one I love!

After the park, we had planned to have lunch at Pizza Hut, but it was packed and had a waiting line almost out the door.  We decided to try KFC.  Not as long a wait, and still fairly good food. 

When we finished eating, we went to RT Mart to do a little shopping.  The Wilkin’s needed us to show them where some good milk was.  Most of the time the milk here is either soy milk or the packaged shelf stable milk.  That wasn’t going to work for what Tresa needed it for, so we showed them the area where the best brands of real milk are at.  Then we hurried and finished our shopping and went home in time for a “virtual” tithing settlement with our Branch President.

All ready for Thanksgiving Dinner on Sunday.  David, Aaron, Patty, Deneice and John Kinghorn.

 Sunday, we had planned to have Thanksgiving Dinner after church.  Bonita and Sue both made chicken (turkey is really hard to find in China, and the one we had last year was tough and stringy), Tresa made mashed potatoes, Nancy made stuffing and sweet potatoes, and Deneice brought veggies.  We had a teacher from Brazil, Annie, who is the girlfriend of Christian that was at our Thursday dinner, and a Spanish teacher from SDNU, Samuel also come.  Annie made an apple pie (her first time making a pie), and it was excellent.  I made two pumpkin pies and Bonita made a pecan pie and a lemon meringue pie.  We also had three extra visitors, Daniel Kelly and wife, Jamie, and baby, Lucy, from Weifang.  He wanted to visit Jinan, because he has to come back in two weeks to take the GMAT test at our university, and wanted to find out where to go.  

It was a great dinner and even better company.  No one seemed to want to leave, but we all finally did.  The Kelley’s went to the Hongjialou Campus with the Wilkin’s because that is the campus where the test will be administered.  Jay and Tresa were going to show them around on the campus and let them stay at their apartment until they needed to leave for the train back to Weifang.  I love Thanksgiving, and if I can’t spend it with family, I am so grateful to spend it with the wonderful people I have the privilege to know here!

It wouldn't be a proper Thanksgiving without the pies!  I even made whipped cream, which John thanked me profusely for bringing.