June 2 - Dinners with Friends

Most of the first part of our week was quiet.  We finished teaching this week, and we will start the two weeks of final exams on Monday.  Spent a fair amount of time entering the last of the grades, because we finished all the personal presentations of the students, too.  Glad that is over.  Some of the students do such a great job, and I even learn things from their presentation, but others just don’t put much into it, and you can barely understand them.  This second semester is students that mostly don’t seem to care if they learn English or not, but they have to take the class anyway.

 

Some of the students are getting ready for their graduation.  You will see people in cap and gown all over getting pictures.  Some are getting special pictures taken and this is one of the places they are doing it.  I'm not sure what the one with just the Chinese characters mean.  I'll have to ask.

As we were on our way to the canteen for supper on Friday, we saw one of David's former class monitors taking some pictures by this sign.   She offered to take our picture.  She wanted me to kneel like David is but that is just too painful to even contemplate.

Thursday at our massage, the lady with the red hat came.  We found out the reason that she was so popular there.  She used to work at a big factory where most of her colleagues were women.  She loves to talk and always seems to have something fun to say, because they all laugh a lot when she comes.  The workers at the massage place wanted a picture with us, and then she wanted a picture with us also.  So many times I have wished that I could speak more Chinese, or that they could speak more English.

 

Our massage people.  The man in the yellow shirt worked on me most of the time.  The girl standing behind me did the cupping on my legs.  The girl standing behind David, Xiao Ya, did his massages all the time.

She doesn't  have her red hat on, but she wanted a picture with me and David when the picture was finished with the massage people.

David explained to all of his classes this week why we wouldn’t be back teaching in China again.  He told them about his cancer, and that my knee would need surgery.  David also said that we felt it was important to go back and spend time with family now.  They all understand that very well.

Thursday was English Corner for David’s students.  He had almost 20 students there that night.  A lot wanted to say goodbye to him.  These farewells are getting harder to take.

David needed to have another treatment on the wart on his toe, so we went to the hospital to talk to Dr. Tricia.  She had a young man come and escort David to the podiatrist.  I stayed in her office and talked with her.  We kept getting interrupted because of different patient needs.

 

David has been going for walks in the evening without me.  So he brings back some great pictures.  This is at Da Ming Lake.

Da Ming Lake

Da Ming Lake.

Da Ming Lake.

The people come out in the evening to either dance or exercise at the park and really all over town.

Exercising at Bai Hua Park (Hundred Flower Park).

One woman who came in is the daughter of a patient of Dr. Tricia’s.  When the woman brought her mother to the hospital, and they started talking, they found out that the woman who is the daughter, was one of Dr. Tricia’s tutors when she was going to school at the university in Qingdao.  They were very surprised.  Dr. Tricia was about twenty and her tutor was twenty-six.  They really seemed to enjoy renewing their acquaintance.  She introduced me to her, and then Dr. Tricia would translate between us. 

We stayed and had lunch with Dr. Tricia. We had a good talk and then she sent us home in a taxi, but not before she had invited us to her home for supper on Saturday evening.

We had a lot of things that we wanted to send home (winter clothes and some gifts we have bought), so we asked Eva to help us on Wednesday after lunch.  She drove David and the large suitcase to the sending office, but they said they didn’t have boxes big enough for everything that was in there, so they made an appointment to come to our place on Saturday afternoon to box it all up.  

Eva couldn’t be here Saturday when the man came, but through the translation apps, we were able to communicate.  At first, they were going to just take the stuff down the stairs in their arms.  It would have taken two or more trips up and down the stairs, so I suggested that they take the suitcase down to the little truck and box them up there.  They lugged the suitcase down there and set up the box.  It looked like we were going to need two boxes, so I sent David back up the stairs to get another suitcase that had a bunch of stuff in, so we could put more in. 

The guy took another box (the boxes are collapsed), started to put it down over the top of the other one, and just made the box larger (and stronger).  We were able to get it all in and with the extra room, he pushed the box further down on the other one until it was just the right size, and then he started taping it up.  China is really good at taping the boxes together so that they handle the journey they are about to take and the abuse that they will probably be put under. 

I was in the process of making a birthday cake for one of the BYU teachers for Sunday dinner, so I had to get back up to it.  David stayed down with him.  The guy made a handle out of tape on the box, lifted it up with the scale, told David the price, and then put the information in his little machine, printed off a receipt, loaded the box on his little truck, and left.  So, the box is on its way home.

Getting the box ready made us a little late for starting out to Dr. Tricia’s home.  We were about ten minutes late for the agreed time.  She was out waiting for us by the gate to their complex.  We met her five-year-old son, Baobao, and her 25-year-old son, Bill, and her mother.  I found out the other day that the Chinese never refer to their parents by their given names.  They call them mother and father and introduce them as “Mother” or “Father,” but they don’t say their given names. 

 

We spotted this little guy as we were walking to Dr. Tricia's home.  We were looking down watching him and trying to get a picture.  The people that were walking around us probably thought we had some problem that we were looking at the ground so hard.  I guess we just didn't expect to see a cute little lizard in the middle of Jinan.

Here we are with Dr. Tricia's husband, Baobao, Dr. Tricia, David and Zina.

Dr. Tricia’s mother was in the kitchen finishing her Bible reading before she started cooking the dumplings for supper.  Bill came in and out of his room a few times.  Bill has autism, and he speaks some English.  David played with Baobao while Tricia and I talked, when she wasn’t busy with Bill’s or Baobao’s interruptions.  We kept waiting for Dr. Tricia’s husband. He was having an English lesson from Nancy Rounds, and Nancy said he just didn’t seem to want to leave.  They talked about ways for him to deal with Bill’s autism.  She said he seemed to really be absorbing all the information he could.

 

Whenever there is a piano in China, David wants to sit and play it.  When he did, Baobao ran to his room, found his little toy saxophone and started playing it.  He was sounding pretty good as David was playing, "Rock 'em Boogie."  Then Baobao wanted David to wait and not play until he had played an introduction and then David played with him when Baobao gave the cue.  

Dr. Tricia wanted to have us all go to the park.  David and I thought it was a small park or playground nearby, but it turned out that she meant to go to Buddha Mountain.  Just as we neared the gate of the complex, Dr. Tricia’s husband came on home on his scooter.  Baobao was very excited to see his dad, so his dad got off the scooter and picked him up. Bill jumped on the scooter and rode it into the complex, I assumed to put it away.  

We decided to get pictures then.  Baobao wanted to take a few pictures first.  Then a woman on a scooter came by and said she could take some pictures for us.  She took some on her phone and also some with David’s phone.  After the pictures, Dr. Tricia’s husband wanted to go get some supper, so he took Baobao home, and we started up the hill to the park.

The big golden Buddha at night.

Buddha Mountain is up a really steep hill just outside of their complex.  It is really close, but with my knee, steep is not a welcome sight.  I walked as far as I could until I had too much pain.  Dr. Tricia and I then sat at the side of the road, while David went on ahead and saw the huge golden Buddha.  

As we sat there, several of Dr. Tricia’s neighbors came by and wanted to talk.  One woman even wanted to invite us into her home.  Bill came by, and she told him to go find David.  After about five minutes, Bill came back with David.  I know the Dr. Tricia would loved to have us stay longer, but I was tired, and it was starting to get late.  She ordered a taxi for us, rode down to the main road with us, and then got out after she gave the driver instructions on how to take us home.

On Sunday, we went to church and had a fine lunch afterward.  Jurgita and Huang Songsong were there.  Lily came for lunch after church.  We had a fun visit after lunch.  Lily got us a taxi to go home in.  It was good to see her.  She gave us some gifts for two of our grandchildren.  Jurgita had some gifts for me.  She and Lily are both sad to see us go.

Our picture with Jurgita and Huang Songsong.

Me and Jurgita.  My Lithuanian daughter!

Lily wanted this picture of all of us sitting around talking after dinner.  She wanted to keep it for a memory.

In the evening we were invited to dinner with Michael’s and Stone’s parents.  They wanted to thank us for teaching them this year.  We met them at a hot pot restaurant that is fairly near to our campus.  Stone and Michael were watching for us and came running to meet us as soon as they saw us.  Michael’s parents are both fluent in English, but Stone’s parents are not.  His father understands some of what we said but his mother didn’t understand very much at all. 

We had a fun time visiting and getting to know them.  They wanted Stone and Michael to speak as much English as they could and Stone made a good effort, because he was sitting next to me.  Michael has never been hesitant to speak English with us, because of the year he had in South Carolina with his mother and his father uses English as much in their home as they do Chinese.  Michael’s father studied in England for three years.  He works for an international company that does financial feasibility studies for future construction projects.  His mother teaches English at our university.  Stone’s father has a doctorate in molecular biology, and he works with genetics.  His mother works on our campus but doesn’t teach.

Michael's parents are on the left, Larry and Jenny.  Stone's parents in the middle.  I don't think they ever said their names.  Then Michael and Stone.

David and I with Michael and Stone.

 Michael is with the red shoes in a fencing tournament.  His ambition is to be a world champion fencing master.

 He won first place in the last regional tournament in Chengdu a few weeks ago.

Michael looks like a champion.

They gave us each a fan as a gift.  We gave Michael and Stone a set of card games “Go Fish” and “Old Maid.”  We had played these games when we finished with the assignments that they had, and it was very well received.  They were both very excited to be able to play the games on their own.

One of the many beautiful areas of campus.

This area is called, “The Little Woods.”  The wooden walkway they had going through it was falling apart.  In the last part of April they tore it all up and now they are redoing it.

This is what the walkway will look like when it is finished.  Still wood, but this one is treated and up on metal railing rather than wood blocks.