December in China

12/03/2014
The foreign English teachers are assigned to take turns hosting the weekly English Corner held each Wednesday night on both the old and new campuses.  Luckily we are assigned as a couple and do not have to do it individually like the single teachers, and we can use the same presentation for each location.  We chose as our topic, “The Great State of Texas”.  Using a PowerPoint presentation we taught a little about Texas history and had them play a game “I am going to Texas and I am bringing…” where each one has to say something starting with a different letter of the alphabet.  We demonstrated some Texas swing dancing and had them try it out.  We showed them clips of the rodeo and talked about professional sports in Houston.  During the question and answer part at the end they were amazed to learn how many guns Clyde has. 

12/06/2014
This Saturday’s trip with Autumn and his mother took us to the Zen Buddhist Shijing Temple.  His mother is very nice but doesn’t speak any English.  Of course Autumn is her only child.  They are Buddhists and are supposed to go to a temple once in a while.  We took the 2^nd Metro line (subway) southeast to where it ends.  We walked through the town looking for the bus that was to take us to the Tiancheng Mountain.  That failed so we ended up in two taxis for a half-hour ride to the small mountain village. 

Autumn’s mother treated us to a vegetarian lunch cooked by the monks at the monastery.  It involved tofu in all kinds of shapes and ways and I was surprised to find it was actually quite tasty.  We spent the next hour or so walking around the temple complex in the mountain.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  It reminded me of a lovely summer camp resort in the trees.  The misty air added to the effect although it doesn’t help with the pictures.  Afterwards we found the correct location to wait for the bus to take us back down the mountain to the town below.  While we waited for it, we mingled with the local old folks selling their veggies and trinkets.  They are so short and wrinkled.  They have been through a lot.  While we took photos of them, a large group of teenaged girls came out of nowhere and jumped in front of us to get on the bus that had just pulled up.  We squeezed on and took a very crowed, bumpy, and standing-up ride back to the town.   We then walked to the metro and took the subway back to our home away from home.

Shijing Buddhist Temple

Clyde, Autumn and his mother lighting candles in the temple

If faces could tell stories, wouldn't you love to hear them

  Final Exams    Just in case some couldn’t make it on the last day of class, Anne announced that the final exam for her three PhD classes would be held on the third to the last class.  That way she could come up with some kind of make up in case a student was absent.  Turns out all but one student came on final exam day.  She promised them the exam would be fun and easy as they are under so much pressure from their other classes and professors.  She had been cutting out interesting magazine pictures over the semester and she mixed these up into packets of ten.  She put the students into groups of 5 each and handed them a packet of pictures.  Their task was to turn these into a story which they presented in front of the class.  She graded them on their creativity and speaking ability.  It was fun.

Clyde had an oral interview with each of his ~250 Masters students for his final exam.  While he was talking to each student, the others were writing a short paper about a video he had shown them.  Most of their grade comes from attendance and regular participation during regular class.

Anne’s last lesson for the year was about Christmas.  Her students, for the most part, knew nothing about it.  One student said he thought it had something to do with apples.  Anne talked mostly about the secular aspects and only a little about the religious history (not wanting to get in trouble for proselytizing).  Afterwards they did a game about the symbols of Christmas.  It was fun and she rewarded them with candy.  Then she told them good-bye as she will not see these students again.  At the end of my class, the students clapped for me.  Many of them stayed after both our classes and asked to have our pictures taken with them.  We will miss the grad students - they were the best; the young joint school students - not so much.
 
12/14/2014
As there are so many families in the branch traveling for the holidays, our church schedule was reduced to just a one hour meeting until further notice.  We can take that!  Marilyn and Anne sang a duet, “Star Bright”.  Jerry accompanied us on the guitar and it was very nice.  Clyde and Anne were asked to come up with a short Christmas program for the next week.  We were able to find one that was a short scripture reading followed by a Christmas hymn, repeat the process again and again, which told the entire Christmas story.  We ended up with “Silent Night” for which some other person in our branch played the guitar.   

12/22/2014
We taught our last classes on the 22^nd.  WooHoo!  And then we received a wonderful gift.  Our branch president, Lee Mitchell, and his RS president wife, Vernita were planning to go back to the US for 4 weeks over the holidays.  (They are expats from Dallas.)  They needed someone to water their house plants while away and asked if we’d like to stay at their beautiful high rise Ascott apartment in a nice part of the city.  Would we?!!!!! 

Where to begin about how nice this place is.  It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with soft beds and fluffy comforters.  Maid service 3 times a week.  The maids keep the place stocked with toilet paper and bottled water – no having to go out and buy it and haul it yourself.  Three large screen TV’s.  Walls of floor to ceiling windows with killer views (well that would be more so if the smog wasn’t so bad here).  A washer and a DRYER.  A fully equipped kitchen with full sized oven, fridge and dishwasher.  A fully equipped gym on the 37^th floor with heated swimming pool and wet and dry saunas.  A recreation room with ping pong table, air hockey, foosball, and one of those expensive all over body massage chairs.  Not that Anne shops much, but it is on top of an upscale shopping mall called Raffle’s City.  We are in heaven!

The Mitchell’s left Chengdu on the 13^th but unfortunately we couldn’t move in until we had finished teaching our classes.  Because first, it would take an hour city bus ride to get from the Mitchell’s to our own apartment.  And we would have to leave our old apartment before 7 am to catch the school bus for another hour ride in order to get to the new campus where we teach.    We also had a staff meeting to attend on the new campus on the 23^rd so we were just going to wait to move in to the Ascott. 

But when Anne came home to our apartment on the 22^nd and saw the sign announcing that the “water tricity” would be shut off at our place for at least the next 24 hours – and it had turned cold by now - that did it.  She cleaned up the place, packed our bags, loaded up what was left in the fridge/freezer and unplugged it, and we left when Clyde got in from teaching his last class. 

12/25/2015
This has been the weirdest Christmas ever so one I will always remember.  To begin with, it was nice not to have stores bombarding you with it as early as Labor Day.  But really there were no reminders at all.  A few international stores had small displays in December.  The mall played instrumental Christmas music.  I wondered what people would think if they were exposed to the words that belonged to the songs.  The Lotus market (everything flows through that crowded place) had the ugliest, most garish decorations I’ve ever seen.  There was a large red cone shaped tree thing set up in the plaza of this high rise complex.  It has an opening so we thought maybe they were going to put a chair and a live Santa inside for children to visit and tell their wish list.  Nope.  Although you could walk inside, there was never anything in it except new age music and lights that could set off an epileptic seizure.  Weird.  Like something from Dr. Seuss. 

Christmas Decorations

Stock photo of where we are staying (the sky is never this blue!)

I would like to say that we were able to focus on the “true meaning of Christmas” without all the commercial trappings around, but we were so busy with inventing and teaching lessons that we didn’t give it the attention we should have liked.  Vernita gave Anne a small Asian Nativity consisting of Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus.  She put together a swag of what we could find and taped it to our apartment door, although the hallway is so dark you could hardly see it.  We hung a string of lights in our office window that faces the outside entry so everyone could see that.  

Those people in the Branch not traveling out of town were invited to Christmas dinner at the US Consulate by two of the families that live there.  Since Anne had access to the right equipment, she was able to bring a large chocolate cake.  We met people there we never meet at church as they have to work on Sundays.  After dinner we played games and exchanged gifts.  Then the children reenacted the Nativity while someone read the story from the scriptures.   

We are loving the Ascott living but still had to return to campus for a couple of end of the year social events and to turn in our grades.  We tried to keep a careful record of attendance, homework, and presentations.  We were told what percentage of students should get what grades.  Clyde and I must have done it right, but Jerry was told to raise and re-submit his grades, twice. 

Because we have access to a decent kitchen and have more than three plates, we have enjoyed inviting others over for Sunday dinner.  The table here seats six so we have a different set of branch members over each week while we can.  After being at the Ascott for about 10 days, the maids left a notice on the table.  It announced that the continental breakfast held on one floor would be stopped for a few days for remodeling, but that the main dining room would still be serving it.  What breakfast?  Anne emailed Vernita.  She said there is a free American style buffet breakfast each morning on the 38^th floor.  We could go if we wanted to but she seldom used it.  What?!  Free food and she didn’t think to tell us about it?  So we went and it is fabulous – eggs to order, bacon, fruit, breads, cereal, etc.  This place just gets better and better.  It will be hard to go back to our real life here.

Besides taking advantage of the all the things this high rise complex has to offer, we have also been using our time to explore Chengdu.  We looked up a list of the top 30 things to do and see here.  We have now done all of the top 10 and 6 of the next ten.  We have especially enjoyed walking around the beautiful parks in the city. 

 

Anne by a water fountain

Beautiful park are everywhere

Clyde in an Ebony Forest