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

 

The Story Continues

10/31/2104
Anne taught a Halloween lesson to her three classes of grad students.  They had no idea what it was about so that was fun exposing them to her favorite holiday.  Their assignment was to get together in small groups and invent their own holiday; what would it be called, what would it be about, what would they do and wear, etc.  They had fun doing this and then presenting their ideas to the class.  Anne put their holiday names up on the board and then the classes voted on what they thought was the best idea.  The winner was "PhD Day".  They all think they are over worked (which they are) and deserve a day where they lay around in their pajamas, do nothing, and have others wait on them. 

Saturday, 11/01/2014
We heard through a source, that the school provides four field trips each semester for the teachers.  Of course the school never told us this so we missed the first two.  But we managed to get on the bus for the next two.  On Saturday, November 1, we were driven to a small town about two hours outside Chengdu called Pingle Ancient city, founded in 150 BC.  It had been hit hard by an earthquake in 2008.  But they rebuilt part of it and so that part is now a tourist site.  It was very picturesque.  We bought some trinkets, snacks, and then wandered out to the country side.  People farm every available plot of land.  We are stared at more when we are in the country instead of the city.

Pingle Ancient City

C&A in Pingle Ancient City



Clyde Kissing a Frog (actually 20 feet in a pond behind him)

The following Saturday, November 8, we went on another trip, this time to Bailu Town.  This is a small town nestled in the mountains, settled by French missionaries in the 1600’s.  It too was destroyed in the earthquake and then rebuilt as a tourist site.  It now looks like a European village, complete with cobblestone streets.  You would not know you were in China.  The Chinese love to come here and escape the heat in Summer.  As it was late in the tourist season, most of the shops were closed.  But we preferred to hike around the beautiful countryside anyway.  There were misty mountains on both sides of the town and a river that rolled through it.  There was a sign above one store called “Secret Bacon”, with smoked dried animal bodies hanging from the ceiling.  We think they were dogs.  (Mmmmmm - Dog Bacon!)

Bailu City

A stop along the road

Bailu town

Friday, 11/14/2014
Our next trip was a much bigger adventure and wouldn’t have happened if not for a male student named “Autumn” who the Hadds befriended.  His family lives here in Chengdu and they know their way around.   He took us to see two more UNESCO world heritage sites.  We and the Hadds all had Friday off (which happens once a month).  We got up early and took a bus to the north train station.  We handed our passports and money to Autumn and he bought us tickets at the train station window.  It is so nice, and necessary in our case, to have a native speaker with us.  We boarded a high speed train and took a very smooth ride about an hour away from Chengdu to Dujiangyan.  This town is famous for an irrigation system built in 256 BC that still functions today.  It prevents the town from being flooded and yet provides water for the crops, by dividing the river in two.  They have since built a modern dam up stream, but some people think that work on it caused the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. 

Counting the driver, six of us were stuffed (it was practically immoral) into a small taxi for this part of the tour.  Afterwards he dropped us off in the town before we needed to catch a bus back to the train station.  We wandered around for awhile, taking pictures and eating local snacks.  Anne bargained for a necklace from a street seller.  And this is also where Clyde and Marilyn decided to try and eat some local food:  bugs on a stick.  Clyde said they were crunchy, but some legs got stuck in his teeth.

Bugs on a Stick - Mmmmmm

C&A near Dujiangyan

Back at the train station, we took another high speed one to the end of the line.  That is where Autumn’s aunt owns a weekend home.  She met us at the train station, but there were too many of us to take a cab so we walked a couple miles to her home.  It was a small but nice two story in what would pass for a modern subdivision.  Apparently a lot of wealthy people live here and commute into Chendgu to work.  It is prettier and the air quality is better.  His aunt, uncle and later his mother, met us there and took us to a local restaurant.  None of them speak any English.  We were served quite a variety of food, but my palate just isn’t a fan. We spent the night in his aunt’s home and were served some “interesting” things for breakfast.  They were all trying so hard to be attentive hosts. 

It was cold there and we were planning to spend the day hiking up a mountain – Qing Cheng Shen.  We put on lots of layers of clothes.  Most people take the city bus to the entrance of the mountain, but again, we walked it, a few miles.  It is very pretty there with the misty mountains in the background.  All along the way is a beautiful park that lines the road on both sides.  We were told it is green here all year round.

Starting the walk to Qing Cheng

One of the many temples on the mountain

The Pagoda and top of Qing Cheng

From the entrance, it took us about two hours to hike to the top of the mountain.  There were carved steps all the way - though some were easy, and some were ridiculously steep.  We had to hold on to chains to pull ourselves up those.  For a fee you could hire porters to carry you up in a sling thing.   We were not tempted.  The trees were changing colors.  There were several different temples carved into the mountain side to walk through along the way.  We were really proud of ourselves for making it up to the top as it was a tough hike.  On the very top was a pagoda shaped Taoist temple.  We could first see it from far away and urged each other on to make it to the “birthday cake”.  The view of the green and misty valley below was worth the struggle to reach the top.

There was a cable car that could take people half way up the mountain, but it wasn’t free and you would miss all the extra temples and most of the view along the way.  But at this point it was getting late in the day and we all agreed to take it down the mountain.  Back down at the entrance, Autumn insisted that we visit Dr. Stone for a foot massage.  It turned out to be a sidewalk studded with decorative stones.  The idea is that you take off your shoes and walk the path for a massage.  The more you weighed, the more it hurt!  Autumn thought it was a pretty funny joke on us.

View from the top of the Pagoda

Beautiful scenery along the way

Dr. Stone foot massage

From the mountain entrance we walked back to Autumn’s aunt’s home.  They offered us some snacks like chopped rabbit – a cold dish full of bones.  Thank goodness for Snickers bars.  And then they hired some tuk tuks (small 3-wheeled vehicles) to take us back to the train station.  If I had a fit-bit thing, I bet the number of steps we’d taken the past two days would be off the chart.   We took another smooth train ride back to Chengdu.  After a dinner at the nearby fast food restaurant, Dicos, we took a bus back to our apartment.  It was a great weekend.

11/19/2014 
The directors of our BYU China Teachers program, Geneil and Jamie Ballantine, have been traveling around China for two months and visiting all the BYU teachers to see how they are getting along here.  Chengdu was their second to the last stop.  It was so fun to see their familiar faces and ask how the other teachers were doing.  It’s impolite but sometimes comforting to hear that someone else might have it worse than you.  As the Hadds were doing tutoring that first evening, we took the Ballantines out to dinner and got a chance to visit with them alone.  We all went out to Peter’s Tex Mex on Thursday and the Hadds got them alone on Friday.  During the day they visited with our school’s directors and tried (unsuccessfully) to get another university here to accept BYU teachers. (We are too old for them.)  The Ballantines also attended our classes and observed our teaching.  That was a bit intimidating but they said nice things about us.  But then I guess they really couldn’t say that we stunk as teachers, now could they?

11/23/2014
Anne was asked to speak at the branch on Sunday on the topic of humility.  That’s a hard subject because if you think you know anything about it, you really don’t.  It’s like the old saying:  “Humility is like underwear; absolutely essential but indecent when exposed.”  But living and teaching in a country where we can’t even understand the language has humbled us. 

11/27/2014
Anne taught an oral English lesson about American Thanksgiving to her grad classes.  She went over some traditions and idioms like “cold turkey” and “talk turkey”.  For the last part of it she brought some American grocery store ads that were left in our apartment by the former BYU teachers.  After dividing them into groups, she handed each group an ad.  Their assignment was to make up a menu for a dinner for 4 people, spending no more than $50.  Then each group reported to the class what their meal would consist of and how much they “spent”.  A few groups spent all their allotment on meat only.  A girl representing her group said they would spend the little cash they had left over on "snakes".  That caught Anne off guard for a second.  After all, this is China and we've seen strange things they consider food.  Turns out the girl really meant “snacks” but she definitely pronounced it “snakes”.  They all had a good laugh. 

For our Thanksgiving dinner, several expat adults met at Peter’s Tex Mex for a traditional turkey meal.  It was a set price consisting of all the usual, wonderful things you would expect.  It was heavenly. 

11/29/2014
After the visit from our BYU directors, the school official over us decided to offer a local cultural field trip to the foreign teachers – something in our contract but never delivered on until now.  But by now, this location was something most of the foreign teachers had already been to on their own - so only ourselves, the Hadds and one other teacher signed up.  We were met on campus by a junior student with the English name “Michael".  It turns out he also met the Ballantines at the airport and helped them get around here.  Michael speaks English well and had done a short internship in Chicago last summer.  He loaded us into taxis and off we went to Wide and Narrow Alley. 

The Alleys are preserved streets from the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911).  They have been refurbished and are mostly tourist areas now, but represent old Chengdu.  We walked through the shops and Michael (at the university’s expense) treated us to snacks and then dinner.  He is such a nice person and interested in practicing his English, so on another day we invited him to dinner at our apartment.  Given a choice of what to have for dinner, he chose pork roast, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, rolls and homemade cookies that we baked as we ate.  A week later we invited him (and the Hadds invited Autumn) to a guitar/pizza party at an expat’s apartment.  We think they had fun.  We hope to be able to keep up with Michael.  We can help him and he certainly can be a help with Chinese for us.

Our friend Michael

 

Wide and Narrow Alley

 

Ginko Trees

Our province is famous for its Gingko trees.  In the fall they all turn a striking bright yellow.  Our two campuses are covered with them and the school offered a month long photo contest.  The place was packed with people posing in and under the trees and playing with the leaves on the ground like it was snow in winter.  Literally the ground is solid yellow with the layer of leaves.

One of the single English teachers in our building is Agmad Gydien from South Africa. He looks and talks like he is from India.  He is a fun and funny guy.  He got tired of his students excuses for why they were late to or missed class so he bought a “lie detector” and brings it to class.  Now when the students come in late, they have to put their hand in an electric machine.  If their excuse for being late is a lie, they supposedly receive a mild shock to their hand.  The rest of the students now look forward to someone coming in late for the entertainment factor.  He also bought another electronic shocking machine that he applies if they are caught using their cell phone in class.  The other students like this so much they turn each other in.  We had “Akes” over for dinner along with Michael.  (His students call him Akes because they can't pronounce his real name.)  We forgot Akes is a Muslim and doesn’t eat pork, but he sure loved the rest of the meal and especially the cookies.

More will come later . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



More October Activities

Sorry for the delay in publishing our adventures, but we have been very busy with our classes and local trips.  Now that we have finished our first semester of teaching, we will have some time to catch up with everything else.

Friday, 10/10/2014
We only get CCTV (a Chinese version of the news in English) and the Discovery channel (mostly re-runs) on our TV; we decided to buy some DVD movies.  We were perfectly willing to buy legitimate ones if we could only find any.  But apparently they are not worth selling on the open market.  We visited some stores in the area they call “Computer City” and asked on every floor about purchasing DVDs (after a lot of miming and sign language).  Everyone shook their head “NO”.  And then on the 4th floor a man came running up to us and motioned that we should follow him.  

First he took us up a couple of floors on the elevator.  Then we got out and followed him to a back stairway.  As we were climbing several flights of dingy stairway, I started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into.  Were we going to be thrown off the roof for asking about DVDs?  We were then led down a dark hallway, past rooms with doors slightly ajar, filled with people hovering around computers (hackers?).  We were taken into a dirty maintenance room where a man was asleep in the corner on a makeshift bed, and the door was closed behind us.  So were we now going to be shot, like in some kind of drug deal?!

Our guide then took out a key, opened up a tall utility cabinet, and pulled out two large boxes filled with DVDs in flattened packages.  He placed them on a low table and then put up a cardboard shield around them and us, in case anyone walked in and tried to see what we were doing.  There was quite a selection, but we just pulled out two we hadn’t seen before:  “Divergent” and “Maleficent”.  They cost 10 yuan each, which is about $1.60 apiece.  After that we just got out of that building as fast as we could.  Since then, we got up our courage again and went back to purchase some other movies to watch over the long winter break.  We have since heard of a couple of other places on the street at night were you can buy DVDs.  It’s kind of like a “back alley” thing. 

We tried a few more city field trips and learned a new way to get around town, this time on the 2^nd ring road.  Chengdu has concentric roads that circle the city center.  We’d call them “Loops” in the states.  The 2^nd ring has an elevated bus lane that is dedicated only for bus usage.  We primarily use it now to get to get around town.  It’s much cheaper and more reliable than the taxis.  

A member in our Branch, invited us to go to a dinner and a show with her and her family/friends.  She and her son live here, while her husband lives and works in Houston – the Chinese way.  After a long bus ride, waiting on a street corner for a taxi (45 minutes) and then getting stuck in traffic, we finally arrived at the restaurant a little late.  We ate typical China Chinese food (not at all like “Chinese” food in America), served family style with a large glass lazy Susan in the middle of the round table.  The show came after the dinner.  We watched some dancing, acrobats, and stylized tea pouring.  The tea people dance round with tea pots with very long and skinny spouts.  They stop quickly and pour water into tiny tea cups from far away without spilling a drop.  The highlight was the “face changing” masks.  Dressed in Chinese Opera outfits, the men dance around wearing fabric masks on their faces.  Somehow they turn their face quickly and then they are wearing a different face mask.  It’s kind of like a magic trick where you see it but you don’t know how they do it. 

Stylized Tea Pouring

Face Changing Opera

We try to go out to eat on Thursday nights with the Hadds.  One night we went with them and one of Marilyn’s Chinese students to a “Hot Pot” restaurant.  This area of China is famous for their spicy Hot Pot dishes, and the student took us to a popular spot.  The meal was 150 yuan each, or about $25.  They don’t have tax or tipping here.  We sat at a table with a sunken square shaped pot in the middle.  The pot was divided into two sections and was filled with a white “broth” in one side and a red one in the other.   The white side was supposed to be less spicy.  The waitress turned the heat on under the pot and started it boiling.

There was a small conveyor belt going past our table which also traveled throughout the restaurant to the other tables as well.  On this were little bowls of food that passed along.  We were supposed to take a bowl we liked and dump it into the pot (either side).  Mostly they contained bit of pork, chicken, vegetables or mushrooms.  But one had raw, sliced eels and another had a whole pig brain.  Ewwww!  But the table after ours was thrilled to see it and snatched it up.  You boil the food in the liquid until you think it is done and then you fish it out and eat it.  We will check this off our list of things to do in Chengdu, but we probably won’t want to do it again.  

Anne and Marilyn at Hot Pot

Mmmmm - Pig Brains

Sliced Eel for the Hot Pot

  

At some point during the meal, a small live band started to play some contemporary American music.  We were pretty much over the food by then, so Anne and I got up and went to their little dance floor.  We will always be glad we took that BYU social dance class many years ago!  Pretty soon the customers, waiters, and kitchen staff were all around us taking our pictures.  The student who came with us got out his phone and started filming us.  A few moments later Jerry Hadd asked him, “So when are you going to put that on the internet?”  The kid answered, “Oh, it’s already on there.”  Now we are instant celebrities in China but you would never know it! 

Saturday, 10/18/2014
Today we visited the Jin Li street market and Wuhou Temple.  Jin Li is a touristy rebuilt Chinese market.  It’s full of quaint little shops and photo ops.  The temple is a large park like area with many buildings and statues.  Our favorite place inside was the Bonsai garden.  It made us think of our son's family and the bonsai collection we have seen in Seattle.   

WoHou Temple Gardens

Jin Li Street - each red thing represents a prayer

Bonsai Gardens

The following week we went to the People’s Park near the center of town.  An interesting feature there is that parents seeking a mate for their child put up posters on easels along the sidewalk.  A few had pictures but most just advertised (so we are told) their child’s age, education, and how much money they make.  (Hmmmmmm . . . I wonder if we’ve got a current picture of Leanna we could use? . . .)  We were also exposed to some terrible karaoke singing: different people close by each other all singing different songs, but at the same time and very loud.  Karaoke is a big deal here and you can go to KTV stations and have yourself filmed doing it.  There were amateur dance groups to watch too.  It was entertaining.

Saturday/Sunday 10/25-26/2014

Church this week was District Conference and we have a very large district - like half of China.  We attended at the same place we usually do, but we were hooked up via Skype audio to the other locations.  Clyde was asked to speak at the Saturday evening session.  Although we couldn’t see them, we heard talks from several of the BYU teachers we trained with in Provo.  

We have figured out how to go to the movies here.  We take a picture on our phone of the movie ad we want too see and show it at the ticket counter.  But there are different prices on different days at different times and we haven’t got a clue about that.  We have seen The Maze Runner, and Interstellar.  We’ve been told there is some rule about only 22 foreign films can come into China per year.  I guess it may have something to do with outside competition for the national film industry.  They’ve hit their limit this year so we will have to wait awhile for any others to come.