May Blog

05/06/2015     We needed to make up for our missed classes when we returned from Beijing.  Rather than schedule an extra day, we combined our Monday classes with our Wednesday ones which meant a lot of noisy students in one hot room.  The walls of the buildings are solid concrete.  Our Monday and Wednesday classes are held in the afternoon on the fourth floor of the west side of the building.  The sun just bakes those rooms which, of course, have no A/C.  We try to open the wall of windows for a breeze but when we are doing our PowerPoint lessons we have to pull the heavy curtains in order to see the image on the screen (lousy projectors).  There goes the relief of any breezes so we all sweat, but not all in the room wear deodorant.  The Chinese men’s version of A/C here is to roll up their shirt so their belly shows and no socks but roll up one pant leg.  We don’t know why just one pant leg, but we’ve seen plenty of it.  I’ve taken some pictures of the state of disrepair on campus as well.  And I think the new campus is only 5 years old.  I can’t imagine that being tolerated at beautiful BYU.

Our classroom wall

05/09/2014     The following weekend was district conference with Saturday night and Sunday morning sessions.  Through the miracle of technology we have an audio hook up with other branches in the district and get to listen to a variety of speakers.  A group of BYU singers were visiting the Xi’an branch and were supposed to provide some of the music.  But a little intrigue happened the night before and not only were they not allowed to perform at a concert planned there, but the branch was kicked out of the place they’d been meeting in for 10 years.  You have to be really careful here.

Sunday morning we met up with two young adult types while walking to church who were looking for our branch meeting place.  They were both students from Duke University visiting the country with a business school group.  The rest of the group (nonmembers) were spending the day hiking while these two (he was married, she was not) chose to attend church.  In the “it’s a small world in the church” category:  turns out the girl, Camille Blanco, knew Leanna from New York and the young man knew Marilyn’s brother.  We invited them and the Hadd’s over for dinner and had a great visit.

Church Visitors for Dinner

 We have found another suitable place to eat out here at a chain restaurant called “Big Pizza”.  It’s an all you can eat buffet that has decent pizza (although some have questionable toppings) and a variety of other offerings.  They even have soft serve ice cream that is pretty good and a chocolate fountain.  Only they think you are supposed to dip grape tomatoes into the chocolate.  We cheat and find fruit at the salad bar or spoon it on our ice cream where it forms an instant hard shell.  Men get a discount on Tuesday nights and women on Wednesday.  But since we teach until late on Wednesdays, we treat ourselves there every Tuesday.  It’s something to look forward to.  We even took Michael Shen (our Chinese student friend) there one night – not sure if he was impressed as he doesn’t eat as much as we do.

Our branch president, Lee Mitchell, is changing jobs and moving back to the states.  He and his wife Vernita are originally from Dallas but will be moving to Utah the end of June.  With us and the Hadd’s leaving too, as well as two families with kids, the branch will be quite a bit smaller.  Vernita asked me to come and help her inventory their belongings before the company packs everything up.  She gave us all their DVDs.  We picked out the few we liked and hadn’t seen and gave the rest to the other teachers in our building.  I also took home some of the food they would not be using.  This is the same couple that let us stay in their high rise during the semester break.  Later we went with them and Marilyn (Jerry was busy) to see the premier in China of “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” 3-D.  It was in English with Chinese subtitles.  Every seat was sold, the Chinese love American action movies.

Marilyn and Anne with 3D glasses

05/17/2015    This must be the time of year for visitors to China.  And thank goodness the LDS ones look for a meeting place on Sundays.  It really boosts our numbers.  Today it was two brothers passing through.  One just got home from his mission and the other is getting ready to leave for his.   Marilyn hosted them for dinner and we helped.  The following Sunday was a single young man preparing the way for his brother’s family to settle in Xi’an.  So we had him, two other single teachers in our building, a single American student studying here that we know, and the Hadds for dinner that afternoon.  It has been fun to host and serve others.  And our food scouting and kitchen skills with limited equipment have improved.  We served a big pot of chili with ground pork, cornbread casserole, and key lime pie.  They loved it.  The last Sunday of the month was a branch pot luck after the meetings.  Each family that was leaving was given a DK Eyewitness Book about China.  We took turns signing things in each others books like a high school yearbook.  We thought it was a very nice idea.

Other schools offer their foreign teachers a big trip each semester, like traveling across China.  Last semester ours was a trip to a tourist street in Chengdu.  Most of the people in our building had already been there and so didn’t come.  This semester we were offered a trip across town on a Sunday to play laser tag where the age cut off was age 60.  Needless to say we didn’t go.  Not all things are fair.  Other schools also pay for their foreign teachers to mail home two packages.  Not ours.  We’ve been watching the DVDs we bought since we can’t bring them home.  We went through all the BBC Planet Earth stuff, 6 Star Wars movies and are now working on the Lord of the Rings series (the extended version). 

This second semester is going much better than the first.  We now know how to get around to just about anywhere on the buses, and where to shop for food we can eat.  In fact we have put on weight rather than losing it.  Our teaching expectations are still frustratingly ambiguous with different bosses giving us contradicting instructions.  Jerry has some interesting conspirator theories about all this.  I’m wondering if they will come true.  So we are just pretty much teaching what we have already prepared.  With only a few more weeks to go, I finally have some down time.