Journal 9-27-8

Sept. 27, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, we made it back to China fine! We had some long flights, layovers, and delays, but made it fine. We left Idaho Falls at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning. We were stuck in Boise an extra hour and a half because of fog in San Francisco, then circled SF in a holding pattern for another half hour, but then we were finally able to land and barely catch our next flight to China. We were supposed to have three hours in San Francisco, but ended up with only about 45 minutes, and a good part of that was hiking a mile across the terminal to the international gates. Our fight was good, though, and we got into Beijing about 5:30 p.m. Monday evening. The university had a couple of cars there to pick us up, so we had a comfortable 2-hour trip home to Tianjin.

We came home to find our apartment clean and ready, all of the stuff we left was in great shape, and we even got a new toilet! Our other one had broken about a month before we left, and ran constantly. I guess they couldn’t get the parts to fix it, so they just put in a new one. It’s a lot better than the old one. But the new seat they put on it was too small, and they broke one of the bolts when they put it on, so they fixed it with packing tape. That broke in a couple of days, so we had to kind of chase it around when we used it, and it would slide sideways all by itself. I didn’t know whether to try to fix it or just install seat-belts. ReNee opted for the fix, so yesterday we rode our electric bikes over to Home Depot (not quite the same as in the US) and found another seat. It’s about like the really cheap ones in the US, but hey, it’s WAY better than the old one, and you don’t have to use spurs!

It took us about a week to get over the jet-lag. That’s a killer with a 15-hour time difference! We had trouble staying awake until evening, then woke up in the middle of the night wide awake! Then by noon dragging and rummy again. I think we’re finally back to normal, which is fortunate, since our classes started this week. I’m sure glad we had that week to adjust! ReNee teaches Mondays through Thursdays, and I teach Tuesdays through Fridays. We are teaching doctoral candidates, and they are REALLY smart! They can read and write English really well, but haven’t spoken it much, especially since they graduated, so they are excited to take our classes. Our classes are larger than they were last year, with mine ranging in size from 18 as the smallest, to fifty. Now that’s a lot of people to try to work with one-on-one! We are going to be really busy reading journals. We organized all of our classes into family groups again this year, and they seem really excited to have families! I can’t believe how fast they bond. We let them choose groups of usually six, and in one of my classes one of the groups ended up with seven and another with five. I asked who wanted to transfer to the smaller family, and nobody would because they had already chosen their family name, and didn’t want to break up the family! So we left it five and seven. They really like the family name King, and I have a King family in each one of my classes, and each of ReNees. Throughout the semester when we have group discussions and activities, they will work as families, and at the beginning of each class one of the families presents an opening program, with a Master of Ceremonies, a Newscaster, a Cultural Specialist, an Entertainer, someone who presents five idioms and proverbs, and someone who gives an impromptu speech. Most of the time they really do a fun job and it helps them get used to speaking in front of the group in English. This first week, we just introduced the syllabus and discussed what would be covered in the class, then organized them into families and took pictures of them individually and as families.

King Family!

King Family

It has been really fun to be back, we have met quite a few of our students from last year, and they are sad that we don’t teach in their building and their classes this year. Several of the students that were freshmen over at the Ying Shui Dao campus where I taught part of the time last year are now Sophomores on this campus and wanted to take our classes again this year. It’s touching to think they liked us that much. We are in a whole different college this year, last year we were in the college of Foreign Language and Translation, and this year we are in the College of General English. We are in teaching building number two, which is a huge building capable of housing about 8,000 students at the same time. It is a modern and beautiful building, and the thing I like best is that it has media capabilities, so we can show movies, Powerpoints, pictures, etc. as part of our lessons. It really helps with the continuity of our lessons, and it’s nice when everyone can see what you are trying to show them.

This next week is our Mid-Autumn festival holiday. It’s kind of like Thanksgiving in America, but a little earlier in the year. It is about the only full-week holiday left. They used to have three, but it was too crowded and disruptive when 1.3 billion people tried to all take a vacation at the same time, so they have made two of them into 3-day weekends like in the US. The China way, though, is that this is a three-day holiday too, but they add the other too. To make it a full week, everybody has to work Saturday and Sunday to make up the Monday and Tuesday they are going to miss the next week! That way they get all five week days off, plus the Saturday and Sunday at the end of the holiday week. Of course we don’t have a choice, so the students who are in our classes next Monday or Tuesday have to come to class today or tomorrow (and we have to teach on Saturday or Sunday). But we decided if we do that, it will mess up our teaching continuity, so we told them to come to our Friday movie instead one Friday this month, and it will give them the same amount of time listening to English as if they came to our class. Then they have to write a brief review of what the movie was about and what they thought of it. We were supposed to show our first one last Friday night, but the department forgot to make arrangements for the auditorium so we have to wait till after the holiday. Then we’re scheduled to show “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” which they will love. If they don’t make it to that one, then they are supposed to attend one of the others we show in October.

For the week of the festival we are schedule to go on tour with several other couples from the Kennedy Center China Teachers program. We are planning to fly down to Guizhou (pronounced “Gua-Joe”), which is semi-tropical and has some of the most beautiful scenery in China. We are supposed to get some rain, but hope it doesn’t rain the whole time like it did on our trip to Southwest China over Christmas. We about froze on that trip. This area is supposed to be known for its mountains, waterfalls, caves, lakes, etc. I am really looking forward to seeing it! In our tours we have gone on, we have found that China has some spectacular scenery, just like the US does. But it is unique to China! This part is located on the continent of China about where Kentucky would be found in the US. I am hoping that most of the people from China have already been there, so won’t be traveling there this week. We bought our train tickets to Beijing where we catch the plane, and several of the times were already sold out. You can only buy your tickets three days ahead of time. The line at the train ticket office was about half mile long, so one of our students volunteered to pick them up for us the next morning. He got there 30 minutes before they opened and only had to wait in line for an hour. The 3:00 train we had intended to take was already sold out, but he was able to get us on the 4:00 train, but only to the Beijing South train station, which means we’ll have to take a longer taxi ride when we get to Beijing. But hey, we have tickets! Each train carries about 7,000-8,000 passengers, so I’d imagine the station will be a little crowded when we get there too. We can’t buy tickets for our return yet, that should be interesting too. We’ll have to get them at the train station. Maybe we can just catch a bus from the airport if they aren’t full by the time we get in. It takes longer, but is closer to the airport.

It has been fun to come to China and see the aftermath of the Olympics. There are a lot of people who are traveling to Beijing, Tianjin, Guanzho, and other places where they were held just to see the buildings where they were held. Most of them couldn’t get tickets to see the actual events, but they got to watch them on TV, so they want to see the actual buildings. I think it’s funny that people are buying tickets just to look at the inside of an empty building! They are planning to use the Water Cube and the Birds Nest for sporting events, but I don’t think there is anything going on right now. They are really beautiful facilities and should really be an asset for whoever uses them. Maybe they will use them for professional sports like football (soccer), or something. Everything is really beautiful here after the Olympics. The flowers and gardens are beautiful. The landscaping along the streets is really beautiful. The new streets are so wide and new and clean! We are really enjoying all the improvements that the Olympics brought. The people are really proud of it, and they are working hard to keep it that way. They think it is really neat that we tried to watch as much of the Olympics as we could while we were in the United States. And we always tell them how proud we are of the Chinese for doing so well by winning the most Gold medals. It shows that they are truly a player in the world scene. They are proud of all they have accomplished, and truly have a right to be.

We loved being home with our family this summer. We kept plenty busy while we were there, it seems like we tried to cram a whole year’s worth of living into two short months. We got to visit with all of our kids except Troy, and we really missed seeing him and the kids. We got to see Emma when she came out to teach a class in Malad in early July, and loved catching up on their life. We plan to spend some serious time there next fall when we finish up here in China. Maybe in October of November when it’s cooler and all the fall colors are out. We really loved seeing everyone else, and especially liked our trip to see Brent and Kiley and Kaedyn in Cleveland. All of our new granddaughters are so beautiful! Teresa and Dave’s Ivy, Brent and Kiley’s Kaedyn, Shaun and Kelli’s Rachel, and Troy and Emma’s Zoe, who was born on the very auspicious (in China, anyway) day of 08-08-08! I don’t know how many people in China pulled strings to either be married on that day, or have their children on that day, because the number eight is considered to be such good luck, because it signifies health, wealth, and happiness. To be born on that day occurs so seldom! Not for another 1000 years!

We loved spending time with Ed and Julie and the kids—time fishing, time barbequing, time working together, and just plain enjoying each other. We also loved going to football and soccer games with Russ and Billie and the kids. Especially Russ’s “to die for” prime rib! And just the family time! Loved spending time with Teresa and Dave and the family up from Arizona, and so appreciate all the work Teresa did to get our house ready for us to come back to. We loved seeing Amber and Tyler—several times! To play with them and just enjoy their company. We’re so excited about their new addition to our family in March! That has been a long awaited and desired and prayed-for event! We pray for them every day! We loved spending time with Shaun and Kelli over in Boise, and appreciate all they did to keep our house up while we were gone. And we especially loved spending so much time with Warren while we were home. I’m sure by the time we left, he was glad to not have to spend so much time with us old people. But we loved every minute of it—working, playing, visiting, and doing stuff together.

It was fun to get back to our little Branch of the church here. Strange to be in a meeting with only about twenty-five after being back home in wards of several hundred. We are working to get re-staffed with the new teachers and people who are here, have to call new priesthood leaders, clerks, Relief Society leaders, almost all organizations. But there is still the excitement and closeness of the church in a small branch. No question about whether you are needed or not! We are losing the lease on the building we are meeting in, so we will have to move all our stuff to a new building. We had to move a year or so ago, and it took us most of a day to hand-carry most of the stuff to the new building that was only about a block away from the old. We rolled the piano over the brick road to the new building, and it suffered for the experience. We never did find someone who could re-tune it. Probably a good thing, since we’re going to have to do it again, so it would have messed it all up anyway! I don’t know where we are moving to yet, but I think it’s supposed to be in the same general area, though probably farther than the block we had to move last time. Nobody here has a pickup, so we move some of it in one of the member’s van, the trunks of a few cars, and the rest by hand. TIC!

Well, I guess I’d better be going for now. I will try to write again when we have had more things to write about in class, and hopefully let you know how our Guizhou trip goes. I hope you all are well, that you, too, have had a great summer, and that you know how much we enjoyed seeing those of you we got to see, and that we appreciate your interest in our China experience. We are loving our experience, and love the people here in China. They are truly children of God! They just don’t all know it yet, but He hasn’t forgotten! May God bless them. And may God bless all of you and your families.

Love, Dondavid and ReNee.