Fun with friends



Our internet has been working for an entire week with no disruptions.  We are very excited to be able to communicate with friends and family.  The SDU international office sent a repairman who determined that there is a faulty wire somewhere in the wall of our apartment.  He made a temporary "fix" and said if the one wire connection doesn't work, then try the other!!  The university said they will replace the wires in the wall this summer.

 

Our wireless router "fix" with two possible connectors!

 

We did have a chance this week to talk via Skype with a BYU couple who likely will replace us teaching on our campus this fall.  They are the Naegles from St. George, Utah.  He has a PHD, has taught in the church education system for his career and his wife has been a middle school English teacher.  They should be well prepared for this assignment.  They also knew Stan's cousin and his uncle.  Plus they served an LDS senior mission in Moscow, Russia.  During that time they became acquainted with young adult woman who was on a church mission in Moscow from our Hillsboro congregation.  We have known her family for many years.  Small world.

 





Readers of this blog probably think that all we do is go out to eat with friends.  Sometimes that is the case!  On our China tours we tend to get authentic food and most of us cook in our apartments during the week.  So sometimes it is wonderful to find a "Chinese" restaurant with western style food.  Wayne and Libby Clarke "found" this eating establishment, tried it out first and suggested we go as a group since we could point to pictures of the food!  They also discovered that even though the order is taken at the table, you must pay for your food in advance!!

 

 Nancy and Libby Clarke at the Jazz Beefsteak restaurant near the SDU west campus.  Nancy has her food, but the Clarke's order arrived after Nancy had finished eating.  We have noticed that Chinese restaurants have a harder time getting food prepared at the same time to serve to the entire table .

 

 

This was Stan's fillet with a lot of black pepper in the sauce!!  The steaks are very thin, but are served on a sizzling platter.

 

 The foreign teachers on all three campuses of SDU were invited to go out to dinner at a very nice "56" restaurant.  There were only 11 of us, but we all really liked the Chinese food.  The green pea pods were very fresh and a curry dish was served in a loaf of bread!!  At the top of the picture is Mary (from the SDU International Office who lives in our apartment complex), Lynn (a teacher on central campus), Wayne and Libby Clarke (BYU teachers on the west campus), Jason (teaches oral and writing classes on our campus) and Stan.

Lily and Zina Cox working on the newspaper at the Cox apartment

 

Friday night seven of us ate at the Central Campus Faculty restaurant where we can use our SDU meal credits.  We get credits for each day that we teach during the semester.  We like the food there as opposed to the student campus cafeteria.  We invited Lily to join us.  She wanted some help doing a newspaper in English to send to her BYU "parents", John and Rosylyn Kuzmich.  They were the BYU couple she met on the bus last spring and we took their teaching position at SDU "old" campus.  After dinner we went to the David and Zina Cox's apartment to help Lily, visit and do repairs!

Wayne Clarke fixing the ceiling light fixture at the Cox apartment.  He is standing on the coffee table!  David Cox is in the background  "supervising".

 

 

Stan relaxing at Cox's apartment

 

Our classes meet once a week for 110 minutes.  During the ten minute break we are both doing   "chats" with a couple of students to get to know them better.  It is not graded.  They can choose the topic and we have been surprised about them sharing personal feelings..  Nancy had one student say that she didn't want to return to school for the second semester and was feeling unhappy.  One night she decided to visit the China coast and took a train for six hours, arriving at midnight.  After seeing the calm water she returned back to Jinan.  Nancy encouraged her to talk with her parents about her feelings and to consider seeking some medical advice.  Another girl (age 20) had a student relationship from middle school with her teacher and they have communicated on occasion.  The teacher  (37 years old) was coming to Jinan to visit and wanted to see her because he really, really liked her!!  She was very concerned about the tone of this message since he is married and has a 5 year old.  She was very upset about him declaring his feelings in this way.  Nancy assured her that she had done nothing wrong.

 

Saturday, April 5, is a national holiday in China.  As a result there is no school on Monday, April 7 so we are going on another tour starting Friday.  It is a cruise on the Yangtze River.  We will see the Three Gorges Dam and also the largest municipality in the world, Chongqing (34 million!).

 

Update on Jinan BYU Teacher, Steve Schauerhammer.  In a previous blog post we mentioned the medical situation of our colleague.  He and his wife returned home to Utah for official diagnosis and treatment about three weeks ago.  After some medical tests that were repeated in the US, we now understand that he has Hodgkin Lymphoma.  He will have six months of chemotherapy, but is optimistic that he will have a favorable outcome.