Getting the Hang of It All.....

DISTRICT CONFERENCE




President & Sister Britton's Apartment. President Britton is the local leader of our church.

We met there last Saturday night and Sunday morning for District Conference. This was the first time that the meetings were broadcast via Skype so all of the passport holding members could participate. the wife of the branch president was one of the speakers. She just put on a headset and started talking. What an amazing thing technology is! What the Church is doing with the technology is even more amazing!

 

I am getting into the hang of teaching now. The three preparations are keeping me pretty busy; plus, I had to teach two classes on Sunday this week because of the two national holidays coming up. That was difficult. Thursday is my hardest teaching day; I have my newspaper class and my writing class. I taught them on Thursday and then turned around and taught them again on Sunday. I was scrambling to get the lessons planned and the Power Points made. In my newspaper class, I taught about how the media affects elections and the increasing impact of blogging and social networks on the voters. The other articles have been from the 1990s but this one was from 2008 and talked about the elections with McCain, Obama, and Hilary Clinton. It was an interesting discussion because supposedly those kinds of sites are blocked in China. The students did say that they have blogs, but did not have access to Facebook. I had them do a mock election for class president;  Charlie Brown and Snoopy ran against Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The chosen students gave small speeches then the media (other students) asked them questions. Mickey and Charlie even started debating about Disneyland and air pollution. It was not exactly clear how they were related but it was funny. And they spoke in English! It was pretty entertaining!

Sunday's traffic was lighter so the bus got back early, and Laree Phillippi and I were able to go to the last 30 minutes of Relief Society. It was such a blessing to participate in just a few minutes of Church and get some insights into faith as the sisters finished the lesson. At the end of the meeting, the RS president passed out our list for visiting teaching. We each have two people to visit and Laree is my partner. Visiting teaching will be quite the challenge in Xi'an but still doable. We will be brave and get on the bus or hail a taxi by ourselves. I sure hope we know where to get off. . . .

This week is the Mid-Autumn Festival and we have three days off--Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The first and last day are for traveling to and from home, so we have to make up those days. The next holiday is from October 1st to 7th and is called National Holiday. The students explained that it is like our Independence Day, July Fourth. I will be traveling to Urumqi on September 30th and ending back in Xi'an on October 5th or 6th.

I am still trying to figure out how I get to the airport, but someone will help me. We have to make up one of those days too. I just do what they tell me to do. It doesn't make much sense yet.

On Friday we had lunch with a young business teacher named Tang Huili (Who-a-lee). She is in her mid thirties, and she is absolutely delightful. She has a Master's Degree in business, has attended some classes in the US, and speaks excellent English. She will be so helpful when we need someone to interpret for us. Apparently she has known several of the other BYU teachers in the past.



The weather is unbearably hot, especially with the high humidity. I stand in front of my classes and the sweat just rolls down my back.It is most uncomfortable. (Sounds just like teaching in Ogden in August and September.)The students are suffering as well. I am trying to drink enough water to stay hydrated. I have a large bottle of water in the corner of my kitchen. I thought it would last for about two weeks. Wrong! I use it for drinking, brushing my teeth, washing off fruit and vegetables, and cooking. I am lucky if it lasts five or six days. The bottles are so heavy that I have to get help from the workers in the teacher cafeteria to bring it down to my apartment and lift it onto the stand. The water from the tap is not too clean. I just have to let it go when I wash my clothes or take a shower. This too shall pass. Next thing you know I will complaining about the cold.  There was an article in The China Daily about how Americans like to talk about the weather. Apparently we are unique in that respect. Think about it. We talk about it with friends and with strangers. It is a safe topic. I will work that into my Oral English classes in the next few weeks.

TOUR MY APARTMENT!

My modest apartment consists of four rooms and a hallway. Outside the door is a porch for drying my clothes. It looks out to a little area with trees, shrubs, and flowers. Another apartment building is across the way. My porches are closed in because I am on the first floor.



Front Patio and View



Hallway



My sitting room has two chairs, two tables, a desk and two cabinets. The week after we moved in, they replaced the old TVs with new ones. We can get three English stations—CNN, BBC, and HBO. So far, I have not been too interested because the picture was pretty fuzzy. It was better yesterday but I still don’t watch it much. Why would I come to China to watch TV? Well, the news maybe.

The kitchen consists of a frig and a butane hot plate. You can also see the water bottle talked about earlier.

When I first moved in, my bed was in the sitting room because of the AC. I had some of the men switch it to the bedroom, and I like it much better in there. It is a king-sized bed with a hard box springs mattress and two hard, flat pillows. The sheet pick-up place got new sheets after we arrived—white with a brown square design on them. We were all thrilled. Seriously. I bought an air mattress (double), which is saving my back and helps me to sleep through the night. I need more than four hours of sleep per night. The pillows are hopeless.

My bathroom has a shower, a western toilet (thank goodness!), and a free-standing sink. It was pretty gross when I first moved in, but my weekly cleaning lady has done wonders with it. My shower has hot water in the morning. I was told that the Chinese shower at night because that is the only time they get hot water. So far I am lucky.

I have a back porch that looks out onto a small garden. There are workers out there everyday weeding and picking the corn.

I dry my clothes out there because when the AC is running that porch is like a furnace.

All in all, it is adequate and I feel safe and happy here. All of the BYU teachers at my university live in this building. We have 18 apartments in the building. The six in the middle are for couples and the six on either side are for singles. I am surprised at the number of single people who teach here. I think there are more single people than married.

I am always excited to open my mail and see messages from America. Keep them coming. Thanks for your support and friendship.