School Begins!!

Another week has gone by. This week was much better because I am starting to establish a routine and fill my time with school, preparation, and getting settled.

One thing that happened was I was able to get Ms. Rao (rhymes with how) and her crew to come over and move my bed out of my sitting room and into my bedroom. You may wonder why the bed was in the sitting room in the first place. I think it was because the air conditioning unit is in that room and the former occupant was trying to cool the apartment down enough to sleep at night. The problem for me was that when people came to visit, they had to sit on my bed. Awkward!

I thought they were coming on Monday, so I left my apartment in a mess all week. I finally talked to her on Friday morning and she agreed to come between 3:30 and 4:30. I was leery about her promise, but sure enough they showed up. There were three Chinese men and a young girl, and they kept up quite a conversation going in Chinese (of course). Earlier in the week Sue Nibley had gone to Metro and picked up an air mattress for me. It is like sleeping on a real bed after tossing on the hard box springs for a week. Those men had a few choice comments to make about the air mattress. I am glad that I did not understand them or I would have been blushing.

I spent the rest of Friday night cleaning my apartment and making it more comfortable. I bought a shower caddy and a rug for the floor by my bed. Gradually it is becoming more like home to me.

School started this week. I only had classes on Tuesday and Thursday, but I went on Monday with Sue Nibley to watch her teach and get to know the system. The writing classes are taught in multi-media classrooms. That means we have computer access and can show power points and DVDs. In the first class the computer wouldn’t work so we went down one floor. In that room the electricity wouldn’t work so we went back to the original room and suddenly everything was working. We introduced ourselves and Sue took pictures of the students for their information cards. Then we taught the introduction to research. The students seem to listen intently. When I talk to them, I have to get really close and read their lips because I cannot understand yet. The students in the Translation Department speak very well—that is why they are there. I just have to get used to their accents. I told them it is my problem, not theirs.

My other class is a Newspaper Reading class and I have the students twice a week. My multi-media classroom is a chalkboard, chalk, and an eraser. They seemed a bit put off the first week at my style of teaching. However, when I asked them about their summer, they all wanted to talk. The lesson was about the parts of a newspaper and short history. I bought two English newspapers the day before and passed them out and had them talk about headlines and the five questions in the first paragraph. I thought it went well. The second meeting on Thursday was even better. They worked on the vocabulary for the articles and read them and discussed them. I was able to give them a reading assignment. Of course, all of the news is biased-- which I expected but it is still interesting.

On Friday I got a phone call from a woman named Emily. She had one class on Language and Culture for me to teach on Mondays on the old campus where I live. (The new campus is 30-40 minutes away by bus.) It is in the continuing education department. I don’t know what that means. On Saturday she called up and said that I had two classes on Monday morning. That was okay by me. If I prepare for one, I can teach the same thing twice. Because the information about the class was so vague, I decided to talk about America. I have a map and I will point out places of interest. Then I thought I would talk about George Washington and sing “Yankee Doodle”. Anything can happen.

Our branch president, Ed Britton, came over to meet with Ruth Ann, Sue, and me on Wednesday evening. He wanted to get better acquainted and give us a calling. I was given two callings; the first was Sacrament Meeting organist and Gospel Doctrine teacher. I was surprised at the second one. I only brought a kindle and it will not work for preparing a lesson twice a month. I gave the lesson today on Jonah and Micah. I am very intimidated and get too emotional to enjoy standing in front of people. The funniest part was when I was starting the lesson and said, “Please open your Bibles to the book of China. Er, I mean Jonah.” Everyone laughed. What a way to start.

I will include one excerpt from my journal about washing clothes. I hope you will get a kick out of it.

September 1, 2010
I had a day off so I proceeded to clean half of my apartment and do two batches of washing. I had never used Ruth Ann’s machine so it was a real adventure. First, I put my whites in the wash side of the machine and used a bucket to start filling up the tub with water. It seemed to be running out of the bottom, so I put more and more in. Then I added some soap. I started the machine and set the timer for nine minutes. The machine agitates one direction while water pours in from four holes, then it stops. A few seconds later it begins to agitate in the other direction and water pours in again and it stops again. It seemed to be working fine so I went over to my apartment to clean the bathroom. A few minutes later I went back and turned the middle switch to the far right and all the water in the tub drained out.

Next comes the rinse cycle. Once again I fill the tub with water. I am stuck because I do not know where to put the dial for the clothes to rinse. Of course, all of the directions are in Chinese. I call Sue Nibley and she helps me turn the dial correctly. The process starts over with the agitation, stop, more agitation, stop. I go across the hall to continue to clean the bathroom. When I go back to Ruth Ann’s apartment I lift the lid and find that the water is still soapy. I have to drain it, fill it, and let it run the rinse cycle again. The third time I go back to check on the machine, it is still soapy. I give up, rinse the clothes by hand and throw them into the other tub for spinning. I set the timer for four minutes. I forgot the machine bounces around if the clothes are not balanced correctly, so I have to hold onto the machine for the entire four minutes while it dances around the kitchen.

Second batch. Repeat process. This time I put in less soap and the rinse cycle works better. However, I still had to hold onto the machine while it went through the spin cycle. I stopped at two batches.

Next, I hang the clothes out to dry. Imagine getting a pair of jeans to dry in a humid environment. I hang up the clothes on hangars and put them on the racks. Both of the racks I have are very rickety. I put the clothes in the kitchen with a fan on them for most of the afternoon. Then I decided to let them go outside on my porch for a few hours. I walked down to get some copies made, buy a newspaper, and buy some clothes pins from a street vendor. When I returned the rickety rack had tipped over and half of the clean clothes were now filthy because they touched the dirty wall. I need a hose with an attachment on the end to hose off the filth on the porches. I now have another batch of clothes to redo on Friday. Sigh.

I found some treats: American almonds, peanuts, and rice cakes. I know they have sweets but I don’t know what to buy. I did find some heavenly cream puffs. Yum!

Note to readers: although Karen cannot access her blog in China, all comments you post go directly to her email in China and she is able to read your thoughts and good wishes. Sidney