First Emails

"Hello Dr. Marklund, I am Zhang Liyuan from Class 4. I come from Sichuan province, hometown of panda.  In my first English class at Peking University, I was so surprised at such a cute teacher, making me so excited to attend the next lesson. May you a nice day." Always fun to get student's first emails.....of course this was to Rick, not me. Today we have our second classes of the semester. The registration is starting to be solidified so we will not have 59 and 49 students as I did in my classes last Monday. Today, I should have 25-30. Of course students can still enroll if there is space until the third week of classes. (Can you imagine all the info I have covered after 3 weeks of classes? Admin says, well just don't give any assignments until week 4. Well, that is not going to happen.) The way different cultures attack similar situations is always interesting. I will get their first journal entry today. That means long hours of work for the next week. That is

Requests

We attend an international church here. It is legal if we only let people having foreign passports attend. (Which is strange and rubs a little against the grain to restrict church attendance by checking your passport as you come in. Oh well.) However, in May the church was told that they would have to leave the venue in a large hotel banquet hall which they have used for several years. This venue was allowed a few years ago because it has cameras, etc., that keep things from becoming secretive. Important within this context. The church has searched since May for a new location and have been completely unsuccessful. We have to vacate the end of September. Last Sunday we were told perhaps we would be utilizing a house meeting model for a while, if we cannot find anywhere else. Our regular attendance is 700-1000 people every Sunday! We need real intervention. Please remember us. We also need pryers for our continued laptop difficulties. We went back and forth to the computer repai

Computers， prayer beads

A year and a half ago my laptop quit and I had to buy one here. I was directed to a nice little man in a huge selling complex.   Three weeks ago my Windows download alerted me that my license had expired. I assume it was a pirated English version and brought it back to the computer man….7 times now. He downloaded another version but the wifi and Power button drives were not activated. Then he downloaded Windows 7, rather than Windows 10. As I sat waiting for an hour and a half yesterday morning, I took this picture.  (that I ended up not being able to downloadThis is a 12 story building with 100’s of itty bitty kiosks selling anything electronic or mechanical you can envision. This is China capitalism at its best. Haha I watched the man across the aisle from our computer man. He had a kiosk selling pliers, small flashlights, and mobile phone cases. During the hour and a half I watched him he constantly rubbed his Buddhist prayer beads. Two people stopped to glance at his counter