Qing Ming Holiday or Tomb Sweeping Day

I think that the translation of Qing Ming would be something about spring brightness; maybe a bright spring day. ….Well, it is not! It is 34 degrees right now, and last night it was sleeting and snowing and really miserable while we were trying to bike home after a costly scam at our massage parlor involving the removal of moles and warts. Oh well.   However, this holiday has another name: Tomb Sweeping Day. My students have a different feeling here than they did in Taiwan. There it definitely was a day to go to the graves of departed ancestors and clean it and also bring things they liked or things that represented things that the departed valued in life: paper cars, god money, etc. It was important and viewed as activities for protecting the family. Changes. We are staying inside on this day off school and having our ERRC team for meeting and then supper. We spent the day filling out our contract and application for visas for next year! Everyone seems confident that t...

Dealing with sickness (using local medicine)

My hip was absolutely horrible all Christmas break. I could walk, but just barely. I limped with every step and it truly was painful and getting worse. I only thought it feasible to come back to China because I had tested myself with our grandson’s little bicycle and could bike without pain….but had to lay the bike on the ground and step over it to mount it. A fellow Chinese team member tried to do Thai massage on me and really could not manipulate me at all. She also had watched me agonizingly walk around our mission retreat. She mailed me Chinese medicine that had helped her mom. The first day it helped me. I have been pain free for a month now! And I mean pain free, my hip, my knees, my shoulder, most of which have bothered me for almost 10 years. I have no real answer for this, because two different doctors have looked at the med and said, it is very benign herbs, etc. which I can continue to take for as long as I want. I had a student translate the ingredients: glucosamine hydro...

Easter and Baking Powder

Originally posted April 1, 2017 So how do you buy baking powder in a country that does not have ovens in homes? We only have two very hot burners for woks. (We happen to have a toaster oven as well, which I think is a small concession to foreigners' needs.) We looked up how to say "baking powder" then went to the store. Nope, no way that our pronunciation was going to result in anything. The lady behind the counter called over a man she evidently knew and thought could speak English. We looked at the English and the Chinese pronunciation ( I did not have it in characters.) We talked back and forth between the man, his wife, and me.Finally he said, "To make cake?" "Yes!" Well the store also had a bakery as part of it, so we went to the bakery counter and the baker went to his kitchen and brought out a sandwich bag with about 30 cents worth of baking powder. Mission accomplished. Update: Only of course it never is even that simple. I took...

2,000 Views! Thank you

We have had 2,000 views in the first 3 weeks. Thank you so much ! Would you do one more thing for me? I think it is important to get "followers" for the sake of attracting a book agent. The "follower" button is on the right of the blog and says: "followers". I only have 15 people who have signed up.  I think it just means that you will get an alert in your email when I post. I need to go on accruing views, and certainly I want to continue to share our current experiences as well as book excerpts with you. Thank you for your faithfulness.

You Are Neded in China

2 OPENINGS Location:  Tai’an (at the foot of Taishan a famous tourist spot in China) Grade:  High school level students (ages 16-20) (at a Nursing Vocational School) Start Date:  September 2018 Subjects:   Oral English & Western Culture Qualifications: • Bachelor Degree • Female • TESL certificate • Humanities Major • under 50 years old • has a sending team Salary:  7000Y (approx. 1k USD) a month, with free housing and round trip reimbursement (sufficient to have saving to pay student loan) Benefit:  2 years contract, qualified to enroll in the masters degree program in Azusa Pacific or Biola University with discount tuition. Deadline:  April. 8, 2018 Unsubscribe ERRC - Educational Resources and Referrals - China 3824 Buell Street, suite B Oakland, California 94619 United States (510) 486-8170

Dealing with Sickness (Caused by the Environment) Part 2

The air pollution currently in much of China is listed as “severe”, ‘dangerous”, etc. This means you can almost taste the air right now, and it is much less in Beijing, than in the town we lived in a year ago, but they are all listed as 900+ on the air quality scale. ( I have been told that if Las Angeles reaches 100, people are told to stay inside. Does that put it in perspective?) You can see the air like a fog over everything. It is gritty in your mouth.   You need to clean off every surface repeatedly. It is almost like the sandstorms in Senegal, and as Rick says Beijing is almost as close to the Gobi as Dakar is to the Sahara, so probably that is a factor. We should be wearing facemasks, but we sent our facemasks with the new friends leaving on the airplane in hopes that they will not be infected on the airplane. Mostly I just ignore it. Most of our time overseas has been in places where environmental factors might affect our health.   Water bourne pathogens are usu...