Understanding Essays from Major Areas of Study at PKU!!!!

(P.S. I successfully purchased a new Kindle yesterday. It only took half an hour.) An interesting week of checking 120 essays (30 more to go on Friday). The assignment was to write a compare/contrast essay comparing the two sons in the “Prodigal Son” story. Or compare two issues from their major area of study. (The assignments mainly cover genre of English essays like Narrative, Descriptive, Cause/Effect, etc.) The “Prodigal Son” essays were good. One Chinese proverb that was used several times, confused me: “The prodigal son changes gold”. It is not unusual to struggle with translation of proverbs. Within the culture the proverb is immediately understood, but translating it to outsiders becomes challenging. Someone finally gave a translation that made more sense: “A prodigal who returns is more precious than gold.” But the really fun part of this assignment was reading the essays from those who chose topics from their majors. Remember, these are Ph.D. students in the...

Buying a Kindle in Beijing

What a fiasco! I have a lovely old Kindle. It was a present from Lynn Richardson, a good friend and fellow English teacher in Panama. It had over 200 books downloaded on it when it came to me, and I have so thoroughly enjoyed reading the novels that Lynn left for me. You can imagine that it would have been impossible to carry this load of books to China with us. Well, I could tell the Kindle was soon going to quit. I was having to force reload it often. And on Thursday, the monitor finally went blank and I could not revive it. I was prepared. I knew it was coming. I had purposefully read almost all of the books Lynn left me. I even had staked out a Kindle dealer about a mile from our home. So on Saturday at noon, we went to the mall and found the dealer. I told him I would only buy a new Kindle if he could migrate my 300+ books that were being stored in my Amazon library to the new Kindle. I have 4 or so sites I check every day for free books, and download a few every week….to th...

Thanksgiving in Beijing

Our Thanksgiving celebration involved biking 3 miles in very chilly, dark conditions to a beautiful banquet hall at a university close to our church. It was a full Thanksgiving banquet with turkey, chicken, beef, mashed potatoes, rice, Chinese vegetables, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin tartlets.   Very good.   There were about 200 people celebrating. I can bet that our Thanksgiving table partners were more international than yours! There were four of us from the US, then 2 from Nigeria, and one each from Togo, Ecuador, and Kenya. Fun times. We are blessed.

Bronchitis in Beijing

I have bronchitis. The pollution in Beijing has been very vicious lately and this started as a cold, and then progressed to where I can hear "tweeting" on every exhaled breath. Loud enough sometimes, that Rick could hear it too. I have had pneumonia 3 times in my life, and that "tweeting" was part of it. So I went to the dr. today. Always strange that one cannot go to the dr. by oneself. It is just complicated to know how to get to registration, cashier, waiting room, find the room when your appointment number is flashed on the screen. Talk chinglish with the dr., find the way to the window for a finger stick. Go down to the hospital basement for chest x-ray. Decide if you are going to get undressed and put your hair up in a rubber band for x-ray or not. Feed your hospital card into the ubiquitous machines to get the lab results. Find the doctor again who prescribes meds. Question dr. about what the meds are and remind her that I am allergic to sulfa and penicillin....

Mermaids and Jesus

We are having very deep and good discussions from the book of Luke on Friday nights with two students. This week one asked, “So the Holy Spirit is greater than Jesus, since the Spirit created Jesus in Mary’s womb?” So we backtracked and explained that Jesus was preexistent in Heaven reigning co-equal with the Father, further demonstrating Jesus love for us in humbling Himself.   How does one ever explain the Trinity? Particularly if you are starting almost from scratch. Reflection reminded me about a post I did about 18 months ago when we were first in China, teaching in Taian: I am not sure how to write this post without sounding like a heretic, but I don't think I am. As we were in the "US culture" class today (for 4 hours every Saturday), the students were responding to a newspaper article that talked about a lady with webbed fingers claiming to be a mermaid. The students had to give a review of the article and then ask a discussion question. The question they ...

What Is It Like to Bike to Church in China?

No, I didn’t forget and wear a skirt this morning. I faithfully put on pants, knee brace, socks, etc. that I have put on every day for the past 2 months. After all it was the 30’s and rather cold. These kinds of temperatures make biking interesting. I put on a heavy winter coat. Mine is a black peacoat, quarter length. If it were longer, I think it would get in the way of biking. I was told before I came here this time that I needed to be sure that I had clothes that were dressy enough. Something like an army/navy camouflage coat would be an embarrassment to them as they expect professors not to be camping chic as it would have been acceptable at some points in their past.   I wrap a scarf around my neck and head, and tie it in the back because winds might otherwise untwist it while I bike. I also need to be sure that I can turn my head and see behind me while I bike without my scarf and hair getting in my way. I put on my gloves, which are those light weight $1 black stretch...