Visiting on Christmas

I have been struggling how I can at least be able to knowledgeably greet the other 11 families who live in our apartment. I have played around with inviting everyone for a meal, but that is not realistic, both for space, and cultural appropriateness. So last night I suddenly thought about taking a small bag of left over candy canes (left over from sharing with our students), and knocking on every door for Shang Dan Kwai La. Merry Christmas. So Rick and I did this at 6 this evening, Christmas Eve our time.   Only 3 families were home, out of the 11! I left the candy with a note on the other doors. No more than “Merry Christmas”, but I feel like maybe I have at least been faithful to   a vision. It is quiet here. I made part of the Christmas Day supper for tomorrow night with 6 friends at our house. We went to the bank to exchange some of our yuan to USD for our trip home on Dec. 31. We teach all morning tomorrow. Strange way to spend Christmas, but what is appropriate for...

Pearl Market

The snow covered everything by morning to a little over an inch, but it was melting by the time we went out at 11. Today we took our once a semester trip to the Pearl Market. It is a huge multi-story two building complex of wholesale items. It is really quite remarkable. There are certainly plenty of jewelry choices as the name implies: gold, silver, jade, pearls, etc. I really do not know anything about prices on these items, but my impression is that many of the shops are looking for massive bulk sales for export, or at least resale. We went looking for luggage. Because it was cold, I dug out and put on an extra layer of leggings under my blue jeans. My Chinese doctor would be very proud of me. She, as well as most of my local friends, are just appalled if they run their hand over my leg and realize that I am only wearing one layer of clothing. It is true that it helps my arthritis but if the rooms end up being hot, I start to suffer from too   many layers that cannot be conven...

Snow and Thanksgiving

It is snowing. It has certainly been cold enough lately to snow, but we are next to the Gobi Desert, so it is usually not humid enough. We were in our Friday study, and during that hour, it started and a skiff was all ready covering everything. The people we were with were excited. Me, not so much. Biking in snow is OK, but not my absolute favorite. I bet my Thanksgiving meal was different from yours. No turkey, no stuffing, no green beans, no sweet potatoes, no pumpkin pies. We did have mashed potatoes, I think. We were at a buffet with the chuch family. There were individual bowls of mashed potatoes with carrots and corn mixed in. They were not hot, but not cold either. It may have been potato salad?? We also had sesame chicken, beef and onions, mixed whole vegetables, toasted white bread and butter, rice, noodles, watermelon, tangerines, and cookies. A Chinese friend we were with said, “Oh, this is not as heavy as a Chinese meal.” I looked at the bread, rice, noodles, potatoes a...

Falling Off Bike x 2

Solving transportation issues is always necessary in every culture. We have been so very happy here with our combination of subway and bicycles. Bicycling particularly brings much joy to our lives, as well as physical benefits. However, this week has not been very good. First Rick was sideswiped by a bike turning in front of him on Thursday night. He fell. At first he was OK, but by bedtime he was quite sore where apparently the handlebar must have poked him in the side of the chest. He has spent a few days in pain, but it has lessened every day and we are encouraged that really he is fine. Today as I was biking to church, a car hit me. He was slowly turning off a side road and just did not look both ways. Admittedly I was driving down the wrong way on the bike lane, but they are closer to two-way streets and usually you are just as safe going one way as the other. I assumed he saw me, but he just kept coming and his car hit me from the side and I went sprawling right in fron...

Where Are We Supposed to Be When?

I am sitting here looking at 4 beautiful glossy tickets and 2 lanyards.   They were left last night for us with another Foreign English teacher in our building by one of the administrator ladies whose job is to take care of us. We were asked about 2 weeks ago if we would come to the 70 th anniversary celebration of the Foreign Language Department at our premier university. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon and would be slightly difficult, we readily agreed. We did not hear another thing until last night, 2 days before the event. The little bit of English on the tickets say that one set of tickets is for a 12:30 dinner. The other two tickets are for a program of some sort that will last from 14:00 – 16:00. However, we have absolutely no idea where these activities are going to happen. I will take the tickets with us to our Friday night study group in hopes they can read the tickets and tell us where that might be….but maybe not. Our organization team leader will write an emai...

Hearing Aids

Rick has hearing aids! We have known for years that he has needed them. Over 20 years ago he was tested and found that his hearing lose was greatest for the tone of my voice. Haha. However, we have not really followed up on the diagnosis, for many different reasons. But today was the day! We knew this would involve more Chinese than we really had, so were able to contact a friend to go with us. This is not often possible because people work, but this is a wonderful wife of a new ERRC (our sending organization) couple who is Chinese. When I used social media to ask a Dr. friend to set up an appointment to help Rick get hearing aids, the translation system gave her the impression we were asking for help because Rick had AIDS. She was worried that she would not be able to find a hospital who would take his case!   I straightened that out. Getting to the hospital was even a problem because we could not get our Didi (Uber) app to accept the spelling of the hospital name, nor e...