Get ready, get set...

We’re scheduled to start teaching on the 13 of September. The beginning date was bumped back a week because of our trip to Mt. Tai. I was really pleased with this “tender mercy”. In the past couple of days, we’ve met with Xue Ruili, and Ellen. These ladies are our liaison ladies, who are facilitating our teaching. They took us to our classroom areas, and gave us an orientation. Both were very kind and helpful. They helped us get our cell phone cards and have even offered to go shopping with us. I think that we’re going to enjoy working with these two.
     We’ve been to the “Hi Tech Mart” several times. I think we have everything that we will need. We’ve purchased a projector, speakers, copy paper, photo paper, thirty five yards of ether net cable, and an iPod player. It’s been a challenge to get them to understand our non-Chinese requests. But we’ve done okay. I’ve become pretty good at charades. We’ve gone to Wal-Mart and RT mart several times too.

The prickly fruit is Durian. It’s the stinky fruit that you aren’t allowed to bring into Hotels. We remembered seeing it when we were in Malaysia.

All the little extras that were lacking in our apartment are now in place and serving us beautifully. The U-mart carries American groceries at an all-most double price. But so many other Chinese products are half the price that we paid in the states, so I think that we come out even. We’ve had to buy several multi-plug extension cords. Our apartment doesn’t have half enough plug-ins.

Our biggest disappointment is that phone service between here and the USA isn’t as good as we hoped. Our “Magic Jack” phone is pretty crummy. If the connection isn’t choppy or delayed, then we often get cut off. But it’s better than nothing, and you can’t beat the price. We always are reminded that “You get what you pay for.” So we’re leaning more to communication via email.