SIGHTS OF JINAN

Bicyles, scooters, and pedestrians compete for space on the busy streets.
Jinan is a city of 6 million people. China's total population is 1.3 billion.

Toilet! and, yes, I have had to use one.
But, I'm quickly scouting out all the businesses in Jinan that have 'western toilets'.

At night, the streets of Jinan are lit up like NYC.
This giant electronic billboard reminds me of Times Square.
It's on the corner by the Catholic church pictured in my previous post.

WE'RE IN CHINA!

Yeah! We're finally in China. It was a very long flight here. Our total traveling time from the time we left St. George on the shuttle was 30 hours. We arrived at the Las Vegas airport a couple of hours earlier than we needed to because we wanted to have time to visit with my dad and mom. Then, we had a 5 hour lay-over in Los Angeles. Due to the difference in time, we left LA at 5:40 pm on Monday, Aug. 29th, then arrived in China at 10:40 am on Wed. Aug. 31st. China is 14 hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time.

We were met at the airport in Jinan by my supervisor, Karen (her English name), whose English is very good. I have a better pic of Karen that you will see in my next post. She brought Angelo and Roddy with her who helped with our luggage, drove us to our apt., and packed our luggage up the flight of stairs to our place.

For the next 6 hours Karen, Angelo, and Roddy took us to lunch at a very nice and very authentic Chinese restaurant not far from our apt., took us to my campus, and then took us to an internet cafe to print some documents from one of my emails that Iwas going to need later. By the way, when I said 'took', you need to understand that we walked to all of these places. My campus is a 20 minute walk from our apt.

At that point, Karen and Angelo left us with Roddy at the internet cafe. But, Angelo came back with his car to take us to the police station. Yes, we have already been in a Jinan police station, but only because it is a requirement that any expatriate (persons with foreign passports,) who are establishing a residence in China, register their address with the local police. Just a formality.

We were taken next to a Bank of China close to our apt. to open a bank account. By this time, I was feeling the effects of jet lag and needed to rest. It took Truman about 1 1/2 hours to get the account squared away. Thank goodness for Angelo, he was a very good interpreter. Finally, we were able to go back to our new home to settle in and rest. Actually, I wasn't feeling very good, so Truman did the settling in and I did the resting.

This is a picture of a Catholic church that is right next to my university campus. I'm standing in a large public square, my campus is to my left. Pictures of my campus and Truman's will be in a later post.

SAYING HELLO TO OUR GREAT-GRANDSON AND GOOD-BYE TO MY PARENTS

The day before we left St. George headed for China, our granddaughter Tai accommodated us being able to see and hold our first great-grandson by having him a week early. We had just enough time to hold him for 5 minutes each before we loaded up our 250 lbs of luggage and ourselves into the St. George Shuttle for our ride to the Las Vegas airport.

My dad and mom met us at the airport to say good-bye. They went to California right after we got back home from BYU and just got back to their home in Henderson just two days before we were leaving for China. We had about an hour's visit with them before we had to catch our flight.


My dad took this picture just before we headed for the security gates. Take a close look at the items in my hand. The large white object is a folder containing our boarding passes and our passports. Between the time this picture was taken and the time we arrived at the security gate, that precious little folder dropped off the luggage cart. When we started looking for our passports to go through security, we discovered that they were missing so Truman did an 800 meter dash retracing our steps in record time. I stayed at the security gate entrance and didn't stop praying until I saw him dashing back with it in his hands. We were very lucky that someone found them and turned them into lost and found immediately. I aged at least 10 years in 10 minutes that day.

CLASS IS IN SESSION

To get ready for our China adventure, we were required to attend some training at the BYU Kennedy Center. The training consisted of 10 hours of instruction for 10 days in two weeks. Our classes started at 8:00 AM and ended around 8:30 each day with 1 hour for lunch and 1 1/2 hours for dinner. LONG DAYS! Kirk and Midge Evans were our mentors in this program.

Kirk is pictured above with the Chinese gong he rang to signal the beginning of each class.
Below you can see our classroom at the Kennedy Center where we were packed in very cozily. There were 56 of us in this group, all preparing to go to different universities throughout mainland China.
In this picture with us are Donna and Roger McEvoy. Donna was a neighbor of ours when we lived in our first home in St. George in Morningside, She lived down the street from us. Her daughters and my daughters were, and are still, good friends. They are going to Xian, China.

The Adventure Begins

We left our home in St. George on Sunday, July 31st, after attending church to travel to Springville so we could begin our China Teachers Program training. My sister and her husband are graciously letting us stay in their home while we attend our first week of training. They were also our hosts when we attended the MTC 3 years ago prior to our mission in the West Indies.

Classes started this morning, Aug. 1st. We have classes from 8:00 AM - 8:30 PM with breaks for lunch and dinner. I'll tell more about the classes in another post because I'm exhausted. We had a real treat at a FHE tonight. A former student from Shandong Province who took English classes at a university in Beijing from teachers from BYU told us about her experience and what we might expect from our stay in China. She is studying for her Master's Degree at SCU in Los Angeles right now.

Going to bed - more later.

ON OUR WAY TO CHINA

Welcome to our next adventure and our next blog! Truman and I have been accepted into the BYU China Teacher's Program. We will teach for 2 semesters at Shandong University in the city of Jinan in Shandong Province. We leave for 2 weeks of intensive training at BYU in less than 2 weeks. Stay tuned for what we believe will be as grand an adventure as our mission was.