Sunday, April 27, 2008

Week Two of Preparation

Hi All,
Ni hao, ma? Hun hao.
Actually, we can say and understand much more than that, or at least we think we can. We have been working with the Rosetta Stone computer program now for several weeks. We hope to be understood (with patience) saying I, you, walking, sitting, reading, eating, drinking, running, jumping, kicking, swimming, flying, some colors, numbers to 99, and a few nouns. There are a lot of words which indicate units of items (We have to figure out what that means). Chinese words do not grow like English words through the addition of prefixes and suffixes. A Chinese sentence involves a long string of one syllable words. Quite a challenge to keep them straight. In addition to the computer program, we have had a couple of native speakers work on our pronunciation of these words and encourage us. Please pray that our work will be beneficial when we get to China.
We have been able to contact another member of our team from the Virgin Islands who has also been a teacher and is now off for adventure in China. Two current Peace Corps volunteers have shared what they are doing and have given us some advice on what to bring with us. I (Rich) mostly wanted to know about the packing list which did not include anything formal, but my experience in China has been that there are formal occasions all of the time.
In preparation, we are trying to finish up activities at home. My semester at West Chester has two weeks left with the pressure of all the ending paperwork. The Chester Ridley Crum Watersheds Creek Clean Up is next Saturday. It will be the last one I need to organize - we hope that we will go over the five hundred volunteer mark for our 44 sites this year. Then there is insurance - I think we have a plan for how to cover that while we are away. We think we have sitters for our house, one car is sold as of May 14, the orchestra tickets are gone as of April 25 - only the Taurus remains in need of a loving owner as of June 28.
Work in the garden is done, at least as far as we will go this season. Gardening is an activity that I will miss over the next two years. We hope to have some lettuce by the end of June, but the other fruit will be for someone else.
I (Renee) have started to investigate drawers and closets. Of course, I am finding interesting things that I had forgotten, but also a great surplus of items that we do not need. The linen closet resembled one of those clown cars in the circus; the towels just kept coming and coming and coming. Tomorrow begins a new week with new lists and hopefully new accomplishments.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Opening a Blog

Hi All,
Tonight I am in Winston Salem, North Carolina. My son has set up this blog for me. I hope that Renee and I will kept it up to date and you can follow along with our preparations and eventually what happens to us in China.
Today Renee FedExed in our final medical reports. These are sent directly to the Chinese. Hopefully they will accept them and we can finally be done. Since we were nominated for English teaching in China we have already done several things. We have been posted on the Rosetta Stone program for learning Mandarin. It has been fun, but how successful I don't know. The Peace Corps has its own program which we have copied so we may work on both. We also have the opportunity to do some work with two native speakers. I am interested in learning, but I know from former teachers in China that they would prefer we speak English than Chinese.
We have also completed a new resume and a list of aspirations we have for our time in China. It was really interesting to think about what we would like to see happen.
We have not as yet found someone for our house. We hope that there will be someone who can take advantage of this possibility for us and them. We also are looking for someone or a group to take our Philadelphia Orchestra tickets. Our seats are so good we hate to give them up. It would be great if someone can save them for us. We also need to sell two cars. We have one of them sold. We are offering them at a good price. Anyone interested in a Taurus at the end of June??? We still have much to do to get things in order before we leave.
GRANDMA AND POP POP WITH ANNA ROSE


Among the things we are going to do is to visit Lee and Dave and the grandchildren in Turkey. We will be gone May 21 to June 4. We also will be visiting Ned and Lia and Anna Rose for a long weekend in mid May.

Rebecca, Anna Rose, Samuel, and Joshua with Ned

This is Peter John Giles, our newest addition! Born on Jan. 13, 2008