WHAT IS NORMAL?

We arrived back in XingHu on February 5. We had been concerned that we would feel abandoned because school was out and most of the faculty and almost all of the students were gonee ha, but immediately we had a few tasks to do. The first was cleaning the apartment. A month of absence had left a refrigerator in need of serious attention and a coating of dirt everywhere. Restoring a livable environment took about two days. The next concern was our camera. During our time away one of our camera cards became unreadable. Since we had many precious photos on it, we were sad. One of our student friends took us from store to store in town to find a way to get the pictures off our camera. No luck, but his friend took the camera card and found someone for a small fee who would try. As you have seen, he was sucessful and our travel blog had pictures, My cousin volunteered to replace the card so we are now good to go. While the local stores were almost all closed, the local farmers still sold produce on the days ending in 3, 7, and 0, so we had food. Another advantage was that one of the 17 families left on campus are good friends. We had dinner together and played with their new baby. We have come a long way since our first visit to the deserted campus before school started in September.

We also planned to get to the other two major tourist attractions in the area while we had time. Our first was the Chongqing Animal Park. It is only a short bus ride and we go by it many times a week. On our salary, the entrance fee is expensive. We decided to use our travel money to finance the entrance and we bought a season pass. On this first trip we walked around and got up close and personal with some animals. People seem to really like the safari, which is in another part of this massive park. We saved that for another visit. Those of you who looked up Yongchuan have already been introduced to the park. Tourist from all over China arrive here daily.

The other adventure was to go to Tea Mountain (Cha Shan). Our good friend Becky and one of the art students from first semester and his girl friend went with us. We wandered throught the Bamboo forest maze for about an hour and a half. We decided that it would be cool in the summer time because of the dense growth. Then we decided to head up the mountain. We were unsure of the path but marched onward. Midway, we ran into a trio of young people having a good time. They tagged along for awhile, but we were too slow. They ran off. Shortly, they returned to say they had found the way to the top. We followed along as they went ahead. They stopped at a hard stretch and helped the more mature up. Finally, we reached the top and it seemed like we were in a cloud. It will be great to go back in the summer and enjoy the coolness of the forest and the mountain. The trek down is always hard for us, and these typical Chinese young people stayed and helped us to the bottom. One of them, Xiao Wan, has become a friend. The "bottom" you should understand was a winding road that was still about a 25 minute walk to the bus stop. We got plenty of exercise that day.

School has started and three weeks are complete. My classes are the seven Junior English Teaching Major classes. I have all of the same students except one girl who has dropped out. This semester I am planning on doing speech exercises with them. Impromptu speeches are this week. Dinner with the Doctor has also started again. On the first night I had a visitor on my lap. Renee has six of the same classes of English majors and picked up my class of Freshmen from last semester. She lost two of her classes from last semester. She is sorry, but they are still around and greet her warmly. ( I, Renee, am feeling good about my classes right now. It's nice to see many familiar faces, and Rich's class is lots of fun. They already have a positive attitude toward me because they liked him so much. I am trying to weave in some study skills and some Benchmark strategies, which I think are important in any educational setting. And, of course, we are singing.) The bus rides continue, the entertainment (parties) continue, and the Saturday night dances continue.

The one non - continuous thing was this last Saturday. It wasTree Planting Day. Over 1000 students went to seven different sites to plant thousands of trees from the school's nursery. We joined the group that planted trees on the mountain. It was a mammouth bit of organization, but hundreds of students climbed half way up the mountain and then spread out to plant trees. It was a beautiful day and a great time. The mountain, the streams, river and roadsides should all be better off for this attention. Besides climbing the mountain itself, the other challenge was trying not to step on any newly planted trees because they were quite small and we were quite numerous. After completing that task, we (read "Richard") decided to continue up the mountain with some student friends. It is a somewhat strenuous climb, but doable. At the top, the plan was to go to the pear orchards and see the blossoms. We had no idea it was Flower Day. The top of the mountain was jammed with people. We made our way to the orchards and saw the pear trees and beautiful fields of flowers. One prominent flower right now is bright yellow and is used to make an inexpensive but tasty oil, rapeseed oil. Then we realized that we were hungry, but we had made no preparations for eating. It was difficult to get a table. All of the restaraunts were booked. We ended up waiting a long time for food (We could have gotten back home, but what fun would that have been?). Coming down the mounain is harder for some of us (read "Richard and Renee") than going up. Two of the guys helped me and Renee's Chinese tutor helped her all the way down. What we had planned as a two hour trip took eight hours. (I was grateful that Rich also felt the descent was difficult. Then I didn't feel like such a fuddy-duddy.)After that strenuous activity of that day, we only stayed for two dances last night.

Today after church we went to a teacher's home and made and ate dumplings for lunch, played badminton, and hopefully are prepared for tomorrow's classes.