Meet His Excellency, US Ambassador to China, John Huntsman Jr.

Every day is a new adventure. After we finished teaching our English classes today, we went on a new, different type of adventure. These are photos of our most recent adventure here in Jinan, China. It was a normal Tuesday afternoon until this happened.
We were invited by University officials to attend this event and we certainly enjoyed the afternoon activities at Shandong University with former Utah Governor John Huntsman Jr, now serving in China under the Barak Obama administration as the United States Ambassador of the Shandong University Business School here. This seemingly small set of books you see, contain a complete set of "American Law" Books translated into Chinese. The books were presented and they were very well received by the Shandong University President, (President of a 70,000 student body in several campuses). It was a media event and as foreign english teachers, we were invited to be a part of it and to be in the photos. It was a real thrill.


We also attended His Excellency's presentation to the Shandong Business School in a conference room in the impressive 40 floor, Shandong Hotel, were the Ambassador was the keynote speaker for the event which included a large historical photos display/show. He gave a great talk and even spoke in Chinese for part of it. However, most of his talk was translated into Chinese by his official translator, a tall, caucasian looking, older American man who probably lived in Taiwan or in China most of his life. There were media men everywhere. I personally talked in half Chinese, half English, with one magazine reporter/photographer and one newspaper reporter just to be sociable. We left as friends.

Many of our English students were also able to attend this event. Some teachers brought their whole class. Dana brought three students who managed to get their photo taken with the Ambassador.


We watched Ambassador Huntsman in action on the TV last week in Beijing with President Obama where he was his right hand man in discussions on North Korea, Economic Recovery, Global Warming and Climate Change, etc, etc. and this week he is here taking photos with us. Whoda thought? We were all glad to see him and to talk with him simply because he is from our home state of Utah. He specifically wanted to know something from our group of English teachers -- "How was China treating us? ...or was he just making friendly conversation? You decide. He is the ambassador and a good diplomat and just a really nice guy.

We as foreign English teachers here, are sort of like US ambassadors too, on our own time, and in our own way. We are happy to do it. We do it every day! We teach English.


Here is a little example of the feedback we experience in our jobs teaching English to Post Graduate college students in China. We have wonderful students who appreciate us and who really want to succeed and to be better people.

We are lucky to be teachers here where we are trully making a difference in their lives.
Dear Jay, Thanks to your reminding, I know that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day! In this mail I want to express my thanks to you! I am so lucky that you are my foreign teacher. After that, you have taught me a lot of things, especially a lot of different experience.
Since the first time that I met you and your wife in hospital when my classmate and I looked after Babara, you have left a deep impression on me. Because the cultural differences, we have a lot difference in life and that also enriches my life. After you have become my teacher, you told us the correct pronounce that we always make mistakes in. You have told us to practice our oral English at anytime and anywhere. I still remember that once when I was on the bus, I thought of your words and practiced the “V” pronunciation at that time.
You are such a kind and optimistic person that sometimes your optimism affects me a lot. Every Monday I see you, I will become in good mood. You invited me to your home to attend the English Conner, and that was also a wonderful experience. You asked us to have a play performance. You let us to find p penpal to improve our English so that now I can type the English more quickly.
Our class has plenty of wonderful activities that we are happy to join in. You also remind us that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day so that we have a chance to thank the people we want to. That is also a good way to express our appreciation. You also let us to write a letter to our parents, and that is great! That is a good chance to express thanks to our parents!
Thank you again and good luck!
Best wishes,
Yours, Sun Junzhe (Sharon)

Winter has come with Snow.

Oh... it has been snowing here in China, wet snow. We miss the dry snow of Utah but now we take cabs every where as it is to snowy and cold to walk. I guess there is always a up side if you look for it. Here are some pictures
Love you all
Dana

China Updates

We went to this really neat place to eat, It is so cool. it reminds me of China and an exciting movie. The restaurant was upstairs.

The place was so full with people. It was our first noodle dinner, and it was really good.
The thing I am holding could count as a beginning of a Chinese pizza.
The next several pictures are us going out for a night with the twig group. It was at night and we planned to take a to take another boat ride down the canal, but the boat closed at 5:00 pm, we missed it by 15 minuets. We enjoyed our self, and we went out and I ordered the food In Chinese with the help of James (one of our last year students that we went to the wedding in September.) Every one said I did well, but I think they were just being kind.




Above is a picture of Paula Watkins playing a Chinese musical instrument and below is Jay playing his harmonica with her.

Here is a picture of Jay working at his computer. It was freezing in our apartment. The day before had been really warm. The next day it got cold, but there is a rule in China that they do not turn on heat until the 15 of Nov, and so we had to wear coats till then. But then on Sunday it came on, which is wonderful, because it got winter cold here on Monday, and it would have been torture to wait another week to get heat. Today it is snowing. Last year we saw a lot of rain in the spring, but the only snow came while we were on our spring break. This is suppose to be a really big storm. Luckily, we have the next 4 days off and it should be fun to stay in the apt

RED LEAF VALLEY IN JINAN

As winter encroaches on us here in Jinan we have been traveling a bit. It got very cold on the day we returned from a wonderful Trip to Red Leaf Valley. Here let me, Jay, tell you all about it....

We were bussed by Shandong University tour on Saturday, November 7th, to this tourist resort about one hour away by bus.

Upon arrival, it was clear that the red leaves were already gone! However, we enjoyed the day, seeing all of the dead red leaves (there were a few sort of purple/maroon on the ground),
There were also amazing tree houses (what we in our family like to call E-Wok Villages.







The bird sanctuary (gigantic) with it's colorful parrots, swans, ducks and geese and many of these beautiful peacocks. People inside the cage with them, like I was, were feeding them cookies.
After I successfully captured these beautiful peacock photos, very close ups, inside the gigantic outdoor bird cage, I was told that they tend to jump on and physically attack, peck and scratch tourists who get too close and who look them in the eye. I guess I never looked them in the eye, but they were sure looking me up and down as you can see.

Our tour ended with a Chinese food lunch at the local restaurant featuring chicken head/feet soup plus about 12 other similar dishes. Our only cost today was the $3.00 each of lunch.

It was a great day, certainly a fun day, with many new adventures as we met gobs of people there and took photos with them.

They are all so excited to see and meet a foreigner that they jump at the opportunity to take their baby, personal, family or tour group photo with us in it. I guess we just look totally adorable!

This trip also gave us some fancy and expensive English signs to direct tourists in English...However, they needed some proof reading before they went to the final production step -- the printer. Can you find the spelling mistakes?

Here are some brides we caught on camera as they were taking their wedding pictures in the lovely scenery.


Over all it was a wonderful tour of this interesting and beautiful country.

JINAN, A NIGHT OUT.

Attached is video clip of Jinan and our adventures here last Monday night on Family Night. There were many lighted kites in the sky that night. It was beautiful and quite striking, even though the video does not catch that very well.

This is a video clip of our night out at the Park and dinner with all the other Jinan (BYU) English Teachers together with Midge and Kirk Evans, our supervisors from BYU. They are assigned by BYU to come and visit all of us in China for a few days to observe our teaching styles, teaching failures and successes. It was their annual visit.

We were all glad to see them and to host them in Jinan.

I made a 7 minute "Thank You DVD" movie/card for them and Dana presented it to them as they left for their next adventure as they travel throughout the entire country of China and continue to meet with BYU English Teachers.