Yeah! The Moon Cakes are Gone!

We are actually happy that Mid-Autumn Festival is over. This is the moon cake festival and we have had our fill (lower right). They are kind of like the old fruitcakes that people back home used to take around at Christmas. Everybody gave them away, but few seemed to want to eat them. It is the same with moon cakes.

Lowell is pictured here standing in front of our apartment building. The scroll of excess electrical wires is our "landmark" to let us know we have reached our building (since many look very similar). Here are some of Lowell's students and the class he alone (no one else seems to have access to it during the week) uses on campus to teach all eight of his classes in.

Teaching in Earnest

We have begun teaching in earnest now. Our campus celebrates it's 110th anniversary next month, so it has its own personality and many of the buildings (including the one lower right which Lowell teaches in) have been around a long time. Others are a bit newer like the Administration Building (upper and lower left). When it is smoggy, which it often is, it has a bit of the Harry Potter feel (at least that is what Susan thought when she snagged some of these pictures.

At Home Again in China

We are getting settled in our new accommodations. We live in a dormitory on campus which is actually two units combined to make it more roomy for the American teachers. It is quite nice and actually huge compared to where we were living in Hong Kong. Susan has started teaching and Lowell starts next week. Her classes are averaging about 50 students each. Maybe we can actually do this.

We were invited to stay for a light dinner after our group meetings the first Sunday. Two of the couples live in a hotel near their campus and that is where we will meet each week as well as where we will generally share a potluck dinner with the other couples. This time there was a member from Bolivia who is here teaching high school and a nonmember from Australia who coincidentally also has the last name of Bishop, There is also a widow who has been teaching now for six years and she is over 70 (the redhead in the picture).

Ready, Set, Go!

After two weeks of intensive (100 hours) training at BYU, mostly in teaching English as a second language, but also some survival Mandarin Chinese (different from the Cantonese we spoke in Hong Kong), we will soon be off to Shandong University in Jinan, China to begin teaching university students for the school year. Not at all intimidating, right?

We were with approximately 50 others (mostly couples, but some are single individuals) for this training and we will get to see all of them again next February when we go to Hong Kong for a seminar and our sole temple visit during the next nine months.



The group below are some of the couples we will be associating with on a weekly basis in Jinan even though they will be teaching at other campuses than the one we are assigned to. Two couples (missing in the photo), the Miners and the Joneses, are returning again this year and so had already received the training. We will be living close to the Joneses who will orient us once we arrive.



(L to R rear: Charles and Nancy Rieben, Lowell and Susan Bishop. L to R front: Truman and Carol Leishman, Marlene and Fred Simes)