Driving Tips; Out & About

We have learned 2 things re: transportation tips that you might want to try right away. People here drive their motorcycles without the lights on (day and night) to save gas!! With gas prices going up, I'm sure the police in the US would understand if you get pulled over for doing that. And, many cars have red ribbons tied to their exhaust or car frame to ward off evil spirits. Haven't seen any evil spirits, so it must be working.

Tuesday Bobbi was able to visit a huge truck manufacturing plant to try to set up the tour for Moraine Park teachers coming here in the summer. The name of the company is Shaanxi Automobile Group. They make semi truck tractors, tour buses & some military trucks. They made 100,000 trucks last year and 90,000 stayed here in China. The rest were shipped to at least 20 different countries. The man who showed us around is a former student of an administrator who now works at this univ. The tour-giver is quite high in the company, managing the engineering & research depts. They have 1200 engineers, some from the US. Hopefully one US engineer will be able to meet with our faculty this summer to give them a better explanation of the operation. It's very neat, very clean and very lean. Their business model reminded me of WalMart: spartan offices, few if any perks and EVERYone wearing the same blue jacket. I was very pleased to FINALLY get to visit a mfg site. It's been a source of contention between this univ & me since I arrived.

400 Trucks Built/Day; 20,000 Employees; Biggest Factory in China's 5 Northwestern Provinces

Most of the week was teaching and doing nothing special. Heat has been off in the classrooms & apartments since March 15. Because people like to leave windows open in the classroom buildings, the room temps are in the 50s (we guess) for over a week now with the cold, cool week & night-time temps hovering above freezing. Don taught with four layers on and many students kept their gloves on during the entire two-hour morning classes. About 5-8 of his students in each class have never shown up. (Remember the night-mare of taking an exam after forgetting to go to class?) We have been told by other teachers that they will show up on the last day, take the test and expect to pass, maybe even asking if they're going to pass before taking the exam or submitting Don's required short paper. Since they pay extra tuition to come to this private school, that is (supposedly) the main criteria for passing. We may never know.

Some of Bobbi's English Teachers

One of Don's Classes

Cleaning Crew Anywhere?

Saturday was very nice and we went to another park (lake, paddle boats, walking paths, games, etc). As soon as we walked in the park we were like rock stars. Very young kids ran up to us to practice saying "Hello." Older kids asked to have their picture taken with us. After about 10 minutes things settled down. But later on we were sitting on a rock people-watching and we heard, "Bobbi, Bobbi, is that you?" It was one of her students who again wanted a picture taken with us. An hour later we were in the Old Walled City area and we heard "Bobbi, Bobbi, is that you?" A young lady from our campus saw us. Being a celebrity can be tough.  (See pix from other posting:  Xi'an.)

We ate dinner at a dumplings restaurant (no English on the menu to help us out; tour books need to indicate this). We were able to convince them that two 18-course dumpling dinners were too much for us so they let us split one and we still walked away quite full - but with enough room for dessert & WiFi @ Starbucks.

At night we attended the Tang Dynasty Cultural Show at a "Las Vegas" style theater. Actually the theater, performance, music, costumes, etc., were all quite good & we enjoyed the show. So Saturday was a full day.

Sunday Don is going to work out with the local rugby group (and try not to get hurt) and we will walk to a restaurant for dinner later, as it is a another really nice day. We'll try a Thai restaurant in a grocery store complex. They were doing some construction work there the first time we walked through & the smells drove Don out. Hopefully that's done & we can enjoy the dinner. Bobbi has a lot of requests for topics to be covered in the last classes this week, so some homework for that & Lakeland are in the picture after a power walk on the very nice rubberized track on campus.

We're really looking forward to having our 4 kids here next weekend. My students love seeing family pix and may want to tag along Sunday & Monday so they can meet them, too. I'm not sure if there will be anything to write about 'til then & after the kids get here, we hope to be too busy to write much until we're home. Thanks for reading our ramblings - and all the reply msgs. Internet sure makes being away from home a lot easier than when we taught in Estonia.