David's Big Adventure in China

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog. I continued to teach at the university in the 2015 fall semester but decided to retire from full time work after that. We were living on campus in the apartment provided to me as part of my contract so since I was no longer working there we had to move off campus. My wife wasn’t too happy about moving off campus since it would be a longer walk for her to go to her classes and for meetings but accepted that I didn’t want to teach full time anymore. We found a small apartment just outside the campus that was suitable and moved in mid-January. It’s a two bedroom unit with about 750 square feet on the 7th floor of a 30 story building. It’s in a pretty new building and it’s decorated pretty well so it’s comfortable enough. The second bedroom has been made into an office and that’s where we spend much of our time. The kitchen is tiny and it’s quite an adventure maneuvering around with both of us in there at the same time. The bathroom has a Chinese style hole in the floor toilet (which is what most Chinese have in their homes). This is the first place I’ve lived in China that didn’t have a western toilet. I don’t like it but I’m getting by with it. I’ve read that that kind of toilet is actually healthier. Most rentals here are furnished which makes the move much easier since we don’t have to move furniture but we still had quite a bit of personal stuff to move. We hired a truck and 3 guys to move the stuff for us and the whole process of loading, driving and unloading only took about an hour and cost us about $55 US.

We had a TIC (This Is China – a term foreigners use here to describe things that only happen here) event happen shortly after we moved into the new apartment. I got up early one morning and found that the power and water was off. We could see that it wasn’t just our apartment and so we went down to the management office and found out that the power had been shut off because the management company had not paid the power bill which they blamed on too many residents not paying the bills to the management company. The residents don’t yet pay the power company directly because the developer still owes the power company some money. The management company does have the ability to turn off the power to individual units if they don’t pay but for some reason they hadn’t taken that approach. Some residents apparently hadn’t paid their power bills and other fees to the management company for over a year because they thought the management fees were too high. Many people paid their bills that morning then within a few hours the power was restored and has stayed on since but who knows if and when it will happen again. TIC!

Since we were moving we decided not to do any traveling during the winter holiday this year but I did plan a trip to the states for myself in late March to early April to visit family and friends and take care of some personal business. My grandmother died suddenly and peacefully in March so I went to the states about a week earlier than planned to be with family and attend the funeral. She was about a month short of her 102nd birthday and was in good health mentally and physically up to the end. We all miss her but she had been ready to go for years and she passed the way most of us hope to.

Even though I’m not teaching full time anymore I am still doing some work. I signed a contract with a training company for some part time work but so far they haven’t asked me to do very much which is fine with me. I’ve also taken on some private tutoring. I seem to keep plenty busy and rarely feel retired but I have found more time for reading.

Well that’s enough for now. Until next time………

We took a high speed train from Nanning to Guangzhou on July 22. We spent the night in a bargain hotel ($15 for the night) near the airport and the next morning flew to Beijing, then onto LAX and then an overnight flight to Indianapolis. We enjoyed a week visiting family and friends before heading to Gatlinburg for a few days for our annual reunion with my Coca-Cola friends. We rented a 5 bedroom house in the Smokey Mountains and had a great time relaxing and enjoying the mountains. We also enjoyed a visit with former Edy’s buddy, Norm Downing and his wife Joyce. On the last morning there we had a bear saunter by the back door on the deck. He seemed to be looking for breakfast. After a few more days back in Indiana, we borrowed Mom’s car (thanks Mom!) and headed northwest.

Our first stop on this leg of our trip was just south of Chicago to visit my nephew Drew, his wife Annie and my niece Katie. Drew and Annie graduated from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University a few years ago and are teaching in Portage, Indiana. Katie will graduate from Jacobs next year and also hopes to teach at a public school. They gave us a tour of the school where they teach and we were very impressed by the facilities and equipment they had. The next day we headed for Minneapolis where we visited the Mall of America. It was impressive but not really much bigger than some of the malls we have here in Nanning. We went to see a movie while there and the cost was a bargain at $6 per ticket compared to the cost of seeing movies here in China (average cost of $8 to $10).

Our next stop was Wall, South Dakota near Badlands National Park. We toured the park, did a long hike and drove over to see Mount Rushmore which was quite impressive. We then headed to Billings, Montana where we spent the weekend with Loyd and Lynn Knudsen. Loyd and I taught together here several years ago and I went to their wedding which took place in LiuZhou which is a bit north of Nanning. Lynn is Chinese and has become an American citizen since moving to the states with Loyd 4 years ago. She has really adapted well to life in the states and spends most of her time chasing after their 4 your old son, Ike. She has become a garage sale junkie and my wife really likes garage sales since discovering one by accident last year so we had to hit a couple garage sales while seeing the sites of Billings. Loyd is managing a security company watching over oil and gas drilling locations which keeps him out of town most of the time.

After leaving Billings we headed to Yellowstone National Park. Shortly after entering the park we had to stop to allow a bunch of bison to cross the road. This happened a couple more times during our stay there. We did a late afternoon/ early evening hike after checking in to our hotel and saw the famous sites close to the hotel such as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and a couple waterfalls. We also got our first glimpse of a bear that evening. The next day we did an 8 mile, 5 hour hike starting near Old Faithful. We saw many geysers and hot springs. We were happy to stand near the hot springs since it was only about 30 degrees F when we started. We got to see Grand Geyser and Old Faithful erupt. The next day we did a couple hikes totaling 6 miles with a large elevation change which really wore me out considering that we were at an elevation of more than 6000 feet. The next day as we were heading out of the park we had to stop to allow a bear to cross the road in front of us. We drove to Laramie, Wyoming to spend the night then on to Denver the next day.

We spent a few days in Denver to recover from our hiking and to allow me to take a day trip to Las Vegas to renew my driver’s license. We left Denver to drive back to Indiana. It was our first time to experience the miles and miles of plains with very little traffic and very few places to stop. We made it back to Indiana in time to spend a few more days with family before heading back to China. Including our trip to Gatlinburg we drove over 5000 miles in about a month’s time. My mother’s car is more than 2 years old and only had 10,000 miles on it before we embarked on our trips. Bonnie shared the driving with me thank goodness and her driving skills continue to improve.

We’re now back in Nanning and classes start this week but my first class isn’t until next week. Here is the link to see pictures from our trip: https://davidsadventure.shutterfly.com/1303

This is a post that I wrote in June but apparently forgot to post on the blog site. I work for the Foreign Languages College (FLC) here at Guangxi University. A few days ago there was a strange ... [Continue reading this entry]

We’re now back in Nanning (not) enjoying the dreary, cool Nanning winter with the poor air quality. The AQI (air quality index) has been holding close to 200 for the past several days. Less than 50 is considered ... [Continue reading this entry]

I haven’t posted an update since the end of the end of the summer vacation because I’ve been working really hard this semester and because some of the things I’d like to write about I’ve had to self-censor to keep ... [Continue reading this entry]

We’re back in Nanning after enjoying our summer travels in the states and ready to start the new school year tomorrow. We started our US visit in Jupiter, Florida with the 24th annual reunion of my former Coca-Cola colleagues. ... [Continue reading this entry]

The spring semester is over and I’ve been in China for over 7 years now. I signed a new contract so I’ll be teaching for at least one more year. We finally got the key at the end ... [Continue reading this entry]

I finished the semester in the first week of January and then made a visit to Indiana to see family and friends. Bonnie’s semester didn’t end until a week or two after mine so I went to the states ... [Continue reading this entry]

We’re now approaching the half-way mark of this semester. I’m teaching 4 classes of Oral English, Business English, 2 classes of Reading and a class called Communicative English to Vietnamese majors. These are all classes I’ve taught before ... [Continue reading this entry]

The semester is over and we’re enjoying our summer vacation now. We started by flying to Harbin in the far north of China on July 16. We spent three days there as part of a group of over ... [Continue reading this entry]