I would *love* to be updating the blog with all sorts of exciting and unusual experiences we’re having, but actually our lives this past week have been rather humdrum and in many ways routine. Our typical day consists of beginning classes at 8:30 and ending at 11:30. We go to our apartments for lunch and then for a short nap, usually just a time to cool off and rest rather than sleep. After that we spend the rest of the afternoon planning lessons, cleaning, doing laundry, shopping for necessities, and/or proofreading. Yes, proofreading! Last Monday evening, two teachers from this university invited us out for dinner. We thought it was just a nice gesture on their part. The one had been in charge of us last summer, but his duties here have shifted and we have had next to no contact with him this summer. The other man has a daughter in my wife’s class and has himself attended several of the classes for university students, mostly to get new ideas in the area of teaching techniques. At the end of our meal at the restaurant, they asked us if we could proofread some materials they had put together for testing their students - about 400 pages, 4 copies. We thought we could handle it - 100 pages each, with two weeks in which to accomplish the task. W-E-L-L, when they delivered the materials to us, it ended up being about 400 pages of 4 *different* sets of testing materials = 1,600+ pages to proofread! So, the four of us have each attacked our personal stack of 400 or so pages after keeping up with our regular schoolwork, which is higher on our priority list. Nuff said….

With all our school and paper work to attend to, our big activities have been restricted pretty much to dining out each evening, always with a different mix of people and different hosts. The variety of food has been incredible, and we find ourselves thinking more and more that people back in America only *think* they know what Chinese food is! Below I will place a few pictures of highlights from some of our recent meals.

These are the two teachers who wined and dined us….

Among the items they ordered for us was potatoes covered with some kind of hot caramel. We had to eat it right away before it hardened into a sweet mass. Here’s Ruth pulling some of it from the hot from the plate….

We got to eat twice this past week at one of our favorite restaurants - the JiaoZi place. Not only is the food always good, but also it’s rarely “controversial.” Below is a picture of our of our nights at the JiaoZi restaurant….

Friday evening we were invited to have dinner with two of my students from last summer’s classes - Spring and Peter. Spring invited a classmate to join us, and Peter invited his girlfriend Jessica. I have greatly enjoyed talking to Spring about how much his life has changed since last summer. Below is a picture of some of the group - Jessica is on one side of my wife, and Spring is on the other….

The restaurant to which they took us specializes in food from the NorthEast of this country. I was the “ugly American” of the evening by eating my chicken wing with my fingers instead of with my chopsticks. We reminded them of the saying they knew right away from KFC - “finger licking good” and explained that what I was doing was why KFC has that saying. Below is a picture of some of what we enjoyed, including the bones of a whole chicken that we tore apart….

Jessica was pleased to get the chicken foot. Below is a picture of her pleasure before digging in….

Saturday of this week our “tourism” was shopping here in Haikou. We explained that we had not had time to shop to find souvenirs for our families. So they took us to some great places to find nice gifts. I will not show you any pictures of the shopping because some of it got a little ugly - especially when our hostess Judy battled it out with one clerk to get our purchase down to 40 percent of the original asking price. I was actually tempted to catch that wonderful Kodak moment, but I was afraid it might derail the haggling.

We ate lunch and dinner in local restaurants where the food was not only tasty, but also more than a little controversial. Lunch below included thinly sliced chicken stomach and also pigs’ ears. Can you find them in the picture below?

Mid-afternoon, we had “afternoon tea” at a “cafe” (read: Pizza Hut!) Four of us had iced lemon tea (ah… civilization!), Jean had iced coffee, and Judy had hot tea. Five of us had ice cream, and Yvonne had chocolate ice cream cake. Below is our little group….

After two and a half more hours of “window shopping” (read, for me: hostage situation!) we went to a restaurant where they had taken us last year. Their speciality is NorthWestern cuisine - once again, some of it quite delicious and also some of it controversial. Several of us had by this point “maxed out” on dealing with “mystery meat”. Below is a picture of a few of the delights. Notice on the left their version of a wrap - the cream-colored wrap is made of bean curd, and the meat on the same plate is made of pork. Jean’s hilarious aside to me was, “This puts a whole new spin on ‘pork and beans’.”

After dinner we were entertained by a floor show that was a charming mix of tradition dances and non-traditional things like the theme to Titanic played on a soprano saxophone. Here’s one shot (I’ll spare you the belly dancers)….

This evening (Sunday) Alice, a former student of mine from BJ (who was also a fellow teacher with us here last year), and her fiance are taking us out to dinner. This will be the 7th or 8th night in a row that we will have eaten out (I’ve lost track!) And we’re scheduled to do the same with yet someone else tomorrow evening. Believe me, we’re all a little concerned about the potential expansion of our waistlines. Fortunately, there seem to be plenty of items that we do no more than politely taste.

Well, this entry has gotten almost as long as our humdrum week, so I’ll stop for now. Later this week, I hope to do an entry on our apartments and show you a few more pictures of our students. Thanks for checking in!