Refrigerator Gems or Leftovers Too Tasty to Toss

I certainly hope no one in this blogpost takes issue with being referred to as a refrigerator leftover.  I apologize in advance if offense is taken.  None intended.  In a full attempt to maximize my retro blogging spree, I take you back two summers.  Yes.  My rationale is that when I hit the rest home the past will be so muddied and sullied that it will not make any difference at all.

These valiant women were companions of mine in the North Carolina Greensboro mission in the mid 70's.  I could tell whole long stories about each one of them to knock your socks off.  They are faithful and true, and I love them.  We get together and yuck it up alternating with tears.  I hope to take them with me well into my 90's.

This handsome group formed the 20/20 club in my fifth grade class.  That chart they're holding marked the accomplishments of each of my 25 students as they chipped away at each of the 20 goals.  These are the finishers.  We got the heck out of Dodge to Lagoon for a day and a night!

Recite the Gettysburg Address.  Recite the Preamble to the Constitution.  Learn to Knit.  Learn to spin with a drop spindle.  Juggle for 3 minutes.  Learn the major bones of the body.

Pass a math facts quiz.  Pass a parts of speech quiz.  Learn to play the ukulele.  Read a book about all the presidents of the U.S.  Identify all 50 states and their capitals on a blank map.  Memorize "'Twas the Night Before Christmas".  Memorize the major parts of the brain and their functions.  Memorize major world capital cities.

Learn to double Dutch jump rope.

Congratulations Keaton, Jaxon, Halsey, and Hallie.  You rocked my world.

I love these garden pictures.

Clara and Maren, I love you to help me in my garden.

 

My garden did well last summer.  This summer was a totally different story.  Does Mugsy look 13?  I love him.  He's a dog among dogs...

My lilies are truly pure joy.

Dom giving a victory signal after we got the boat up and running again at our fifth grade summer lake party.  We sold a hedgehog and a gecko and used the proceeds to have a party!  What you don't see here is the storm or the wind that sent us all scurrying to our cars...

I canned some survival supplies for my students which they opened on the first morning of middle school.

Bear Lake High School Class of 1971 43rd Reunion--Who do you know that has a 43rd class reunion???  Yeah, and we're having another one next summer...

What can I say?  We like each other.  We enjoy reunion-ing!!

 

And we're off to China!  Here we are in our two week training at BYU.  This is really retro blogging!!  A year has passed!!  Some of these folks are back in the arena, and some of them are back at jobs and life before China.  Little did any of us know here what was in store...

 

Rita--our Chinese teacher.  She optimistically took on that task.  We were dullards at Chinese.  Still are.

Directors and teachers.  Good good people.

Hiking in Provo Canyon with some of our fellow teachers during the training.

Princeton 1st Ward reunion.  Angela, Jordan, Celeste and baby.

 

Kay and David.  I wish I had pictures of the kids David and Sherise adopted shortly after this.  They were all downstairs.

Sherise showing off our homemade pizzas which we cooked outside in Angela and Peter's uber awesome brick oven!!!

You can't even...

Susan and Gary Carter and Steven Marsh.  We left this ward twelve years ago, but our ties are still strong.

Rebecca and her friend.  I hear he has moved up the pike.  His loss totally.

With good friends, Kay and Marilyn, at one of Provo's plethora of ice cream parlors.  The other woman was someone we met in line.  She was here on business, so we adopted her.  She was a gem!

On the Yangtze River

I remember reading about the Yangtze River when I was six years old and read this book.

Fifty six years later I boarded this cruise ship and took off for 3 days to see it for myself with my fellow BYU China Teachers!

Along the way we docked and strolled the villages which were lucky enough to survive the flooding of the river when the Three Gorges Dam was constructed.

This village had all manner of lore about evil spirits.  Note the Monkey King masks on the right.  He is prominent in Chinese folklore and just downright creepy to me.



I bought this little dress at one of the villages, modeled here by my granddaughter, Rosie.  One of the benefits of retro blogging...

Diane, Anne, and Clyde pose happily.  Diane has achieved BYU China Teachers infamy by buying a sewing machine and sewing Halloween costumes for ALL of her students!!!!!  I know!!!!!!!  She's a heck of a lot of fun.  I don't think Anne and Clyde had any inclination to sew, but Anne DID bake chocolate chip cookies for all of her students.  I mostly just yelled at mine.  Not really.

Happy, festive, cheery, colorful, whimsical architecture.  I wonder if Paco could put something like this up in our backyard...

These little boys were basically unsupervised.  They didn't seem any worse for the wear at all...

I just can't resist.

Paco all touristman-y alongside Kayleen (she's a former BYU roommate of mine from 1976 who has randomly shown up in my life on other occasions--last area conference ever ever held in Ann Arbor--we just met in a corridor there!!!--then she showed up randomly in my gospel doctrine class in Princeton, NJ about 14 years ago!!!--She and her kiddoes were vacationing, so we kidnapped them, checked them out of their hotel and into our bedrooms, and spent a cool cool week traipsing into New York AND even saw Oklahoma on Broadway on New Year's Eve!  THEN we meet again in China...  What do you make of it??)  She's going to run a Great Wall Marathon in a few weeks.  Burnetts strolling along with us as well.

Now THESE stout souls!!!!  They are touring the WORLD for a year!!  Sam, Tim, Katia, and Ash.  I think Tim was an afterthought they picked up along the way, but he seems to fit in.  You can follow them on www.thetruthfultravellers.com!

Happy happies again.  We took a side boattrip down a narrow tributary of the Yangtze--about 6 or 8 to a boat with our own private oarsmen.

And then we arrived at the world's largest DAM!!

Thank you Google Images.  It was rainy and wet, and I can never afford the helicopter rides necessary to get these pictures!

It was a novel unique Easter Weekend.  I looked for Ping.

100 Things I Don't Want to Forget About Chengdu Which I May or May Not Ever See Again

1.  Babies bundled up in hot weather
2.  Mops and brooms (you know I love ya)
3.  Street cleaning machines that play music
4.  Timed stoplights
5.  Beautifully attired young ladies
6.  Tiny tiny old people
7.  Uninhabited building after building after building
8.  Neighborhood trolley buses
9.  Pushing and shoving
10.  Lack of personal space
11.  Slimey sidewalks
12.  Dodging spit globules
13.  Street vendors selling EVERYTHING
14.  Vegetable and fruit vendors
15.  Cats on tethers
16.  Dogs in clothes
17.  Dogs running free dodging and stopping traffic
18.  Sides of buildings flaking off
19.  Old ladies' winter berets
20.  Wienies on a stick
21.  Grandparents babysitting
22.  Chairman Mao statue
23.  E-bikes
24.  Umbrellas in classroom hallway
25.  People hitting themselves for health reasons
26.  Medicine shops
27.  Clothes hanging from windows and balconies to dry
28.  Babies in basket backpacks
29.  Random traffic protocol
30.  "Praise the Lord" bus stop signals
31.  Vast supply of chopsticks at the cafeterias
32.  No concept of queues
33.  Shaved children's heads
34.  Wrist guards over sleeve cuffs
35.  Creative use of English on signs and T-shirts
36.  Passing up $ and bus cards on bus
37.  Slow relaxed service
38.  Red official stamps
39.  Loud phone talking
40.  Yelling children
41.  Stares and doubletakes when we are seen in public
42.  Cats howling all night
43.  Horns
44.  Crazy taxi driving
45.  Spotless streets and sidewalks
46.  Women marching in streets to advertise products
47.  Women dancing in groups on sidewalks
48.  Obnoxious repeated recording at veg/fruit carts
49.  Being saluted at the entrance to UESTC
50.  Neighborhood trash handling
51.  Empty high end malls
52.  Bike alarms going off around the clock
53.  Families and dogs piled up on bikes
54.  Pre-shift pep rallies
55.  Strolling arm in arm--boys with boys, girls with girls, old with young etc.
56.  T-shirts rolled up to cool off your tunny
57.  "WEI!"
58.  Soup of take-out without lid in plastic bag
59.  Spike heels
60.  Mahjhong
61.  Playing cards, $ exchanged
62.  Fake trees with surveillance cameras
63.  Hovering helicopters
64.  Police drills
65.  Everyone scrambling to give a little kid a bus seat
66.  Teahouses
67.  Sweet sunflower seeds
68.  Empty streets during a holiday--eery
69.  Tiny white fragrant flowers to buy on the street and hold to your nose
70.  Abundance of clothes shops
71.  Women dressed to the 9's
72.  Noodles noodles noodles everywhere
73.  "Dwei, dwei, dwei!!"  "Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
74.  Moving pictures out of the windows of the subway
75.  Motorcycle arm guards
76.  Everyone urinating in public
77.  Parents holding children over trash cans to do their business
78.  Grandparents waiting en masse for school to get out
79.  "You're an old lady!"  "No, You're an old lady!"
80.  Selfies on a stick
81.  Umbrellas on scooters for rain or sunshine
82.  Old rotten smells that just appear and gag you
83.  Loud speaking
84.  Water bottles with floaters
85.  No seat belts, kids ride wherever
86.  Red circles on bodies from hot bottles
87.  Squatting
88.  Protective face masks
89.  Badminton players
90.  Kite flyers
91.  Old people walking briskly in the morning
92.  Groups of people doing morning exercises
93.  Split pants for babies
94.  Field corn for street foot
95.  No headlights or sound on e-bikes at night
96.  Knitting with 4 needles
97.  Change of street foods for a certain season
98.  Pronoun misuse
99.  Lack of copyright concepts
100.Warm water in restaurants

"Back in the Saddle Again..."

"Well howdy, pardner.  New in these parts?"  I am shaking this blog awake.  Time to get to work!  We have returned once again to China--Beijing this time--new university, new neighborhood dogs, new opportunities!  I must admit, however, that I have been desperately homesick for Chengdu, so before we begin in earnest, I'd like to take a moment to pay homage to our former home.
We miss these dear dear faces.

Alice--one of the top 20 cutest little kids in all of China with her daddy, Bill-a peach of a guy and a smashing dentist as well.  You filled our apartment with hearty laughs and good fun.

Lily, Irene, and Mindy--I REFUSE to think that we will never see you again.  I have never felt love so quickly and so deeply as with you.  Thank you for dropping like gold dust into our lives.  Just a few of the many faces we singled out of the masses and called friends.  There, I can move on now.

New faces in Beijing at the Summer Palace.  We don't live too far from here.  I think, in fact, we could ride our bikes!!!

Did I say bikes????  Why yes!!  Before we hardly had a chance to unpack our jammies the first day back, Lee (fellow BYU teacher and on his 3rd year with his wife Kathryn here at PKU) had us herded off to the bike shop!!!  Before we could say, "20 MILLION CHINESE LIVE IN BEIJING!" we were bike owners and out on the streets dodging and swerving!!  It was a clever slight of hand on Lee's part, catching us in our jet-lagged state, but by cracky we are doing it!!!!  I love my new blue one speed.  She purrs.  She goes by "Gamma".  Welcome back one and all!  I was pleasantly surprised this summer to learn that my blog has lurkers!  Hello to you!  I apologize for needing to do some retro blogging for a while to catch things up to date.  Go make yourself a sandwich and come back when I am more current.

Be It Ever So Humble...

Jet Lag

Just when we thought we might have discovered the magic formula for avoiding jet lag (keep awake on the plane and put yourself on your destination's time the second you get on), day #3 hit.  I felt like I had a slow leak somewhere that was basically draining my life fluids.  All I could really take on in the afternoon was a package of pumpkin seeds eaten prone on the couch accompanied by the first season of the The Office.  No trouble falling asleep when the time came, but then at 12:30 A.M. I was bright eyed and bushy-tailed!  Initially, I played a game I made up where I go through each letter of the alphabet and think of countries and cities that begin with that letter.  I got to T and decided to get up and go downstairs.  First I found a box of hair accessories in the bathroom and messed with my hair for awhile.  Then I tried on some new clothes I ordered from Serengeti.  Following the fashion show, I perused some doll clothes patterns and then sat on the stairs playing with some little Chinese charms I'm taking to my knitting group tonight.  Every good insomniac eventually resorts to the internet--pinterest, etsy, facebook.  Inspired by my hairdressing session, I ordered a couple of hair gadgets and a book on DIY braiding on amazon.  Always the optimist (and knowing I had to get up at 6 to weed), I slipped back into the covers, but Mugsy's snoring and the enthusiastic roar of the  air conditioner were stiff competition even though I wound my way through U, V, W, and lastly Z.  This time I moved across the hall into our library and sat on the couch looking at my American girl doll clothes and reading old blogposts from 2010 in one of the bound books of this blog.  That was entertaining.  At 4:30 I finally fell asleep.  And that, my friends, is the downside of international travel--the only one I've discovered so far.  I see a nap in my near future.  A--Algeria, Athens, Atlanta, Arimo, Anaconda, Arizona, Akron...