The last 2 days I have taught 4 sessions of Oral English III (first semister sophomore). Tomorrow I teach 3 sessions. Each session is 2 hours long. 14 hours in class does not sound like much except I spent at least that much time in preparation and recording envents of class. It will probably take all of Friday to get the gradekeeper entries put in so I can record scores as the students complete them.

Following are pictures I took on the way to school today. We live on the old campus and we are bussed to the new campus to teach.Traffic lights are very few. Bicycles, scooters and the like ignore the lights. You will see someone on a scooter in the middle of the intersection making a left turn when the light says they should be back waiting their turn. They just move thru traffic as if it no big deal. Most roads have no shoulder. If a person is waiting for the bus he may very will be standing on the edge of the right lane. When making turns, left or right, no one stops to see if there is an opening, they just make an opening. The streets are all cleaned by manual labor. I will try to get better pictures of the brooms used. If there is debris in the middle of the road, large or small, the person assigned to clean that portion of the road walks out it traffic and does the cleaning. Road rage is non-existent. You cannot get mad at someone for doing something you don't like because 30 seconds later there will be another incident that could make you mad. You have to just 'go with the flow'.
The freshman were out on campus in their uniforms training. there is one picture below. All freshman for the first 15 days of school have military training.

 Above is some freshman in their uniforms training. I could hear them out my window while I was teaching class. The windows to the rooms open and you could throw things out them, no safety barrers at all. I teach on the third floor.

 This lady is sweeping the sidewalk. I will try to get a close up picture. Her broom is a bunch of small branchs bound together for a handle and fanning out for the sweep part.

 There is some mud or something in the road. The street cleaner here is cleaning it up. Traffic just goes around him.

 Here is another street cleaner working on the street. Notice no sidewalks. Sometimes people will be walking along the road by the curb.

 Here is a bicycle/scooter truck. They are everywhere. Some are motorized and some are just 3 wheel bicycles with a truck bed over the back 2 wheels. One man was driving his scooter with a lady on behind him. She was nursing a baby while they maneuvered thru traffic.

We made it to the end of Monday. We took the faculity shuttle to the south campus. That is where we will be teaching. We met with the Associate Dean of the College, Fangjun Li and then the secretary who gave me my class schedule. I will be teaching Sophomores. I will have 7 classes. Rosemary will be teaching Freshman. She has a 2 week wait. The freshmen spend the first 2 weeks of the year doing military training. That means she will have 2 more weeks to worry about what she is doing. My classes are 2 on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday and 3 on Thursday. Each class is 2 hours long. One preparation, repeated 7 times. I do not know the size of the classes or the names of the students, I guess I will find out when class starts.
Classes are run a little different at this university than it the states. The students are grouped and assigned a classroom. the teachers  move from room to room teaching their subject. More like junior high in the US.
As we have traveled on the busses in Xian it is notable that being on the roads here is scary. Cars, trucks, bicycles, motorscooters, and pedistrains all seem to be on the roads at the same time. Very few signal lights to help with traffic. Those that exist are actually ignored some of the time.Every one has the right of way. If you try crossing the street, you have to manouver between the vehicles on the street, sometimes you are standing in the middle of the road waiting for a small break in traffic to allow you through. I will try to take a video of it some day and post it here.

 Looking across campus from the 3rd floor walk way between buildings a and b.

 Walkway to the side of the library leading into the campus

Library, all the above on the south campus.

One of the monuments to XISU on the North Campus.

Well we made it to Sunday evening. it is almost 5:00pm and still no teaching assignment. We thought we would start tomorrow...

Yesterday I went with a fellow teacher at XISU to the electronics mall by the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. 2 builds of 4 floors of computer, camera and everything similar. Not 1 business, but more like going to an expo, hunderds of stalls selling similar things. the place was a 20 minute bus ride away on standing room only mini bus. The bus had a driver and a money taker. I think they think I am really old because when I would get on the money lady would make someone younger standup and let me have their seat. Which I appreciated. the jostling on bus could very will have knocked me down. I bought a projector for teaching with. Rosemary went with the ladies to a park for a while and then to Walmart. They rode the bus there and walked back. It is near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda also, only on the side nearer the school. The electronics plaza was past the pagoda a ways.
Today(sunday) we went to church. I said the opening prayer and passed the sacrement. Rosemary led the music. there were about 18 of us in attendenance.3 of them where primary age children of the councilor in the branch presidency. There will be a few more, not all teachers are back from summer leave. An elderly brother and the 2nd councilor in the branch presidency blessed the sacrement and I passed it. One of the speakers was a councilor in the District Presidency. He was here from Shanghi to release the Elders quorum president and make him the second councilor in the branch presidency. The other speaker was the branch president's wife.
We came home after Church and spent the day preparing for the classes we though we would be teaching tomorrow.
Stay tune for another episode in "When and want do I teach?"

Sorry no pictures. I took my pocket camera with me and discovered it had a dead battery and a dead spare. Maybe tomorrow.
We went this morning to the health clinic to have our physicals reviewed and a blood test. that took most of the morning, there were 5 of us and a whole lot of other people there. On the way to the clinic, the driver went down a road the size of an alley and about 2 blocks long. It was lined on both sides with what looked like storage units, but in reality it was a furniture for sale street. Each little store looked like they specialized in something, even safes. There must have been more that 100 of them.
Rosemary, Sandy and I had lunch in the facuilty cafeteria (the same place as yesterday). It cost us 18 RMB or about 2.60 each. After a break a few of us went to a different store that Christine likes to shop at. In the basement was a market we bought some eggs, grapes and peaches. Prices are really cheap. 6 brown eggs was about 75 cents. we would pay 1.50 or so for that in a store at home.
Rosemary and I spent a little time discussing our first day class in preparation for Monday. We still know nothing about what or when we teach. This evening we went with 9 others to a fancy resturant to eat. We had 8 chinese dishes and rice. Duck, eggplant, tofu, pork ribs, potatoes, sticky rice, sweet and sour pork, broccoli. There were teachers from Australia, Portugual, Italy, Japan, china and the US. An interesting group.

Well,m here we are in china! We arrived yesterday about 10:30am. The school sent a van to pick us up and take us to the university. We arrived at the school, was given keys to our apartment. We where then treated to lunch at the small cafeteria close to the apartments. We had 10 chinese dishes. some were familiar, like the ones in the US and some were new. the noodles were homemade and not rolled out but shaved from the batter. After the meal we went in to XISU hotel, which appears to be the location for foreign teacher interaction with the school, and registered with the government. Our work visa will now be processed to show we are teachers here. We then had a the rest of the day to ourselves. We rested and started unpacking. after a couple of hours Christine and Sandy, 2 single sisters here teaching from BYU same as us, came by and we when shopping. Christine was here last year and knows her way a round pretty good. We bought some card stock for student info cards. I then stopped at the china mobile store and got a sim card for my android phone. the lady knew very little english, but used her computer to translate the questions she needed to ask me. The phone now works in china. Calls to/from the US would be very expensive so we will be using skype to talk to home. We then went in a grocery store. the labels are mostly chinese. if the product is american, the brand name is in English, but the rest of the container is chinese. This will be a challenge. We bought some milk and orange juice. today we may try for other items. The strattons who were in this apartment left their cellphone so Rosemary will be using it. We have a medical check at 8:30 this morming(Friday). I'll try to take a few pictures today. didnot have the camera out at all yesterday.

Well here we are an hour or so before leaving time. we are packed ready to go.
Here is our luggage:

Here is Jacob and family, incharge of the house while we are gone, with the help of Mary and her family. Notice Zina is not happy with us leaving.

 She decided I could take her picture.

As soon as Luke gets here we will load and leave for the airport.

Well here it is the morning we are leaving for china. We have a few last minute things to go buy, finish putting away personal stuff around the our desks and we are ready. I'll try to make an entry this afternood with a picture of our luggage. We started contemplating this adventure last November and here we are ready for it to start.

I am a little slow. Training finished last Friday, but I have been busy. Here are some pictures from the last day of training:

The Deputy Directors and a student playing the opening song.

I was not the only one taking picutes during class.

Survival Chinese Teachers

Teacher that taught us how to teach english as a second language

One of the exercises in class

Graduation

We spent 100 hours being grilled in everthing china. How to teach, survival chinese, history of china, cultural of china, religions in china, china arts and theatre, how to use some of the computer tools available to us, and speakers that were either raised in china or have lived there for an extended length of time.

Tuesday we are on our way!

Well, the first week of training is over. It was grueling. We were in class from 8:00 until 5:00pm with an hour break for lunch. Then in the evening we had different activities, usually after an hour or 1.5 hours for lunch. Each day had 45 minutes of survival Chinese, 2 hours of how to teach English as a second language, then either 2 hours of history or 2 hours of teaching writing of English for non-English speakers. We also had lectures on things like the church in china, medical knowledge for china, etc. Usually we finished between 8:00pm and 8:30pm. We start up again on Sunday with a China area conference. all people in the area that have been in China for whatever reason are invited to attend. It will be presided over by Elder Toronto, the area seventy assigned to administering China and Mongolia. The Monday back to the grind of 8:00am until 8:30pm. Except on Friday we finish at 4:00 pm. Then we will have a week to prepare and we fly out on August 21.