It's been a few days so I better get caught up. A typical week and school, nothing special happened.
But today (Saturday Sept 22) is the celebration for the 60th anniversary of the University.
 We went to the ceremony this morning and had good seats. Unfortunately, all they did was talk. The did let loose some balloons and birds, that was pretty cool. Other than that, they had lots of speeches, in Chinese of course. Below are some pictures I took on the way to and in the event.

 This is the entrance into the stadium. Note, here they do not call it a stadium but a 'playground'. It has a track and a soccer field in it.

 The three ladies sitting are Sandy, Christine and Gale. You can see the top of Rosemary's head. Sandy and Christine are part of the BYU teacher group. The lady standing in the middle of the picture is Zoe. She invites us to her home to do thinks with her kids so they can improve their english.

 Here is a group of students that were in the section next to us

 The guy running this camera focused on us way too much.

 This is at the entrance to the old campus.

 Christine and our 'flag' bearer just before we walked into the stadium. we marched in 3by3.

 This is a construction project of about 6 30 story apartment buildings. They are made of concrete. There are hundreds of these projects going on in Xi'an.

There is tension between Japan and China over some islands in the sea between Japan and Taiwan.
There are riots going on over the debate. We are not supposed to discuss sensitive issues so that is all I will say.

We had saturday sessions of district conference today. We are part of the Centeral China International District of the Church. Branches from Quingdao in the east to Chengdu in the southwest participated. We all called into a conference number from our regular meeting place of the branches.
The official location of the meeting was in Chengdu. We had a little technical difficulity in the Priesthood session this afternoon. The Church has supplied a Polycom teleconference device to the branches so we can meet together and participate. We had a little trouble getting it to work here on campus in the conference room the branch rents from the university to hold meetings in. After it was working we had a good meeting. I got to give the closing prayer. The evening adult meeting had the
District presidency in Chengdu and their wives were in the home branches some where around the country. Rosemary gave the closing prayer in the adult meeting. Speakers were from around the country.
 Between meetings, all the teachers, not just the BYU teachers, had a gettogether and shared food from our home countries. We have teachers from Spain, Japan, Iran, Turkey, Portugual, USA, Australia, Egypt, India and maybe some others. So we had a sampling of different foods. Rosemary made deviled eggs.

Monday is at an end. We had family home evening in our apartment tonight, it was our turn. Suzanne Mullins had the lesson we discussed temple stories. This morning Rosie had her hair cut pictures were posted on facebook. I went shopping, bought some gatorade to drink in class. I went to a pharmacy to try to get some things for diarrhea and fighting msg reactions but no one there could understand English so I went away empty handed. It rained all day. Finished preparing for this week's classes and recorded the journals I received in the email today. Not a lot to get excited about. When I went out I bought a chicken(I think it was a chicken) precooked at Vanguard. It was shaped a little different and came with the head still attached. I should have took a picture of it before we broke it up and ate some.

Well, here it is Saturday the 8th of September. I have 2 weeks under my belt, that is I have taught 14 classes. Rosemary does not start until next Wednesday with the freshman. Below are some pictures of our apartment Rosemary took. Today we walked to a store called Metro, about a mile away I guess. They carry more international products that the Vanguard store that is where we usually stop. It was raining, but we did not let that slow us down. We took the other BYU couple with us. They arrived on Thursday and start teaching next week. We purchased CHEESE! we had grilled cheese for lunch and Rosemary cooked up some beans and a little meat and made homemade tortillas. We had burritos! Two things common at home but non-existent here. Below is a picture of the butcher. We could see in the cooler where the meat was hanging, the beef in quarters. When you want some meat you have the butcher cut it off the one he is working on. there was also some packages of meat. I bought a steel frying pan to cook in, I am excited. we cooked the tortillas in it. I work a little each day on either the lesson plan/powerpoint for the next week or reviewing homework. I have 196 students. I am just getting over diarrhea that I have had for a week. I am not eating much. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 as much as at home. I have lost a little weight. Hopefully the diet stays the same and I can loose some serious pounds the next few months. We will see.

 

 Door to the stairwell. Only those living in apartments from the stairwell have keys to enter.

 Looking down the hall from the outside door.

 Our Livingroom

 The study with the oldman hard at work. the corner of Rosemary's desk is on the left.

 Our bedroom, the one with an airconditioner.

 The kitchen and the clothes washer

 The second bedroom, for visitors to stay (hint, hint).

The butcher preparing someone's meat at Metro.

I have procrastinated long enough.
We had an interesting weekend. I'll get to it in a minute. Another interesting thing I noticed about traffic is that when there is a signalized intersection vehicles with 4 or more wheels obey the lights, vehicles with less that 4 wheels ignore the lights.
Last friday, it started raining before we gotup in the morning and did not stop for 2 days. It was difficult to walk around without getting wet. the water in the streets was sometimes ankle deep you had to walk through. Friday I took the pictures of students I took during the week to a photo store to have printed to put on the student info cards I had the students fill out. I picked them up Saturday. Most the street vendors were not out during the rain.
Sunday there were about 18 at church. We had a full block of meetings. Church as usual, we just expect to be asked to participate. I helped bless the sacrement. Getting up from kneeling was a challenge.

 This is a better picture of a lady that cleans the street. She is walkingback from in front of the bus where she was cleaning up stuff off the middle of the road. Notice her brooms, the large one is to sweep the street, the small is to help picup debris.

 Today we rode the subway to the city center and got off at the Bell Tower. I had asked another teacher for directions to walmart. I was told to walk east on the street that goes east from the bell tower until I get to a promenade. Turn right down the promenade and walk to the end and you will see the walmart sign. That is what the pictue is. The only sign on the street. It pointed thru some doors that looked like they went to a baskin robins and a chinese icecream stand. We when in and there was an esclator going down that at the bottom had a sign over the esclator that said Walmart.
We went down and there was a full size walmart, not abig open area but isleways going off in all directions with the various items for sale, a read maze.

These men are cleaningthe side of the old hotel that is part of XISU. I am not sure if the also do windows.