This will be a big entry. A trip on the Silk Road in China has little in the way of internet access, and when we got it, it was very sporatic. I have pictures below of the places we went in 4 days between Urumqi and Dunhuang along the silk road.

Day 1 Flew to Urumqi

 Inside the world famous Urumqi Bazar. 3 builds, multiple floors with all the junk you could dream of and then some more. Seth would like the knife collections, hundreds of different knives and swords.

 Dinner at a muslim restraunt.

 Rosemary and the bull at the muslim market. After dinner we drove for 3 hours to Turpan.

Day 2

 This is the hotel we stayed in in turpan. The beds are rated as 'soft'. I've slept on the ground camping at places that was softer. I think they useds box springs with no mattress on top.

 3-d map of the ruins at Jiaohe in turpan. On the UNESCO list of places to see.

 Large stupa in the stupa grove and the north end of the ruins.

 Daughters of a Uyghar (pronounced wee-gar) family that entertained us. The father raised grapes. you can see them hanging above the dancers. He mostly made raisins.

 Dinner at the Dinner and Uyghur show in turpan.

 Two of the dancers in the show.

Day 3 Still in the Turpan area. Same 'soft' bed.

 In china ruins that are man made caves with drawings and statutes in side are called grottos. This is one in the fire mountains outside of Turpan.

 We rode these donkey carts to the ruins of another site in Turpan.

 To conserve water from evaporation, the people in the Turpan area 2000 years ago build underground canals for the water. They are called Karez.

 Mosk in Turpan. Refered to as the Little Mecca. Muslims from the area come here because Mecca is so far away.

Took a night train to Dunhuang. 12 hours on a bed that was a little softer than a 'soft' bed in the hotel.
Day 4 Dunhuang.

 The Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang. They do notallow pictures to be taken inside any of the grottos we visited. I guess they want you to buy their picture books.

We rode a camel! Some kid stood along the trail and snapped pictures of every one and they sold them as you left the area. 20 rmb each picture.

Spent the night at the Mogao hotel in Dunhuang. the bed again was 'soft'. Flew back to Xi'an the next morning. In the evening a dumpling dinner and Tang dynasty show.

I took about 300 pictures on the trip. I am loading them to dropbox for those with access that want to see more.

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.

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.