Much Obliged

Last night we were taken to a celebratory dinner commemorating the 62^nd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.  The dinner was held by the regional government in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, and our school decided to send in addition to our school's president, Eaaf, William, Mrs. Ma (who works for the international affairs office and can speak very good Japanese) and myself.  Mrs. Ma's English is limited, but the four of us are able to communicate pretty well, with William using Chinese, and Eaaf and I using Japanese.  I am able to somewhat follow the conversations William and Mrs. Ma had, but usually I could only answer in Japanese.  We were seated with the vice-president of Zhengzhou University and four of their foreign teachers.  One of them, who sat next to William, was an older gentleman who has been teaching for seven years.  I was sitting between a Russian teacher from Zhengzhou University and the Zhengzhou University vice-president.  The Russian teacher, who has very good English, has been teaching for three years, and is from Moscow.  She came to China because her husband is Chinese and from Zhengzhou.  I got the impression that she misses Russia very much.  The vice-president of Zhengzhou University had a very good sense of humor (he would laugh a little whenever they would announce the Yellow River Friendship award going to a representative of the Coca-cola company) and he taught me the word for shrimp (xia1 虾) and oyster (bi, which I can't find in Chinese dictionaries, so maybe it refers to some other kind of creature).

Last weekend, we went to the Yellow River National Park with the other teachers (except for William who decided to sleep instead).  Once again, it was the school taking us.  This time however, it was only for us.  Among other things at Yellow River National Park was an enclave of peacocks which we got to feed and take pictures of.

I have started this week working on my Chinese with one of my students.  I told her I'd exchange one hour of English conversation for one hour of working on Chinese.  We covered holidays, parts of your face, furniture, and the phrase, “I didn't understand your meaning” 没有听明白你的意思.  This next week we are on vacation, and I am going to Nanjing.  So next entry will include many pictures from Nanjing.

This may be a habit I am forming from my classes, but I would encourage you to ask questions about these pictures and leave comments.  Though I am only posting once every two weeks, I can respond to your questions via e-mail or it may get me started on other posts.

Also, this just in right after I wrote everything else and saved it and my pictures for today onto my flash drive, my computer is broken!  Fortunately, everything is backed up on my external hard drive, and just about all of my pictures are still in my camera's memory card, so I don't think I've lost anything.  Except a working computer.  So... I will have to figure something out there.  I'm not panicking.  There's a city to visit.

Tatiana, Ben, Eaaf, Aikawa-sensei, Aikawa-san, Mrs. Ma and a friend of Mrs. Ma in the parking lot at Yellow River National Park

Several restaurant river boats on the Yellow River.  We ate lunch at the one with a red roof on the left hand side of this picture.

So many peacocks!  So many shinny blue feathers!

Zhengzhou, the newer part of the city.  As you can see there is lots of construction.

Our fancy table.

This is a great picture.  It really captured the essence of that number sixty two.

Night time when we left there were so many lights!  It was so beautiful!  And I had drunk more wine than I usually do because of all the toasts.  Mrs. Ma pointed out that my cheeks were red, but she said a little red made them look pretty.