Friday, November 13, 2009

Friday was yet another cold, windy and cloudy day…but the rain had stopped. We had breakfast in the hotel and left for the train station in Weifang, the closest city with a high speed train connection to Jinan. The train left at 10:20AM and the trip took just over an hour. As we approached Jinan it was clear that there was a much more substantial snowfall around Jinan…on some cars in Jinan there was at least six inches of snow. We took a taxi to the hotel in Jinan and were greeted by Wang Peng, her husband, and daughter “Wendy”. Wang Peng had visited AMSB in October; taught two of our Mandarin Chinese classes with Wu Bo, and had stayed at Mrs. Frank’s home for the week. After lunch Peng (pronounced “Pong”) took us to several Buddhist temples on a mountain near downtown Jinan. The park and walk up the mountain included a cave that had 28,000 Buddhas in it…some simple portraits while others were huge statues. About halfway up the mountain we had photos taken of us in traditional Chinese clothing and we had a traditional tea ceremony performed for us near the top of the mountain. We returned from the top of the mountain in the dark and took a taxi back to the hotel. For dinner were met by Mr. Han, his wife and an English teacher/interpreter from the Shangdong Experimental High School. Mr. Han was the first Chinese teacher who visited AMSB and AHS in October/November in 2008. He had stayed at my home for a week and I had visited him on his trip to China in April of 2008. Following dinner, I visited Mr. Han’s new apartment and Mrs. Frank went out shopping with Peng. I returned to my room at 11:00PM and called back to Bethany using Skype. The charge for the call was only two cents per minute, and it was nice to get updates from Mrs. Beecher and Dr. Tracy.