March 3, 2009 – today was a take it easy day, just unpacked the rest of our things and kind of organized. Watched a couple movies on the TV (something I NEVER get to do at home!), worked on the computer and just stayed here in the apartment.
Floyd was in the office today to get the agenda lined out for this trip. There is always a lot of planning and coordinating to do. When he is here he is very helpful to the company, but it does put some burden on individuals with the necessity of being available for translating. Next week he will be helping in a national training program, called a dairy campaign. He has a lengthy presentation to do on farm and animal evaluation. He had emailed the presentation over to be translated, 181 PowerPoint slides. He also has another presentation to a group of dairymen next week as part of the campaign.
March 4, 2009 – I stayed in the apartment most of the time, the air quality was quite bad today. It looked really bad but part of it was fog. I call it dirty fog, either way it was gross to look out the window and see it! I walked up to the grocery store to pick up some more things we will need. It is really different having to think about what to buy here, you have to plan things out specifically so you don’t have anything left when you leave…no extended food storage capabilities here.
Floyd will spend the rest of the week in the Beijing office finalizing the presentations for the dairy campaign in Zhengzhou next week and working on other issues for the rest of this trip. He will be gone to Zhengzhou all of next week, flying out on Monday and returning late Friday night.
March 5, 2009 – I got adventurous and went over to the Country Club at the hotel. We get a complimentary pass for one person with our apartment rental. Last time they put it in Floyd’s name so neither one of us were able to use it, Floyd because he was gone most of the time working and it was not transferrable so I could not use it. It is a very nice facility with a small but adequate gym (with probably 10 treadmills, 4 stair steppers and elipticals, 4 stationary bikes, weights, etc.), a large warm pool (my kind of pool, one that doesn’t make you gasp for air when you get in) and a hot tub. I will be using it frequently now that I got brave enough to venture over there on my own.
Floyd has both the presentations completed and translated so now he needs to practice giving them. He said it is much more difficult with a translator. First it takes twice as long and second because he can only do so much talking and then has to stop to allow the translator to catch up. It is very difficult to keep a consistent fluid train of thought going.
March 6, 2009 – Other than making another trip t the gym, today was very quiet. It is very different being here than at home. It seems like at home I always have a thousand things I can do, while here it is much more laid back.
Floyd was in the office again today to finalize everything for next week.
March 7, 2009 – We are finally starting to sleep better through the nights. It takes a little while to get used to the different hours. We are going to bed here when it is early morning at home and then getting up in the middle of the afternoon. The day started bright and sunny with no wind. The temperature was in the 40’s, perhaps into the 50’s later in the day. Since today was housekeeping day, which means they come in and clean for us, we took a walk to explore the area. We found another market where we can buy groceries. It is larger than the one we have been shopping at and has more selection. Between the two we should do quite well. We continued walking around the area and went over to the big park. With it being a nice day and the weather warming, there were a lot of people in the park. After we got back to the apartment, our pedometer said we had walked just under 4 miles. It was a very nice morning walk and adventure.
Tonight we had the Saturday evening session of District Conference, which is roughly equivalent to our Stake Conference, except in China it covers basically the whole country. Elder Kent D. Watson of the Seventy, and a member of the Asia Area Presidency, was the presiding authority. He was assisted by Elder Chi Hong (Sam) Wong, also of the Seventy. We had an excellent session, followed by the obligatory stop at Dairy Queen for a Blizzard – a Mango blast…yum, yum! Yes, they have Dairy Queens in Beijing. In fact this was is located on the ground floor of the office building that the church meets in. This was a special treat to be there for meetings on a Saturday as we usually pass it on Sunday but will not stop. We wonder if this was a prerequisite to the Church leasing the space to meet here – just kidding.
March 8, 2009 – This morning we continued with District Conference. Floyd had Priesthood meeting at 8:30 and then we had the General Session at 10:00 AM. We both went together for the 8:30 session as we did not want to have to take 2 different taxis to our meetings, so I got to spend some time visiting with others sisters and reading my scriptures before the second session. Again, both of these meetings were very spiritual. We went back to the apartment very uplifted and spiritually well fed. We had a leisurely afternoon of just resting and spending time together. It was very enjoyable.
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