March 1-19, 2010

March 1, 2010 - Here we are back “home” in Beijing again. It seems like it is getting to be too routine. It snowed just before we arrived so there was some snow on the ground. We thought winter was over so we again did not bring warm enough clothes, Floyd left his heavy down coat at home and I just bought one on sale for next year and left it home also. We can make do though. I will probably not write in the blog every day this time but I will try to mention some of the things that happen from time to time.

March 7, 2010 - Our first Sunday here and we had District Conference, which is where many of the congregations meet together to hear area speakers. It was a great meeting! Our Area Authority Elder Chu spoke to us about why we are here. He challenged us to find out why we are here in China, he said we may think it is for employment but it is not. He said the Lord has placed us here right now for a reason and it is up to us to find out why. That was very thought provoking. I don’t believe we have found out why yet.

March 8, 2010 - We had snow again today, about 2 inches or so. Floyd had to fly off this morning for work and had to trudge through the snow for a block or so to get a taxi…seems there weren’t many to be found that morning! He finally found a taxi and had a fun ride to the airport. At one point the driver was going faster than he should and traffic stopped in front of him. He slammed on the brakes and still wasn’t going to be able to stop so at the last second he swerved and they sat cross ways in the road, but missed everything. Floyd did make it safely to Yinchuan, a city about 2 hours flight West of Beijing. It was very cold and Floyd said they walked in a snow storm as they visited the farm. They must not get many Americans in the town as Floyd said while they were eating lunch a group of school kids came to the window and peered through at him. He felt like he was on exhibition. It is really giving him a better understanding on minorities and how they must often feel. The cold and snowy weather is starting to get ordinary. They say this has been the snowiest and coldest winter they have had in at least 10 years, maybe more.

March 9, 2010 - I got to go out to lunch to a local restaurant with some of the ladies from church. I ordered a chicken salad (with raisins and walnuts) sandwich on pumpkin seed bread. It was pretty good but not spectacular, it sounded better than it really was. It was a bit dry. It is always fun to spend time just talking. Great lunch, great ladies! Floyd flew back to Beijing tonight.

March 13, 2010 – we spent the day catching up on computer work although we decided to take a break and get a bite to eat for lunch then go for a walk. We had a wonderful walk in the park and enjoyed watching everyone out enjoying the “spring” weather. It was actually a beautiful day…a little warm to wear your coat but too cool to go without it. Hmm, what to do?

March 14, 2010 – well it did it again. I looked out the window this morning and thought it was foggy and thought nothing of it. I then stood up and saw something funny over on the sidewalks so I went to the window to get a better look and sure enough it was snowing again. Somehow we missed the memo or something that it was going to snow. So we later trudged off to church in the snow. It was coming down pretty good but we thought it would taper off as the morning wore on and the temperature would rise like it usually does. Much to our surprise it continued snowing all through church. When we got out of church at noon it was still snowing and continued to do so until around 4 PM. Much of that time the flakes were very large and majestic looking, the kind that look like feathers floating down after a pillow fight. Floyd had a flight out in the evening to Hohhot (in Inner Mongolia) for work and was concerned about the weather. As it turned out his flight was only delayed, not cancelled like 3 others going to the same place. They were supposed to arrive in Hohhot about 7:30. He finally got to the hotel at midnight and had a 6:30 breakfast meeting. He said he was very tired.

March 15, 2010 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our first born – Terri Lynne (Hoisington) Grammer!!!! It has been 37 years now since we first became parents to our little “Trinket”. I can remember the day as if it was yesterday! So many mysteries, so much love…and so much WORK! I wouldn’t trade it for the world. She was our “prototype”, everything got worked out on her before the others came along. That has not always made her happy when she would say “I never got away with that” and we would reply “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let them do it when we realized it was not that big of a deal”. We had learned to pick our battles or maybe there would be only battles and no good time. Funny how sometimes wisdom comes with age and experience.

She has been a delight to our family and a good example to the others. We love her dearly!

True confessions time… I have decided to make a quilt for each of my grandchildren for their 12th birthday. Sounds easy enough right? It should be, but I took on a bigger project with Katie’s quilt than I should have. It took me an entire year to finish piecing the blocks together – she has now turned 13…UGH red faced shame! To make a very long story short, I finished piecing it just before we came to China this time so I brought the top, the batting and the bottom layer with me. I promised myself I would tie 1 to 2 rows a day until I got it finished. I GOT IT DONE TODAY…YEAAAAAAAAAA! Now I just have to put the binding around the edges when I get home and give it to her. I must say it has truly been a labor of love! I hope she can enjoy it for many, many years!

March 16, 2010 – today started out rather normal then about 11 AM Floyd shows up back at the apartment after having left at 7:30 AM to go to work. It seems that the internet server was down and he had many things to get done that required the internet. Sure changed my plans around but it was good. Floyd’s co-worker Joshua and his wife asked us to go out to dinner tonight. This is the individual that just spent a year in the US being trained by Floyd and his co-workers. We went to a Korean restaurant near our apartment. I must confess when they said they were going there I quietly cringed. We had gone to dinner at a Korean restaurant with one of Floyd’s bosses on one of our other trips and I was not enthusiastic about the food. I was able to eat most of it but told Floyd I would not care to go back. Luckily as it turned out, there are 2 Korean restaurants next door to each other and they were taking us to the one we had not gone to. Thank you, thank you, and thank you! We had a fabulous dinner with many new things but nothing that I would call gross, some I took one bite of and went on to something else but nothing bad. Korean kimchi definitely has a unique flavor that you have to acquire a taste for. We had a very enjoyable evening and really appreciated the chance to experience their culture.

March 17, 2010 – Floyd had to go in to work this morning even though the internet server is still down; they say it might not be up until next Monday. He had a meeting with some people from the United States at his office early this morning. He came home again before lunch and we had an enjoyable afternoon together with him working out of the apartment for the rest of the day.

March 18, 2010 – the internet server was back up this morning so Floyd spent the whole day at the office. He has some training meetings he is involved in next week and was finishing preparing for those meetings. I just spent time of the computer and catching up on things.

March 19, 2010 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother Dan. Hope he has a great day! He lives in California and I do not get to see him more than once a year if he can make it to Oroville where we visit the rest of the family. We finished the day by “going out to dinner”. Actually I went over to a local Japanese restaurant and ordered Sushi to bring home for dinner. We ate it here and just watched movies for the evening. Very relaxing!

January 2010

SORRY! THIS IS FROM OUR LAST TRIP OVER, BUT I GUESS BETTER LATE THAN NEVER...ENJOY!

January 2010 – HAPPY NEW YEAR! We started the New Year in Meridian, Idaho furiously getting ready to travel back to Beijing. We had a lovely evening with the kids but did not stay up to see the New Year in. Our journey back on Jan 4th began very early in the morning, as usual. We have to get up at 3:15 AM in order to be packed and ready to leave the house for the airport at 4:30 AM. It was a foggy dreary morning and the drive was a bit slower than usual but we made it in plenty of time. Our plane was on time and we had the first short leg of our trip to San Francisco to make our connection with our flight to Beijing. We had about a 4 hour layover in San Francisco before our flight so we spent the time checking emails, walking and eating breakfast (it was way too early to eat before going to the airport!) As we checked our emails when we got to San Francisco we found that we had gotten one from a friend in Beijing telling us that it was COLD over here and to be sure to bring our long johns! Luckily we had gotten an email from the Beijing branch of our church the day before we left (since they are ahead of us) letting us know that church had been cancelled because of a really bad snow storm so we had already packed lots of warm clothes. This trip is definitely colder than our January trip over last year!

We had the wonderful opportunity to upgrade our tickets to Business Class seating because of the amount of miles we travel each year and got to see “how the other half” flies. WOW is all I can say! The seats were soooo nice, extremely comfortable and reclined like the recliners at home. The meals were also much better with real silverware, glasses and dishes as well as linen napkins. I don’t want to make it sound like I am bragging too much, just let it be known we slept much better than in coach as well as we were not as sore from sitting. I could get spoiled really quickly, but reality must set in…this will not happen very often as we do not always qualify for upgrades. Boo! Hoo!

Our trials started when we arrived at the airport in Beijing. Due to the bad weather (many flights were cancelled the day before from the snow storm) the airport lines were very, very long. Customs usually only takes about 10 minutes or so to clear but the lines were so long and there was a problem with a passenger in the head of our line. Apparently there must have been a problem with his visa as they kept working on him alone for about 15 minutes before they removed him from the line. Then it took us well over a half an hour for us to get to the immigration officer. We were already tired and this really tried our patience. Once through customs we thought things would go smoother only to get to the escalator and look down at the subway stop to take us to the terminal for our baggage…the whole platform was full of people! It took 3 subway cars coming and going to clear out the crowd enough for us to get on. Ugh, more waiting… patience wearing even thinner. So here we were packed in like sardines in the subway car only to have it creep along at about 2 mph instead of a regular pace of probably 20 mph, with stops every so often to wait for the subway car to pass in the other direction… patience wearing even thinner! Wilson, Floyd’s co-worker, called us just as we got off the plane and said he was just then leaving the office to come to the airport, that way he would not have to wait too long. Even with that he still wound up waiting for us for over an hour. Luckily the Chinese people seem to be a patient people! We did finally get to our apartment long after dark, very tired and hungry.

We noticed as we left the airport that the “snow equipment” they have for snow removal here is quite different than we have in the states!!! It consisted of men with shovels dumping snow into the containers they use in the baggage area on one of the carts they use in the airport then taking it a short distance away and dumping it in piles. Very ingenious…and cheap! We forget between trips what it is like on the roads here. For example, we got to an intersection where we had a green light and suddenly cars were turning left from the oncoming traffic and going right in front of us…not just one darting in but a whole line of 5 or 6 cars just kept coming…couldn’t get away with that in the USA.

We had about 6 inches of snow on the ground here and the temperature was about 15 degrees F on our arrival. It was beautiful to see all the snow but the cold kind of cuts through you. We did not leave the apartment that night to go grocery shopping, as we usually do, we made do with the food we had left behind in storage. Within a couple hours we were all unpacked, settled in and ready for bed!!!

A dear friend of ours, Doug Roberts, who we went to High School with in California, lost his wife to cancer just before we got back here to China. We did not find out about it until we arrived. Wished so badly that we could go to the memorial service but it was not possible to make it back from here to be there. Our prayers are with him!

January 7, 2010 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our grandson Max. It is his 5th birthday today. We had spent a bit of time with him before we headed back to China to wish him a happy birthday and give him a gift since we would not be there to celebrate with them.

One day as we walked home from the park, we noticed some of the street maintenance workers had a manhole cover open and were dumping the snow down in it. We really had to laugh at that one. I guess that is a really good way to get rid of it!

About 1 week into trip, they blocked Facebook again this month. Floyd figured out that we could get a special VPN (virtual private network) that would make it so we could access the site blocked by the government here. It was nice once he got it set up. I could get back on Facebook and not miss out!

The weather was bitter cold much of this trip. Floyd and his co-workers walk to where ever they eat lunch and then afterwards they often take a walk around the block. One day when they did that, Floyd said it felt like he had ”frozen eyeballs” when he got back to the office. I checked the temperature to see what it was during his walk. Accuweather said that it was 12 degrees F (-11 degrees C) with 29 mph winds (46 km/h) making the RealFeel at -16 degrees F (-26 degrees C). Floyd said he believed it was that cold.

January 25, 2010 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our grandson Elliot. He turned 4 years old today. We got to talk to him on Skype today and wish him a happy birthday. It is so nice to be able to see the kids on the computer!!!

Just before we returned home, Floyd’s co-worker, Wilson and his wife took us out to dinner to “celebrate” Chinese New Year a little early since we would be back in the States. They took us to a nice restaurant in Beijing, Chinese of course. It was one on those places where you cooked the food at your table. In the middle of the table was a burner with a large pot of seasoned stock boiling in it. You then picked several other items that they brought to the table on platters that you would then put into the boiling stock to cook. Once it was done, then you would pull pieces out and eat them. The waiter would continue to replenish the stock as it boiled down or was consumed as we dished up things from it. We had quite a variety of things at dinner. Some of the things we consumed were: pig brains, duck blood (it had been coagulated in a loaf and then sliced and had the consistency of tofu), lamb, mutton, red sea bass, tofu – 3 kinds, tapioca roots, sea floaters (sea weed - the long tubes with the bulbs on top that the kids pick up at the beach), dragons eye (a type of fruit), dates, cabbage, pork meatballs, mushrooms (much different looking then we are accustomed to), whole garlic cloves and various spices and vegetables. The air in the restaurant was full of the smell of spices. It even permeated our clothes and the next day when we went to the closet to get our coats, it smelled just like the restaurant. It was a very enjoyable evening and about as authentic as you can get. Yes we tried some of everything!

We returned to Idaho on the 29th. It was a very routine flight, but we did not get the luxury of business class going home. It was good to get back home to visit with family.