​Journal Entry #26: Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Tuesday was destined to rain - again.  It was cloudy and felt like it was going to bust loose soon.  I let the girls sleep in as I realized they are still college-aged students.  But about 10:00 I needed some translation services and I felt good about calling out Jessie’s name in a low voice, and she responded quickly.  To my surprise she appeared out of her room dressed and ready to go within seconds.  She apparently was already up and going long before I called her.

What I needed was some assistance in figuring out how to best purchase airline tickets for Donna and I to travel from Changsha to Beijing.  I checked on the train option, but there is no high-speed train to Beijing.  The slow train was 22 hours and it was just not an option that I wanted to consider, especially after Donna would have gone through a 32-hour trek just a few days previous.  We first went to China Southern Airlines’s website to book the flights.  The price was going to be $352.00 (American), for two one-way tickets.  I thought the price was a little better than I was expecting so we tried to purchase them and get an e-ticket.  But the site would not take an out of country credit card!  Then Jessie knew of a phone number for the same airlines and she called it.  They told her that if I paid cash, and they delivered the tickets directly to me, within the next two hours, the price would only be $180 total for both tickets!  Done!  After a quick trip to the ATM, Jessica and I met the man with tickets in hand at a designated place on campus and we made the exchange. That phone call saved me $172.00 USD!  It’s really great to have such translation and cultural assistance when I am so obviously out of my world.

On our way back to the apartment we stopped to visit with Linda Gearhart and one of her delightful English major students, Emma.  I had met Emma in a previous class and had spoken with her extensively at English Corner last Monday night. When I introduced Emma to Jessica and explained how I knew Jessie, Emma became very excited that she could actually meet a Chinese student that was going to school abroad, something which she had only dreamed of doing some day.   When I saw how much she enjoyed speaking with Jessie I invited Emma to come along with us, saying that we were going to pick up Mia and then go to lunch, would she like to go?  “Oh yes!” she said, “It would be my honor!”  Jessica and Mia have become like “rock-stars” here among the Chinese students.

After stopping by to pick up Mia, and hoping she would be ready as planned, we walked into town.  I had already expressed to Emma that I was buying lunch, but she was worried about the cost and suggested a Noodle restaurant that was cheap and that the students liked a lot.  I love the noodles here about as much as anything they serve but they are harder to eat with chopsticks than other choices.  After we ordered something for all of us, Emma wanted to sit outside in the back of the restaurant where they had some seats available instead of the dining room.  We had to walk through the small kitchen to get there. What an unsanitary mess!  I ate my food trying not to look around.  Yuck!  It was horrible, the kitchen and the seating area, not the food. The food was pretty good!

We soon were leaving and told Emma that we were headed to the Supermarket. She asked, “Can I go with you?”  We walked about 6-8 blocks to the big General store and had fun shopping for a few items I needed for the house.  As I perused the store waiting for the girls to pick up what they wanted I decided I had been in China long enough, and I bought two forks!  Real eating utensils with which I could eat noodles! I am going to start carrying them with me for meals at future restaurant selections. When we left the store it was really pouring and I hailed a cab.  The girls thought no, too expensive, but the ¥5 (about .75 cents) seemed like a real bargain to not have to walk a mile in the rain. After lunch we finally said our goodbyes to Emma and she and my Harding girls exchanged contact information.  Jessica and Mia may turn out to be the greatest recruiters that Harding never hired in China!

Chinese nap started a little later that afternoon because of our trip to the store but it was no less welcomed and not any shorter.  In fact, I probably stayed down too long, about an hour or so. About 4:30 I realized that I needed to get to the Foreign Language building to get some copies made for handouts (as requested) for my 8:00 p.m. class.  I still can’t get used to starting a class at 8:00 o’clock at night.  I suppose the kids like it.  In fact, I thought, the most well attended worship service on Sundays in Searcy by the college students is the 8:30 p.m. Downtown church worship service.  

By now the rain was really coming down.  We made sure we had our umbrellas and off we headed to get my copies made before trying to get a snack before my 6:00 p.m. appointment at the campus radio station.  When we arrived I saw Charles, one of my assigned student host English majors.  Charles is as nice of a young man as you’ll meet anywhere.  He has a chiseled good look about him, with a very polite and sweet demeanor.  I could tell right away my Harding girls took a good look at him with a raised eyebrow!  In fact, I could have sworn I saw birds and fireworks circling over Mia’s head.  So without hesitation I asked Charles to join us to go get ice cream.  Mia shot a look at me like only a daughter that had been embarrassed could, and said sternly to me, “Mr. Shaner!”  “What?” I said with my palms up?  Then she sheepishly smiled, leaned into me, and softly whispered, “Thank you.”

We went to the closest place we knew of for ice cream but I insisted on a place that we could go inside and sit down and not stand out in the rain to negotiate an umbrella, ice cream and discussion.  We found a place that Charles said only had one flavor of ice cream.  Charles speaks pretty good English but somehow he missed this explanation because we all ordered what I thought was the same thing and the girls ended up with different flavors. No problem by me.  Mine was great.  It was a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream in an orange juice drink mixture.  We enjoyed the refreshment and had a fun talk.

My 6:00 o’clock appointment was at the campus radio station where I was to be interviewed on an English programming section of their broadcast.  USC has a radio station and I found myself on the airwaves – go figure!  No call letters were assigned to the station, just an FM frequency of 93.1.  Charles happened to be a radio station staff member so he walked us there and made all the proper introductions.  The station was small but very functional.  They had two control boards: one for the broadcaster to sit during the interview and one for the engineer to make sure everything was being produced properly.  I told them of our Harding campus radio station, KVHU – 95.3, the voice of Harding University, and even called it up on the Internet for them to listen to right there in their studio.  Knowing it was the middle of the night (actually about 5:00 in the morning), they were amazed that a campus radio station broadcast 24-7 and on the Internet!   I asked that they record the interview and make me an MP3 copy so that perhaps I could play it back on our station and let them know before-hand so they could listen to it on the Internet sometime this fall.  I might add here that KVHU is as good of a radio station in equipment and automation with strategic programming as you will find anywhere in the country, rivaling most non-university commercial stations in America!  

During the interview I was glad to see that the host veered from the same old questions that he prepared that sounded like every other question I had been asked a thousand times before.  He did ask the first one, but then the interview went in a good radio discussion where it was just that, “a discussion between two people that happen to have microphones in front of them.”   Gray, (not Gary), my broadcasting partner, (don’t you just love their English selected names?), seemed a bit embarrassed by their lack of facilities and by what he must have perceived ours to be.  I explained that good equipment is nice, but good radio comes more from dedicated staff/student workers and hard work than it does by how much and what kind of equipment a station has.  The interview actually went about 5 minutes over time but eventually came to a close.  They seemed to be delighted that I would be on their station but I promise you the thrill was mine!  I had Mia take several pictures on my camera of me on the air and of the staff afterwards, and then we headed out to get something to eat (real dinner) before my 8:00 o’clock class.

Dinner was much the same as our snack, something close where we could sit down.  We went to a Korean restaurant outside the front gate and ordered Sushi, noodles and some pickled carrots.  Without me requesting to do so the waitress brought me a fork!  I guess she saw me struggling with my noodles.  She probably had a good laugh or felt sorry for me, or both!

The class went amazingly well. It was a class on constructing your speech outline. There were 58 in attendance. The class seemed to be engaged and very attentive to everything I was trying to tell them. I love classes like that. I assigned each of them to select a speech topic they could work on throughout out my lecture of suggestions and tips on constructing speeches.  I asked if anybody wanted to share with the class what they decided to speak about.  One student, named Stanley, raised his hand and said he wanted to prepare a speech about “governments having diverse thought input from all members of their society in which they live.” I just thought, “This country is about to explode in a social revolution.”  Subjects like this are on the minds of millions of college students.  Our team has been asked many times about similar issues and we have tried to stay away from that because that is not our purpose.

I was exhausted, but pretty keyed up after teaching class for an hour and forty minutes so Jessica, Mia and I stayed up too late talking in the front room.  I finally went to bed and realized that my days are quickly growing short to be here in China.  Donna will be here in a couple of days and I’m sure that will re-energize me.