This last week was a busy, but good week. The busiest was the weekend. I am the enrichment activity co-ordinator (there aren't "official" callings in a group, so we are all co-ordinators). We had a sleep-over at my house on Friday night. It was lots of fun. My home is about 30 minutes from town, where most everyone else is located, so the taxi rides are expensive out this way. Some of the University students had been wanting to come and use our oven, and hang out, so we thought it would be a fun thing for the girls. Even a few married sisters came! There were 14 of us on Friday night, and another few came on Saturday morning for a Chinese cooking class put on by two of our Chinese sisters. Wow! What a feast! They made eight dishes, if I remember right. I'm going to make an attempt at one tonight. So...We'll see how it goes. The BYU group is leaving in a couple of weeks, so we will be back to our small group. It's been wonderful to have them here. The children have had a "real" Young Women's and Primary program. We have made some neat friends. The Christiansens, the BYU professor, and his wife, brought their five kids and a cousin. It has been wonderful for our children, and the other two children in our group.
On Sunday, was the Young Women sacrament meeting. Rachel gave a nice talk on Knowledge. They all sang a pretty song, as well.
This next week is Thanksgiving, and ours will be an interesting one. On Saturday, we will have a nice Thanksgiving Dinner with our church group. I mentioned before I'm the only one with the oven, so I'll be busy! Luckily, Sharon Christiansen will come over and we'll do it all together. Much more fun!
You should have seen me trying to tell my driver that I was going to Metro to buy 2 turkeys last Friday. I was picking up 2 turkeys (a rare and special treat) that I had reserved for the church group next week. I was trying to figure out how to say this in Chinese, and I had told my driver that I was picking them up. Before I knew the word for turkey, I was trying to tell him "big chicken",because that's all I knew how to say, and I was gobbling and everything. Ok, Chinese people gobble differently than American people...Just for your future reference! He must think I'm such an idiot! He miss-understood (which is easy to do cause there aren't turkeys here in China) and was asking me if I was getting a man or a woman. I was so confused, I kept asking," A man or woman turkey? I don't know if it's a man or a woman, but I think maybe a man" (do we eat male or female, or both????)and finally, when he drove up to the front, where they were selling live roosters and chickens, I understood. He thought I was buying 2 live chickens or roosters! I felt bad cause the people were so excited when they thought I was going to buy two live roosters from them! Then I had to explain to him that I was getting them inside the Metro and that they were frozen. That was a challenge in itself! It was so funny! You should have seen Wan (our Ayi) and Jiang helping me carry them in the house! They were pretty amazed! I found out today that our driver, Jiang, has never even seen what a live turkey looks like...Only the big frozen thing he carried in the house!
You've probably guessed by now that our driver doesn't speak more than about 10 English words. I'm sure it would be most entertaining to watch us try to communicate! I am most often glad about this, because if he could speak English, I don't know if I would have the motivation I need to even try to learn this crazy language!
