Sept. 9-15th (Chinese time)

We are settling into our classes  and things are going very  well.  Your Dad is in his element and loving his classes.  I am a bit lazy and would rather just play and not work so much.  It is going to be fun working with my 191 students and I am getting into the routine.  We visited Peking University on Monday as we have Kennedy Teacher’s there.  They have 40,000+ students there and it is like a small city…we had a very nice tour and ended up at a delicious place to eat on campus.  Excellent Chinese food and we plan to visit that again very soon.  It was more like American Chinese food that we are familiar with. We visited a grocery store near the Peking University that we really like.  Somewhat like Cosco we were told.  We walked two miles from the University to get there and that just about did your Dad in.  Not quite up to that since his surgery.  We bought a few goodies and loved the wonderful loaf of bread that we devoured with peanut butter and jelly. Oh, we also found some 2% milk that was delicious.

I have some pictures of the Forbidden City.  I saw them on my computer and now I can’t find them.  I get so frustrated with my computer abilities!  I will learn this year! Could I blame it on all of you that always do my computer stuff for me!  

Our group went to the police station today to finish our visa procedures.  They call this place a police station but it has tons of people trying to finish their visa permits.  We were both rejected today because they didn’t like the background in our visa photos and my head was too big.  We were whisked to the camera room for a quick photo shoot and then lead down stairs to pay for the photos and escorted back to the processing department.  It was quite comical.  We passed!!  

I actually cooked dinner tonight.  I thought we were having pork chops but they turned out to be lamb chops.  A little different taste , but I smothered  them in gravy  and they were ok with the boiled potatoes and delicious carrots.  We invited one of the single teachers, Lori, to have dinner with us and we enjoyed the green salad she shared.  We even had ice cream and fresh peaches for dessert.  The fruit stand on our campus has wonderful produce.  We wash it many times before we eat anything and we haven’t had any problems.