My first talk on my experience in Xian

On September 22, I think, I will be speaking to the Peoria Section of the American Welding Society, about my time in Xian.  I will talk about welding and the other jobs I was able to watch people do, while I was in China.  I will also talk about life in general, as I observed it.  This will be the first time I will get to talk to a group of people about what I did in China and what I got to see.  I need to go through my pictures and get them on a thumb drive so I can just talk about the pictures.  I did take pictures of people just working and going about their every day lives, and many of those people looked at me like I was nuts.  I will enjoy getting the opportunity to talk about a place that I enjoyed so much.  I even have treats, Chinese cigarettes, hard liquor, and I will put together a Chinese welding helmet, a pair of sunglasses stuck in a piece of card board.  You strike an arc and close your eyes.  The Chinese word for personal protective equipment is Mei you.   Mei you, pronounced, May yo, like in what you spread on a turkey sandwich, means "not have."  I have been posting a lot of pictures on my Q-zone, so my Chinese students and friends can see what I did during my time in China.  It is interesting for me to go back through the pictures and see what I did in China.  I will enjoy added pictures to the different files as I prepare for this talk.
I will give a talk that will be very similar to the final exam that I gave my students.  All my students had to teach me about 5 to 10 new words in Chinese and talk in English for 5 to 10 minutes.  It took a month to get them to actually understand the assignment.  These were college students but I found out that none of them had ever given a speech before, not even in Chinese.  The school system is different from ours, very different.  I told all my students to talk about something you are interested in and to practice you talk  until you are comfortable with it.  That is what I need to do, get my pictures ready and practice.  It will not be difficult to talk about China because I enjoyed the experience so much.  Did I mention I was going to have samples of hard liquor that I brought back from China.  I will have more details after the AWS planning meeting this week and will post the information on the blog and facebook.  I just hope the room will be big enough for everyone.

Q-zone and other things.

I have been busy trying to learn how to post pictures and blog on QQ, a Chinese networking system.  I am trying to share my life in the USA with the students and friends that I met in Xian.   I am starting to adjust to life back in the USA but more important I am busy on other projects and working towards my goal of retirement and moving to Silver City, New Mexico.  That is something I hope to do in June of 2012.  I will add a few things to this blog as time allows and things happen but I will be writing a new blog about a project that I am working on now, a solar coffee bean dryer for Guatemala.  I have been working to get a team of people at Illinois Central College involved with this project and we hope to come up with several models that could work.  What I know about coffee is that I like to drink it.  I hope to learn more about coffee, solar energy, Guatemala and more important meet interesting people that know more about all of the above than I do.  Once I get a name for the new blog and get it started I will let people know.

Link to a show that is similar to what we show at Xian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrUnEKE1hgQ&feature=related



While we were in Xian we show an outdoor show that was visually one of the best shows I have every seen.  They would not let you take any photographs but in the West Lake area they have a show that is similar and visually is very interesting.  I thought I would share this link with you.  The show in Xian was different but still done on the water.  They could raise and lower the floor and the different lights.  It is hard to describe but it was amazing.

the cell phone

When I was in Xian I had to carry a cell phone.  That was the first time I had ever had one in my pocket every day.  If a student needed something, they had to be able to contact us.  I also sent my first text message in China.  It took forever but I got it done.   I remember our last day in China sending text messages as we killed time at the airport.  I was texting as we walked to the airplane because the phone would not work outside of China.  I have not used a cell phone since.  I have done a few video chats on QQ.  Some day I will get back in the swing and use a cell phone again, but not now.

visitors from Xian

Rob Rogers, his wife Ang and son, Min, stopped by Peoria last night to visit us before they drove up to Milwaukee to visit some other friends.  We when out for Bar-B-Que and this morning had waffles with real maple syrup, bacon, omelets, melon and cherries.  It was really nice to see them again and to have JoAnne meet them.  I do hope to see them again sometime in Xian.

You don't get a breakfast like this very often in  Xian but then you don't get a breakfast like this very often in Peoria. I am so glad they stopped by and spent the night with us.

hot day in central Illinois

A hot day like today makes me long for retirement even more than I already do.  To top things off our air conditioning quit working on Sunday.  The one problem I have about returning to Peoria and returning to work is that I miss being the English teacher in China so much.  But the English teacher could not have fixed the air conditioning and done it for 16 dollars.  I guess there is some advantage to being a "gong ren", or working person instead of the English teacher.
I have been in contact with one of the students that I met at the Wednesday English Corner in Xian.  The difficult thing about communication with the Chinese students is that I met so many people and was not able to learn enough names or you learn an English name and then do not know who they really are.  I have been emailing Ellen since I left.  She wrote me today that she was afraid to speak out even though she liked me.  I have told many of my students to practice a few sentences and get good at saying them and then you just have to force yourself to talk to foreign visitors.  I have always told my students that every day I walked in the classroom I was nervous.  I enjoyed teaching but I was always nervous that it would not go well and I could not help them learn.  But you just have to suck it up and try and try and try.  If I can get students to practice saying things like can I help you find something, or is this the first time you have been to China, etc.  If they would practice 10 sentences that would be "ice breakers" I think they would develop the confidence to then continue to talk with the foreign person.  They just have to force themselves to not be so shy.  I know how they feel because I have missed several opportunities to talk or do something for just that reason.  Something does not go well, you lose some confidence, and then you put your hands in your pockets and shuffle off.  It happens.
One good thing about being back here is the Guatemala coffee bean dryer project.  It is starting to develop and we are starting to get some more people involved.  I think we will have a good team of students and faculty to work on this and I hope we can develop something that will work or set the ground work for something that will work in the very near future.  Sometimes you have to get something built to see how to do it better.  Right now I need to get something built.  But that is going to make my days before retirement a little bit more interesting.
I am just glad the house is starting to cool off.  In Xian, in the classrooms you did not have air conditioning.  The last day I taught it was 98 and we had two over head fans and two windows opened.  Students were trying to give a speech and we had construction noise and the hallways are loud.   I felt bad because I was leaving and this one girl said to me, "smell", and I taught, "Of course I smell, it is hot, I am nervous and sad, I know I smell.  And then see told me one more time, "smell" and she did smell from ear to ear.  :-) , with a great big grin.  I will always remember my Life in Xian, and I will do it with a smell on my face and a tear in my eye.

The world is a lot smaller now

This horse on a flying bird is the symbol of tourism in China.  When I went to Wuwei, with Zhang Kai, I visited this park in his town that plays tribute to this horse being selected as the symbol of Chinese tourism.  My first week back at the ICC East Peoria campus I saw a small copy of the horse in the lobby of PAC.  I looked at it and smiled and said to myself, "I know what that is and I have been to the place where they found it."  To be from a small town in Illinois and to have the opportunity to travel to China has been a dream come true.  When you travel you get to see things and do things that you will always remember.  You get to meet people that you will never forget.

This lady is someone I will not forget.  See cleaned my room and she could read and write English and could speak some.  I could read and write some Chinese and could speak some.  If we both worked at it we could communicate.  I always enjoyed the days went she came it to clean my room.  Some days we would be on the computer on QQ or looked at facebook and working very hard to communicate with each other.  I do realize that if I could have just spoke a little more Chinese my time in Xian would have been so much better.  Hopefully next time I go to China I can speak, read and write better than I do now.  I just have to keep practicing.  I have her QQ number so I need to email her and practice my writing.  Even though some of the students were not great at keeping their rooms neat the staff did seem to like having us around.  When Dr. Murphy was in the hospital everyone wanted to know how he was doing and many of the them went to visit him.  They were really and nice group of people to be around.