Pictures, Pictures and More Pictures

Some of the other BYU China Teachers Program (CTP) teachers are also posting to blogs of their adventures in China.  One of them almost exclusively posts only pictures with captions in her blog.  While I don't want to do that exclusively, I thought it might be nice to do that every once in a while -- they are a little quicker to read.

So, with that introduction, following are a few pictures of mine and Bonita's adventures the three months we have been in China:

This was taken at Daming Lake, a magnificent park in the midst of  a city of 7 million souls where they can go and commune with nature for a while.  I liked the colors in this picture...I call it Red and Green.

Speaking of the color Red, when we visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing in 2016, I took this picture, titled Red and Gray:

Getting artsy with some (very uncomfortable) benches along Daming Lake.

Fall finally fell here at our campus in Jinan the past couple weeks, about a month later than it did back home in Colorado.  Here's hoping spring arrives a month earlier than back home!

When we were on a trip in western China, we visited one of the finest museums I've ever been to -- it was in a town called Urumqi (pronounced Ooh-room'-chee). They had a number of mummies that were remarkably well preserved --  not by professional embalmers, like the Egyptian mummies had, but by the dry climate of the Gobi Desert (which is in western China).

 

The picture on the right is an artist's conception of what the woman on the left may have looked like in real life (it is believed this area of China was inhabited by Celtic peoples at the time of this woman's death -- 3,800 years' ago).  If you look closely at the mummy, you can see her long eyelashes -- still intact!  Amazing.

Another well-preserved mummy, inside the wood coffin in which he was buried:

A common sight along the streets -- this fellow repairs bicycle / electric bicycle tires and shoes.  I had a small tear in one of my leather shoes, and it was expertly fixed by one of these vendors.  The cost?  5 Yuan (about 75 cents).

Bonita shopping in the local produce section.  Actually, the grocery stores do have produce sections...but these small carts can be seen all over the city.

Wash day at the girls' dormitory on campus, across from the back of our hotel.

I had to deal with a broken tooth last week. Dentists are employed by the hospitals (therefore, they are Civil Servants, since healthcare -- including dentistry -- is nationalized).  So when you need to see a dentist, you go to the hospital.  This is where you will receive your dental care.  The room was about 140' long by 32' wide.  There are 42 cubicles in this area (you can't see the cubicles along the left wall due to the dental personnel in the way).  The equipment appeared to be fairly modern, and the dentist competent and efficient.  It was shift change when I took this picture, so the cadre of dental assistants and dental hygienists that work with the dentists in the middle of the picture were being given their instructions and assignments for the day:

A couple weeks' ago, we took a bus trip to the mountains to a place called Red Leaf Valley Park -- about 90 minutes away from Jinan to "see the colors" -- similar to going up into the Colorado mountains to see the aspen change in the fall.  Alas, we were about a week or ten days too late to see much color, but it was nice being in the mountains during the fall -- the clear, crisp air, the long views, etc. Wish I'd have had my elk bugle (or at least cow call) to make a little noise!  Made me miss the Colorado mountains within which I have spent many a day hunting.  I thought the views looked very much like some areas of Colorado and Utah I have hunted.

While parts of the park looked like Colorado and Utah, the lake area at Red Leaf Valley Park had that quintessential Chinese feel. You can see how stunning it would have been a couple weeks' earlier with all the grey flora covered in reds and golds!

Home sweet home -- our front (and only) door to our apartment: Room 720, Hanlin Hotel, Jinan, China.

Finally, one of our favorite pictures of ourselves in China so far was taken by one of the other CTP teachers in Yar City in western China:

Bonita and I walking off into the sunset at Yar City the first week of October.