From Grits to Chopsticks

A few weeks ago, we were able to watch (live on the internet) our youngest son (Timothy) graduate with his Civil Engineering degee from Georgia Tech.  Although the broadcast froze while they were calling his name, we were able to capture the screen shot below:A week later, Tim’s wife (Caitlyn) graduated with her Nursing degree from Mercer […]

[Read more →]

We typically hold an English Corner in our apartment each week, giving our students the opportunity to practice their English.  Susan usually teaches an English lesson, and we often play games with English words:eat green foods on St. Patrick’s day:and dye eggs at Easter:When students come to our home for the first time, we have them put a […]

[Read more →]

The air quality in our city has been rather poor lately: According to the local website, the higher-than-normal pollution is due to the combination of very dry air and increased construction activity . Not only are there many large apartment complexes rising up all over town, it is interesting to see the recent flurry of construction activity […]

[Read more →]

In our densely populated city, the government planners have set aside quite a few places for public parks.  While westerners would normally seek out an isolated spot in a park for a private picnic, Chinese people usually gather for group activities. In the Emerald Chicken Park, the “birdwatching” group gathers.  Of course, in China they bring […]

[Read more →]

While hiking in the nearby mountains, we stopped to smell (and photograph) the wild flowers: It is amazing to see the beautiful array of small flowers growing on the mountainside, reminding me of the verse from Matthew 6: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell […]

[Read more →]

We’re very blessed to live on the edge of town, allowing us to hike straight out of our apartment and into the nearby mountains.  On Sunday after church, I clicked on “My Tracks” as we headed out the door: The five mile hike is the easy part – it’s the 1000+ foot ascent that can take […]

[Read more →]

As we walk around our apartment complex and down the local streets, we always see lots of cute children.  Here are some typical, uniformed schoolkids on their lunch break:The college girls usually walk arm-in-arm – so do the little girls:Every morning, the kids at the school across the street gather on their new athletic field for group […]

[Read more →]

Just south of our city is Dianchi Lake, the 8th largest body of water in China.  While taking our Sunday afternoon walk, we noticed that a strong South wind was pushing some large waves onto the paved sidewalks: Even though the weather was a bit threatening, other local people were still enjoying a day at […]

[Read more →]

I have 106 students in my business classes this semester, a much larger group than last year.  Here’s a picture of one of my International Marketing classes: 85 of the students signed up to eat lunch this semester (in groups of 3 or 4), giving me a rather full schedule: Usually, the food can get a person “fired up” […]

[Read more →]

Every Thursday, farmers and vendors gather in a nearby residential community to sell their products.  It is a crazy place with thousands of people and hundreds of distorted bullhorns.  The sounds, smells, and variety (of products and people) are impossible to capture in photos.  But here are some from last week:

[Read more →]