We're Going to the Mountains!

Monday, October 27, 2008
The view from the top. Last Friday afternoon I stayed late at school to put the final touches on the Dewey Decimal System. Yes! The library is finally organized. No, we have no card catalog, not the old fashioned kind or the new-fangled computerized database, although that's coming, but we can go to the 590's and find butterflies, and we can go to the fiction and find Cleary! I was feeling pretty good about all this, when my cell phone rang. It was Cathy. Did I want to go hiking in the mountains with Janet and Victor tomorrow? They'd pick us up at 10. Of course, I did. How could I turn down an opportunity to get out of the city and see a different side of China. I had several plans for Saturday, but I'd just have to put them off until Sunday.
At 10 o'clock Saturday morning I meet Cathy out front with my little backpack and water bottle. "Is that all you're bringing?" she asks. "We're staying overnight." WOW! So, I dashed back and grabbed a few overnight things, although not enough as it turned out.
Janet is one of the administrative staff at Beanstalk Academy and her husband, Victor, is with Sun Microsystems. They are originally from Taiwan but have lived in the states for many years as well as Shanghai.We stayed at their country place which is between Xiang Tang Culture Village and Changping. Changping means Prosperity and Peace...auspicious name for a village. But at first I had no idea that we were spending the night any place. I had assumed we were going to a rental, so I was surprised when we arrived at the Jieh's beautiful county home. On our way there we stopped at a housing unit for the elderly and visited with a delightful woman who is 104 years old. Her eyesight and hearing were very good, she said, but sometimes she didn't sleep as well at night as she'd like. We ate at a small country-style "All you can eat" restaurant. The food was very good, mostly vegetarian but also thinly sliced liver and a beef or pork dish. That's Janet and Victor's house to the left. The village is well-known for it's orchards, especially apples, and we bought a couple dozen especially delicious ones to bring home. I hope to make something delicious like apple crisp with them, but my microwave went on the fritz. I'm getting another one from Bill. I've never made apple crisp in a microwave but I've spent a lot of time studying recipes on the internet and am convinced it can be done.