Hello all from our temporary homeland, (China)
A lot has happened since Sue’s last update. As you are aware our experience on Tuesday wasn’t something dreams are made of. We went to JinTan again on Wednesday to meet with the local authorities and good news--the power was on. We arrived about 15 minutes early with our driver, Louis. Katherine was there along with the office manager who can’t speak any English or very little. By the time the doors open, there are about thirty people lined up on the stairs waiting to get in. They open the doors at 9:00 A.M. and all thirty of us are trying to squeeze through these double wide glass doors at the same time. Luckily for us, Katherine has been through this before and she takes Sue and I to a window where no one is at the time. Her manager goes and gets in line on the other side of the room that we are in. That is where you get all of the forms and paper work to fill out, etc. The door is locked for the room we are to go into and we have to wait for a few minutes for one of the staff to come with the Golden Key to unlock the door. They finally get the door unlocked and we get to go into this room where they have to take like a passport photo of you. Sue and I are sitting there, waiting for them to get the camera and everything ready, the computers on and so on. (One thing we have learned in a very short time is that no one here knows how to wait in a line if some one
is in front of you). Any way we are sitting there, and this little Chinese woman comes strutting in with a hand bag as big as she is in one arm and an umbrella tucked under her other arm. She is all of about 4 ft tall, very slender, probably less than 90 lbs. and throws her document down on the desk and is already to get her picture taken. The worker finally gets the equipment ready to go and then Katherine and the worker motion to me to come and get my picture taken. This woman has look of disgust on her face, and then it is Sue’s turn and I think there were a couple others there that were ahead of her and she just had to wait. If you have seen some movies of someone getting interrogated, this is kind of what it reminded me of. You had the reflective back drop behind you, a little stool to sit on, then two lights by the camera aimed toward you. You are not sure whether to smile or look un-amused or what! The girl at the desk is trying to get me to get my head turned to the right position; of course, me with my fluent Chinese don’t understand a thing she is trying to tell me to do. So finally one of the girls comes and grabs my head and moves it. And might I add, it wasn’t a gentle move. Oh, Sue had to remove her earrings and pull her hair behind her ears. We still haven’t figured that one out yet. Plus she has to remove her glasses, I get one of these looks from her that I know is saying, “What the %$@#&& have you got me into.”
We finish getting our pictures done and move out and go to the other side of the room now where there are some chairs for people to sit down in. Of course, Sue and I are the only ones sitting in them to start with. The office manger is in line and finally it is his turn at the desk. There are three stations at this desk that goes all away across the width of the room. We have probably been there about 20-25 minutes at this point. Sue looks at me and says she is hot, I happened to have a bottle of water with me and she was able to get a drink. Those of you who know Sue, knows that if she is warm and not comfortable it is warm. Any way back to the story, the manager that is there with us is standing in line and getting papers out of a folder and talking to the worker, etc. There are about 15 people in space that is about 20 ft. wide. And yup, you guessed it, here comes this little woman from the photo room and pushes her way right up to the front of the group of people. There is a space about the size of a case of Diet Coke, and she just plows right into that spot. Her umbrella still tucked under the one arm and her shoulder bag in the other. Sue and I just looked at each and rolled our eyes and kind of had to chuckle a little bit about it. Just a little note about her standing in this line, she probably had to spend about fifteen minutes standing there before she was attended to. It was so funny because she would take her papers and put them on top of some one else’s and they would remove her papers and put them underneath. Enough about her. Sue and I finally had to go and sign a document and then get our pictures taken again. Katherine told us we were about through. We had probably been there close to an hour now. We were really kind of feeling pretty good about things, thinking that in five days we would have our passports and residence permits. Katherine comes up and motions us to talk and says, ”We have a little situation here.” Which means, “We have a problem.” Apparently, on the 1st of July. the law was changed and instead of waiting five working days for your permit and passports, you now have to wait 15 working days. So here we sit no passports, no permits yet, and still living in a hotel. Life is so good. It is a little unsettling being in a foreign country with no passport.
We did get some good news though yesterday, The real estate people had received the lease agreement back from Autoliv legal and there is a good chance that we will be moving on the 20th of July into our new apartment. Just one day short of spending four weeks living out of a suitcase in the hotel. It has got to the point that yesterday, we did not want to even go look at the restaurant in the hotel to eat. Don’t know what we will do in the apartment, since we don’t have our residence permits or our passports to claim our air shipment out of customs. We do have a Official Stamped Document stating that our passports are being held by the local authorities. The real estate people say that they are trying to negotiate with the government to get our things out instead of having to wait that full time. We will let you know how that all goes
On Wednesday after we finished with the permits. I had my driver take Sue and I to work and drop me off at the plant site. Then he took Sue and our good friend, Cherie Sparks, for the rest of the day shopping, sight seeing, or what ever was their desire. The days get pretty long for Sue, just sitting here in the hotel. I am very proud of her and how well she is doing. By Friday and Saturday though of this week, she was ready to get out. Saturday we decided that we were going to go out and maybe try to go some place and do a little sight seeing and start to find our way around on the Metro, (subway) and maybe even try to do a bus ride. We had breakfast and came back to the room to try and plan our route, etc. By about 10:30 that morning the temp. was already at about ninety degrees and the humidity was above eight five percent. We finally decided it was just to hot to go. So we made a plan that we would leave at about three that afternoon and go to the Potato Bistro for a late lunch and maybe walk around and explore a little in area where are going to live. Our apartment is going to be really close to the Sugou market, (Walmart), Potato Bistro, McDonalds, The dumpling dive, etc. We spent about two and a half hours at the Bistro, just talking, eating, etc. When we got out to walk around a little, the heat was terrible. We spent about forty to fifty minutes out and decided it was time to go back to the room and try to cool off.
I forgot to mention that on Friday night, Lane and Cherie called us and asked if we wanted to go out and eat. We were sure glad that we weren’t going to the hotel restaurant again that night. There were two places that they had heard of that they wondered about going to. One was Jack’s or the Masala Indian Restaurant Bar. We decided to go to Masala’s. It was really quite good. When we came to Shanghai in March, we went with some friends of Lane’s and Cherie’s to an Indian restaurant there. So we kind of knew what the food would be like. We ordered a couple of appetizers, some Naua Bread, Lemon Rice, and three different types of Curry. Needless to say, we had plenty to eat and it was pretty tasty. Something different every now and then to try is good. We are really trying to broaden our cultural experiences. We woke up and got ready for church and was able to Skype a few minutes with Emily and the girls and Brian. It was so good to get to see and talk to them. We went down to get some breakfast before Lane came to pick us up for church. We got seated and were just going to get something to eat, when I ran into Greg Ferney. He is the Quality Manager at the plant site where I am working. He had just returned from Utah and brought his family here. They got here last night at about eleven. They have four children here with him and his wife. The oldest boy that is here just got his mission call last week and is going to Wisconsin. They were sitting in an enclosed room and asked us to join them. They are some way neat people. There are three boys here and their daughter. They have one son out right now on a mission. After breakfast we went to church and then had a linger longer or pot luck luncheon after. Sue and I, with all the facilities available here at the hotel, fixed a fabulous course of three bags of chips. And Sue did it all by herself. It was very good to have a variety of good old American food---PBJ’s, egg salad sandwiches, Hoagie Sandwiches, chips, salsa and deserts. The Ferney’s brought a big bag of chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Wellcome Mart, here we come! It has been a good day today. We have had a pretty good week. Hope by next Sunday, we will be living in our own place. We want to thank all of you for remembering us in your prayers. We love and miss all of you.
I forgot to mention that on Friday night, Lane and Cherie called us and asked if we wanted to go out and eat. We were sure glad that we weren’t going to the hotel restaurant again that night. There were two places that they had heard of that they wondered about going to. One was Jack’s or the Masala Indian Restaurant Bar. We decided to go to Masala’s. It was really quite good. When we came to Shanghai in March, we went with some friends of Lane’s and Cherie’s to an Indian restaurant there. So we kind of knew what the food would be like. We ordered a couple of appetizers, some Naua Bread, Lemon Rice, and three different types of Curry. Needless to say, we had plenty to eat and it was pretty tasty. Something different every now and then to try is good. We are really trying to broaden our cultural experiences. We woke up and got ready for church and was able to Skype a few minutes with Emily and the girls and Brian. It was so good to get to see and talk to them. We went down to get some breakfast before Lane came to pick us up for church. We got seated and were just going to get something to eat, when I ran into Greg Ferney. He is the Quality Manager at the plant site where I am working. He had just returned from Utah and brought his family here. They got here last night at about eleven. They have four children here with him and his wife. The oldest boy that is here just got his mission call last week and is going to Wisconsin. They were sitting in an enclosed room and asked us to join them. They are some way neat people. There are three boys here and their daughter. They have one son out right now on a mission. After breakfast we went to church and then had a linger longer or pot luck luncheon after. Sue and I, with all the facilities available here at the hotel, fixed a fabulous course of three bags of chips. And Sue did it all by herself. It was very good to have a variety of good old American food---PBJ’s, egg salad sandwiches, Hoagie Sandwiches, chips, salsa and deserts. The Ferney’s brought a big bag of chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Wellcome Mart, here we come! It has been a good day today. We have had a pretty good week. Hope by next Sunday, we will be living in our own place. We want to thank all of you for remembering us in your prayers. We love and miss all of you.
Quick note from Sue:
When I met Greg Ferney’s wife, Alayne, at the restaurant she said to me, “I met someone the other day who knows you. She asked me if I knew anyone who worked at Deseret Book in Ogden. I told her my really good friends’ son, Tim Bennett, was the manager. She said she was in there buying some things to bring on the trip and got talking to Tim. She told him she was moving to China and he told her about us moving to China. They made the connection that we were living in the same place. It really is a “small world after all.”
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