District Conference

Saturday was a long boring day - mostly because I did not understand most of what was happening. Meetings are boring but when they are in a foreign language you don't understand it is worse.

The morning started out with Tom giving me a tour of his factory that makes the plastic cases for tools. The working conditions in factories here are awful. I cannot imagine sitting on a little chair or stool all day long hunched over and cutting off the extra pieces of plastic or connecting the handles.

Then we had a tour of the university where district conference was going to be held. It was just a tour of the outside buildings. We had lunch at 7 Eleven on campus. After lunch we had to go to district conference. We had to stand out in the hot sun (probably 80 F) for an hour waiting to parade in with the other important people. We were the last. Then it was speaker after speaker in Chinese. Boring.

There were some good parts to the conference. They had an awesome drumming show. I also got to see many of my host families and others we have met along the way. It was fun to chat with them. There was a break about 1/2 through the afternoon were everyone went outside for snacks. I had 2 host families (both husbands and wives) running in different directions and bringing me food to try. It was a great way to try lots of different types of food.

We did not learn until late last night that we will not get a chance to see our host families again. This was after we saw some of them at the conference. We all thought that they were coming to the goodbye party tonight. The schedule said that host families were invited but we learned that it is just the current host families. I would have liked a chance to say goodbye to them but I'll have to do that through email now since we are not attending the conference today.

Last night after the conference we stayed up for an hour playing with the Eskimo yo-yos that I brought. They were a big hit, especially with Brian and Carol.

This morning we have a free day until the goodbye dinner. The problem is that we cannot go anywhere unaccompanied and almost everyone is at district conference (my hosts are). I cannot even cross a street unaccompanied. I will be glad to get back to Alaska and be able to walk down the street by myself and have some quiet time. Seth's host took him and Rebecca to hot springs. Mike and I are hanging out in Chainlon's house and this afternoon his assistant Ann is going to take us around town. I wanted to go to church but again was told I could not go unaccompanied.