Update from Qingdao

Joseph's comments for Monday through Wednesday of this week

Monday:
The stem cell injection went fine, I was laid out in bed for the six hours as normal. Late in the evening Peter (the Korean member that lives near the hospital) came by with a couple of girls the work with him. They are both Chinese and our English students. The two girls were our age, they were Chinese and spoke pretty good English. One was named Jane, the other named Annie. Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture with them, but that will be soon remedied as we are going to hang out soon in the future. Peter said it would help him greatly if we helped them practice their English, and of course we are more than happy to cruise around with a couple of cute translators:) they brought us over fruit and bananas to eat.

Tuesday:
While we were getting ready to get onto the mat at physical therapy, Shelley (Peter's wife) and Kim (local primary president, and Korean) came by to say hello. We chatted for quite a while during physical therapy. They brought us some melons and strawberries to eat.

Later that afternoon we got a phone call from the branch president. He said that they managed to get a manual wheelchair to lend us. It was dropped off that afternoon by someone who did not speak English. (most of the wheelchairs purchased and delivered by LDS Charities throughout the world are made in Qingdao) We got some good pictures of the chair, and at the LDS/Chinese symbols on the back. They also left us with a massive basket of strawberries, mangoes, bananas and apples. Very tasty!

Tuesday night Matt and I were tired of sitting around the hospital, so we went wandering off into a new direction. We quickly found a little side street where a bunch of guys were playing that Chinese chess like game and we got some good pictures. We later stumbled across a little street market in the middle of a large housing estate. We actually bumped into some of the staff from the hospital who live there, it was kind of funny. We got some good pictures of the fruits, vegetables, fish and other items being sold there. On the way back we went through the long thin part of the park near the hospital and we had some fun playing around with the guards and policemen.

Wednesday:
For breakfast I had a plate full of strawberries and cut up mangoes, followed by that croissant/date/sesame seed thing that we got from the store, then all washed down with lemon lime Tang. A fine meal it was!

We did therapies as normal. I even did some long sitting on the mat.

Just a few minutes ago, Lee (Korean primary president) came by with even more fruit and her two daughters -- Cristina the older one, and Popo (means cute little kisses) who is her youngest daughter. We went through my scrapbook album together, they really enjoyed looking at the way mom had arranged everything. Sounds like she needs to start to scrap booking business in Korea :) it would certainly be a hit in the relief society. They said that they are going to come again sometime soon, and that her oldest daughter would bring her violin. Matt is anxious to have a go on her violin as well, he played all through junior high.

So as you can imagine our room is quickly feeling to the brim with fruit.