Vanessa's Journal

Feb. 8

Today I woke up at Lao Yang’s house.  I decided to extend a hand of friendship to Lao Yang’s dog. She is a precious 1-year-old puppy. Lao Yang said that he was surprised that his dog didn’t bark when I arrived at the house like she normally does with visitors. She is stationed outside in her doghouse to be the guard dog. Nevertheless, she barked at me while I walked by her house a few times yesterday on my way to the outhouse. But I found out this morning that she is so unbelievably sweet. She is the worst guard dog ever because she is like everyone else in their family in that she would never hurt a fly. All she wanted to do was play and have me scratch behind her ears. She also truly has the deepest puppy dog eyes. After our bonding session, whenever I walked to the outhouse, she would always stand guard to protect me. 

After another huge lunch at Lao Yang’s house, I took off again for Lao Fan’s house. I was greeted warmly by his family, which included enough granddaughters to practically make a baseball team. And they all worship their granddad Lao Fan. I also got to meet his niece LiLi who is an English major at a university in Chengdu. I was amazed at her near fluent English and it was good to chat about what things are like for her as a university student in China. I asked her what she and her five roommates do for fun and she said they all just read books. Studious indeed. It was also good to see Lao Fan’s son Li Mao, who is also a colleague of ours who helps with field work when he is not in school. At night, we had another rousing dinner with more pictures of the grandkids.