Panpan’s First School

In the Fall of 1973, the ETSU College of Education started a new project. It was called the “Child Study Center”. The main part was a school for children before kindergarten. It was just at the right time for Panpan. She was admitted without any hassle. She was certainly ready for it too, both emotionally and physically. She enjoyed the whole thing from the first day. The only complaint she had, which she remembers even today was that the nap-hour was too long. With nothing to do, and having to keep quiet for an hour, it was just a bit too much! I am so glad that I took some pictures of the place!

Home-coming at ETSU

All ETSU home-coming celebrations are in the mid-fall when East Tennessee reaches it’s most beautiful time of the year as the trees are all changing color! The year 1973 was when Panpan and Steven got a chance to appreciate not only the color change but also the home-coming decorations, which were more interesting to them. It turned out that, starting about that time, these decorations gradually decreased in popularity. They became less elaborate and eventually faded out. I do not recall exactly when the decoration competition was no longer part of home-coming activities, but it is not there any more!

First Time in Montreal, Canada

While we were in Vermont, we planned a one day trip to Montreal, Canada. It was our first time to that city. Of course, Shari had been there before. We started one day early in the morning. It was a drive of about two hours. We got there with plenty of time to visit the 1967 World’s Fair ground first. It was an enormous place! We went to the US Pavilion and the China Pavilion. Then we went to a children’s play ground. We brought food with us, including a picnic lunch. It was an exhausting but great day!

Vermont Dancing!

When we were in Vermont, we visited Shari and Ben’s folk dancing group. They were very active, both of them were very good folk dancers. It was a regular meeting time, but quite a number of dancers were in their favorite folk dance customs. They danced one dance after another, full of enthusiasm. Both Janice and I were certainly appreciating their way of approaching the folk dance, as we were more or less the same way! It is great that I have taken some pictures to show you below:

Shari was in Vermont

After we went to Cape Cod in the summer of 1973, we drove up north to Vermont, as “Shari was in Vermont”. We have used this term since, just slightly before this time, Shari and her then husband Ben bought a farm house there in a town, Colchester, near Burlington. They settled in with their two kids, Doug and Laura. Janice’s sister, Shari, is very close to her, not only age wise, since they are only slightly more than one year apart, but also because they used to sleep in the same room while they were growing up. They performed together when they were young (including once on a TV show). They both loved folk dance when they were in their teens. There are quite a number of old pictures of the two of them together which their father took. He was certainly very proud of their activities. The following pictures can give you some taste of his work:

When we got to Vermont, we saw their farm house on a  5-acre plot of land. Our children got interested in dressing in folk dance costumes too. The four kids took a picture together hand-in-hand. It is my favorite picture of them together.

Good Time on Cape Cod

During the summer of 1973, we were on Cape Cod for quite a while. We were somehow in a very relaxed mood; everyone was truly enjoying “doing nothing”, including Kai. You can easily see, from their expressions in the pictures below, that both Panpan and Steven were very relaxed and happy! Besides going to the beach, cooking some fish, doing some clamming, and picking blueberries, they just had a great time. I want to show you some great family pictures where I was able to catch these moments we had. That summer, both Father and Mother were relaxed, too. Father was very happy as well, since I had helped him to change quite a number of shingles on the roof of the house.

Erin Fernald

On Cape Cod in 1973, we got to meet Erin Fernald for the first time. Janice’s brother, Greg, and his wife, Judy, were living in Illinois and pursuing advanced degrees at that time. Erin was born there. We all went to the Cape in the summer and got the chance to spend a bit of time together. Every one had the opportunity to meet her, some got a chance to feed her, and others got a chance to hold her! It was certainly exciting for everyone there, but she was not impressed, just continued her schedule to do what she liked, such as sleep and eat.

Voice Lessons

Another thing I did shortly after we moved to Tennessee was to start something I had wanted to do for a long time, but had not had the opportunity for, i.e. to take voice lessons. ETSU had a pretty good Music Department. There were two professors in voice, Robert Lapella and Betty Fleming, at that time. They usually worked together. I decided to start my voice lessons and both of them felt that what I needed most was to improve my diction. Betty had a better schedule for me, so I started my lessons with her, once a week for half an hour. She tried to give me some familiar songs to sing and then to correct my pronunciation in detail the following week. Later, I took some lessons with Bob, too. Singing had been part of my life since my Junior High school days. While I had sung in choirs and directed choirs, I realized that I needed some formal training. My desire to get better was still very strong!

Another Trip North

In the  summer of 1972, Father came from Taiwan to accompany my sister Kai to the states. We took him north for a big trip all the way to Cape Cod. My sister  had to report to the Graduate School at the University of Kentucky, therefore she did not make the trip with us. Father went back home in the spring of 1973, since his visitor’s visa only lasted for half a year. We decided to take Kai that summer for a trip north. Since she had never been in New York City before, we spent quite a bit of time there with Sherman’s family. We visited all the famous icons in the city, plus the Bronx Zoo for our children’s sake. We must have been in the city for a whole week, but we finally arrived at the Cape. Unfortunately Kai was sick and could not get into water. She did get to the beach as shown in the last picture. Greg and Judy were also visiting there.

Our Savior Lutheran Church

Shortly after we moved to Tennessee from Kentucky in 1971, we joined Our Savior Lutheran Church, in Johnson City on Sunset Drive. Janice became comfortable with the Lutheran Church after leaving the Catholic Church. It was a very small church and we got to know everyone quickly as many members of the congregation were about our age. We were very familiar with the liturgy of the Lutheran church and the church activities soon become part of our routine life. We would belong to Our Savior for more than a decade, during which time a brand new Sanctuary was built. (See below.)

It is very interesting that I did not ask myself why I belonged to this church, or why I belonged to any church at all, until much later. At that time, we were very comfortable belonging to this church and we certainly enjoyed many, many church activities. For example, at the end of1972 I accepted the position of director of the Junior Choir, the first ever junior choir at Our Savior. There were twenty some young children between the ages of eight to ten in the group. I had never worked with young children before. You could say that I did not know what was I thinking or doing!