Anna V. Blough letter to dear ones at home, April 15, 1915

              Ping Ting Hsien, Shansi, China
15 April 1915

Dear Ones at Home, - 

I am going to begin this a little earlier this week, as I am thinking of cleaning house on Saturday and may not have so much time to write then.

Had a letter from Mother and one from Aunt Nora this week. Was glad for both of them.

You may be interested in an affair that we have had on here for sometime and which was worked out this week. Sometime ago I said that one of our Christians, Rung Gien, had gotten engaged to a girl and that she was to come to school here for two years yet, being only fifteen years old But a month of school passed since that time and the girl did not come. This man got anxious about it and sent another older man to see if she did not mean to come. They said she surely meant to come, but did not say when. So Sunday eve Rung Gien called here and asked Minerva if she would not go to the girls home and find out. She promised to go and asked me to go along which I did. We went on Tuesday, putting in the whole day. It is a villagecalled New City twenty li, orabout seven English miles away. We rode our Donkey-Mobile, as Minerva termed it. The day was so nice, just right to wear our sweaters most of the time. We saw the first Dandelion and violet flowers along the way. We went by way of Soa Feng where we have a small room rented with two Christians there to open up work. So we stopped there to get a drink of tea. We never drink water here that has not been boiled. At home we boil it and cool it, but the natives never cool it as they think cold water makes people sick. So when we go away we can nearly always get boiling water and make tea which we substitute for cold water.

We got to the village of our destination by noon. There was a small chapel of the Faith Mission there. We went to that and the folks we wished to see came in and we talked to them there. They without any excuse for her not coming sooner promised that she could come the next day. And she did too. About two oclock, after they gave each of us a dish of dough strings with some egg and bean curd, we started home. We came another way in order to stop at a village from which a little boy had been here to have his foot treated. We found the place and recieved a welcome that was very hearty. Then they insisted that we would have to eat something. We protested as far as we could. But they brot in a dish full of hard boiled eggs and some cakes fried in hemp oil which made them very oily. The eggs were good, looked fresh and I believe they were, for as we went in the door the chickens came out. Our eggs are not always fresh. In fact here age adds value to an egg sometimes. They have a way of preserving them for years and serve them as a great delicacy at their feasts. To us they are not so much of a delicacy tho. Well when I had eaten two of the eggs I thot that was plenty. And I did protest with all my might, but they were more than a match for me and the result was that I ate the third one. It was six thirty P.M. when we got home and decided we wanted only a light supper.

Every evening this week Minerva and I have been auditing the Station Treasurer�s books. Neither of us know anything at all about auditing books and so it does not go very well. Of course I am learning some things. I wish that each of our boys would sometime take some book-keeping along with their school work, for no matter where they go they will have accounts to keep.

I forgot to mention that the aprocot trees along the valleys were just out in bloom. The pears and peaches are a little later& 

Best wishes to all for this time, Anna V. Blough