On Sunday I attended the morning service at BICF, and afterwards went out for lunch with Jared and the Brassers at a little restaurant not at all close to Dongzhimen (a subway station.) I'd thought that you were never more than 500 feet from a restaurant when you were in Beijing, but I was proved wrong. We had to walk for at least half an hour before we stumbled across the little (tiny!) establishment. The food was spicy and good. After that I went back to my pad to prepare for my lessons – the topics for the week were food (grad students) and traveling (undergrads.) My feet had been sore for about a week; I took the time to examine them and found that I had some of the largest blisters that I have ever had – they were under old callouses. After a half hour of playing podiatrist, my feet were happier. I had purchased a thick wool pile (I used to call it shag, but my British neighbor, Melanie, took the time to point out what shag means in Britain. I won't go into it here, but it isn't good.] rug from IKEA that is more comfortable than my bed. I've contemplated sleeping on it, but it is a little too small for me to fit on comfortably. It is great for sore and tired feet, and it knocks the echo out of my room. I ended up hanging out with Melanie and Mike (from Nevada, teaches spoken English at the flight school, and is here only for one semester – his college has an exchange program with Beihang, so he gets credits for teaching here.) We watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, if I remember correctly.

Monday was typical – I have three classes on Monday – two in the morning and one at night. I do not have enough time between classes to go anywhere fun, so I reviewed my Chinese, cleaned my apartment, did laundry and lazed around before my night class. I also dropped off my first recordings at the editor's office – I had spent about three hours on Saturday and Sunday recording myself reading articles from College English onto a digital recorder. After that I was pretty bushed, so I went to bed early. That night at around 2 am, I was awakened by a noise – it sounded like someone was slamming a door. It went on and on (for about 5 minutes or so) but I did my best to ignore it, figuring that it was coming from my downstairs neighbors. The walls on my floor are soundproofed – I can't hear anything that happens on my floor, but the floors are not soundproofed – I often hear noises and conversations from below when I am in bed. So I figured it was no big deal and went back to sleep. I found out later that the noise was from students banging on the secure door on our floor (you need an RF fob or a password to get past the door and onto floor 14 – the door is designed to keep uninvited students off the foreign teacher floor.) The students are foreigners as well (the ones banging in the door were from France and Korea) and they live on floor 13. Their heating pipes had burst, their apartment was flooding, and the shut off valve was in Melanie's apartment. Apparently the hot water is pumped up through a separate set of pipes (one set for each apartment on the 14th floor) and then flow down to each apartment directly underneath. So I control the heat of everyone underneath me – if I shut the valve, everyone underneath me will be without heat The heat wasn't on yet – the maintenance people had been pressurizing the pipes to make sure they were okay.

On Tuesday I taught my one class, and then went to the Xizhimen (a main subway stop – it is a transfer station) area with Mike – he knew of a great DVD store where the prices are small but the selection isn't. I bought 25 DVDs – though 20 were in the 007 box set, and we ended up going to a jaio zi bar for dinner. Jaio zi are boiled dumplings that are usually filled with pork or beef and vegetables. Thanks to a slight language barrier (although Mike is almost fluent in Mandarin) we ended up getting enough jaio zi for ten people – it turns out that this place sold jaio zi by weight, so mike ordered one kilogram instead of one serving. I did my best, but that's just too much, even for two hungry foreigners.

I woke up early on Wednesday – I had a meeting with Prof. Zhang at nine about the classes that I was picking up from Ben (the teacher that left.) We discussed my schedule, and worked out times for my two new classes – their original times conflicted with other classes that I was teaching. I still have every afternoon free, but now my mornings are packed full – I have classes from eight to noon every day except Tuesday. After the meeting and my class, I went to Hepingmen market – it is an art market, and I bought a few posters and scrolls to put on my otherwise bare walls. Hepingmen market is a pretty sweet place – you can find every type of artwork imaginable and the supplies if you'd like to do it yourself. It's worth visiting if you're in Beijing, though it is a little touristy.

Thursday after my classes I went to Wangfujing (the main shopping district in Beijing)with Mike and Rob (teaching writing and oral English at the Freshman village, off campus – all freshmen are off campus, since Beihang is actively renovating the entire campus. Next year the freshman housing will be done, and they can move back onto campus. Rob is from Florida originally, though he taught in Hunan province last year.) Our goal was to visit the Foreign Language Bookstore, and we succeeded. I purchased a few novels and an excellent Chinese – English dictionary. Time was precious, since I had an accountability group that night with Jared and Mike Brasser. I'll be heading back to the bookstore when I have plenty of time to browse. On the way back to my apartment the light rain that had been falling all day began to freeze and eventually turned to snow. Branches fell from trees and all vertical surfaces were icy and slippery. Apparently Beijing doesn't see much snow or ice in the winter, and I am the only foreign teacher at Beihang who has experience walking on ice (Rob and I were the only ones who had seen snow before this storm.) Everyone, foreigners and natives alike, were walking around so slowly and hesitantly on some of the most textured ice that I've ever seen.

Friday I had 2 classes – one was with my new class, and the other was my largest class of grad students. The power was out in all the classrooms, and it made the rooms rather dark and sleepy. After class I went to the internet cafe, since the internet service that I have in my room has been kicking me off after about five minutes online. I met Jared at six pm – we went out to dinner and then to the theater. We saw The Diary of Anne Frank. It was performed in Chinese by a Chinese theater troupe. Since my knowledge of Chinese is limited (I know maybe thirty words) the two hours I spent in the theater seemed much, much longer – five years or so, I'd say. The acting was high school quality, and there was no set per se, just a few chairs, a sofa, a bed, and a table. The sound effects were the worst, though – at one point the actors hear the Nazis outside, and from the sounds we heard, there must have been at least 2000, all running in place. So it was pretty much a waste of my time.

I spent most of Saturday lazing around, watching Bond movies while working on my lesson plans for the upcoming week. I went out to Pizza Works with Rob for lunch – Pizza Works is an all you can eat pizza place, and they have all you can drink draft beer. It's a wonderful place – the pizza was good, the beer was okay. The pizza had very little sauce, and everyone seemed to pour ketchup on top of their pizza. I don't know which causes the other, but I tried it ala ketchup, and it wasn't terrible. I went out for dinner with Jared, M+C, and four other people that I didn't know. I do know them now, but since I only know their first names, I'm not going to record them here. We ordered too much food – we had 15 dishes (as a general rule, you order the same number of dishes as there are people present.) The food was really, really good – some of the best food I've had in China. After dinner we went back to the Brassers and played Cranium and a little Dutch Blitz (it's a card game – I hadn't heard of it before Saturday. It's fun in a world domination kind of way.) On the subway back I encountered the drunkest person that I have ever seen. The car was almost empty, and he was lolling and rolling around on the seat. This was strange, since everyone here is concerned with face, and being drunk on the subway is a great way to lose it. Also, he was all alone- this was the first lone drunk that I've seen- they're always in groups here. He got off at the first stop, and I was left wondering why.