Mwhahahaha! I removed quite a few viruses from my ‘puter, and now I can access the internet from my room. (I managed to find a real licensed copy of Norton AV in the high-tech district of Beijing.) I’m back in the nineties, technology-wise. It feels good.

I’m done with my semester, and I have two days of teaching left – it’s a special introductory class that takes place next week. I’m not exactly sure what “special introductory class” means. It’s only 12 hours of teaching, and I’m supposed to spend 4 of those hours testing their English skills. So it’s not that big of a deal and I’m finished with all of this on June 10. The end is near (at least for this semester…)

I have the entire week off, but I still have a few non-work commitments which have resisted my attempts to weasel out. So I won’t be traveling – what will I do? My goal for this week is to find the first 7-11 in Beijing. Apparently one recently opened here (although no one seems to know exactly where it is) and I’ve decided that I have to track it down. Chances are it’s on the east side of Beijing, since that is where the majority of foreigners live. I haven’t spent a lot of time in that area (I live on the west side of Beijing) and I’d like to explore it – this seems like the perfect excuse.

Last night I judged an English language karaoke contest held at Beihang. It was long – it lasted for almost three hours – three hours of mostly off-key karaoke. All of the karaoke-ers were students at Beihang, and more than half had been students of mine. Some of the contestants were excellent, but most were so-so at best. I was a little upset because I had been planning on giving feedback to the contestants – I had been told that by my boss – and I had spent some time preparing some really good slams. Didn’t get a chance to let’m fly.

I’ll be filling in the gaps in this blog in the upcoming weeks – keep checking for updates