The internet in my room is still down. This upsets me greatly, since I have to meander down to the nearest internet bar and fight with the teeming masses (who are playing Counter Strike) to get a computer. But now that I'm on a 'puter, I'm not getting off for a while. So let me tell you about the past week.

It's been rough. Apparently there were some problems with the grades that I gave to my students last semester. My boss knew this. Rather than talk to me about it, he gave my phone number and my address out to ALL of my students, so that they could get in touch with me. This upset me, since he's the one who told me not to give this information to my students. My phone had been ringing off the hook, students kept "popping in" at inopportune times, and I spent most of my free time trying to sort through this gigantic mess. Eventually I unplugged my phone - I had given all of my students my email address, but they'd rather call, so this way they had to email me - and spent as little time as possible in my apartment. Yesterday was the last day to change grades for the past semester, and the madness has thankfully stopped. The worst part was that I'd resubmit a grade, and it would take two days for the registrar to change it officially (and notify the student of the change.) So I kept getting upset calls and angry emails and late-night visits from students that I'd already helped. 'Twas frustrating. But it's done now, and I can move on. Hopefully.

My classes are much smaller than last semester, and the students seem to be a little more confident than the previous ones. I'll be spending more time this semester doing lesson plans, since I don't really have a textbook. It'll all work out, I hope.

This past weekend I helped Mike and Christie move in to their new home - I was impressed by how fast it went (although I wasn't there for all of it) and how easy it is to find. It is very conveniently located, and there's even a coffeeshop (which makes great smoothies) right outside their door - ah, the extravagance. That's a word I'm surprised to use.

Wednesday night I hung out with Jared, and when we were walking back from the restaurant, we stumbled across an rink where a bunch of people were playing hockey. We were invited to play, and I had quite possibly the best time that I've had in China. I'll mention this, because I'm sure that Jared does on his blog - I had forgotten to wear a belt, so my pants kept wandering in a general downwards motion, especially when I would try to sprint.

That's all for now, I have to run to my next class. I'll fill in more later.

My internet connection is down in my room. This happens much to frequently around here, and since I prefer to cut and paste my blogs out of Word, I'm out of luck. I have a diatribe prepared - it's all ready to go, nice and informative - but it'll have to wait. So I'll do less than give the highlights - I'll give two. I'll fill the rest in later, when the internet is back up and purring.

The first is that I now have my schedule for the next semester (starts on Monday) - I'll be teaching 14 hours - 8 hours of post-grads, and 6 of master's candidates. I will not have any of the same students this semester - there's no overlap. I also am without a night class - my latest class ends at 4pm. So I'm happy. My schedule could change but hopefully, it won't.

Second - This morning I sat in on a taping of a tv show. I was one of the "experts" (Mel and Jared were also experts.) who gave his/her opinion about learning Chinese. I still don't know why I was there, but it looks like I'll be on tv, so all in all, it's a good thing. The taping was done in a coffee shop outside of Li Gong Daxue (the place where the Calvin students study) and it was very informal. I ended up with two new - free - Chinese dictionaries, so it wasn't a total wash. That's all I have time for at the moment. Sorry.

Here’s what went down in the last week and a half – my apartment is spotless – almost sanitary. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time studying Chinese – I’ve memorized four hundred characters since I’ve returned from Kashgar. I also acquired salsa – this was harder than it sounds. It took me three long, hard days of visiting import shops all around Beijing to find the right salsa. I’d been given a large bag of white corn Tostitos (that’s a long story that I shouldn’t tell without getting permission. I’ll ask and let y’all know how it works out) before I left for parts distant and I wasn’t going to eat them without the proper salsa. Beijing has food from all over the world, but Mexican food is few and far between. There is one restaurant (which I know about, there are probably more) that sells Mexican food in Beijing; it is unlike any Mexican food that I have ever had. That’s not a good thing.

Wednesday night I went to Tomato, a new Italian restaurant in Wudaokou, with the Brassers and Jared English. The food was good and the company was great. Afterwards we went to Sculpting in Time, a coffee shop next door to Tomato that is known for its slow service, and discussed handwriting – theories on and what ours looks like and used to look like. After that we went to Wisdom, an adult toy store, according to the sign. It had numerous games and brainteaser-type puzzles – we didn’t buy anything, but we looked around for a good, long time. When we had finished, the Brassers took off for home, while Jared and I headed back to my place to watch Fight Club, a movie that Jared had never seen. That was the extent of my past week and a half. I could write more, but this is it for the moment.

All right everyone, I know that it has been a long time since I last wrote, so I’d suggest you prepare a drink or two (whatever suits you – I’d pick coffee, except that it’s so hard to find real brewed coffee here), put on your reading glasses, and get all nice and comfy – this is going to be a long one. Everything up to now has been pamphlet-sized – this is going to be a novella. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I promised last time that I would talk about Christmas, so let’s start with that. I’d hate to break a promise. The week of Christmas I didn’t have to teach any classes – they were left open so that I could finish my finals if I needed the time. I had to finish finals in three of my ten classes – the other classes watched a movie or were cancelled if they met on Christmas or the day after (Boxing Day, if you aren’t from the USA.) I say that they watched a movie, since I offered each class the same choices – Mission: Impossible, Shrek, The Truman Show, and The Princess Bride – and each class chose Mission: Impossible. I kept the choices the same since I figured it was a fluke – surely one class would want to watch Shrek… apparently not. I spent Monday and Tuesday watching M:I .in the morning (four times in two days) and the nights grading the listening test finals that I had given to my graduate students the week before. On Wednesday I finished a final with my continuing education students – they were the best and the brightest of my students, and I gave them a conversational final – each student would come to the podium and we would talk for five minutes, and then I would give them a grade based upon their listening and speaking skills. It was much easier to grade than my listening tests, and it seemed less subjective. The listening tests were not well designed – I had to decide how correct the answers were – 50%, 60%, 20% - not just if they were right or wrong. But I digress.

After classes on Christmas Eve I went out for lunch with Mike. On the way back to my apartment, my cell phone rang – it was Mel, letting me know she was sick. I stopped at the store and bought some water and Ritz crackers and dropped them off on my way back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the night grading listening tests and well, that’s about it. I may have spent some time cleaning – my sister was visiting that weekend – but I doubt it. I honestly don’t remember; it was over a month ago.

Christmas morning I awoke very early and called my Grandma Lubbers – the party was going on and I had to call to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. After that I went shopping for Christmas presents – I had a party at the Brassers later in the day. No, I didn’t take the time to prepare earlier – I had a couple of hours to spare, and it all worked out ok. I had lunch at KFC – it was the first time that I’d had KFC in China and it was an experience and a half – it’s like stepping into a pseudo-high-class restaurant –everything is clean and the staff is friendly. ‘Twas very strange, even for Beijing. After that I went back to my apartment to warm up – it was a very cold and blustery day. A few hours later I headed over to the Brassers – they were having a Christmas ham (a real ham, even) and other Christmas foods. We exchanged presents – I received a sweet chair from the Brassers and they received an assortment of stuff from yours truly. After dinner, presents, and a little celebration, I had to leave – Stephanie was having a party of her own that night and I’d promised to stop in. The party was a good time – all the foreign teachers stopped in and the party went long – well into the night. I left early, since I had one final to finish the next morning.

The next morning – Boxing Day, if you prefer – I called G+G (Grandpa and Grandma Hulst) to wish them and the rest of the family a Merry Christmas. After that I went to finish my finals – I had four students that I needed to grade, and after twenty minutes I was finished with my classes for the semester. I believe I went back to my apartment and went to sleep. I don’t think I did anything else worth mentioning, so I’ll skip over it.

Saturday I awoke early – Mike and I were planning on taking a bus trip to the Great Wall. We walked over to the bus stop and waited for about an hour. After realizing that the bus wasn’t coming, we headed over to the terminal to wait inside a bus for about two hours. After losing almost all of my patience, the bus left for the Great Wall. Mike and I rode on a sixty passenger bus with about 5 other Chinese people (including the tour guide.) The tour guide did not speak any English, thankfully Mike speaks Chinese pretty well. We headed to the Thirteen Tombs, a pass in the Great Wall, and eventually to Badaling (though we didn’t really get off the bus at Badaling.) Because it was a private tour bus, we stopped at everything of minimal interest on the way to the three stops. This trip should have taken about four hours, but it took about nine hours. It was quite possibly the longest nine hours of my life. The tombs were interesting for about five minutes or so – the best part was the Chinglish on the signs which were placed about five feet apart all through the tomb area. The best was, and I quote, “Please according to priority for visitage.” It must be a deep truth; I don’t understand it. There really isn’t anything else worth mentioning – it was a nice day for photos and being outside, but I was preoccupied since my sister was arriving later that night.

Ok, let’s move on to Xinjiang Province. I went to Xinjiang Province (Xinjiang can be loosely translated as Western Regions) on my “vacation” (really week three of my seven week break.) I stopped at Urumqi (the capital of the province) and Kashgar – a major stop on the Silk Road. Xinjiang Province is an interesting place – the majority of people belong to a minority group known as Uyghur (pronounced Wee-gir – insert joke about Eminem here – we always did.) Uyghurs look nothing like Han Chinese (undoubtedly what you picture when you conjure an image of Chinese people – they look close to the stereotypical image of a Chinese person, though not exactly, of course.) One could say that Uyghurs hate Hans, since the Han people have been settling in Xinjiang in droves for the past twenty-five years or so. The government encourages the settling and development of Xinjiang, and this upsets the native Uyghurs – they are not happy with the local government. The local government (run by the Hans) has declared the Uyghur way of life unsanitary and have been knocking down the Uyghur housing and rounding up the people who complain as terrorists. There have been protests in the past and the region has had problems with stability – though no foreigners have been targeted in the recent past.

There is an underlying tension in Xinjiang, and it divides both of the cities that I visited. There is a Uyghur part of town and a Han part of town; the Han section is modern and feels a little like Beijing. Step into the Uyghur part of town and you feel like you’ve jumped back in time at least a thousand years, maybe more. All the houses in the Uyghur part of town are made out of straw and mud and sometimes pressed earth. There are modern conveniences, but they are few and far between.

We – Jared English (a friend from college who works in Beijing,) Jason Sigsby (one of Jared’s former roommates and colleagues,) and myself, left for Urumqi early on Friday morning (the 16th of January.) We arrived at the Beijing Airport early – too early to remember the time. Early, very early. There weren’t too many problems in the airport – I made it through security without setting off the metal detector, but Jason wasn’t so lucky. His belt set off the detector, and the security lady de-belted him with an amount of flair that surprised all of us. The flight to Urumqi took 4 hours (almost due west of Beijing) and the plane had video games as well as a highly edited version of Pirates of the Caribbean (all of the scenes that had skeletons in them were cut – so essentially the last half of the movie was gone.) Upon arriving in Urumqi, we had to wait for about an hour or so to claim or baggage – efficient Urumqi ain’t. As we waited we kept placing bets as to when our luggage would come down the chute, and after placing bets for the fifteenth time, our luggage arrived. Stepping outside was painful – it was incredibly cold and dry – it hurt to breathe for the first few minutes. We flagged a taxi and were taken for a ride – it took us over an hour to get to our hotel – it only took ten minutes the other times. The hotel was really nice, in fact it was a five star…and it showed. Everything was modern and the staff were actually helpful (which is impressive for China – there is absolutely no concept of service over here…it is a strange, strange country.) We wandered around the city after dark, and found out that there aren’t enough taxis in Urumqi – we had to wait for at least a half hour before an empty taxi drove by and stopped for us.

The next day we went back to the airport and left for Kashgar – it was an hour and a half flight (due west) from Urumqi, yet it’s in the same province. Kashgar is really close to some of the “stans” – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It’s also pretty close to India. It was one of the main stopping points on the Silk Road back in the day. After we checked into our hotel – the fabulous Qinibagh Hotel (we were the ONLY people staying at the Qinibagh during our stay) – we headed out to explore. We stopped at a little restaurant decently close to our hotel for lunch, and sat a table close to the door. The waiter/cook/owner walked over, and Jared ordered some yan rou tang (lamb soup) and nang (it’s a type of bread.) The w/c/o said, “rice?” Jared repeated the order again – same response from the w/c/o. So we had “poloo” - rice stir-fried with carrot, pumpkin, a huge chunk or roasted lamb, a few small shards of bone to slice up your tongue, and sometimes raisins or pomegranate seeds. We ate this frequently in Kashgar – it seems to be a staple of the Uyghurs, and it is pretty good. After lunch we headed down a street that was lined with hat and knife stalls. Since we seemed to be the only foreigners in Kashgar at the time (it’s a huge tourist spot in the summer,) we attracted a crowd wherever we went. We walked past a large number of fruit stalls which sell a variety of dried fruit – Xinjiang is known for its fruit, and quite a few open-air butchers who had their wares hanging right on the street. It wasn’t as unsanitary as it sounds, since it was colder than a meat locker outside. I even stumbled across a few blacksmith and carpenters who were working their craft the old fashioned way. We also walked through Old Town – the Uyghur suburbs, for lack of a better term. I can’t do it justice, so I won’t try – you have to see it to believe it. After that we went to a really bad museum – it was the most unimpressive and boring thing that I have ever seen, and I’ve driven through Northern Ohio at night…

On Sunday we went to the Sunday Market, the largest open-air market in China. Salespeople come from all over China and the ‘stans to sell their wares, which are primarily spices, knives, rugs, hats, and fruit. Everything else under the sun is also sold here, though in lesser quantities and varieties than the previously mentioned items. Mohammed (a curtain salesman who worked at the Sunday Market, spoke almost perfect English, and was very friendly – we’d met the day before on the street) led us around the market. When we’d seen all that we wanted to see, he suggested that we go to see the livestock market outside of town. We agreed. I’ve never seen so many sheep, goats, donkeys, and horses in one place before. We browsed around for a while (thankfully there weren’t any camels, I’d have purchased one if there were any present) and eventually wandered out of the sales area to watch blacksmiths shoeing horses. Eventually we grew bored, and Mohammed suggested that we visit a cemetery that wasn’t to far away. It turned out to be the most interesting part of the visit to Kashgar, at least as far as I was concerned. The cemetery was immense, and the customs (as explained by Mohammed) were very different from the western set. I won’t go into them here. After that we headed back into Kashgar and began a general mosey back towards our hotel. That night we took a right out of the hotel instead of a left (left led us to the rice? place) and after a two minute walk we were smack in the middle of the Han part of town. We had “Chinese” food for supper instead of Xinjiang food. There are three things you should know about Xinjiang food: no pork (because the Uyghurs are followers of Islam,) no rice (it’s too cold to grow it in Xinjiang – they eat nan, wheat bread, or laghman, wheat noodles, instead,) and the food is hallucination-inspiring, tongue-numbingly spicy. It was a nice change of pace, but I couldn’t eat it everyday.

Our plans for Monday had us taking a trip to one of the borders to look into one of the ‘stans, but due to inclement weather – it was winter – we were unable to get anyone to take us even remotely close. So we went back to the hotel and decided to go back to the Sunday Market - that’s its name, it is open every day, though more stalls are open on Sunday. We acquired a few more souvenirs, and wasted time – we were ready to leave. There isn’t much to do in Kashgar during the winter, since all the tourist attractions are outside of the city and the routes were closed due to snow. That night we went to a Mongolian hotpot joint for supper and I had squid by mistake. ‘Twas the highlight of the day.

Tuesday we left the Qinibagh Hotel behind (good riddance – it was bad, and not in the as time passes my disgust will fade away way – I’ll stand by that feeling ‘til the day I die) and went back to Urumqi. The Kashgar airport left a bad taste in Jared’s mouth – the lady in charge of the airport tax was late, and we had to wait for her to arrive so that we could pay the tax and consequently proceed through security. Jared was chosen by Jason and myself to wait in line for the tax. Why they don’t include the tax in the price of the tickets was a deep question that Jared pondered as he waited; I know this because he kept repeating the question until we arrived in Urumqi. We also rhapsodized about songs for Urumqi on the flight back – we’d adapted “Rock the Casbah” into “Rock the Kashgar” – but Urumqi left us stumped. We checked back in to the Hongfu, and settled in. Eventually we left and explored Urumqi – we found an Islam import store called Istanbul that had all kinds of interesting foodstuffs – like Naibao – a Whopper-esque candy that was really good – good enough that Jason bought at least five pounds of them in bulk. Tuesday night we went to a park that had ice sculptures – bears, dragons, elephants, camels, castles, etc. Jason rode an ice elephant for a pretty sweet picture; when he dismounted, we noticed a large crack had developed in elephant’s tummy region. We moseyed a little faster at this point. We also discovered that the park had a skating rink.

Wednesday morning we went skating at the park, or rather I tried to skate while Jared and Jason skated – the largest skates available were still to small for feet. After two hours Jared and I headed back to the hotel; Jason skated for six hours or so. We had been invited to dinner by the Executive General Manager of the Hongfu – he was from Canada, and we happened to be the only English speaking foreigners staying at the hotel. He’d been in China for fifteen years, and had many stories to tell – especially about the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. After dinner Jared and I headed down to People’s Square at about eleven-thirty for the best fireworks display I have ever seen. Nothing in America comes close (Wednesday was the eve of the lunar new year, and it’s the Chinese equivalent of Christmas.) We were in the center of a large square – maybe a quarter-mile to a side. People were lighting firecracker and rockets around the perimeter, and the mortar tubes were maybe 50 fifty feet away. Fireworks were going off all around and directly overhead – it was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. I didn’t know where to look or what to focus on. It was truly awe-inspiring.

Thursday we took it easy – nothing was open, since it was New Year’s Day.

Friday we went to Tian Chi – a picturesque lake in the middle of a mountain range near Urumqi. It’s a main tourist draw in the summer, and in the winter, when the lake freezes, you can ride horses on it. Or if you prefer, you can take a sleigh. There is also a tube slide – sort of like a bobsled track, but not as steep or as much fun. It was beautiful. We ate lunch in a yurt (it’s a big tent that the Tajiks – the people who live around Tian Chi – used to live in.) It was horribly overpriced and the food was awful, but I can now say that I’ve eaten in a yurt. We relaxed for the rest of the day.

Saturday was spent relaxing – we had a western breakfast which was the highlight of my day (this was the first western breakfast that I’ve had since coming to China.) We also purchased large quantities of souvenirs in a last minute purchasing attack. Other than that, we didn’t do anything worth mentioning.

Sunday – we packed up, said goodbye to the Hongfu, and flew back to Beijing.

Since then I haven’t done anything except write this. Most of the other foreigner teachers are still traveling – Stephanie is back, but I haven’t run into her yet. That’s it for the moment – I’ll do this more often from here on out, because this took too much time to write. Later.

Unkie Tom, this one’s for you

Well, it is the New Year, and my sister, Sandy, is here in Beijing visiting with me. She’ll be here until the 6th of January. She’s taking a nap at the moment – she hasn’t fully adjusted to the time difference and so we are taking it easy today.

She arrived on Saturday night, and after an uneventful ride from the airport, we settled in and took care of the most important thing – my Christmas presents. (We also caught up on the activities of everyone and everything in Holland and the US in general.)

On Sunday we went to church, and afterwards met with Jared and his cousin, Susannah (she was visiting him over Christmas.) We went to Lido to buy DVDs and for lunch, and eventually made our way to Silk Alley for Sandy’s first taste of Chinese bartering. Now, I can’t say what we purchased – it might have been presents, it might not have been. All you need to know is that we haggled out excellent prices for everything that we bought. Later that night we went to Mike and Christie Brasser’s for dinner and games.

Early Monday morning Sandy and I met Susannah (Jared had to work and asked if Susannah could accompany us on Monday and Tuesday.) and we started our whirlwind tour of Beijing. We started out at the Forbidden City – we went through it at an incredible pace (with Roger Moore as our guide – he narrates the audio tour) and after that we headed to Jingshan park – it is a park directly to the north of the Forbidden City that has a big hill in the middle. The hill was made from the dirt, rocks and debris that were removed to create the moats around the Forbidden City; it also gives a very picturesque view over Tiananmen Square and the F.C.

At this point we went to lunch with Christie - we had an authentic Chinese lunch of baozi and jiaozi (steamed dumplings and filled steamed buns.) After lunch we went to Tiantan (Temple of Heaven) and spent a few hours wandering around the park – it’s gigantic, to say the least. After we had seen most of the sights – the echo wall, the processional bridge, etc. – we went to Hongqiao Market. This market is known for its pearls, but it has everything under the sun.

Once we had finished shopping (bartering, really) we met up with Jared for dinner. After a very random dinner (we had eel, fruit salad, celery and lily root, and sizzling rice) we went to see an acrobatics show. The show was excellent – contortionists, unicycles, and the Leaf-Men (guys should not wear leotards, especially ones with strategically-placed leaves.) It was impressive and disgusting – people should not bend those ways or have such a great sense of balance.

After that, we went our separate ways. On Tuesday we started later – at 9 am – and began by heading to Tiananmen Square to view Mao’s body (we’d missed it on Monday, and it’s one of those things that you have to see if you’re in Beijing.) I didn’t get to see Mao, since we all had bags, which aren’t allowed in the mausoleum and someone had to guard/hold the bags. After they had seen the Cat – as Mao was known – we headed to the Lama temple. It’s the largest Buddhist temple in Beijing, and there are a whole lotta Buddhas in the temple. There is even a 18m tall giant Buddha in the very back of the temple. It was interesting, but not too terribly interesting – there were only a few signs in English.

After lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. We took a bus, and it took a long time to get there. Once we arrived, we moseyed down the Long Corridor – a covered walkway that is over a mile long, is covered with painted scenes, and runs the length of the lake. We ended up at the Marble Boat and then headed around the backside of the mountain and scaled the rocks up to the top of the palace. Scale probably isn’t the right word, since there were “steps” carved into the rocks, but it was steep and slippery. After we finished there, we went back to Jared’s apartment to wait – he was at work and we were tired. When he arrived he was bleeding – he’d fallen off his bike and scraped his hands and knees. Once we got him patched up, we headed out to a Mongolian hotpot restaurant. Mongolian hotpot is a very involved means of eating – you personally stew meat, vegetables and noodles in pot that is on your table. Sandy and Susannah didn’t seem to terribly enthralled with this, but they survived.

After dinner we went to Houhai – a bar area in Beijing that is built around Houhai lake – and cruised the scene. We ended up in a club listening to DJ Leaf do his mix. A live band came on after a while, and Jared requested a song. When the band got around to playing the song, they invited Jared onto the stage to sing with them. He did. The club had a deal going with their “specialty” drink, which tasted they way rubbing alcohol smells. So we each had one, and that was more than enough.

Wednesday was spent at Fuchengmen Market, a large market that has everything anyone could ever want (well…) Sandy bought a sweet blanket – heavy, warm and fleecy-good. I have one, and Sandy had latched onto mine. So I made sure that she acquired one of her own. We also bought quite a few presents, since Fuchengmen is THE place for good presents.

We went out to a Korean barbeque joint for dinner – Sandy, Mike (it was his going away party – he left on Friday), Mel, two of Mel’s friends from Shanghai, and yours truly. Korean barbeque is some of the best food on Earth – the meat and veggies are cooked over coals directly in front of you – tasty-good. After dinner we went to Sanlitun (a different bar street – the main one, in fact) and met up with Jared and Grace (one of Jared’s friends.) We spent New Year’s Eve in Durty Nellie’s Irish Pub listening to a Filipino band play covers of Pink Floyd and U2. Eventually the bartenders threw handfuls and handfuls of glow sticks to the throng. There was a countdown to midnight (though I’m pretty sure that it happened fifteen minutes after midnight, I might be wrong, but I doubt it.) We headed back to campus after one, and had to climb the stairs (fourteen flights – the elevator shuts down at midnight.)

Thursday we slept in and eventually ambled down to Wangfujing (the main shopping street in Beijing) and window-shopped for awhile. We stopped in at the chopstick shop and the foreign language bookstore and bought a few sets of chopsticks and reading material. After Wangfujing we headed down to the Friendship Store to see the real deals – real jade and pearls and antiques. It was enlightening. That night we went to dinner at Ashtray – a local eatery of decent edibles. Sandy was impressed with my ability to order and express myself in Chinese (well, not really – ask her for details.) After dinner we went back the apartment, watched a DVD, and went to sleep.

Now, I know that I promised more on Christmas, and I will – next time. I promise.

‘Twas the weekend before Christmas…

It’s finals week here at Beihang, so I’m going to keep this short – I don’t have time to go into any great detail about the past week and a half. I’ll give a three highlights, and fill in the gaps at a later date. I promise.

1. I went to RBT (a pseudo-western tea house popular here in Beijing) on Tuesday with Mel to study and practice for our Chinese class. While we were sitting and chatting, VoL’s Skin came on over the PA system. I stopped and stared for a few minutes (ala the Desperado-guy from Seinfeld) and eventually managed to compose myself – it was surreal.

(For those of you who are unaware of VoL – VoL is an underground Christian folk rock band that is virtually unknown, which is why I included this note. The song Skin is about Vincent Van Gogh, his insanity, and his supposedly lopped off ear.)

2. I spent last weekend planning out my listening test (final for my graduate students) It was by far the most stressful forty eight hours of my life (so far) One thing I didn’t think about - and I should have - was that I would have to grade the finals at some point in the near future. Rather than make it multiple choice (easy to grade, cause it’s either right or wrong) I decided to make a fill-in-the-blank style test (hard to grade – full of grey area.) Each test takes about ten minutes to grade. That doesn’t sound so bad, but remember that I have 437 students in these classes. That’s only 73 hours of grading. Oh well.

3. Last night I received my first Christmas gift from Christie Brasser – a huge ornament with my name written on it. It’s large enough that it dwarfs my tree – the tree hangs on the ornament instead of the usual way. It’s large enough to be used as a Christmas piñata – do I dare to start a new Christmas tradition? Yes, I believe I do.

Have a merry Christmas, y’all

Hello Y'all,

It's been awhile since I last posted; I apologize. I have been busy enough that I had to prioritize my tasks, and unfortunately this didn't rank very high. Tonight I acquired a new type of internet card, and it seems to work great - maybe my internet problems are behind me (so it'll be easier to blog) - only time will tell. I composed this piecemeal over the last few weeks, and I haven't taken any time to check for continuity errors. Sorry.
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I've been playing nurse for most of the floor this past week – those who are sick have come down with a pretty nasty case of food poisoning or possibly a mild case of the flu. I've been to the store at least twice a day to acquire Ritz crackers, Sprite and water as well as a few other necessities. I have my rounds to check on everyone, and they all have my cell number in case of emergencies (such as running out of water or Ritz crackers.) I'm not just being nice – I hope that they will reciprocate when (not if) I get sick. There is nothing worse than being sick and alone, except being sick and alone in a place where you can't communicate with most of the people – including all of the doctors in the on-campus clinic.

That's how I spent most of my week. Here are a few non-nurse highlights for your reading pleasure...

Monday
Five of us on the floor decided to do a Secret Santa drawing to spare the pain of buying gifts for everyone and to place a cap on the value of the gifts given. It took us an entire hour to draw names – someone always ended up with their own name. It became Kafkaesque after the first four attempts (Beijing tends to amplify this feeling,) and everyone was pretty quiet until we succeeded. After we had drawn names, Mike mentioned that his stomach was cramping, and I was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. Mike, Mel, and I had eaten lunch together at a little restaurant outside of campus, and we had shared the same dishes...

Tuesday
At 2 am my cell phone rang – it was Mel, calling to let me know that she was horribly sick. She wanted to know if I was sick as well. I said, “no,” and went back to sleep.

That night I went out to dinner with Jared and Mike Brasser (a different Mike than the one mentioned before) to a little restaurant that the foreign teachers of BUAA call “Ashtray.” I don't know why it has that moniker – it just does. On the way to our table I noticed Stephanie and Anne (both foreign teachers at BUAA, and both from Australia) were sitting at a table on the other side of the restaurant. I waved, they waved back, and I headed over to my table. The food was really good – some of the best that I've had in China. We went our separate ways after dinner, and I headed back to my flat to do a few lesson plans and to record myself reading a few articles for the College English magazine.

Wednesday
Taught my classes, they went remarkably well, and I spent my afternoon lazing around my apartment. I also took a little time to clean, if I remember correctly. I went out to a pretty sweet restaurant for dinner – the meal was served on a gigantic piping-hot cast iron plate. It was more food than ten people could eat (there were two of us – Mike had decided that he was feeling a bit better.) About half way through dinner a random bug fell from the ceiling and landed in the middle of our dish. After pointing it out to our waiter, we left – the meal was gratis. Went back to my apartment to do lesson plans – on the way I ran into Mel, who was apparently feeling much, much better. She apologized for the late call, and informed me that both Stephanie and Anne had cases of food poisoning from eating at Ashtray...

Thursday
Taught my classes – the students didn't seem to want to be there, and it was a teensy bit exasperating – I spent most of the time cajoling them along. After classes I did a little grocery shopping (snacky foods) and went to the internet cafe to check my email and send a few overdue replies (I'm about a month and a half behind, in case you're wondering.) I had my new Chinese class at 4 pm – it moves about twice as fast as the other class I was taking, plus it is taught by a teacher who speaks English. The teacher of the other class did not. I also signed up for a class on writing characters – it'll meet on Wednesdays. After class Rob, Mike, Mel, and I went back to “The Bug” restaurant – we sat in a private room (the walls had been spray-painted gold – China chic) on the third floor. We didn't see any bugs. The meal was still pretty good, though Mike left halfway through – he was having premonitions – stomach cramps and a bily taste in the back of the mouth. We drank two one-liter cartons of this funky carrot-pumpkin-mango-apple juice with dinner and were shocked to discover that each carton cost 45 kuai each (that's enough to buy 10 gallons of apple juice, which is what we had ordered.) We all vowed to never set foot in “The Bug” restaurant again. Afterwords I went back to my apartment and watched a DVD.

Friday
So tired – so very, very tired. Went to class, came back, took nap, went to dinner at Ashtray with Mel, came back, sat on couch and stared at the wall for a bit, and then went to sleep. At least I'm honest. Oh, wait – between the nap and dinner I wrote a few (43 by my count) Christmas cards/postcards – to the Grands and my former workmates at Repcolite. Made plans for phase two of the Christmas card campaign.

Saturday
Went to the Forbidden City Concert Hall at 2 pm to buy tickets for that night's performance of Handel's Messiah. It took an incredibly long time to find the concert hall, since it was hidden deep inside a park directly west of the Forbidden City. After buying tickets we (Mike – he was feelin' better - and I) braved the art students that hover around Tiananmen Square and headed towards one of the museums on the east side of the Square – the museum is showing an Egyptian exhibit which contains all of the relics of King Tut. When we arrived, we were sad to see that the museum closed at 4 pm, since it was 3:54 by my watch. So we wandered around doing tourist-type things – snapping pictures of people flying kites, talking to art students, bartering for things we neither need nor want in the Qianmen Market (southwest of Tiananmen) and making a general nuisance of ourselves. After a while we went for dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we had “Beijing Burritos” - hot pulled pork in plum sauce with spring onions served on tofu pancakes which are rolled like burritos (hence the name.) Very tasty, once you figure out how to roll a burrito using chopsticks – it's quite a challenge. Once we finished, we headed back to the concert hall for the Messiah.

The Messiah was excellent – it was performed in English (the Chinese version was performed the next night) by a chamber orchestra, a full choir, and four talented soloists. Mike had never heard a live version of the Messiah performed before that night, and he was impressed.

Sunday
Went to BICF, met Jared and the Brassers, and we went to the Outback Steakhouse for lunch to celebrate the birthdays of Mike Brasser and myself. It was good, very good. Jared and I had a drink-off (using Fanta Orange – we tied on the amount) since they actually had free drink refills. Mike and I received presents aplenty – I received the Beatles Anthology DVD set, a boxed set of Lu Xun's works (Lu Xun is a famous twentieth century Chinese author,) and a tiger-striped toilet seat cover (from Jared.) The food was good (and Western) and there was actually too much – everyone left feeling uncomfortably full. Mike and I even managed to finagle free ice cream, since it was our birthdays (also strange for China, or so I heard.)

That night I went out to eat with most of the foreign teachers to celebrate my birthday, again. I was still pretty full, but the celebration was for me, so I did my best. I even had birthday bread – we ordered “cake” from the menu, but what appeared was only mildly cake-like. It was a large round loaf of fried sesame bread. It was really tasty, but it wasn't birthday cake. We had a lot left over birthday bread, and I was forced to take it home.

Monday
'Twas my birthday. I had leftover birthday bread for lunch, and I taught my classes. After classes the other teachers and I went out to a “cafe and bar” for birthday libations. It was a pretty good day.

Tuesday
Not sick yet, but I was getting there. Didn't do much of anything except teach class and sleep. I did find out that Mike (the teacher) had gone to the on-campus clinic since he hadn't been feeling well – he was diagnosed with an inflamed intestine – he's not allowed to eat anything except plain bread and rice for the next 3 days or so.

Wednesday
I felt happy and healthy – and it showed. I found out that my finals will be finished on the day after Christmas (all the other teachers won't finish until Jan 12 or so. It's the joy of teaching all spoken English classes – writing classes have later finals than the spoken classes. Mel and I went out to dinner at Ashtray – everyone else was still under the weather...

Thursday
Taught my classes. Didn't do anything else worth mentioning. Still not sick, though all the other teachers have been.
I am tired, and I think I'll be going to bed early tonight.