The Internet is slowly getting better, so I will take this opportunity to update.

I didn’t get anywhere near hoped in my reading challenge last year. Coming to China put a crimp into it. I only had so much room in my suitcase for books.

I tried reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. It came highly recommended so I jumped into it with great enthusiasm. I think the book should have been made into a trilogy and perhaps what she was trying to accomplish would have been presented better. I loved loved loved the first half of the book. But by page 700 or so some of the tangential storylines began to get old, and a bit redundant. So with about 200 pages left, it’s over 1000 pages, I put it on the shelf with little hope for being finished.  

Niels’ Mom sent The Stolen Child: A Novel by Keith Donohue, and I devoured it in about a day and a half. It’s about a changeling who kidnaps a little boy and trades places with him. The story alternates between that of the changeling’s and that of the little boy who is then turned into a changeling. I thought it was really, really good.

Niels and I are sharing A Short History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-Lan, which I’m enjoying quite a bit more than I thought I would. It’s written for the layperson in mind; I don’t feel like a dumbass while reading it.

While I’m not doing the reading I’d like, or should be doing, we are watching quite a few movies. One advantage of being where we are is that we’ve been able to find some really good movies on DVD. Granted most of them are things we’ve seen already but who cares!?

The past three weekends we’ve re-watched The Lord of the Ring Trilogy, the extended versions which totally kick ass.

We’ve also recently watched, or re-watched:

The Banquet – a VERY loose adaptation of Hamlet
Citizen Kane – Niels had never seen it before, but it’s one of my favorites
Constantine – I like it more than most people I know, but I’ve never read the comic book
The Chronicles of Narnia – one of my favorites
Devil’s Advocate – I had never seen it before, god it’s awful
Kung-Fu Hustle – the 2^nd time I watched it, it was with my sister and our Mom and I’ve never seen my Mom laugh so hard at a movie
Mo-tzu – the plot is loosely based upon the teachings of the Chinese philosopher of the same name
Sin City – brilliant just brilliant
Spirited Away – watched for the first time last year when we had hoped to go to Japan
Talladega Nights – Niels and I saw it in the theater when we were in Wheeling and I was laughing so had he was embarrassed to be sitting next to me, and yes I laughed just as hard the second time
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – I wish I had a dog like Gromit

Yesterday (the 25^th) we ventured out to do some shopping and picked up Children of Men (with Clive Wwen, got to love China), The Illusionist and Shaun of the Dead.

And with that said, I’m off to watch The Illusionist. Hope you’ve a great night!

There are many things I love about being in China, but there are somethings that really gross me out.

Niels & I were hanging out downtown yesterday afternoon and on the bus ride home the bus was crowded with little kids on their way home from school. As we began to near campus the bus started to empty out, but there were still quite a few people remaining. One being a wee little child.

I was knitting so not paying much attention to my surroundings until Niels said "Did you see that? That little kid just pee'd on the bus floor."  Did the Mom clean it up at least. Nope. And about a half dozen people walked through it.

Children pooping and peeing in public, while their parents and people around them are greatly amused, is one thing I can not deal with. And it's not like the children are taken off the beaten path a bit so the bodily fluids are not walked through, because that would make sense.

Nope, the little ones just do what they need to do right where they've stopped.

It's so gross.

Diapers, they're a good thing.

The Internet hasn’t always been great in our apartment. The city is on one local area network and like all networks in China is guarded by the “Golden Shield”, which I think sounds like a kind of maxi-pad, in country and every where else is known as the Great Firewall. The school has its own firewall to ensure access to anything that may be considered subversive is squashed, because us knitters are a subversive group. These things make it pretty hard for us to have any sort of normal relationship with the Internet. Information that should take less than a minute to load can take anywhere from one to two hours. Getting western news articles to load is always a crapshoot. The times it does work well is when we’re sleeping and of course no one else is using it, so the connection is perfect!

And that was before the earthquake in Taiwan knocked out 97% of population’s Internet access. 

Now, well, it’s like having dial-up, but much, much, much worse. There are mornings I’ll try to load my email, and hope that by the time I return a couple hours later it’ll have loaded. There have been a few nights where Niels and I have opened various web pages crossing our fingers that it’ll be loaded by morning. This makes planning lessons very difficult. Niels read that it should be back to normal by January 15, and surprise! it’s still not working. It’s quite frustrating since it’s the main tool for us to plan our lessons and is our connection to the States.

I read this morning that everything's supposed to be back to normal on the 20th. Oh, that was yesterday, sorry, but the end of the month. I'm not holding my breath.

Being away from friends and family is tough, but when the one link to help maintain a normal relationship with loved ones is cut off, homesickness becomes that much worse.  

(A quick post before the Internet decides to crap out...)

One of my classes has P.E. the class before I see them. One week while we were practicing for the play they were to perform I noticed a few students had their hands over their mouths and had weird looks on their faces. I asked what was the matter and received a “Don’t you smell that?” in reply. I honestly didn’t smell anything and was confused on what the problem was. Since I had students directing the plays, I didn’t have much to do that day. I had to be available to help students if they had questions regarding pronunciation and to make sure they weren’t too loud while rehearsing. At one point during class I walked around the room to survey the progress of the rehearsals. Then it hit me: a horrid sour smell. I couldn’t make out where it was coming from.

One of the Chinese English teachers there to help me keep the peace was trying not to gag. I asked what the horrible smell was and, trying not to laugh, or was it throw up, she said “Some of the students are a little stinky.”

A little? How about a lot?

I guess if your showers were in a completely different building from your dorm, you’d be a little stinky too. It’s really no surprise that the students, as well as many of the teachers, only shower once a week. The showers are in a building behind the dining hall, which isn’t a far walk from the dorms but far enough to make it a pain in the arse, especially in the cold. The showers also aren’t private, which just is plain ol’ sucky.

There are many things I will never take for granted and my shower is one of those things.

I apologize for the sporadic posting the past month or so, the Internet has become less and less reliable, and since the earthquake a couple weeks ago in Taiwan, it’s slowed down to where if we had dial-up, our connection would be faster.

(As a testament to how slow the Internet is, I’ve spent the past four hours in front of my laptop trying to get the “post” page to load. To keep myself from going completely batshit crazy I’ve: studied Chinese (which in of itself can make one lose their marbles), IM’d my best guy friend Mike, wrote up this bit, tried to pick a font for wedding invitations, played some FIFA 07, and started a new scarf. Needless to say, the Internet SUCKS.)

Niels and I have reached the level of comfort teaching where things have hit a comfortable routine. Granted, it’s not always comfortable, but we’ve had to be careful that we don’t fall into a rut.

Don’t get me wrong, there are weeks we’ve no idea what to teach or if we do we’re not sure how to present it. Resources are limited, we can’t give hand outs to our students, we’ve too many of them, and for Niels, the projectors don’t always work so using multi-media isn’t always an option.

We also struggle with fending off boredom because we teach the same lesson 21 times during the week. Last week I talked about music and played a few songs from different genres for them. The only thing that kept me from wanting to poke my eyes out from monotony was I was able to play different songs for each of my classes, yes there was overlap I heard some songs multiple times, but the diversity was varied enough that I didn’t go crazy.

This week my students are playing music for me and we’re talking about what they’ve chosen to bring in. One thing I’ve learned from this lesson is that the vast majority of Chinese kids have the worst taste in music. But it’s not their fault; their access to good music is limited. I can’t tell you how many times I was told that they thought Bob Marley sounded “scary”, “horrible”, “terrible” and “old” but when a song by the Backstreet Boys is played they became giddy. I contribute part of it to their age, but it’s not solely that. When we talk with the teachers they like the same music their students do. And sometimes it’s hard to persuade them to try to listen to something different.

My favorite is that they think Jazz music is comprised of all of Kenny G’s repertoire, and nothing else. “Do you like Kenny G, teacher?” Oh, god, no; he’s shit, I think to myself. But I can’t say that to them, so I just say “Not really. But I know people who do.” (I don’t.)

Does anyone really like Kenny G??

Happy New Year!! May your year be filled with peace, joy, lots of laughter and good friends.

Sorry for the lack of posting the past few weeks, our Internet's been effed up and when the earthquake hit Taiwan last week it got knocked down for a few days. It's back up now but still quite touchy.

Niels and I had a wonderful New Year's celebration, so good in fact I was passed out drunk by 11:30, so I totally missed a New Year's kiss. The drunkeness was the result of doing baijo shots with a politics professor at the teacher dinner. I will write more about it later, I promise, because it's a classic. But right now I'm going to relax and watch Family Guy.