A Very Exciting Week

It has been an interesting week for me in Yancheng.

My students are slowly starting to warm up to me in
the class room. I say slowly, because I have taken to
bribing them with sweets & snacks to get them to talk.
This has been somewhat effective, but, of course, has
created a precedent which now cannot be undone. My
snacks bill will be quite high by the time I leave
here.

The Freshman arrived at the college last Friday and
have 10 days of military training. This means that
every spare inch of space in the college grounds is
taken up with young adults in fatigues marching and
chanting "Yi, er, san ..." (1,2,3). The poor things
start early in the morning and go all day. It is 10
days straight, including the weekend. They are usually
pretty excited to see me walking to my classes and
even more excited when I wave and call out "hello" or
"ni hao". I stopped and had a chat to a group of them
today, and told them that if they are in any of my
classes, I hope they will talk to me as much in class
as they are talking to me today!

I had to go to the post office twice this week to
collect parcels. That was very exciting. I received 2
care packages. Thanks Cate & Lindy. The items are
already being put to good use. I especially love the
tea towels from Lindy and the marshmallows from Cate.
I think Cate was concerned about the toilet situation
over here, but I assure you that toilet paper is in
abundant supply at the supermarket - you just don't
flush it down the bowl! I also received a postcard
from Sarah in Tanzania, a book which Mum express
posted to me and my 2 bags with winter clothing, which
I sent before I left Oz. Some much excitement for 1
week!

I also purchased a printer this week. The main purpose
was to print out handouts for my classes without
having to walk a mile to the print/copy office on
campus and try, ineffectively, to communicate my needs
to the print office staff. However, it is also handy
for printing photos and pictures off the net to make
my apartment more cosy. Two of my students, Aaron &
Allan, helped me purchase the printer. It is a colour
HP inkjet. It cost 320 Yuan, which is about $65. I
think it will be worth the investment, even if I have
to leave it here for the next foreign teacher.

On Friday, I found out that a new foreign teacher from
America would be arriving in Yancheng the next day. I
was told that he was a young American from San
Franscisco. I nearly dropped dead from the excitement
of it all! Another caucasion (I assumed) to take some
of the limelight away from me.

On Saturday, 3 of my students came over to take me to
Century Park, which is a large park on the outskirts
of the city. It is a lovely park set on a canal, but
certainly not like the parks we have in Australia. I
took my travel frisbee with me, but, unfortunately,
there were no large grassy areas suitable for throwing
it around. We had a play on the paddle boats instead.

After the park, the students took me to a famous
dumpling restaurant in the downtown area. I like the
dumplings, but my bowels seem to have a pretty quick
reaction to them! (Perhaps Cate's toilet paper will
come in handy afeterall!) I have not yet had to brave
a public toilet, other than in the new teacher's
building at the college. I think, in future, I will
have to stick to the dumpling restaurant closer to my apartment.

On Saturday afternoon, I came back to my apartment to
check the score in the AFL grand final. I got onto the
Lions website, and lo & behold, there was a link to a
live radio broadcast from MMM in Melbourne. So I got
to listen to the game live, even if I did have to put
up with the tosser Sam Newman in the commentary team.
It was just before half time when I linked to the
radio broadcast and I was very excited (again!).
However, by the end of the 3rd quarter, things were
not looking good for a 4th straight premiership.
Nonetheless, the Lions can be proud of themselves. It
is no mean feat to win 3 in a row and get into the
final for a 4th straight year.

After the game, I headed downtown to meet the other
Yancheng foreigners. Most of the same suspects as last
week were there and a few others who were sick last
week. Bev is an older Canadian lady and Piers is a
young Australian boy from Melbourne. I am not sure of
his age, but I would say early-mid 20's. This is his
first time out of home and he has only been here 4
weeks, like me. However, he speaks Chinese, so he can communicate with
the locals. He is a fairly typical young Aussie bloke, who likes his
footy and his VB. Very left in in his politics and not afraid to shout
it out to anyone who will listen, and also expects everyone to have the
same opinion as him. Apparently, he won't be going back to Australia if
Howard gets back in, but might give it another go if Latham does.

So now I have met 5 other Australians in Yancheng and
we outnumber the other nationalities, with the kiwis
coming a close 2nd with 4 of them.


On Sunday, I went with Annie and Gony (the Phillipino
teachers) to the bazaar to buy some necessary
household appliances.


When I got back to the apartment, I ran into the new
foreign teacher and so I invited him in. He is 22,
caucasion, from Washington DC. He has just finished
college and this is his first job so he is a bit
nervous. However, he studied Chinese literature and
can speak Mandarin Chinese quite fluently, so he is
already a step ahead of me.

Last night, all the foreign teachers attended a
banquet to welcome us to Yancheng and to celebrate the mid-Autumn
festival (which is tomorrow) and the national day (Friday). It was
attended by the heads of the foreign affairs office, the deans of the
English and Chinese departments, the party secretary and the
Vice-President of the school. The food and drink was in abundance. Just
when you thought the food was finished, another dish would be brought
out. And there seems to be no order to the food delivery. Sweet dishes
came out half way through the banquet, and the main, signature dishes
after the sweets. The last dish was a soup/porridge thing. Nothing too
strange - except for snails (very popular in Yancheng) and century eggs
(boiled duck eggs which have been buried for a long time). The eggs are
black and grey and do not look particulalry appertising, but tasted ok.
There were lots of tofu and vegetable dishes, as well as spring rolls,
vegetable triangles, fried pumpkin, crumbed beef, Peking duck, pork
stew, spicy chicken and sweet & sour whole fish.

And the drinks were plentiful too. Red wine, which was
weak but ok and a very potent rice wine (50% alcohol
content). The toasts were endless and you were
expected to skull the entire glass with each toast. I
tried sipping but got told I must do Gan Bei -
"bottoms up". I insisted, if I was required to drain
my glass each time, that I go back to the weak red
wine rather than the potent rice wine. I was
constantly being offered cigarettes as well. The whole
banquet room was covered in a haze of smoke. All the
foreign teachers except for Denzel and I partook in
the smoking. Denzel was not very happy with the
smoking, but you have to get used to it in China I am
afraid.

The new American foreign teacher was put on the table
with the Korean teachers (who speak Chinese) and other
Chinese speakers. Poor boy. He was downing those
drinks and dragging on cigarettes like a madman. (He
told me today that he rarely drinks and does not
smoke! I told him to just say no, but he says it is
harder for a man to say no than a woman. He is
probably right).

Anyway, it was quite a good evening. A bit
uncomfortable at first, but things lightened up once
the alcohol started flowing. I was seated next to the Vice-President,
who turned out to be reasonably entertaining.

At the end of the evening, which was over by 9:00pm
(started at 5:00pm), all the foreign teachers were
given a box of "moon cakes" to celebrate the
mid-autumn or "moon" festival, which is tomorrow. I
have tried "moon cakes" already and cannot say they
appeal to me. Some of them have nuts in them, some
seaweed (!), others with quite unidentifiable
substances. I think I might give my box of moon cakes
to my students' family as a gift.

After my classes this morning, I met Max (the new
American foreign teacher) and took him on a tour of
the school. I have been here 4 weeks, so I am an old
hand now! He does not have to start classes until
after the national day holiday.

Speaking of which, national day is this Friday and
there is a 1 week holiday. Two of my students have
invited me to visit their home towns. One town is 45
minutes from here by bus and I am going for a day trip
on Friday. The other is 2 hours by train and I will go
for a couple of days. This student also invited me to
go to Nanjing with her friends, but, unfortunately,
the friend's grandmother is sick so we cannot go to
Nanjing. Instead, we will go to Huangshan which is a
famous mountain in An Hui province. So it looks like I
will be away for most of the holiday, which is great.

Not that you can really call it a "holiday", as we
have to make up the classes that are missed during the
next weekend!

Anyway, that brings you up to date. Hope everyone is
well and happy. I know you might find it strange that
I got so excited about some of things that happened
this week, but hey, you try living in Yancheng, having
no communication skills, and being the only caucasion
at your school, and just see what you get excited
about!

Love Meagan

New Friends - Chinese and Foreigners

I know you must be champing at the bit for the next
instalment of my China adventures, so here it is!

It has actually been a relatively quiet week, this
week. I guess I must be "settling in".

My classes went ok, although I am still having
difficulty getting the students to actually speak in
class.


In the audio visual class, I tried to play celebrity
heads - I used Tom Cruise with one class and David
Beckham with the other. None of the students would
volunteer to be the "celebrity head" so I had to
nominate a student, which did not go down too well with
the unlucky victims. And then the buggers cheated by
speaking to each other in Chinese!

So, I decided just to stick to showing the movies for
now. I thought "Bend it Like Beckham" would be a
"wholesome" choice, but after watching it again, I
realise that there is quite a bit of (mild for our
standards) swearing/cursing, lying to parents, and homosexual/lesbian
references, which may not be understood or appreciated. (China still
seems to be a fairly homophobic culture). Now, I remembered this movie
to be a fairly wholesome one - quite amazing the difference in
standards!


It did not help my cause when I met David, a Chinese
teacher in the English dept, who asked me what movies
I was showing and then entered into a 10 minute
monologue on the "bad language" in most Hollywood
films and how he sticks to the classics with
"beautiful language".

Oh well, I think my students might need a dose of
western reality with their movies! Of course, whether
they understand the movie remains to be seen. Given
that the plot centres around an Indian Sikh family in
London, even I find the myriad of accents and the
colloquial expressions difficult to follow at times,
so I don't know how my students will go.

I have not got any interesting cuisine stories to tell
you about this week. I have been doing a bit of
cooking for myself, or going out with Annie and her
student Michelle to a couple of local restaurants.
Michelle does the ordering and we stick to fairly
normal dishes.


However, those who know my eating habits well will be
surprised to hear that I am eating a lot of
beancurd/tofu over here. It comes in many shapes,
sizes and flavours and I am actually quite enjoying
it.

One of my audio/visual students, Smiling Fish,
approached me after class and offered to bring a few
students over to my apartment to cook for me. Ok! So,
Smiling Fish, Jordan, Ice Man and Barry, came to my
apartment at 8:00am on Saturday and took me to the
markets to buy fresh meat & veges and other cooking
products. They would not let me pay for anything. They
then came back to my apartment and cooked up a feast -
stir fry chives; egg and tomato; egg and cucumber;
stir fry pork, potato and green peppers; egg and
mushroom soup (yes, they like to use eggs in their
cooking), stir fry snails (yes snails again - quite
frankly a much preferable choice to the eel looking
things they were going to buy!) and rice.


I watched them prepare and cook everything in the wok
and so got a few tips on Chinese cooking. They use a
lot of oil, salt, sugar, chicken stock and flour
starch in their cooking, which can't be too good for
you.

We then sat around my table and enjoyed the feast. I
could not quite work out how to eat snails with
chopsticks. Particularly as these snails were tiny and
still in their shells. It was quite a sight watching
them pick up the snails with the chopsticks and then sucking/slurping
the meat from the shell and spitting the shells on the table! I tried a
few. They tasted good but I was pretty unsuccessful on the
sucking/slurping skills. I pretty much made all the right noises, just
did not get the snail out of its shell!

Anyway, these same students have offered to take me to
the city park next weekend, so it looks like I have
made my first friends.

Last night, I went out to dinner with other foreign
teachers or business people in Yancheng. That is,
teachers at other schools. I was surprised to learn
that there are about 15 or so other foreigners here.
They all meet for dinner every Saturday night.

Unfortunately, it does not seem that Yancheng attracts
the "younger" crowd, so apart from a few, they are all
mostly older, retired people. So, whilst I might not
get the travel partners I was hoping to find, at least
there is a good support network here.

There are a few younger Chinese who come along to the
dinners too - obviously to practice their English and
to order for us!

There are 5 other Australians, 4 or 5 Kiwis, a few
Americans, a couple of Canadians, an Englishman, an
Italian and a Brazilian.

Out of that crew, there is one younger Australian guy
from Melbourne and 2 younger, female Canadians. I
suspect though that the Australian guy bats for the
other team, so no potential there for me!

All of the Aussies are from Melbourne, so there was a
lively discussion about the AFL grand final. I was
pleased to find out that the Lions are into their 4th
straight grand final!

After dinner, we went to a "bar". This was a "saloon"
style bar which played Elvis incessantly. Apart from
one other table, we were the only ones there. Quite a
night life Yancheng offers! Oh well, it was good to be
able to have an alcoholic beverage, swear a bit and
talk about the football.

Well, that is it. My week in a nutshell. Oh, I signed
a 6 month contract with this school on Monday.
Wouldn't you know it, but the Qld Education mob
contacted me on Wed about a job with the Unilearn
program in Beijing in mid October. 3 times the salary
I am earning here and a big city. Very tempting, but I
decided to rough it out here in Yancheng for awhile
and experience the "real" China. I can hear my sisters
telling me how stupid I am as I write this....

Beijing will still be there in 6 months time.

Take care all. Go the Lions!

love Meagan

First Lessons Down - What's with the English names??

Well, my first week of lessons is now over, so I
thought it would be a good opportunity to give you an
update.

I have 7 classes a week, each class lasts for 2 x 45
minute periods. So that is a total of 10.5 teaching
hours per week - not bad! I don't have any classes on
Friday, so I get to have 3 day weekends this semester.

I have 2 advanced writing classes (3rd year students),
2 audio/visual classes (3rd year students) and 3 oral
english classes (1st year students). The freshman
classes do not start until October 7, so I am only
teaching 4 classes/week at this stage.

I have now met the other foreign teachers. Apart from
Washington Butler Jnr who I have previously told you
about, there are 4 foreign teachers who are teaching
English. Annie is a Phillipino lady (mid 40's) who
taught here last year. Benjamin is a Kenyan man (not
sure of his age) who also taught here last year. There
is also a Phillipino couple, Gonnie and Rex, who have
a young son. This is their 4th year teaching at this
school. So, Washington (who I will refer to as
"Denzel" for the amusement of some of my friends!) and
I are the only native English speakers, which I find
quite amusing. The Phillipinos, whilst their English
is very good, often pronounce some words quite
differently, and their sentence structure is not
always as a native English speaker would say the
sentence.

My first class was at 8:00am on Monday morning. It was
an audio-visual class. Apparently, Yancheng Teachers'
College is not in the habit of providing foreign
teachers with any sort of curriculum, syllabus or even
course objectives. So my questions as to what the
objectives of this course are were met with answers
like "Oh, it is easy. Just let them watch movies". Ok.

The AV classes are held in a "language lab". Each of
the students have a head set and a screen on their
desk which is connected to a computer out the front.
Unfortunately, no one has shown me how to use the
equipment, and my requests for instructions have been
met with very vague answers about it not working at
the moment, and there being no projector... Great.

Anyway, I wanted to spend the first class getting to
know the students. So I went around to each student,
(all 51 of them!) and asked them to introduce
themselves. Unfortunately, that only took about half
an hour so I still had 15 minutes of the first period
and the whole 2nd period left! I offered to answer any
questions they had, but they seemed reticent to ask
any. So, I started talking about different genres of
movies and music. Still, very little input from the
students.

In the 2nd period, I managed to get the DVD working,
so I slapped Moulin Rouge on for awhile to fill up the
time. They did not seem to know the "musical" genre at
all. In hindsight though, I am not sure that Moulin
Rouge is the sort of film I should be showing them.
Afterall, it is set in a brothel/dance hall in Paris
and the lead character is a prostitute. Not the sort
of wholesome movies they are used to, I expect.

So, for the next 3 classes, I put some thought into
how I could drag out the introductions to last both
periods. I wrote up on the board a few things that I
wanted the students to talk about when they introduced
themselves and the last thing was to ask me a
question. That seemed to work well. Until one of the
students asked if I liked singing - to which I
answered in the affirmative, and then the next student
asked me to sing them a song. "What, right now" I
asked. "Yes", came the reply. So I sung the first
verse of the national anthem, very badly. The
Australian idol judges would have said it was very
"pitchy" and that I was "letting the nerves get to
me". The students all clapped very politely afterwards
and then we moved on to the next person. It was very
embarrassing. Silly me for telling them they could ask
me anything!

Anyway, the first classes seemed to go ok, although I
think I am going to have problems bringing the
students out of their shell and getting them to talk.

They all gave me their English names, because they
know the silly foreign teachers cannot speak their
language and therefore cannot pronounce their names.
Some of the English names were quite hilarious -
Smiling Fish, Ice Man, Eleven, Pear, Apple, Lemon,
Yobby, Funny, Luck, An'nan (as in Kofe's son - he told
me), Jordan (after Michael as he likes basketball),
Cushing, Manson, Snow, Blue (these last 2 had to be
named by an Australian foreign teacher, don't you
think?), Cloud, Say, GiGi, ViVi, CiCi (all of whom
were friends who sit together in class) etc...

I finished my classes for the week on Wednesday by
lunch time as the freshman classes don't start until
October. So, I have 4.5 days before my next class. I
went back to my very bare apartment and had no idea
what to do with myself. The internet connection was
down (and stayed down for 4 days), the cable tv was
connected but the only channel which is not available
is the only English speaking channel (there is only so
much time one can spend flicking through 39 channels
of incessant Chinese gibberish) and I had finished the
1 novel which I brought with me. I was bored
senseless! And its not like you can relax in the
comfort of the apartment - both the lounge and the bed
are as hard as rocks! I was at a bit of a loose end. I
started talking to myself, but did not like the echo,
so I shut up.

However, yesterday I went on a long walk to the "big"
supermarket and back. I have to go to the supermarket,
rather than the market at this stage, as I cannot
communicate at the markets. The "foreigner" walking
the streets of Yancheng was quite a draw card and I
got many stares. When I left around 10:00am, the
streets were fairly quiet. However, on the return
journey around 11:30am, the streets were alive with
bicyles, tricyles, scooters & motorbikes. It was lunch
time, and everyone was on their way home for their 2
hour siesta. It was quite an experience, trying to
cross roads and navigate my way around the traffic.
Although technically they drive on the right side of
the road, practically they drive where ever they want!
And the horns are honking incesssantly, to warn of
their approach. It is quite a sight for sore eyes.

In the afternoon, I met Annie and, after showing me a
few things on campus, we went to dinner with a student
of hers at a little hole in the wall restaurant. We
then went to Gonnie and Rex's apartment and they have
heaps of English books and DVDs which i can borrow to
save me from going insane in my apartment.

So, all in all, it has been an interesting and
challenging week. There have been high parts and low
parts, but i am looking forward to the challenge.

Once again, I have written an epistle. I promise I
won't bore you stupid with lengthy emails everyday.
Just while I am settling in!!

Keep in contact and take care.

love Meagan

Yancheng, China - First Impressions

Well, here I am in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, China.
The flight over was uneventful, except for the fact
that I probably would not recommend China East
airlines. Very ordinary aeroplane that made some very
scarey rattling noises at quite inappropriate times
during the journey. Food very ordinary. Movies - well,
what can I say. 4 movies - first one was a Hollywood
movie with Charlize Theron, but I had never heard of
it and think it must be an old one before she became
an A-List actor. Then a French movie, with Chinese
dubbing and very badly translated English sub-titles.
Then a German movie, also with chinese dubbing and
marginly better English subtitles and lastly, a
Chinese movie in Chinese with no subtitles -hmmmm.

Arrived in Shanghai on time and cleared immigration
and customs quickly. I was met at the airport by Mr Gu
(I think) who works for the Yancheng teachers college
(YTC). I think he might be a driver, but then again,
he could be the head of the English department for all
I know, not that he seemed to speak a word of English.
Also met by Ms Guan Yuan Yuan (Gwendoline is her
English name) who is a teacher at YTC. She studied at
YTC and has been a teacher here for 1 year, so she is
quite young. I would guess early 20's.
However, her English is very good.

As it was 9:00pm by this time, we drove about 45
minutes to the Shanghai teachers college where we
stayed the night. They have a hotel on campus which
was quite comfortable.

I met Mr Gu and Ms Guan the next morning for
breakfast, and the dining experience started.
Breakfast was a (sort of) Yum cha affair with pork
dumplings and some stuffed bun type things (similar to
bbq pork buns, but with rice and vegetables, I think).
Also some pickled unidentifiable vegetables, a bowl of
very bland and soggy rice porridge (which is rice in
water) and a glass of milk. Most of the food was quite
nice, but a very large and unusual breakfast.

We hit the road for Yancheng at about 8:30am. The
drive took about 5.5 hours with a stop for lunch along
the way at 12 noon (very early!). All eyes turned to
me when we walked into the restaurant. Mr Gu went into
the kitchen to choose the dishes for lunch. Gwendoline
told me what he had ordered, but I sort of wish she
hadn't as it did not sound very apertising. However,
most of it tasted very nice. There were 2 vegetable
dishes - bean sprouts and a green veg like pak choy. 2
meat dishes - small but whole river fish in some type
of rich black sauce and, wait for it, frogs! The frog
dish turned out to be just frogs legs, which I have
had before, and it still tastes like chicken. The fish
was very nice, although a bit disconcerting eating the
heads! There was also rice and a very watery egg soup.
The Chinese in this area eat the rice last, as a
filler, and the soup gets poured into the rice.
Personally, I would prefer my rice without soup. The
piece de resistance (don't know the French spelling)
was the house special which they brought out
especially for me. Boiled pig's trotters - I wish they
hadn't. However, to be polite, I had to eat a couple.
Very fatty and quite disgusting, although probably a
step up from chicken's feet which I have had before!

After lunch, back on the road to Yancheng. The drive
was very boring and not particularly scenic. It was
pouring with rain in Shanghai, but the rain stopped
after a few hours of driving.

The first hiccup was to find out that Yancheng is not
located where I thought it was. The agency had told me
it was 7km from Changzhou, in between shanghai and
Nanjing. No, its not. It is in the north of Jiangsu
province and appears to be quite isolated.

First impressions driving into the city is that it is
fairly ugly and ordinary. However, after a few days
here and doing a walk last night into the downtown
area, I have changed my opinion. Whilst not a
beautiful city, I think it has potential. The streets
are very wide and clean and it has quite a bustling
shopping district with lots of neon lights.

I was taken straight to my apartment which is on
campus. It is a 2bdm apartment, but the 2nd bedroom is
locked so I cannot use it. The apartment is quite big
and has been fitted out with most of the mod cons. It
has a small referigerator, microwave, 2 gas burners
(although no gas bottle at this stage) in the kitchen.
There is a western toilet and a separate shower. There
is a washing machine. There is a sitting room and
dining room with a table and chairs and a very hard &
uncomfortable lounge chair. The bedroom is quite big.
It has a very hard & uncomfortable double bed, a tv
(which currently is not connected to cable and
therefore has no reception) and a computer with access
to the YTC network for internet.

I must say that the apartment is much bigger than
expected and whilst quite cold & bland looking and not
at all cosy, it is a good start. With a few home
comforts and personal touches, it will do fine.

I was left alone for a couple of hours to unpack and
then Gwendoline came back at 6:00pm to take me to a
restaurant for dinner. This was Wed. We have now been
to that same restaurant for lunch and dinner on
Thursday and lunch and dinner today. I think we are
also going there for lunch and dinner tomorrow and
then I will be on my own. Hopefully, I will have gas
by then!

I won't bore you with all the details of each and
every dish we have had, suffice to say that there has
been alot of it, some of it quite strange looking, but
most of it very edible. The highlights are an
unidentifiable fish dish which looked more like big
long worms than fish, an egg soup with what I later
worked out must be snails, half a chicken with the
head on the plate (for presentation only - thank
god!). There were many other very normal dishes,
particularly lovely vegetable dishes. (Anthony, don't
let these stories deter you from visiting. I assure
you that whilst some of the dishes look disgusting,
apart from 1 or 2, they have all tasted good!)

Before I arrived in China, the agency told me that 3
other American teachers had been placed at this
school. I had been in email contact with an American
couple (retired business man from Miami and his wife)
by email and was looking forward to meeting them.
However, by the time I arrived, they had come and
gone. Hmmm.

I have met the other American teacher, who is my
neigbour. His name is Dr Washington Butler Jnr, a 71
year old African American, currently from Tenessee. He
is a vegetarian, tee-totaller and strict 7th day
adventist who strictly observes the sabbath from
sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and does not allow
visitors during that time, nor does he alight from his
apartment during that time. This could be interesting!

Apparently there is also a foreign teacher from Kenya
and one from the Phillipines but I have not met them
yet. There are some Korean teachers, but they are here
to teach Korean. There may be more... the school is
very vague on the details.

Gwendoline took "Butler" as she calls him, and I to
the fresh food market this morning. Quite an array of
sights, sounds and .... smells. It is going to be
interesting once I get the gas on and have to start
cooking for myself.

I have been on a couple of walks with Gwendoline,
mostly on the way to or from the restaurant for lunch
and dinner, but have not ventured out on my own yet.

I had a big dose of culture shock and home sickness
the first night, but am now feeling better and ready
for the challenge, almost. It has been quite boring in
my apartment, but things should improve once I start
teaching next week. I also need to learn the language
quickly, so I can get out and about on my own and be
able to communicate and meet people.

Well, this has turned into an epistle and will be
keeping many of you from work, so I should end it
here.