In most of... No. In all my classes, the back bench is occupied by three or four sleeping heads. The heads are connected to shoulders by a neck, with an arm either side and part of a torso underneath, the rest of it being obscured by the desk onto which these body parts collapse the instant any kind of teaching begins nearby.
6 Comments
Hello,
I had a really great weekend this Thanksgiving - I may start celebrating it every year from now on. Things began on Friday when we went to Scary Alley for dinner. It's a cramped street market selling everything ever, although you go for the food. Meat skewers, tofu, sweet potato chips - the closest I'll get to regular chips, I guess, except they're covered in sugar, but no soup, hurray! - fruits, vegetables, pastries, wraps, noodles, sweets, eggs... You can easily walk up and down this street for an hour, and I did, just having a little bit of this and that, whatever looks good. Just in case you've forgotten. It's really big on campus, with all the students wishing us 'a Happy Thanksgivinger'.
There's no turkey dinner laid on - which poses challenges for Christmas. You know, a real holiday! In case you missed them, Anna's got some more photos up here - of the car show and the student's home in Xinxiang. This is my personal favourite in the "Crap car with awful dancers" category. Or just passed anyway!
I think half the college is back on military training in the morning - the past few days, I've been woken up at 6am by the sound of (what I presume to be) hundreds of marching, shouting students starting the days off with a casual bit of formation drills in the main square. Last week, Susan, one of Anna's students, invited us to visit her family at their home in the countryside. Yesterday, Saturday, we took the bus to Xinxiang - a few hours north of Zhengzhou - and went to Susan's grandparents' house just outside the city.
Barack didn't make it...
And I'm not really sure why. Apart from having whatever it was that Michelle had, most likely caused by the poor conditions they're kept and sold in, and despite our best efforts, he just stopped moving this afternoon. This is after we bought him (and Michelle too, so we thought at the time) a larger tank with a floating dock and a UVA/ UVB lamp. He had perked up since we got the lamp, and was looking a lot better. But then bam, stopped eating, became lethargic again and, sadly, kicked it. Maybe we're just THAT bad at looking after turtles - I tried Brenda, honestly, but maube turtles just aren't for me? Anna's a bit upset that her birthday presents to me have died. I'm upset that we went on the bus for five hours to spend nearly a whole day traipsing around the market looking for the most expensive lamp gadgetry one can buy this side of the Pacific. Apparently Sarah Palin might be running... I hope our poor turtles aren't a sign of things to come. X Last weekend, we went to the 3rd Zhengzhou International Auto Exhibition, or something with a similarly long-winded title. It was, unsurprisingly, rather hit and miss but had an interesting mix of Jaguars, Lambos, Mercedes and plastic Chinese cars (including knock-off Hackney Carriages by a company called 'The Englon Taxi Company').
Unfortunately, I have some bad news. Michelle Obama (the turtle, not the First Lady) is no longer with us. As in she's no longer alive. I think she, and also Barack, had been ill for some time before we got them. My Canadian friend Brenda - turtle vet/guru - remotely diagnosed them as having shell rot, but Michelle only ate a couple of times during the two weeks we had her...
Hey,
You guys with the iPhones, are your phones still set to always on? It's been a while since I saw you online! Same goes for you G&G - leave it logged in if your in, I'm free most afternoons. It's good to talk, which reminds me - is there anything going on with the BT couple at the moment? X |
Photo Blog hereThere's a selection of photos from my time in China, and travels over Spring Festival, on these pages. Categories
All
Archives
June 2011
|