Ok, today was alright. I got done with class and didn’t feel like strangling anybody, which is an improvement over the last couple of days. I went into the monster class armed with a new strategy - I brought a book of short stories by Lu Xun that they had recommended to me last term, […]
The success story:
For lunch, I went to Skyways, which is a German bakery a block away from my house that makes tasty sandwiches. It’s also very nice from a bumbling foreigner perspective, because you fill out a little card (in English), hand it to the cashier along with your 20 RMB, and that’s all there […]
OOF oof oof. Survived. Good god, this profession is something else. I was frantically preparing for class until around 11:30 last night (preparation, for me, involves a lot of hand wringing and moaning that I don’t know what I’m doing), and then woke up totally scared and nervous at 4 am and could not fall […]
I’m out of action right now due to a really nasty cold. I feel just fine, but I’m pretty miserable to be around with all the nose fluid action spewing forth. It’s bottomless - every time I get a runny nose like this, I find myself in total awe of my body’s ability to produce […]
Hey, I survived my first Chinese travel experience with nothing more than a nasty cold. Last Saturday, five of us got on a bus and headed for Jiujiang, which is in the JiangXi Province (a couple of provinces south of JiangSu, which is Anne Town). It was surprisingly easy - I was ready for travel […]
Most of the snow melted, and it’s just not very pretty anymore. Basically about two weeks’ worth of trash is resurfacing. In other news, though, I’m excited! Tomorrow I’m leaving Nanjing for the first time since I got here, and I just realized how weird it is that I’ve stayed in the same city […]
Apparently the Chinese invented toilet paper (which is a sad irony from the perspective of a mildly prudish American who never leaves home without her own supply - I hardly ever see stocked toilet paper rolls here), and they must have invented the pun, too. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’ve been trying to get […]
One of my few really healthy habits is my yogurt addiction - at home I ate a TON of yogurt. Chinese yogurt is definitely different - it’s much thinner and a little more sour. It tastes fine to me, but I wanted to be sure that I was eating the right kind of yogurt, with […]
Well, Friday was the big day - the first time I’ve ever been on tv. I was wrong earlier; it wasn’t really national television. It’s the Jiangsu Province educational network. Anyway, the show consisted of various acts from the large family that is the Jiangsu Ministry of Education (I think). There were twenty performances altogether, […]
YES, vacation. It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and I’m not beginning to worry about preparing for classes on Sunday, or about trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour so that I don’t completely throw off my sleeping schedule. In fact, I went to bed at eight o’clock this morning, after drinking […]