There is so much to report and that I want to share so here goes. I finally got to go shopping to a place that sells throw backs that are really cheap! I bought 2 sweaters yesterday for about $ 12. One is an esprit, the pink one you see and the other is a Nautica ( label gone but a little flag thing on the sleeve). The sweater is washable wool and really soft and really warm. It will be great to wear to class when the heat is turned off (with long underwear shirt under it). I went with Pricilla, a 70 year old woman here with her husband John teaching English. Her husband is editing journal articles for scientific journals. The will be leaving in July to return to America. She walked me to a couple shops that she uses and explained how to "bargain". My total was 83 yuan and we got it down to 70. She also showed me a market about 2 blocks from our apt with nice looking fruits and vegetables and some clothes and batteries and this homemade bread that she uses for pizza crust. It is in the shape of a medium pizza and really smelled good. There is also tomatoe paste stuff there to use, too. On our way home she showed me how to get more minutes in my cell phone. I just ran out a couple days ago from a couple days after we moved here. I had paid 100 yuan for the minutes, about $14. So, I gave her 50 yuan and she dialed a code into my phone and it again has minutes until it runs out. The place is across the street from the campus in a window along the sidewalk. We also got some copies made and some papers scanned in another place across the street in a window. We will get a picture of it in here soon.
In the afternoon we went to take a Tai Chi lesson from a man and his wife that James met at English corner. He is a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner at a hospital close to here and studied Tai Chi for over 10 years. He 34 and his wife looks younger. He told us we would start out slow so just got the warm up exercises that day. We will meet them again next Monday.
We now have a VCR that works so no longer have to watch movies on the laptop. We also have our English channels back again. They were gone for a week or so because the contract needed to be renewed (we think). We don't watch much anyway but is nice to have when we have the yen for it. We watched Amazing Grace in 3 parts. Great movie. We had trouble with the remote since it is in Chinese so hailed our neighbor, right next door, Christine, from Austrailia. She is teaching English and her husband is a full time Mandarin student. She showed us how we had the batteries in wrong. (Don't tell James I put this on here.) She is going to have one of her classes of 25 or so girls to her appt tonight to make dumplings. We are invited to come over for a taste. We are having Monkey over for spagetti tonight and she is bringing tea and a dessert. She has never had it before and we couldn't taste it while cooking so it will be something to write about next time!
Classes are going well. A couple of days ago I was ready to retire but am over it now. I had to have a melt down before I pulled it together and told myself I could and would do it and did. The prayers probably helped some, too.......... I have 2 levels of English speakers so I am learning I have to gear my lectures and material to each of them. I will add some pictures of my students now, some from each class. You will see how I can study and learn their names from the pictures. They are darling girls and so eager to learn. There are a few outspoken ones like the one that didn't want to hold her name in front of her because that is what criminals do. I told her this is different because they don't smile! She agreed and smiled.
The lady by herself is Zheng Yaguang or "Jung Yagwong". She is who is putting up with me, actually assigned to help me, copy things, get equipment, etc. She is a nurse who graduated a couple of years ago and is also teaching some classes, pediatrics for one. She is so sweet. She texts me messages instead of emailing. I asked her to copy some pages for the students, about 5 pages each for 105 students. I emailed her on Monday and said I needed them on Wed, Friday at the lastest forgetting that she needs a week notice because of the backlog of copying that needs to be done. She got it done but reminded me of the rule. I felt bad about that but not as bad as when I realized that info was covered in a chapter in the book that I was teaching out of and did not even need to be copied. She happened to be in a class this week and found out my mistake. She was very gracious about it. They are so forgiving!
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