Teaching and shopping and a little food

I continue to plug away at teaching. The first class of the week for the nursing lesson plan was always the worst so now the first group is the last group which was great until I realized I have another "first group". It doesn't seem to matter which of the 4 classes is first, it is still an experiment and a test class. Can you teachers out there relate at all? Janet and Dilsa and Dawn? Maybe next week I'll have James sit through the 2 hours and see how it goes. He may not be able to keep his mouth shut for that long and just nod, though. It is hard to know if the students are totally bored with what I am saying or that they are unable to understand what I am saying. Most of them are not very verbal in class unless they are specifically called on. I am most likely in a better situation here than if they were all talking at once. It could be worse, right?
I visited another mall type building with Pricilla today. We took a short 20 minute walk to the 3 story brick building. It was full of small shops; the first floor had gift shop-like stores with lots of cool "things" and there were jewelry shops and barrette and hair thing shops and shops with purses and a few shoe stores. The next 2 floors were mostly clothing. Some of the stuff was imported from India, Samoa, and some shoes from the US. What I noticed right away was it was almost like being in a mall in the US in that the merchandise was arranged very nicely and it was not crowded and some things even had price tags on them. Some of the clothing stores had really cute clothes, fashionable, and different. The prices were less than US prices and some things were affordable even on teacher in China's salary. It would be a good place to bring mom, Kathy, and Jeane when they visit. I know Lisa, Lori, and Becky would also have a good time there. I will take pictures to send sometime. (Kelly, you would LOVE the place).
We have been eating at the student cafeteria lately. It's easy, cheap, and good! The Indian food is great, usually a bowl of hearty curry-type vegetable stew with some rice and Indian bread. I had a boiled dinner where you pick skewers of fresh greens, mushrooms, seaweed, noodles, and different kinds of tofu and they boil it and give it to you in a bowl. You add peanut sauce and some hot sauce and you have a meal. It is really better than it sounds and so healthy.
We continue to meet new Chinese friends at the English corner. We are going to visit with one of them at Starbucks in about a week. Monkey went to the bank with us to help us change some money this week only to find out that one of the tellers speaks English and we could have done it ourselves!