SUN!!!

The sun came out today, for the most time it's been visible (maybe
even more than half an hour) in nearly a month. And our response was
almost pathetic. It first poked out around 8, while I was at taiji.
Upon seeing shadows on the ground I immediately dropped what I was
doing and ran over to where I could see it, stand in it. It showed up
again while I was walking back to my apartment, and a couple other
times throughout the morning. Laurie, one of the other teachers, said
she went over to the window in the middle of class just to look at it.
Seriously, this climate is ridiculous. In the last month before
today, I think the sun was visible AT ALL for maybe 10-15 minutes just
before it set a couple weeks ago. The streets are almost always wet,
not because it's raining, but because there's so much moisture in the
air that as soon as it touches something even slightly colder, some
water will condense. And now this weekend it's supposed to drop down
nearly to freezing, according to Ben (another teacher, boyfriend of
Laurie, live right below me, do the most rock-climbing, cool, friendly
people). Okay, enough griping.

In better news, I've got my apartment mostly cleaned up, needs to be
mopped again, and I need to do laundry, but it's in good shape, and
I'm starting to get real groceries and cook for myself. The other day
Ben, who's been here about 5 months now, took me to the market and
introduced me to the people he knows to buy from, people who
understand that I'm here for a while, will be a repeat customer, and
won't haggle or try to rip me off, just give me a good, fair, price.
So today I realized that it's time for me to start cooking for myself
and went and got a bunch of food and spices. I already have some rice
other spices from the convenience stores/supermarkets, but it looks
like I'll be able to get everything I need a lot cheaper at the
market. Which is fun.

I was surprisingly nervous going back to teaching on Monday, but that
was just because I'd forgotten that I can do it just fine. As soon as
I actually had a class, I stopped worrying. Although one of my
classes is now almost all new students, which is actually really
difficult. I don't know their speaking level, they're not familiar
with the book, or with me, or, it seems, with listening to English in
general. Not surprising, I don't hold it against them, but it's a
pain to discover that my lesson plan isn't going to work very well and
then readjust in class simply because they aren't at the same level as
the older students.

Part of the problem with this is the way that we're supposed to use
the book. I've ended up teaching Business English (shudder) to the
higher and lower elementary classes. It's not too bad, but I don't
have enough familiarity with the subject to stray too far from the
book. Since students are constantly rotating in and out of the class,
I can't restart the book every time someone new shows up. But when I
continually progress through the book, it can be a big challenge for
new students, since they aren't so familiar with some of the concepts
we're working with in later chapters. Right now it feels like the
lower elementary class is actually more advanced than the higher
elementary class, and I think it's mostly just because the students
have been around longer.

When I started here the classes were pretty stable, we didn't get too
many new people and we were at specific places in the book, so I just
took it from there. But the higher elementary class reached the end
of the book before break (although I think that part of the book is a
little advanced for their level), so now I'm trying to figure out
where to start them at. It can be a little frustrating, but it's not
too bad.

Oh, a few other strange things I don't think I've mentioned:

Last week some time I went into one of the bakeries along the main
street near the market. I wanted to get a loaf of bread, and I saw,
back-lit from outside, something that looked kind of like a marble
rye. I got it down and bought it, along with a couple cookies for
dessert. Then when I got home and got a good look at it under
fluorescent light, I realize it's not marble rye. It's something akin
to white bread, with the white marbled with what seemed to be white
bread dyed purple. Yes, purple bread.

So up in northern China, small denominations of currency, 1 or 2 kwai
and certainly 1 or 5 mao, are dispensed in coins, not surprising since
they're common, and it's not much money. Typical. Not so in the
south. There are almost now coins, everything, down to one mao, has a
bill. That's a bill for something that's barely worth more than a
penny. Once a guy actually apologized to me for only having coins to
give as change.

My taiji teacher is a cool guy, and he's invited me over for dinner a
couple times, once on the eve of the spring festival, and last night.
And it's usually pretty good food, if mostly unidentifiable.
Unfortunately, and this seems to hold true for a lot of restaurants
around here too, that sort of food does not agree with me. I don't
know if it's the vast quantities of oil that are used in cooking, or
if there's just something in anomalous meat products that my body
recognizes as unhealthy, but oof, I hate waking up at 4 in the morning
having to go to the bathroom. It seems to have passed now, my
stomach's regained enough strength to fight off what little it can't
dump out, which is some improvement over a couple weeks ago. So I'm
still trying to figure out what to do, because usually the food that
makes me sick is at dinners or banquets I've been invited to. The
street food's safer. Speaking of which, it's late, and I need food.
Later.