Back to Blogging (or Back to Business)

Here I am again, still alive, still in China. Both of those looked doubtful, for a while, but things have certainly improved. I'm sorry for the long silence from my part of the world. I think that in a lot of ways, May was my most difficult month in China (yet; I'm cautiously optimistic about the future, though.) We had so many problems, it was just ridiculous. At the top of that list, and probably most to blame for my failure to blog, was the fact that our internet was out for almost two weeks, and before that it only worked in Josh's apartment.

As Julie Andrews likes to say, or at least as she said once, "Let's start at the very beginning." I just googled that line and realized that a ton of other people have used it in their blogs, and it just seems like a bad opener, so I've decided I don't like it. Anyway, at the beginning of May, we had a ton of problems in my apartment. The internet didn't work, the kitchen flooded every time someone used water in the building, and a few minor things. The situation got worse and worse, and although I called the school several times to fix it, nothing effective was done (although Jane was very helpful and came over with a repairman, they still did not solve the flooding problem.)

Then Josh's computer stopped working, so we didn't have the internet. We weren't able to call home on Mother's Day, which was too bad because I was able to do it two years in a row from Paraguay. The computer problem didn't get fixed for almost two weeks, although I talked to David several times about it (and even bought him a bottle of wine, hoping it would grease the wheels. Unfortunately, it seems that both Mussolini and Dwight Schrute got it right when they said 'Blood alone moves the wheels of history.') Things got to the point where one day I thought, "There's absolutely no reason for me to be here if I hate it so much." So I called Owen and told him that if my apartment didn't get fixed, we wouldn't stay in China any longer. He asked me to stay until he had time to come and see the apartment (and, even though I knew he wouldn't be able to come for a few days, I agreed.) Later that day David came to our apartment (surprise, surprise.)

Imagine that it took him less than an hour to get Josh's computer working again (which I could have done if they weren't using illegally obtained copies of Microsoft Windows.) So that was good progress. He talked to the landlord and said that the drain would be fixed soon.

The next day we left for an English competition in Yongzhou--Josh and I packed into a "bus," which was really an old minivan, with four students, David, Jane, and the driver. I don't think I have been in many situations more awkward than that one. Too my surprise, though, David and Jane were really kind about the whole thing, and they didn't seem offended by our threat to leave (Jane has always been good to us, so I didn't really expect any less from her.)

The competition was interesting. I was a judge, Josh was an observer. We had absolutely no guidelines for how points were to be awarded, what was expected of the students, or really why we were there. We just knew that we had the chance to award up to 100 points total. It was the biggest joke of a competition I've ever been involved with--it was extremely unfair, because the students were given random topics that ranged in ease from "Ping-Pong" to "I'm Beautiful Because I'm Young." What? They also had to talk about a picture for 4 minutes (the only students who got even close to that time were the ones who would say one word, then pause for 15-20 seconds, then say another.) The pictures were equally random, from cartoon strips with a clear topic like pollution, to a big picture of a Peking duck. Wow. My part though, was when a student got up to speak and I started wondering, "Is this a boy or a girl?" The first thing s/he said was, "I bet you're wondering if I'm a boy or a girl." S/he hit the nail right on the head.

The trip actually turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend our time (it took Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so we had very little teaching that week.) We got to see a bunch of our friends from Buckland and we were able to relax and get away from teaching for a few days. Plus, who can pass up the chance to be a judge?

When we got back, things got a lot better. The drain was fixed by Saturday, with an old-fashioned Roto-rooter machine, and we haven't had any problems with it since. I started responding to emails, etc., but I didn't get around to blogging until today.

Since the trip to Yongzhou, we haven't had much in the way of excitement. We recently re-booked our tickets home because we found out, for sure, that we are done teaching on June 27th. Currently we plan to go to Beijing from the 6/28 to 7/1, and then be back to the U.S. by 7/3, but it seems that we may have a six day vacation next week. If we do, we may squeeze in a trip to Beijing then and try to visit Xi'an or another city at the end of June. Either way, we're excited to be home in time for a good old-fashioned BBQ.

This week I showed clips of Hamlet in some of my classes (those that were able to get DVD players.) I never thought I'd watch the first 40 minutes of Hamlet (the Zeffirelli version) 12 times in my life, but it seems I have outdone myself again. I'm sort of interested to see what the rest is like; I enjoyed the parts that I saw. Even Mel Gibson does a good job, although I have to agree with the students, who all told me that Glenn Close is not beautiful.

I'm afraid that's all for now. I haven't posted any new pictures recently, in part because I loaned my memory card to a student, and in part because nothing picture-worthy has happened. I'll try to take some more of the school to put up, though, because I think some people would be interested in seeing how it is set up--almost like a miniature town within the town. Talk to you guys soon.