Yesterday we went out to lunch with Shelly, a Chinese teacher at this university who teaches about Chinese literature. Shelly is really interested in all things foreign and has done a lot of traveling. She also happens to be incredibly generous and we are always turning down gifts and invitations to things. She gave us tickets to the Shanghai Expo last year and treated us to numerous dinners and lunches. I had her over for some meals as well and we gave her some goodies we picked up on our trip this winter which I hoped she enjoyed.


After lunch she asked us what our plans were and I told her I had to go to Walmart to pick up some eggs because I wanted to do some baking. As soon as I said it I realized my mistake. You have to be careful sometimes to tell Chinese friends what you want or need because they will get it for you or help you with whatever you are doing, even if you don't ask. After running errands, I came home to a box of 4 dozen eggs sitting at my doorstep from Shelly, of course. Looks like I'm going to be having egg salad for lunch today. . . and tomorrow.

Today is the first day of classes for us and things are busy especially because our friend Emiko is visiting from Japan and we have a few meetings to go to. After being away for 7 weeks there have been a few instances today that have reminded me that I'm in China.

Our friend was watching BBC television and was confused why the station suddenly went all fuzzy. This is because the government is currently censoring everything related to Libya which means searching for it on the internet results in "page not found" and any news programs covering it are cut off during that segment.

Later, when Sean and I went to a meeting with one of our supervisors, Luca asked us if we were going to return for a third year. We said we weren't and reminded him that we were getting married in August while I showed him my ring. Luca looked at it and then promptly asked Sean how much it cost which caught Sean completely off guard. This is not unusual in Chinese culture but Luca has worked with foreigners for a long time so I was still surprised (and amused) when he asked for the actual price. It was funny.

At the end of the meeting, I asked Luca to reset my internet account since I had gone over my download limit 1 GB/month. He then informed us that the school was giving us all 10 GB/month because they were sick of constantly resetting the account. Then he asked, not at all sheepishly, if one of us would give him our password at the end of the year so he could use our download limit as the school only gives him 1.5 GB/month. This is my supervisor, remember.

My favorite part of this day was when I was talking to Steve, a different supervisor, after the meeting and telling him how it went. When I told him about how Luca wanted one of our internet passwords at the end of the year, I expected him to laugh or be shocked. To my surprise (kind of) he asked, in all seriousness, "Can I have the other password then?"

Oh, China, it's good to be back.

After a couple long days of traveling, Sean and I made it back to Changzhou yesterday afternoon. Obviously, I'm a little behind on the blog since after visiting Singapore we spent two weeks in the Philippines, but I'll post about some of those highlights later.

It's good to be back where everything is familiar, I can sleep in my own bed, actually communicate a little bit, see my friends and get back into the swing of things. Qin Chen, my roomie, had cleaned my place cleaner than it has ever been to surprise me when I got home. To celebrate returning home, she, Sean and I went to dinner and enjoyed a huge meal of all the Chinese foods we had been craving. While on the road, I found myself wanting really strange stuff including: spicy tofu, eggplant, and hot and spicy pork soup with sprouts. I never thought in my life I would crave foods like that. But now that I've gotten my Chinese food cravings out of the way I'm ready to buckle down and make some baked goods that I've been missing for the past two months including: muffins, brownies cookies and cakes. YUM.

Last night we also met with Steve, our friend and supervisor here at school. He gave us our schedules and hung out for a bit to catch up on what we did during our vacation. Our teaching schedules are ridiculously light and easy which Steve justifies by the fact that we will all have to give two speeches this year instead of just one like last year. He also managed to finagle us a raise which was a welcome surprise. That means my monthly salary is up to $815 - sweet!

I have three "European Culture" classes and one oral English class for a total of 8 hours of teaching per week. Sean has four oral English classes which also totals 8 hours a week. To add to this already too light load, we might each lose one class. This is because Jordan, another English teacher and good friend here, has stayed in the US to recover after corrective surgery on his arm (after China's doctors botched the first one). If/when he returns, he will be picking up one class from each of us. Until then we will just teach his classes for him which isn't a big deal at all. We really hope he comes back soon though because we miss him!

I have not taught this European culture class before but Daniel did last year and is going to send me some notes to help me out. Besides taking Latin in high school and a survey course in college, I'm feeling totally unprepared and underqualified to teach this. But I am excited to try something new and learn a lot; I think it's going to be pretty fun. Here's the themes that I am supposed to cover:

Greek culture
Roman culture
The Bible and Christianity
The Middle Ages
Renaissance and Reformation
The 17th century
The Age of Enlightenment
Romanticism
Marxism and Darwinism
Realism
Modernism and other trends

I think covering all or even most of those things is pretty unrealistic and I'll be happy just going through Greek and Roman culture and the Bible. This class only meets weeks 2-14 and has week 13 off so that only gives me 12 classes which isn't much at all. I'm excited to be able to work with juniors which will be something new and the university gave me rooms equipped with media and technology which is a big bonus.

Now it's Saturday morning and I am doing a mix of cleaning, unpacking, lesson planning and relaxing. Classes start on Monday and I have a friend visiting from Japan who comes on Sunday. The semester is already off to a busy start! Since I have so much free time this semester I've signed on to work a lot at Web again and may do some more work for Global IELTS. Sean and I are also going to start training for the Great Wall marathon or half marathon and we want to keep taking Chinese classes. With continued wedding planning and trying to figure out what's next after China, this spring semester is sure to fly by and we'll be back in the states before we know it!

After doing laundry at a very overpriced coin-operated Laundromat nearby, we met Daniel at his hotel for lunch. After finding that a French café that Daniel had wanted to check out was closed for the New Year, we ended up at a large open-air food court. I noticed that many people were drinking something that looked like iced coffees in mugs and asked a family what they were. They told me that everyone was drinking something called iced Milos which were a little bit like iced hot chocolates with malt flavoring. We had seen these before in both Indonesia and Malaysia but I was still surprised at how popular they were. Sean and I ordered some and agreed that they were indeed delicious. ($53 hotel, $12 laundry, $15 lunch)

We had a lot of things we wanted to do that day in Singapore and a list of places and maps that we wanted to visit. We started the day with a visit to the historic part of Singapore and took the metro to the colonial district. The primary place of interest was the Raffles Hotel which was opened in 1887. The old hotel was beautiful and is famous for not only being a popular place to stay in the past for the traveling elite but also because it was in the hotel’s Long Bar that the drink the Singapore Sling was invented. ($18 souvenirs, $23 Singapore Sling)

After looking around and checking out the museum, we headed to the bar where each table is given a box of unshelled peanuts to munch on while tossing the shells on the floor. Of course most people order the signature (and really expensive) Singapore Sling and I am sure the bartender gets really sick of making them. We had to try them of course and they were surprisingly sweet and pretty girly. Sean and I shared one because of the expense; I especially liked the fact that they were a pink color and came with fruit.

We spent the afternoon walking around the bay which was awesome. The architecture of the many museums, fountains, cathedrals, and courthouse was incredible. In some ways it reminded me of walking near the lake in Chicago. My favorite buildings were the Esplanade which was a giant outdoor theatre right on the water and a huge mall which housed an indoor casino and a giant boat on the top which made for a pretty impressive sight. Then we walked over to the docks (which they call ‘quays’ here) whose main attraction is the Singapore Flyer which is the city’s gigantic Ferris wheel that we could see all the way from our hotel. ($15 dinner, $29 Night Safari, $6 metro and bus, $13 snacks and drinks)

My favorite part of the day didn’t come until that evening, however, when we went to Singapore zoo’s night safari. The night safari was next door but separate from the zoo and was open daily from 7:30-midnight. The night safari is basically just a zoo at night but it’s really cool because all the animals on display are nocturnal and extremely active. They have small lights around so you can see the animals and just about make out the different walking paths but it’s still kind of spooky. They also offer an evening performance which was awesome and a long tram ride which takes you around the park while a guide talks about the animals. I wish it was open longer so we could have spent more time there because it was awesome. Total for the day for 2 people = $184 (ouch)

There actually are a few fun and free things to do in Singapore and we sampled two of them on our second day in the country.

I initially wasn't too excited about going to Singapore since it's smaller, mostly urban and generally pretty expensive. When our trip worked out to having about 7 days in the little island country I felt like we would regret staying there so long. However, by the end, I was happy we had made the decision to stay for a week as the bustling, modern, developed, clean and orderly nation was a welcome relief from some of our previous stopovers.

The day before we had arranged a snorkeling trip along with a visit to "Turtle Island." But the night after surfing I started to get a pretty bad stomachache and visited the bathroom quite a lot so I didn't go the next day. These are the memories of the experience related to me by Sean. I totally wish I would have felt up to it because the experience sounded awesome.

Weight: 25 lbs