Monday I taught, and it was crazy: it rained all day long, AGAIN. This time I got on the 11:30 bus, and it worked out, but I wasn't informed of my class change until I was actually on the bus (sigh). Then Yanis, the class monitor, met me at the School of English Studies, to take me to my classroom. On the way, a student stopped me, and asked, "Are you American?" "Yes," I replied. He went to rhapsodize about America and how he wanted to go there, etc. I introduced myself and he did the same. "Will you be my friend on WeChat,?" he shouted after me when I was going into my class. But he didn't stick around to let me friend him. Interesting.
So I taught my Short Novels class in the new room: nice, smaller room and of course fewer students...only about 30. I had them do paired discussion to come up with questions that they wanted to talk about for discussion/lecture. So I spent most of the class answering their questions. They also signed up for presentations. Again, several students wanted to talk to me after class--I'm just so popular!! :)
I finally got to my office about 3:15, after getting a bit lost. I ate lunch and called Kerry. I also used a squat toilet for the first time. I won't go into details, but it was a difficult experience for me. I'm also perplexed by the lack of supplies: I had to bring toilet paper and hand sanitizer with me into the rest room. Still not used to this.
After all this, I went to class. I thought that Taozhen was going to be meeting me there to talk to the students and observe my class, but she did not show. It turns out that she had been trying to contact me all day to say that she didn't come to the Songjiang campus after all, but she still wanted to see our apartment and have dinner with us. So I went ahead and taught my class. They seemed to struggle a bit today--the large class discussion on Crevecoeur was not great. I had them do group discussion on Jefferson and Paine, which seemed to go a bit better, but one student said to me, "I think these are too hard for us." Perhaps. But, as I kept stressing, they are important.
It was pouring rain when I got done and it took over 90 minutes to get back to the Songjiang campus and then I had to take the bus home when no cab materialized. I was surprised to be met at the bus stop by Kerry and Taozhen. Taozhen then hailed a taxi and took us to DaDong, a duck restaurant in Shanghai. It was pretty late by this point, but the dinner was marvelous: duck, chicken, bamboo and asparagus, dates, the best fried rice I've ever had, and all for only about 700 RB for the three of us. Extraordinary! The conversation wasn't much, but I think Taozhen was very tired. We were too. But it was a good end to the day.
Here are some pics from the restaurant:
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