Day 32: A Quiet Day at SISU

Friday Kerry and I went to our Chinese lesson. I really liked it a lot better than the first class.  We learned a lot of vocabulary very quickly and even got to practice conversations and introduce ourselves to the class. So I now know some basic Chinese phrases: "My name is.....," "I am from....", etc.  And we learned more about the numbers and how they work.  Of course, if I'm going to remember any of this stuff, I will have to practice it with Kerry.  One thing that stinks is that we don't have the book that the class uses yet; the bookstore was at.  The teacher, however, told us that she'd order a copy for us that we could share!  Nice.  After the lesson, Kerry and I went to Ciao Cafe for a quick pizza, and then he went on to his first gaming club in China.  This was around 4:45 pm.  I went on to the library, where I got a brief lessons in how to use the research databases: apparently, they don't provide computers for folks to use, and you have to bring a laptop. I am not thrilled with this and will try to access the databases from home.  The reference librarian told me that they have an English reading room on the 5th floor.  It was very quiet there--only a couple people stuyding--but I perused their stacks. Lots of business and marketing books, and tons of books on English grammar--an entire row.  The literature collection is dominated by canonized selections from British and American Literature. Surprisingly, they have a good GLBT studies collection, and I found a copy of David Halperin's How to be Gay and started reading it.  I became somewhat engrossed and the next thing I knew, it was 6:30.  I took the bus home, chilled out for awhile, did some grading.  Kerry didn't arrive home until 11:30 pm--he missed the last subway and had to take a taxi.  Apparently he had a good time, though.