This is going to going to be a fairly short entry, because not all that much really happened Monday-Thursday this week.
Monday I taught--and it went pretty well. No classroom changes, and it was nice to get off the shuttle at Teaching Building 4, because I knew where it was! (I had to ask a student to give me some guidance going to my office, though.) Good presentation and discussion in my Short Novels class. We did Poe and Hawthorne in my Honors class: "The Raven," "Usher," and "The Minister's Black Veil." My students, esp. my Short Novels students, seem to be a bit more concerned than they have been about their response paper marks, even though I've only been "grading" them on a minus, check, plus system, and haven't assigned official grades yet. I asked SISU to send me an "official" grading policy, but I got something that was almost more confusing than what I already knew. Apparently, the postgraduate students and Honors students are graded differently, and I don't know how. It also rained ALL DAY today--I ended up standing at the bus stop for 30 minutes before a 745 bus showed up...then when one did, he shouted something at everyone, they shouted back, and he took off. He wouldn't let anyone on the bus! Fortunately, though, another bus came along two minutes later. I didn't get home until 9 pm.
Tuesday and Wednesday, I was mostly at home doing prep work. We're reading The Awakening next in Short Novels; I am glad because I'm tired of Charlotte Temple at this point, and I imagine the students are, too. I ran through a gamut of emotions on these days. Tuesday, I realized that both of my flash drives that I brought to school Monday were infected with a virus: I was suspicious because my yellow and white one wouldn't work in my American Literature class Monday...but my Snoopy drive worked, so I thought I'd be okay. When I discovered a virus on both, I thought ALL my folders on both drives were gone. Still, I was hopeful, because both USB drives had a lot of storage capacity when I looked at them on "Properties." Wednesday, fortunately, Kerry and I managed to fix both drives using instructions that we found online. What a relief!
Thursday, Kerry and I went to Hongkou Plaza for dinner after dropping off our suits at a dry cleaners on Wa'nan Road--we were able to do this thanks to Grace, who wrote in Chinese for us, "Please dry clean my clothes" and sent it on WeChat. She also sent us a photo of the place. Very cheap for two suits: only only 80 RMB (about $13) to DRY CLEAN two suits! Pretty great. Some things here in China are amazingly cheap. Once we got to the Plaza, we opted for Western food (Mr. Pizza) for dinner. Although I did have squid as an appetizer. I had Hawaiian pizza; Kerry had his usual pepperoni. We had a moment of confusion because the waitress automatically added 35 RMB for spaghetti and garlic bread before the meal (we saw others eating it), but she did ask us if we wanted it, we told her (as best we could) that we did not, and she crossed it off the bill. Pizza was good, but the didn't accept credit cards: not a huge surprise. But...as always...no tipping. I really like that! We went to Carrefour after: got new storage containers (only 10 RMB), a pretty salad bowl (again, only 10 RMB), a huge pack of greens (only about 8 RMB), some apples, and some tomatoes. Just all very cheap stuff!
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