Days 286-287: Goodbye to Deborah, Grading the Short Novel Exams

Really, I don't have much to say on these two days. Saturday was kind of nice because, even though I was grading exams, I got to have dinner with Deborah, her husband, and her three-year-old daughter Xiao Bei, in the evening. She suggested 5 pm, and I initially thought that was early, but the restaurant--called "Nanjing Impressions," in Hongkou Plaza, was CROWDED. Chinese eat early. In fact, they tend to do everything early.....that's why there are traffic jams at 6:30 am.

The food was good, but they didn't have the Nanjing roast duck we wanted (of course). We did have fish, salted duck, chicken, greens. My favorites were the tender, sweet ribs and the duck dumplings!  Everyone was very nice, and we had a good time. Deborah gave us a couple gifts--notebooks and a vocabulary guide--and Xiao Bei gave us a homemade "thank you" card for the gifts we gave her.  We gave them pens, a Century mug, books and stickers for Xiao Bei, and the Minnesota Bag.

After eating, we went to Carrefour--got some pork and and some bread--and then headed home.

Sunday not much happened other than I finished my Short Novel exams--even entered the grades--and Roopa came over around 2 pm to pick up some hangers and other stuff we are getting rid of. We both like Roopa a lot and wish that we had gotten to know her better here. We talked more about the whole housing controversy. We agree that the worst thing about this situation is that it will break up what little sense of community the SISU International Faculty have: now everyone wants to live in different places. Richard is moving to Songjiang, for example, whereas Roopa wants to stay in the Inetrnational House.  She's not sure if she will be allowed to; she's threatening to leave if they don't let her do so.

Anyway, back to the students: the average score was an 84.24--actually a bit LOWER than the Midterm average (84.32), which was disappointing: I hoped they would do better after having me give them some tips. Still, there were fewer C grades this time, even though there weren't as many As. A key problem overall was the PLAGIARISM...OH MY GOD.  It wasn't always super serious...they would just take little words, phrases, or sentences here and there....but it was prominent.  I didn't feel guilty about lowering their scores because I thought I made it pretty clear that they shouldn't do that. But they did anyway. Sigh.  It's funny: this wasn't a serious problem with the postgrads. Just the undergrads.  Ah well.

Fun with Deborah and her family:

Xiao Bei with one of her stickers.

(left to right) Kerry, me, Deborah, her husband Lei, Xiao Bei