new year gifts

I have been able to check my email and respond to a few, although the speed is slow and I'm sitting in a smoky PC room to do it. We have been finished with school (grading and everything) for about a week, so I have had some time to finally rest and do the things I want to. Tomorrow, three of us are leaving for Harbin, where it will be much colder than here (we hear) and we'll get to experience the ice festival that starts on January 5th. I bought the train tickets on my own on Monday morning, the first day of the year. I stood in line with many many other people for about an hour and then finally succeeded in getting the tickets for us three. It's a small victory when I get to use Chinese effectively.

I have been having people over for lunch or dinner almost every day for about a week. I have been making either a version of lasagna or pizza almost every time, so I am getting really familiar with those foods. I'm ready for a break from my own cooking, but it's really fun to have people come over and enjoy it.

On the first day of the year, Monday, we had a new teacher come in. It's really strange that he would come in at this time, since almost everyone is gone, but he had to for some reason. I volunteered as one of my last jobs at my previous university to be in charge of making sure someone picked him up and got him settled. It turned out that I thought he was coming in at 10am and I had people coming over for lunch, so I got someone else to pick him up. His plane actually came in at 10pm and the guy who I asked to pick him up waited at the airport thinking he had missed him. I felt really bad about this and told the guy who I had asked that I would go at night to pick him up. He was full of grace and mercy and said, with no resentment in his voice, that he would take care of it. That is the first lesson and gift I received this new year.

The second one was brought by an old student who came over for lunch. She had gone to the old folks home and shared her time and the truth with some old folks there. She told me about it and how one old person understood her but wouldn't accept her good news. She told me about how she felt like she had spent all last year without really telling anyone, so she wanted to start this year off by doing so. That was a real blessing to hear. This newbie has such a passion and such a giving and searching heart to tell others. She's another lesson and gift for me. All before noon on the first day of the year. I am blessed.

internet issues

I have been trying to check my email for three days, but there was an earthquake in Taiwan (or so I hear) that took out all of China's internet for a while. I can access this blog, for some reason, but can't access either of my email accounts. If anyone has emailed me anything important, don't worry (ahem, Mom or Dad). This is a sad time for it to be down, because I need to be emailing people to meet up with/stay with in Korea and also to reserve places to stay and flights inside Thailand. It makes it kind of nice to not be able to write the things I don't really want to (email is sometimes a chore, you know), but....

It is weird that I can get on blogger and post this, but I guess some sites are handling this better than others.

I

I am finished with grading, finally, and am moving out of my desk. I just started the process of getting internet in my new apartment because I've been busy, busy. I am trying to post some fun pictures here for your viewing pleasure, but blogger is not in the holiday spirit, so it will not happen today. I still have a lot to do (meet with students and friends one last time before the break, write a new year's letter to send home with a friend, etc.), but it's nice to have the grading done. I just started every sentence with I and I feel pretty egotistical about that, so I am going to sign off for now. I will try to post pics again later.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas morning here and we are going to give our last final in less than an hour. After that, there will be a lot of grading to do and I still haven't finished grading my other set of finals from Friday. So, this post is short, but I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone!

These pictures are from dinner on Friday. We celebrated the beginning of the weekend at this new western restaurant that opened at the new international hotel downtown. It's pretty impressive to all of us and the food is pretty good too!

it's that time of year

This is the doorway into my new bedroom. You can see my cool new Chinese lantern Christmas lights (I've always had a weakness for strings of lights) and my new humidifer, which makes my room a nice place to wake up to. No more parched throat because of the heating system.

It's been a while. Sorry for anybody who missed me. We are in our last week of classes here at the university, so I have to finish writing finals with the final exam team, give speaking tests, make Christmas cookies (okay, I don't have to do this) to give out to my kids, etc. I am living in my new apartment most nights, but on busy nights at school and when I have tutoring or want to meet students, I stay here at school. I don't have internet there yet, so that's the main reason for my silence lately.

We just had an end of the year meeting for school where a guy from our conversation office and I were asked to plan some mixer games. We had two planned, but then realized one wouldn't work out, so we just played evolution. It was a hit. We had the first 10 people who became humans win prizes. I was in charge of prizes, so I went the Korean route and bought toilet paper, soap, and toothpaste and wrapped them up (you can see them under my mini tree). When I first moved to Korea, I didn't get the whole idea of useful presents (toilet paper or laundry detergent as a housewarming gift), but now I really like it.

Yesterday, we had our English department dinner at a nice restaurant downtown and some of us went to a park down the street afterwards where the pond is frozen and they have sprayed some of the trees with water and lit up to make a nice background, plus they have a long ice slide and some sculptures. We went a little picture crazy. They also have these little things that look like toilets that you can sit on and push yourself around with sticks (as seen below). Looked like a grand time, but we didn't join in that.

(Fighting is a Korean way to say go for it, or some other term of encouragement. The Chinese way is jai-yo!)

I hope for all of us that we can rest and reflect a little in the coming weeks. It's a good season!

My new apartment, with some random laundry hanging on chairs to dry. More pictures will come later, when it looks better.
One fun thing to do in Asia is to take sticker pictures. I keep a collection of them in the front of my journal. They make me smile.

moved in

After a normal busy week, having people over Friday for lunch to eat up some of my leftovers, dinner out and going to our school's "dance party" (which is really a dance competition that you watch on stage), and then back home to pack up all of my stuff on Friday night, I woke up, finished packing, and met the movers at 7:45 yesterday morning. They had me all moved out of my room on campus to my new fourth floor apartment downtown, without my help, in about an hour. There were three of them. They took my bags and boxes and would stack them on their back, tied with a rope, and haul them up the stairs. Only one plastic crate cracked and one missing extension cord so far that I can tell. I was pretty impressed. All for 80 yuan, about 10 bucks.

I unpacked all my stuff yesterday and then went to the gym, since it's so much closer to me now than when I was at school. I went shopping for a few things and then came back to unpack some more. More leftovers for dinner, then joined some English and German teachers for a night of karaoke. We sang and danced to Korean, German, American, French, and Mexican songs (but no Chinese!) together. My goal for next time is to learn a Chinese song. (It's so much harder because you might know the tune, but you can't read all the words because the characters are so hard to learn!)

Today I'm back at my old place for sweeping, gathering up a few more things, and to use the internet.

We had beautiful snow this week and have had colder weather, too. Yay for winter! I had my first snowball fight of the season with another teacher's class who I was subbing for. Not really enough moisture to make it packable, but fun all the same.

I'm looking forward to getting settled in and getting my new apartment looking cozy. I love it!