Blogs
Shanghai and Mid semester
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I guess I forgot to mention that the week after I went to Tianjin, I went to Shanghai to visit a friend of my father. I took the sleeper train to Shanghai and wandered around for a couple days before heading back. It is one of my favorite cities in China. Lower than average pollution, next to no litter, law abiding taxis (still moped problems but that's because they don't need a license I think), and delicious food everywhere. I had a great time catching up and learning about the new Disneyland that will be built there, and enjoying the city's very unique fusion of culture. I had one snag while I was there- because the police were still working on some paperwork, they needed to keep my passport while I went; so, I took my expert's certificate (kind of like a green card). It has my picture, passport number, an official government stamp, and some other stuff that reassured me it would be alright. The train station was no problem, but when I got to my hotel there was trouble... They need a copy of my visa page (not the numbers, an actual copy). It took about an hour, so I was practicing my Chinese by talking to the concierge who happened to be from Henan province. When she heard that I was in Xinyang, Henan, she got super excited and asked me all about what I did and how I liked it. When my faxed visa page came in (via my boss), I grimaced. It was a black ink mess. My concierge just smiled and said that they had their copy and I was set. Everything else went smoothly.
After my return, class has been going as usual. I did get to visit a middle school and an elementary school this week. Both are out of the city and took about 40 minutes to get to (different days, opposite directions). The middle school has a few scholarship students from CSV, and we are currently building relations with the school by helping teach kids spoken English, and (I think more importantly) helping the teachers. I feel if the teachers speak proper English, they will teach it, but if they don't know proper English, they won't be able to. A lot of my students in college have really bad habits, and my guess is it is because they were taught them by their teachers, or their teachers were just unaware of it being a problem (such-ah as-ah ending words with a vowel-ah sound-ah even-ah when-ah they don't-ah have-ah one). Anyway, we teachers in Xinyang have gotten a schedule together and each will go to the middle school once a month to teach an hour to students, and then an hour to the teachers.
The next day, I went to an elementary school with Nancy and two of her friends from the normal University. Nancy is one of the two full time workers at CSV. The elementary school once had over 300 students, but a year ago the government cut funding- telling students to go an extra 20 miles or so to the next nearest school- which very few of the students can afford to do. Now it has 39 1st and 2nd graders. We played games and then Nancy told an American story about a man getting eaten by a whale :D which the kids loved.
I am currently sick with the crud; taking my coveted sudafed (currently day 4 of sudafed, day 6 of crud). I am over the worst of it, but still got a few days until I'll be back at full.
Nerd Alert:
Oh! So an awesome super exciting thing has happened. I am getting a new phone for Christmas! WOOHOO. Well, technically, it's used, but it will be new for me! Kelly (whom I plan to pay back) has acquired a nexus 4 on craigslist for me ^_^ I was so sorely tempted to buy the nexus 5, but the extra $150 was just not justifiable to me (especially since, in all practicality, the 5 is not twice as awesome- though the newness factor makes it significantly more awesome, the cpu is about 50% (1.5/2.3Ghz) more powerful and the resolution/screen size is about 33% more pixelated- not to mention larger (4.7" to 5"), but the RAM (same), camera (add image stabilization), and battery life (a little more), are practically the same) so $200 (16gb nexus 4 that was 6 months old and hardly used from the look and Kelly's examination) on craigslist vs $350 16gb nexus 5 nib is almost double the price (ok fine 1.75x more, but for 2/5--important categories--*40%--average betterness-- is only 16%, better overall imo). ANYWAY, justification: unattainable. So I went for last year's model.
So, here is the plan: I have a usb hub to connect my monitor, external hard drive, and mouse to my phone via slimport (in theory should work). Then I use blue tooth to connect my new collapsible keyboard (perfect travel size). Essentially, my phone will completely replace my laptop and be much easier to tote on travel ^_^ and for all the parts needed, it cost $50 (for: cables/converters, usb hub, external 30,000 mA battery for travel, and blue tooth keyboard). Super excited for phone to arrive and get it set up. It may be a little messier (more wires) to setup than a laptop, but I'm going to make a rig that fixes that problem too, and since my 3 year old laptop's battery is dead, it doesn't do a whole lot on the travel side nowadays anyway. Anyway I am stoked about it. Only thing I'm worried about is the vga connection... we shall see when it arrives and I can fiddle with it. I may be stuck with only monitor or hdd, which would make things significantly less convenient, but I'm remaining optimistic for now.
