A Plan of Action

So the last three days have been incredibly busy for me here. On Monday, the mid-Autumn festival, I went to the small park across the street. After hiking up a rather large hill, I ended up at a shrine of Guan-yin (the Goddess of Mercy). When I came back down the mountain, tired and sweating like a stuck pig, I met the other two American teachers working here in Yizhou (宜洲). Though not the best of all possible meetings, it was nice to get to know them. For the mid-autumn festival itself, we (one of my fellow English teachers) went to the home of one of his (fellow Chinese teacher's) Chinese friends. After eating a delicious meal, we were supposed to watch a live singing competition for the rest of the night. However Guangxi TV zeroed in on us, and took us to a small town just outside of the city to have us observe and interact with the community there. I have never had so many camera flashes go off on me in my life, and my father is a photographer.

Yesterday, I was asked to speak for forty-five minutes to a group of English majors. It was my first time, besides acting, being in front of what I consider a large group (66 students). While I feel I could have prepared a little bit better for my presentation, I found one part of orientation to be completely accurate, it was very difficult to get these students to talk. Despite the fact that it was an English language class, I found myself slipping into Chinese from time to time, mostly to give place names or short descriptions. I now have at least some vision of what my own courses are going to be like, but I still have to prepare for those.

So what happened earlier today that made it so big? I got my schedule. That's right, I know when and where I will be teaching. I have courses all five days of the week, but with the exception of Monday, I have no afternoon classes. So I am thankful for that small thing. Issue is, just over half of the eight courses I am going to be teaching are the better part of a fifteen minute walk, and on Monday and Wednesday I have classes in one location followed by classes on a different campus of the same university. Talk about getting your exercise in. I will see either later today or tomorrow about the possibility of renting a bicycle. Hopefully, it will cut down some of my travel time.

Until later.