Hey,
Seems I can post when I am at a different campus of my school.
Things have changed here. Christal left and a new teacher arrived. If you recall, Christal is my friend that I spent a lot of time with last term (that is her in the picture at the bottom of this page).
Winter is over and school has started. I am teaching 32.5 hours this term, that is actual classroom time. I am lucky that all but one of my classes this term are oral English. My school is paying me big (Chinese) money to teach oral English because the seniors in the International Education Program told them they did not want any more foreign teachers. Of course the school said ok. Now I only teach two senior classes, the rest are freshman.
I am also teaching a Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics. That school is a real state university, it has much better equipment and the students are not all from farming and/or small rural communities. At my main school a bell rings to end and start classes: At JUFE they serenade you with music.
Now that the holidays are over, those people from out of town that have never seen a black man before have returned home. That means the people around town are used to seeing me now, for the most part, some do still stare. And, I am so used to being here now when I see another foreigner I do not know I don't bother to say hello, it is just another foreigner.
Adam, the new teacher Jack and I rode our bikes in Nan Chang a week ago. While we were in a store a guy came running up to us and, in Chinese, told us someone was stealing our bikes. Jack, being new, did not react quickly but Adam and I ran out the door in the direction the guy was pointing. This was at 3 in the afternoon on a Saturday and the streets were jammed with cars. Without thinking I ran in a traffic lane while Adam was on the sidewalk about 20 feet in front of me. He ran past a rack of bikes and a guy looked up and started to run. I chased him then stopped to look at what he had been doing and there was my bike. He had the locked almost completely cutoff when Adam and I got to his location. However, Jack's bike got away. Seems the guy had a key to his U-lock. Bike thefts have been in the news a lot lately. Something like a million are stolen monthly. Bikes are still a primary means of transport.
This is getting long and I don't have a lot of interesting things to say. Well, this is interesting, I think. Prostitution is against the law but brothels operate in the open. While looking for Jack's bike down side streets and alleys we found a whole lot of them. They do not beckon you from doorways like in Germany but scantily clad women sit behind large glass windows and smile and wink. Spas have upper floors where happy endings occur. All in the open.
Well that is it for now.
When my laptop is up and running again I will post some pictures.
TTYL
Terry
