Winter is coming to Yizhou! It has gotten cold and rainy in the past week. I’m actually wearing a cozy red American Apparel jacket from home. Makes me think of autumn and apples. I adore this weather. I’m not a fan of getting out of a warm shower into cold air I can’t escape, but I do love drinking hot tea and wearing layers. That’s more my style.
The real cold will be here next month though, probably, and that’s the rough part. There’s no escape from the bitter cold since we don’t really have heat here! Well, not quite true. In my bedroom I have a heater/air con unit, but it really can only heat my bedroom, so I guess that makes my bedroom an escape from the cold.

This weekend is the English Department’s sports meeting, so that should be interesting. I missed it last year- I think it was the same weekend as Kyle’s birthday, so I was gone.

My freshmen students are really excited, the sophomores less so, and the students in the 3+2 program were totally uninterested (they’re hoping for rain). However, they seemed at least a bit thrilled once I taught them the “Let’s go, let’s go- L-E-T-S-G-O!” cheer. They’re required to go and cheer on their classmates, so I guess that’ll come in handy.

As for me, it’s weird to have a weekend when I don’t have to go somewhere or Kyle isn’t visiting. We saw each other every weekend starting at the October holiday which was the end of September. That’s unusual, but it was pretty nice, I must say.
I’ve got to give two midterm exams next week (more about that later), so I have to prepare everything for that this weekend, I’ve decided to clean out my drawers (most of them) and my wardrobe (what a pain!), Kate and I are going to visit Lizzy where she is doing her teaching practice on Sunday, and tomorrow we have to attend this sports meeting and have dinner with a couple of colleagues.

As for the exam thing…ha. Well, I wasn’t thinking. I was intending to give my sophomore spoken English students their exam next week and give my Brit Lit exam the week after. I guess I got carried away and I told my Lit students all about the exam they’ll have next week. Now I can’t back out, so I’ve just got to tough it up and write the exam this weekend. I really have got to stop and organize things in my head sometimes! I have a schedule all set up on my computer, but I just forget to look at it.

Anyway, I’ve got to go work on some more cleaning… I’m supposed to go climb the “hill”/”mountain” (karst formation?) with Weilinling in an hour.