So I finished writing my Brit Lit midterm. I’ll post it here after I give it this week. I don’t think any of my students know about my blog at all, but it would be a terrible thing if one of them happened to run across it and I had posted a copy of the exam!

This weekend was the English Department sports meeting.
Kate and I hung around in the morning on Saturday and watched some of the students compete. I went around and took some photos and talked to several students. It was fun to watch them win, but I must admit…it was a bit chilly and it started to drizzle and that took a lot of the enjoyment out of it. We stayed around for pretty much the whole morning bit, but we decided to stay at home and bake brownies instead of going back in the afternoon.

In the evening, we went out with some teachers to a restaurant out the front of the school gate…the menu had a lot of animal guts and some things with blood and parts of frogs. It certainly made our choice of dishes pretty simple! We had a good time talking with our colleagues though. It’s nice to get off campus, even if it’s not far at all.

Today Kate and I went to Luo cheng, a city about an hour from Yizhou. Actually, I was informed that it is technically a part of Yizhou. I don’t quite understand how these Chinese cities work!
We went to visit a school where some students are doing their teaching practice. I’ll post some more and some photos about that tomorrow.

In bad news, I bought a big mirror today- I have only had a tiny mirror the whole time so far, so I was really excited about this one! Well, before I even got to use it, it fell on the floor and shattered. I know it’s just a mirror, and in US dollars it cost me very little, but I was actually quite sad/disappointed/upset about it. Alas. I was kind of excited.
However, in order to put the mirror up, I had to take down a poster I bought at church. I thought about a sermon the pastor gave not long ago about how we shouldn’t be vain. I thought it was kind of amusing that I was taking down a Christian poster to put up a mirror. I guess the shattering of the mirror is a sign that I should work harder not to be vain.

I don’t usually believe in bad luck from silly things like breaking mirrors, but just a little bit ago, I tripped over my computer cord and nearly broke the bit that attaches to the computer. I think I got it back together okay, but to be quite honest, I’m not sure how long it’ll hold out now. I’ve already got to replace the battery on this thing asap (well, with a price of something crazy like $100, it might be a long time) but if the cord goes, I’m completely done for. Well, I’ll just use the library computer, which means I’ll be online for something like 30 minutes a day.
Maybe it would do me good to spend less time at a computer anyway…..
maybe.

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.