I hate Google

Google is still giving me a lot of problems to log in, but I have a work-around going now. Not sure how long it will last, as Google is not content until they have annoyed every last person on the planet.

In other news, my class is winding down. Click to see it full size.

and I'm Back

Sorry about the length in between posts, Google in their quest to take over the world has also conquered blogspot so I had to jump through a million hoops and hurdles and change email addresses and confirm accounts to just access my blog. Finally, all is well. (I hope)

Class F

After a much too short break, the mayhem of last session has resided and a new session has started blissfully free of any of the major problems of last session. For the first time in over a year, I am back in the classroom by myself. This is a lot of work, but it's fun and I look forward to actually connecting to the students in Class F.

Interesting...

I saw this on the subway the other day. Apparently the Chinese version of NASA is being sponsored by Yanjing Beer. Anyone else think that might create a little problem later on? Should American government agencies have sponsorship? What would that look like? Would we have the iShuttle? What about corporations taking over troubled states? Would we have something like Pepsi Presents New California (now 35% less debt!)

"Hate Asia yet?"

Everyday brings a new storm. It rains all night and then rains most of the day, when it doesn't rain, the humidity soars. The overabundance of rain is putting a strain on the city's antiquated sewage system that clearly can't handle tens of millions of people let alone flooding and tens of millions of people so there is a very peculiar smell wafting about. The rain isn't like a soft summer rain, but more of a hard angry downpour that can last for hours on end. With this brings problems, each time the lightning gets closer and closer another part of our vaunted technological armory goes down, leaving us teaching with only a chalkboard and oftentimes, no lights, or air conditioning. Put 150 people into a room designed for 100 for 2 hours with no air conditioning and you get another curious aroma to mix in with all the others. With all of this, people have been getting sick. We're heavily short-staffed and overburdened as is, with about 20 people (including hastily "trained" summer staff) trying to handle 1,000 students, so when one person goes down it's an extra burden on everyone else. Right now, we have three down so that's bordering on crisis. I'd say the sky is falling, but it already has been for about a week now. All of this just adds to the overwhelming feeling felt by the newest short term people we have who just got to China two days ago....As one of them came in soaked and drenched after walking back from a class she just got thrown into with a lesson plan, a few tips and good luck, one of the admin team said to her "Hey good job this morning, ya hate Asia yet?"

Storm of the Decade

The past few days we have had unusually heavy storms culminating in one last night that China Daily is calling the Storm of the Decade. I have lived through my share of thunderstorms in my life, even a few tornado warnings in Missouri, but none of them were in any way close to what we went through last night. It started late last night, around 11 and got harder and harder in intensity until about 4am this morning. Some students who got caught out in it were showing off bruises that they got from the rain. Yes, it can actually rain so hard that you can get bruised. The thunder and lightning were the worst. It was nearly fully light in my room from the constant lightning and the vibrations from the deafeningly loud thunder were so bad that it caused a lot of the alignments on our projectors to go askew. (As a result, the students were floored when I told them that Hansel had a sister after watching literally half of the fairy tale.)

I was told by one student that 30 minutes after the rain started to really pound down, it was past their ankles. Given their penchant for exaggerating, I believe the depth but I think it probably took at least an hour to give 3-4 inches of rain. According to a Chinese news service, the city officially received 35 millimeters of water. According to Google, that's 1.37 inches. So either someone's exaggerating, or someone's covering up. Whatever, I'm used to both by now. However, it has also been raining and storming the past few days. Here are a few pictures.

photos

This session, besides being crazy and the most frustrating and intense out of all of them so far, has left me with little free time. Last night however, I was going through a flash drive and found some pictures from when Dad was here.

Us in front of the Temple of Heaven with the Merchandiser.

A giant cat statue at the Beijing Zoo. Look at the people next to it for scale.

In front of the Bird's Nest, where some of the Olympic Games were held.

Dad, Michelle and I at Tienanmen Square