Learning The Word "Softer" Would Have Been Helpful

...before getting my first massage in China.

And to be honest, it wasn't that bad, and maybe I just need to toughen up.  But 70 yuan (about $10) for a 60 minute massage can't be bad, even if it was a bit rough at times.  It included back, arms, hands, shoulders, buttocks, legs, and even a nice ending of a face massage.  And then they give you time to bask in your relaxation and bring you some nice hot water.

That brings me to hot water.  Cold water is a rare sight in China.  At restaurants, at school, in watercoolers...all of it's a few degrees under boiling.  I would wait patiently for the tea to accompany my hot water when eating out.  Until I slowly learned that the tea would never come.  The water was it.  And even on particularly hot days in class, when a nice cold glass of water would do the trick, LAVA water was all to be had.  I've learned to bring my own lukewarm water...or drink tea out of my cool Chinese tea bottle.

There's a metal strainer at the top so you're able to use loose-leaf tea.  Although the hardcore tea drinkers just chew on 'em as they go.

This class is going wonderfully.  I stressed that their grade was on the line for class participation...and now I've never had to call on a single person!  (I never thought I'd be excited about kids raising their hands.)  I'm actually writing this in class, while my students are diligently reading their assigned passage.  I'm working at my creepy Cold War-esque computer console.

The computer is in a hard steel case that needs a key to be opened.  And the computer can only be turned on with the key in the locked position. The CPU is in another locked box, and the monitor is behind plexiglass.

That's some news clip about Michelle Obama's anti-obesity program.

This is actually somewhat of an old post, and the classes have been going smoothly ever since.  I started a different teaching method in which I present an issue and then spend a substantial portion of class time asking them to discuss it amongst themselves.  At this point, I float from group to group and simply sit down and chat with them about the problem they're supposed to be discussing.  It forces them all to speak a bit of English, and at the very least forces them all to listen to English one-on-one.

And in related news, I've started to feel tons of retroactive guilt for all the whispering I did to friends during class in high school...and college.  :/