I’m back

Actually, I’ve been back for two weeks. For anyone considering a trip to Hohhot, I recommend July–any other month of the year is bloody cold.

Going to Hohhot was my first trip to a minority area of China. It was interesting seeing all the signs written in Mongolian and Mongolian graffiti scattering the sides of buildings.

I picked up a few decorations for my apartment like a badly needed floor rug, a tapestry of Genghis Khan and a few scroll painting prints of horses: one for each season.

Classes are keeping me more than busy. My total grading time for this week’s homework was over 80 hours. With 10 hours of teaching tacked on, that’s even more hours than I’d end up with working doubles in a factory. Over work has led me to be under the weather and confined me to laying on the bed in my room. Yes, I purposely tried to cram as many location words into that sentence as I could manage.

I’m going to try and drag myself out of bed in the morning to go to Chinese class, then off to Jenny Lou’s to pick up some non-Chinese essentials–more maple syrup, Bisquick and spaghetti sauce. That woman has to make a killing on her stores.

I need to start playing The King of Fighters again. It seems some of my students are KOF 97 maniacs, and that’s pretty much the only one I never liked enough to play beyond the year it was released.