So I probably won't have very much to report today, but we'll see. It's only 7.45am, and I haven't had breakfast yet.
The chilli-attack was mercifully short-lived you'll be glad to know, but I think I'll still take it easy today!
Well, I ended up spending most of the morning editing my PowerPoints - adding Mandarin translations for some of the more technical terms - for which Google is surprisingly useful.
Before setting off to University I went to the Spar and toook a few shots en route. These were looking in the opposite direction from that where most of the other pics were taken. The first photo shows the front of the main university campus, which is almost opposite my hotel. You might just about be able to see the bus that I later took to the south campus, where my lectures are.
Gave the students hell. Not deliberately. But really, they are certainly suffering. They start at about 8.30 am and have a full day of classes before I get to them at 4.00pm. Given that we finish at 7.40pm, and that most of them are still struggling quite hard with English, you can imagine what mental state they are in. I have every sympathy for them.
Met up with Nigel from Hull on the bus back. He's teaching here for a year, but would like to do longer if he can. In fact, he was talking about trying to buy a house, he loves it that much. We went for a late-evening snack at a little cafe. Offal and noodles, and two bottles of beer (one each). Total cost, the princely sum of £2 in total. We don't know we're born in the west.
Tomorrow, the Dean has instructed Shuai to take Nigel and myself out for the day sightseeing. I'm looking forward to that, and there should be some good photos for the blog.
Incidentally, I decided not to use my laptop for teaching today, but just take my memory stick to plug into their PC in the lecture room. It was recognised, but no files were visible. We gave up, and used the files that had previously been loaded on to their computer - ie my earlier versions; the ones without my hard-won Mandarin translations! But they did have an online dictionary which we found valuable.
When I got back here (hotel) I thought I ought to try the memory stick. A soon as it was recognised, McAfee pounced on a trojan. I deleted it, and everythiong seems to be OK, but I'm going to have to warn them about that.
Come to think about it, everywhere in the world must have a Spar supermarket.
Whoops - it's 11.20pm already. Time for bed, methinks.
Bye for now. Keep checking the blog.
Mike
x
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