It's just about time for Spring Festival. And it's time for me to go away for a while. Not far away. Just somewhere North. Don't worry! I'll be back. We'll all be back, right? So for the next couple of weeks, you won't see me posting out here very much. It's time for a rest.
This doesn't mean that you can't post. You're welcome to. But you won't hear from me as much.
In the spirit of Christmas, I'm trying to give the two people who parked their scooters here the benefit of the doubt. But come on! The rest of us parked our scooters at the end of the line, like normal people! Do these scooters belong to two VIPS? Do these people think that they're better than everyone else? And what about the people who have scooters TRAPPED behind the scooter in the background?
I know it doesn't sound nice but I have to say it. People were acting like ANIMALS on Sunday at the Macau/Gongbei border. People were cutting in line which caused yelling and fights to break out. In this picture, a guard is kicking people out of the elderly line. What's the base problem? People here don't care about others. They look out for themselves. Period.
What do you do on a Thursday night over a couple of cold cokes at KFC? Play video games of course! I thought this group of guys was quite amusing (when they weren't staring at me). Two of them looked to be in their 30's! And I'm not criticizing them. I'm glad they can still have fun. But it's not something you see every day...!
I was quite excited to discover a few weeks ago that WIFI is available in all of my classrooms. This was really good news because it has allowed me to show this website in class as well as spice up my history lessons with online videos. My excitement, however, has begun to wane as I see more and more laptops popping up on desks in my classrooms. The internet, it would seem, is available to anyone and students are just now starting to figure this out. I'm not sure how to feel about this.
So I got a new bicycle today. Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly 'new'. I mean, how new can a bike that only cost 150 RMB actually be, right? But it's new for me - especially since I haven't actually ridden a bicycle in four years. Yep - it's been all scooters or campus shuttles for me.
Fortunately, riding a bicycle is well - how else can I put this - like riding a bicycle. It comes back to you real fast.
Recently, a few students have asked me how they can get their posts (content) published on the front page. You probably know that posts that make it to the front page are seen by many people. What you may not know however, is that the posts which make it to the front page also get sent out to our 1500+ members via email. As you can imagine, we are very careful about which posts make it to the front page.
This has not been a particularly happy week in the news. From the death of the little girl in Foshan and this brutal beating of a 84-year-old in Philadelphia to the barbaric end of Muammar Gadaffi, we are reminded again that the world can be a very cruel and horrible place. In fact, I was just talking to a friend this evening who told me that she doesn't like to watch the news because it makes her too sad.
This story sickens me. It really does. A little girl is hit by a car in Foshan and a dozen people walk by but do nothing to help her. And then she is hit again. If you want to know a major difference between the east and west, this is it! How could so many people just leave her there like a piece of trash?
We all have our stories about traveling during the holidays. These stories often include crowded buses,broken elevators,fighting,crying,ridiculous prices and lots and lots of mayhem. I have experienced all of these events in just the past 24 hours. The same can probably be said for most of you.
