Teaching today...

So Jaclyn and I are both teaching our first classes today. Yes, we've haven't even been here a week, but that apparently doesn't disqualify us from the opportunity to fill in for a couple of teachers who are on vacation. Jaclyn's currently teaching two classes of primary school children (I guess 7-10 years old), and I'm teaching some older folks (high school and university) later today. After my observations this week, though, I'm not too worried. Jaclyn had very thorough lesson plans (something I don't have quite yet..) and should thus be excellent and relaxed.

Oh!!! A side note- Our neighbor just began playing his/her piano, practicing the same piece he/she's been working on all week! At least it's a pretty good selection and the player is pretty talented. Also, it sounds like a real piano (not a keyboard), which leads me to wonder how in the world they got a piano up to the eighth floor with no elevator. Welcome to China, the land of excessive labor! In every store there's way too many employees wanting to offer you advice, and for every public works project... well, there's another group of people doing something else such as clearing the ice off the sidewalks or anywhere else there's ice (everywhere). 1.3 billion people + we need jobs for everyone = someone doing every job imaginable at any given time!
That was a long side note.

Speaking of the ice, it's all the way up to 32 degrees today! And it's sunny! Yes Darcy, most days are NOT sunny. That day in the pictures and today have been the two. Most days there's smog/clouds (or maybe just smogclouds) blocking our view of the sky. But considering the heat today, a good bit of the "urban permafrost" is melting off.

It's the weekend, so we don't have class until Tuesday, so that's nice. All else we've been doing is eating lots of [Chinese] food. I guess eventually it will just be food, but for now it still feels like Chinese food. We did eat some KFC the other day because we were there and it was dinnertime, and Jaclyn did find some Chocolate Stripe Skippy peanut butter, but it's mostly been Chinese cuisine for us.

I've got to finish my lesson plans for class now. We'll be talking about cars today, so my class will hear about the best piece of automotive machinery in the world, that being the 1992 Honda Accord.
The two pictures are (1) The Dragon Tower, Asia's tallest standing steel tower, complete with a restaurant at the top; and (2) Some Chinese recreation on the frozen river here in Harbin. I did also get a picture of the sleds that come with dogs attached for the lazier people out there, but I won't post it because PETA might shut me down.

zaijian!