Yeah Kunming :)

Well, I finally found out how much I'm going to be teaching, and it's going to be really easy! I teach 6 hours a week, only on Thursday and Friday afternoons, teaching oral English to PhD candidates. Then I have four or five two-hour lectures (over the whole semester) on English essay writing for MA candidates. Overall, I'm probably going to need lots more to do with my time, so I'm thinking about asking another lady we know for a job, and also taking Chinese classes! Since I'm only teaching in afternoons, I'll have mornings free, which is when the language classes are offered. I don't start teaching till September 15th however! This is so long from now! So, until then I'll be wandering around in a daze, also doing hella lesson planning (since of course, I didn't do anything before coming here).

Luckily, we've been introduced to the incredible Whitman/Oberlin Library, which is a crowded room in a dark and sort of creepy building. But the location is not the amazing part. It's the content. There are shelves and shelves of books, everything from tour guides of all over Asia to Chinese study books to ESL teaching materials to regular books to the Starkweather Media Library (donated by an Obie alum who didn't want to take his DVD collection back to the states).

And now for the obligatory "Crazy Chinese People!" (heretofore to be referred to as CCP!) story.

Barbara and I today took the bus to Daguan Park, in the southwest corner of the city. The park was absolutely beautiful, lots of lotus ponds and traditional Chinese architecture. It was crowded, as Chinese places tend to be, but that wasn't so bad. It was almost like the park couldn't decide what sort of park to be. There were little areas with bonsai'd trees, and then there were the lotus pools, and then there were little tea-shop sorts of areas filled with old people playing Mahjong. And then there was the amusement park section. This had all the rides associated with fairs, down to the swings and roller coasters! There was even a double-decker merry-go-round. But the best part was this thing called (rough translation) "snow area". Apparently on the inside they have it cooled enough that they make snow that you can play with. There are jackets and boots for people to take when they go inside.

None of this is the actual CCP! story I meant to tell. So, here it is

As we were walking around the park, suddenly a girl, probably late teens, runs toward us yelling "Hello! Hello!". People often say hello to me. Apparently it's because I'm white. Who'd have thought? Then she asked if she could take a picture with me and Barbara, along with her friend/sister. They were so excited, so we took the picture, then they said thanks and we went on. A little later as we're walking some more, along this dock-sort of thing, a random boy comes up and wants to take a picture with me. He even put his arm around me like we knew each other or something. So now he has this picture of him and me, looking very much together, standing in front of a very pretty lotus lake. In retrospect, I wish I'd got his girlfriend (the girl he was with, anyway) to take a picture with my camera, too.

---

---