So I’m back in Beijing with yet another winter vacation behind me and a few more cities in China covered. This vacation was basically divided into three or four parts: Northeastern China (Shenyang, Harbin / Harbin, and Dalian), Beijing (my parents decided to come visit me this year), Middle China (Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou) and then South China (Shenzhen) and Hong Kong (because I can’t really see the city as really being a part of China). I can’t say a month was long enough to recuperate from last semester but I don’t really have much choice. For now I’ll be settled here in Beijing for at least a couple more months.
The weather has been very nice lately with mostly blue skies. All of this was rather unnerving as it gave my parents a bad impression of China. All this time I’ve been talking about the smog and the pollution and yet here they were witnessing clear, blue skies and only the occasional whiff of the coal dust.
Our first faculty meeting is this Friday (when we also receive our schedules for the following semester) and classes begin on Monday. I’m told I’ll be teaching ONLY 20 hours this semester for the university which has me both pleased and displeased. I’m pleased because it means less prep, course work to grade and generally an easier schedule to manage. I’m displeased because I’ll suffer a hit to my paycheque.
So this next semester I am also planning on continuing my Chinese lessons. Lucky for me that I met a very patient Japanese girl who indulged my rather spotty Chinese language skills (as I indulged her rather spotty English skills) and so I did have a bit of time to practice. My next big hurdle, however, is to write a 300-character report/essay/whatever on my winter vacation for one of my Chinese teachers. I have to handwrite it because otherwise she will think I simply copy+pasted into a word processor, which I guess I could still do. And like a good student I have successfully not started it yet.
Anyway, that’s about it for now. Fourth semester in Beijing coming up and like every year I wonder what will happen in/for September.