Hmm...

Blogspot now appears to have been unblocked in China, so I visited my own blog today for the first time.

It rained today for the first time since I've been here, all morning. Fortunately I got to class right before it started to pour. My students asked me if I liked rain and how much it rains where I'm from, so I started talking about the desert, showed them pictures and played some monsoon videos I took last month.

Earlier this week, a first-year student asked me about English tutoring. I cleared it with the school, but since then another girl sought us out to ask the same question. My solution is to hold an "English Corner" on Fridays during lunch, so students can practice conversation. The academic dean said if I made up an advertisement she would post it around campus, so I'll give that to her tomorrow morning and we'll see who shows up.

Last night we had dinner at this bizarre Mao-themed restaurant. The place was plastered in red, Chinese flags sat on every table and everywhere you turned Mao stared back from the wall. The servers wore olive green uniforms complete with red armbands, and matching messenger bags with canteens hung on the walls. It was atmospheric, to say the least, but we made some poor food choices. Our ordering process in restaurants has basically been flip through the picture menu, guess what everything is and point. This has generally worked quite well, and we've had some great meals. In fact, it's hard to go wrong. So last night we decided to try lotus root and two meat dishes. The servers tried to steer us in another direction, but we stuck to our guns when we should have listened to them. The lotus root was gummy and extremely sweet, while the first meat dish turned out to be... our best guess was liver and stomach. The other meat dish, however, was pork -- sliced thin and crispy -- served with onions, and it tasted more like ham.

China Fun Fact: The Chinese flag has five yellow, five-pointed stars. The large one represents Communist Party leadership, while the four smaller stars represent the four classes: peasants, workers, petty bourgeoisie and the so-called patriotic capitalists.