christmas will soon be here‏

Hi,

Time is flying by. I can't believe that it is almost Christmas. Decorations have been up since the first of the month and the major department stores have been playing carols since then. I think Pizza Hut staff have been wearing Santa hats for longer than that. The carols are mostly in English with some Chinese ones. I wonder what the average person thinks when they can't understand the reason and there are all of these foreign songs playing that they can't understand.

安 徽 工 业 大 学 is the Chinese for my school. Literally Anhui Gongye Daxua. (Anhui Technological University). I can recognize it when I see it. It's easy to take a taxi to get home because they use a short version (like us saying UPEI to a taxi driver). It's 'An Gong Da'.Of course we have two campuses far apart and that has caused some confusion but I know the city well and if I see that he is going the wrong way I quickly correct him by telling him that I want the one on Hudong Beilu (East Lake North Road or North East Lake Road, whichever you prefer. Hudong is East Lake and beilu is North Road). The other is on Yushan Donglu (East Mount Yu Road). Yushan is Yu mountain and donglu is East Road). You catch on to it after awhile. We use N-S-E-W. Here they use W-E-S-N. So where we say NW, they say WN. Most of the major streets have a East-Middle-West section or a North-Middle-South section. Many Canadian cities do that with long streets, like Bloor East and West. The directions are qi (chee)-west, dong (long 'o', not like in ding-dong!)-east, nan-south and bei (bay)-north. That's why there is a nanjing and a beijing here; they were formerly the south capital and the north capital. Just a little language lesson. haha

I am preparing two exams this week for my Negotiations class. We need to have 2 exams because they hand out the exams alternately to try to prevent cheating. Of course it doesn't work competely. They are ingenious cheaters. Marks are so important to their future job chances that they will do whatever they can to get an edge; except maybe actually stuying and learning the material in many cases! I think many use their cell phones to cheat. I am sure that they text each other for answers but I can't ban cell phones because many of them use their phones as dictionaries to find the English words. I don't really care because the school doesn't like it if many fail. A few is ok. My TA taught a course last year and 40% failed and she had to scale the marks. The school wasn't happy.

I have about 4 weeks left until Spring Festival. Already I am getting invitations from students and friends to visit them. I can't be everywhere. We will have about 5 weeks off, I think. One week is already committed to visiting family in Canada. I will not make many decisions until I find out which dates my friends have off. I will visit some close friends but not too many. The vacation time will go by quickly and then I will be back in the classroom.

I have no plans yet for Christmas. I have class until noon. After that I am free. I will talk to the other foreign teachers soon to see if they want to get together for a dinner. Some chickens, potatoes, some kind of chicken gravy. We'll see. Perhaps we will go to the western bar that evening. They will probably have some kind of celebration for the foreigners in town. Most foreigners end up going there at some time during their stay here. The owner is very friendly and all of the staff speak English.

I'lll let you know.

Don