Signing on from Yuyao

...and with a new look to boot. (Now that I have pictures working, I will also get an actual picture of myself for my profile too. Then I will also need to work on getting this blog visible inside China, which will involve not quite hacking, but some technical capability, and that will be a whole new project.) Anyway, here is the entrance to the school where I work, all schools from primary on up are basically set up like college campuses.Here is my house

Believe it or not, here is the view out my back windowliterally steps from where I live, with a just broken-glass fence in between (poking in the bottom right of the photo). Apparently just a few years back this whole area looked like this (my school is just seven years old but) now the city is putting a whole lot of investment money into the area. Just a ten minute walk from school is UBC Coffee,

where they always greet you with a friendly "good morning," no matter what time of day. I wondered if I should correct them, but I finally decided they would probably take it the wrong way. Chances are whoever came up with this policy wouldn't even be the person I'd be talking to. I asked the waiter with the best English if she knew what that meant, and she said yes. Chances are that's actually a chainwide policy, since I first tried UBC in Hangzhou, and according to the back of their napkins they're in several other provinces as well.

My other haunts - an internet cafe the next block over, where I'm at now, which is a dirty place. Half the keys in most of the keyboards stick when you push them, and I think I've gotten myself addicted to nicotene from all the second hand smoke. A couple of restaurants know me well...one shop owner always says hi, even though I've never bought more than a bottle of water there. The first time I saw him he got really excited and asked where I was from, and he even managed to spit out the names of a few American cities. He doesn't speak more than a word ("hello") of English though, which limits our conversational options. Oh and these girls at a knick-knack shop downtown were amused when my brain shut down and I started saying the wrong things in Chinese...

Anyway, all things considered, I think I did fairly well on my assignment. I like the area, and the school doesn't even make me teach all of the hours that are in my contract. Some people I heard either complain a lot or didn't get quite so lucky.