Drinking and Drying

Tuesday, November 25. Usually, this is my day "off" (meaning that I hunker down in my apartment to do lesson planning for each of my four different responsibilities: regular class, Junior Teacher Training, and two English Corners). However, today I have been asked to teach two Senior 3 classes: Class 03 (Cindy ) and Class 10 (Cynthia). As always, I have a lot of fun doing this. Class 03 is higher ability, and there are 63 kids in the class. Class 10 is, I think, the lowest ability Senior 3 class, and there are only 25 kids in the class. The teachers say the students are "clever, but lazy" because their parents have a lot of money so they think they don't have to work hard. Interesting, isn't it, that the same problem with "spoiled" kids is beginning to exist in China as in the rest of the world .

Drinking hot water. Between classes, Cynthia offers me a glass of hot water. Yes, that's right. Just plain hot water. That's what we drink here in the winter! (I had three glasses of hot water at the "Italian" restaurant we went to last Saturday.) And believe me, it's very welcome. Drinking hot water is a great way to warm up your body (so is jumping around while teaching, for that matter!).

Drying clothes in winter. This is a major difficulty. It is damp and cold here so it takes forever for things to dry. In the summer, I hung things in my bedroom where the a/c was running, which worked well (also summer clothes are lighter-weight fabrics). Now it can take weeks for some things to dry. OK, maybe not "weeks" but definitely one week. I washed my cotton pajamas and had to wear my long underwear for days (or rather "nights") on end. I try to do laundry on the occasional sunny days so I can hang things outside on the clothesline to catch the afternoon sun. This helps. Also, now that I'm turning on the heater in my office when I'm home, I can hang things in there. I think that will make a difference too. But of course, this is the way we should live in the U.S. - clothes dryers consume huge amounts of energy. I wonder whether I will remember to act on that when I'm home.