to say that I have been a bad blogger is an understatement

I can only hope that I will do better. There are no excuses--when my VPN happens to work, my first priority is Facebook, followed by "Glee" on Hulu, which hasn't been doing so well over here. So far, I've seen the first twenty minutes of the episode from almost three weeks ago, when they paid tribute to the Biebs. Thank goodness "Grey's Anatomy" streams straight onto Youku!

It has been over a month since I've written, and it's been an active month. I went home, saw lots of people and ate lots of food, got a major haircut (short length with BANG bangs), almost didn't make it back on time due to snow, realized that my fridge had been unplugged and all my freezer food had thawed AND spoiled, started the new semester, had sewage water from the three apartments above me leak onto my bathroom floor, spent three days straight with technicians trying to fix the plumbing (still have a dripping pipe), and found out that the apartments we are supposed to move to this summer are not, in fact, on campus.

I'm a little over two weeks into another 20-week semester, trying to keep the students on their toes. I've had to enact a cell phone silence policy, and after I collected phones in nearly every class last week, they know I'm not fooling around on that one. It's much easier teaching for two hours instead of three per class, but it's been an adjustment having Thursday morning class at 8 a.m. instead of an hour later--I'm like a regular American teacher on that one count now. We haven't been asked yet to re-sign for next year, which I will, and I'm already thinking about the year after that, when I want to make the jump to a bigger city. Right now, I have to make myself focus on the present and nearer future, which is proving difficult.

And above all, I can't believe that March starts tomorrow.