the luxury of wireless

Excepting my two weeks at home during winter break, I have lived without constant wireless availability for a year...until yesterday!  Between three teachers, it took the tech team at least two hours to set up all of our routers (I tried to do it myself, but since we bought them here all of the instructions were in Chinese, and it involved lots of Chinese internet usage).  I was the third person, so you could say they had it down to a science, and it didn't take more than 10 minutes for them to set me up.  I haven't been using the desktop computer that came with the apartment, and I had unplugged most of its pieces, so I rushed to put it back together before they got here.  Between internet passwords and wireless passwords and everything else, my desk is littered with pink heart-shaped sticky notes!

We've been moved in for two and a half weeks at this point, and everyday I still love this place ten times more than the "old place".  I'm learning the neighborhood, and we live closer to the river and the paved riverwalks, it's a nice quiet place to go for a walk.  I'm also getting to know the new teachers (and re-knowing some of the returners), for one's birthday last weekend we all went out together with the exception of those who hadn't returned yet and one who has a different sleep schedule.  I remember most of us having an informal dinner get-together last year, but this weekend we ate AND went to another bar, and we all had a good time!  I'm still the baby, this time by 6 years.  However, I've already made friends and been hanging out with other teachers, so I don't think I'll be as lonely as I thought I'd be.  One of the teachers has a scooter like all the Chinese drive, so I got to take a ride the other day, it was fantastic!  Also, two of the newbs have dogs, which is so awesome.

We just got an email last night saying that the graduate class this year will be a full year long, again, after we told them how miserable it was last year and how much the students' performance/attendance/grades suffered.  When I reminded the guy who gives out schedules of this, he said that they "tried" to tell the graduate school (who sets the number of hours for classes) but they didn't listen, and since we have plenty of time to prepare, it should be "easier" to pull a whole second semester of material out of thin air.  I'm sure he's heard the same thing from other grad teachers, and maybe we'll get together to coordinate some kind of plan for second term...I have no clue what to teach, because honestly my second semester last year totally sucked.

So that's where we're at right now.  I get to keep living the lazy life until the last week of September when my classes start, and should probably use this time to get a leg-up on lesson planning.  No guarantees, though...