Ghhhh.... I just wrote a long entry about my week, but when I tried to post it, the connection failed or something and it's now all lost in cyberspace somewhere. I'm not really in the mood to rewrite the whole thing again but just a quick few words to let you all know that I'm still alive.

The one thing I have to mention is this 'English Show' I went to last thursday at the College of Food Science on the West Campus (instead of going to the weekly dinner with my PhD students...will try to attend from now on). These things are basically speech contests, with various other stuff in between the speeches. The speeches weren't really all that bad (on topics like 'Listen to your inner voice' or 'Doing favours can be dangerous', ugh) but the whole even as such was quite painful. Sitting through offkey karaoke songs and having to do silly games, not really my cup of tea. And sometimes I feel like the students here can be quite naive, compared to people the same age back home. For example, the introductions the contestants gave in the beginning were all in the vein of:"Hello, my name is LiuLiu and I'm a lovely girl. I am also a happy girl. I like to smile, because it makes other people happy." And the worst bit is that they all pronouce 'smile' as 'smell' so it comes out as "I like to smell a lot"... Which did give me a couple of chuckles, especially since there is no deodarant on sale in the whole city of Baoding. Being too negative? Try sit through one of these nights yourself sometime! :) My role in the whole thing was just to be the occasional star, apart from doing the games, people actually queued up afterwards to get my autograph!! How mad is that??

The weekend was good, went for dinner on friday as it was Beth's birthday, she's a Philipina English teacher at one of the middle schools here, living here with her husband and two cute little daughters. On saturday went to Beijing with Juan and spent all the money I had with me on clothes I didn't intend to buy. That silk market is just dangerous, I'm telling you! They sell clothes, shoes and stuff like that, and some of it is pretty good, too. And if you bargain, you can get a good deal, much cheaper than in any of the shops in Baoding. So I ended up getting a jumper, a couple of cardigans, and a jacket. But hey, it's a long cold winter ahead!

Ok, that'll have to be it for now. Hope this posting thing works now...