Lately I have not been making nearly enough effort to actually learn something myself (instead of just being the teacher). Rationally thinking, I realise that this is an amazing opportunity for me to be learning Chinese in an environment where it's spoken, as well as getting to know a new culture from the inside. I could easily learn a few new words each day, and practise by talking to my students, people in the shops etc. Instead, over the past couple of months, it's been more like one word per week. My Chinese is still very basic, a kind of "survival talk", which gets me the things that I need but doesn't allow for conversations much past the "can you show me the red one?/I am an English teacher./Turn left, please." What's more, Feng Ying, who gave us the Chinese class twice a week last term, has been recovering from an operation so no classes so far this term.
But, I *will* start making a real effort, we'll probably start the classes again in the next two weeks, and I *will* take at least a while every (other?) day to look at my Chinese books. Really.

Last saturday (which happened to be Valentine's - just a coincidence) we had a little gettogether for the laowais in Baoding. Originally, I just had an idea that we should get some people together for the beginning of the new term, which is mentioned to Griselle and we just passed the word on to people who then passed it on to others etc. In the end we were almost 30 foreigners in Nongfu, met lots of new people from different countries, even a fellow European, which was nice (as you get to reminescense about bad eurodance hits and Antoine de Caunes on Eurotrash). A few of us ended up going all through the night until 6:30 in the morning, just staying up and talking. I took in five strays who had no place to sleep (as some schools close their gates around 10 or 11 pm, after which you are either in or out), since i have an extra bedroom and sofas in the living room. In the end, the whole thing reminded of the first year at uni, it's been a loooong time since the last time i actually stayed up the *whole* night like that. But, it won't become a habit ;)