Last week Mrs Feng called me and asked me if she could bring a friend of hers to my class for one afternoon. Turned out, this friend was a man in his late forties who goes by the English name of Frank (Had another one visit the class later last week, by the name of Uking... hummm.) and works in the Baoding taxation bureau and been doing some auditing at NongDa in the past couple of weeks. This guy has learned English all by himself, and speaks rather well, actually... even better than my PhD students. And he is really eager to learn more, and to talk talk talk talk.

So, on this past tuesday morning I met frank after 7 am (!!!!!) at the university, and he then took me to his office in the west of the city for breakfast and a look around his office. It was quite interesting to see the offices and how that sort of thing works here. But now I have to say Frank is getting a little overwhelming, inviting me here and there and wanting to meet up all the time... ugghh. There's something about him that just makes me a little unconfortable, don't know...

Other than that, we're having a little St Patrick's Day (I know we're a little late) gettogether over at Griselle's tonight for us laowais, should be fun.

I feel like I have done just about nothing the whole week (and the week before that, and...). I'm getting a feeling that I should be using my time here better, that I'm not taking advantage of it like I could. Instead, I just do plain *nothing*, which makes me feel even more blaaahhh and the less I even feel like doing anything at all. I'm in what Ella & Kirsi would call 'amoeba mood', 100%. And it doesn't exactly help that the weather has been cold, cloudy and the pollution just hangs over everything like a wet blanket. But, I just need to snap out of it, get up from the sofa and do something about it!!