Here she is, folks. My school – well, at least some of her anyway. There was no real way to capture the school in its entirety. It is a rather big school and there are even more students.

The school might as well be my second home, or my first home rather, for I spend more time here than I do anywhere else. I am at the school Monday through Friday between 7 and 8 everyday and get home somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 or 5. I only teach 4 classes a day, but those 4 classes are spread throughout the day. When I am not teaching, I am sitting in my office and playing on the computer – much like I am now. There isn’t anything else to do, really. If I want to go off campus and go somewhere interesting – I have to walk 10 minutes to the RT Mart(Grocery store). It is a lot like a Wal-Mart, if not bigger. There are 3 floors. Top floor is snacks, electronics, clothes, and house items. The second floor is all things cold, fruit, bread, meat, and canned goods. The first floor is like a mall. There are several smaller stores there. There is a KFC and dumpling store on the first floor, too. I haven’t eaten KFC in a while. The place is expensive and steals all my money when I go there. But it hits the spot when I am craving food from home – so I try to not let the whole expensive thing keep me away from it.

I’ve been in China for one month and a day now. It is hard to believe. The time has gone by so quickly. Many of the days have blended together and I don’t know where they have gone. I find myself trying to grasp the idea of where I am even more so than when I first arrived. I see the Chinese people and I hear them talk, there are Chinese characters that I can’t read everywhere and most of the time no one understands the words that come out of mouth – but I still have a hard time understanding that I really am in China. It feels like a dream. Sometimes, I think that I am only just in Florida on vacation and the population of Asians has grown by leaps and bounds.

I think that is one of the hardest things . . . being able to understand that home is 7,000 plus miles away and that I can’t just get in car and drive there. So many things used to be familiar and now almost all things are foreign – except for the universal signs like KFC and the famous arches that have seemed to take over the world. I hear there is even a Dairy Queen in Hangzhou.

It is weird not having a car. Phil really misses driving, and I do too, sometimes. Carrying everything you buy home makes you watch what you buy. Anything too heavy gets left behind until another day.

I have 14 classes left this week and then it is the weekend. Then it is vacation time for me and all the rest of China. National Day is on October 1st, but for some reason we get a week off. I’m not going to complain. During this week we are going to Shanghai to sight-see and to meet up with some Phil’s friends from back home. I am going to enjoy every second of it. It is not everyday you get to go to largest city in the world.

If I am not too busy tonight, I will post more pictures of the school. I have some interesting ones. You’ll see what I mean.