Week 18: 2018.1.14

I never liked cheese as a child. Gooey, icky, American ‘cheese’ was the only kind we ever had at home. Ugh!

But now I know better. That orange, plastic processed cheese food was NOT real cheese.

Now I love cheese, and it’s something that’s really hard to find here in China. There isn’t any at the two closest grocery stores, Lianhua and Nancheng. I did find some at Guan Park, which is in the basement at WanDa. But I couldn’t find any at Walmart, where I was SURE I’d find some. Until our visit a week ago.

Cheese, glorious cheese!

But now that I had it, how would I eat it?

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In addition to the cheese, I also found a toaster oven at Walmart. On sale.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that cheese + toaster oven = toasted cheese sammich.

But other than some pastry type breads at the little bakery behind school and school tuck shops, I really hadn’t seen that looked like the bread back home.

But when I went to Lianhua for bananas, juice, and yogurt this week, I saw it! Sliced bread. Of course it’s white and made of wheat, but I really wanted that sammich!

It. Was. SO. Good!!

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On January 5^th, we had received the exam schedule for next week. That means we only had one week in which to write exams, which is what I did most of the week.

This week I learned that I also have to produce a report card for each student, with comments.

Luckily, T sent a template, and K shared what she’d created, which is a document with phrases in both languages that can be coped and pasted in the template.

(Good homework and writing, would like to see more contributions to class discussions.

该生能很好的完成家庭作业和写作任务，我很希望他能更多的参与到课堂讨论中来)

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I have 80 students.

So now I’ve created 80 individual documents and am cutting and pasting comments into each one.

After they’ve taken their exams and I’ve graded them, I get to post their final score on the report card and print them out. One by one.

Whee.

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I also found out this week that the faculty talent show, which was scheduled for the end of December, and I’d thought I’d missed – was postponed.

We had a rehearsal this week. It’s actually a pretty funny skit. We’ll be doing it next week.

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On Thursday, we got the dates for out Winter Break. Everyone can finally make plans and plane reservations.

I had hoped to visit Australia or New Zealand during my time off, but under the circumstances I think it’s best for me to be with family right now, so I’ll be heading back to the US and hoping the cold weather isn’t quite so bad by the time I get there.

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