Moving

This week a new English teacher named Laura arrived in Xinyu. Laura's from Baltimore and she graduated from UNC Chapel Hill this spring. Before she got here Romeo, Bleisha, and I were teaching her classes (I had one extra class of freshmen students for the past couple weeks). Now that she's here we will be back to our original teaching schedules, which means I'm back down to nine classes per week.

One other change has taken place, which is that I've moved into the room in which Laura was going to live and she's in the one where I was living before (I used to be in room 301, now I'm in room 403). Laura wasn't too keen on 403, the apartment she was initially assigned, because it has only one room instead of two and because it has a squatter toilet and not a Western one. I liked my old room alright but I felt strange living in such a big place while all the other Chinese teachers lived in one-room apartments.



I've had a couple problems; the TV doesn't turn on and when I turned on one of the lamps over my bed there was a small explosion, causing some sparks to fly and a loss of power throughout the apartment. But the power was fixed that same afternoon by a guy with whom I can barely communicate since he seems to only speak the Xinyu dialect. And my TV may be getting repaired soon so I think the place is going to be fine.