On Saturday, the English department at FJUT organized an outing for teachers to celebrate "Women's Day." We took a bus ride for a couple hours and stopped at an archealogic museum on the way. Here is me and my friend Julia in front of some beautiful bamboo that grew in front of the museum.

At our destination, we entered a strawberry field where we were given a basket and told we could pick 1 kilo of berries for free. I declare, those were the sweetest, most delicious strawberries I ever had. I still have some of them in my fridge.

Across from the strawberry field was a potato field. Well...not really potatoes...but some kind of root or other. They were old and not good for eating anymore, but they were fun to pull out of the ground.

Fuzhou adventures

I don't yet have many pictures of me around China. So here is me at Wu Yi square, near the center of Fuzhou.


We (Gregor and I) went to a Daoist temple nearby. It's probably been there, in one form or another, for thousands of years. The ying-yang is classic, don't you think?

Last week Gregor and I got a side job recording our voices for a textbook for English-learning middle schoolers. They set us up in a fancy little studio with microphones. Paid us $50/hour, which is substantial even by American standards. I feel immortalized. Generations of Chinese children will listen to my voice! Until of course, they discontinue the textbook. While we were there, the manager took us out to eat at a "Western-style" restaurant. It was pretty expensive. All they served there was steak and some weird pizza. I had the pizza. But they did give us forks and played American music. Haha.

Silas

Two days ago I got a cat. I had been asking around, and finally a fellow teacher directed me to an older woman who kept cats and she gave me one. He is very young but not quite a kitten. I named him Silas. At first (as you see by the picture of him clawing desperately at the upper window), Silas did not like the idea of being trapped inside. Eventually I will let him go out to go pee and play about, but for now I want him to get used to the idea that this is his home. He is mostly happy now and he likes me a lot. Another few days and I will let him go out. He is the most vocal cat I have ever heard. Meows all the time, purrs all the time, usually in sync. Right now he is romping about in the wildest way on my bed. I should try to take a video of it. He is so funny.

Gregor & friends

Picture above is Gregor Henderson. He is the other foreign teacher at FJUT, and the only other fluently English-speaking person that I know of within in a thousand mile radius. Gregor is a bright, adventurous, conversable fellow from New Zealand. He arrived in Fuzhou a month before me and has been studying Chinese since then. He's now at the point where he can communicate simple ideas to the locals.

English-aspiring Chinese often meet together to practice their English in casual conversation. These are called "English Corners." Gregor and I are required to hold English corner for our students once a week. The picture here, however, is from a city-wide English corner. Gregor is in the middle there and I am in the lower left corner. The older fellow next to me is Woodrow. (That's his English name, of course; Chinese people like to assume "English names" for interaction with foreigners and also just for practice in English lessons. It's just as well for me. Chinese names are hard to remember in large quantities.) Woodrow is going to take me to Panda World next week. Apparently, this is like a zoo, but just with pandas.

Tribute to Hershey

I bought this bunny on the road near my house. He cost $2 and his cage cost $1. He was a very good bunny. I named him Hershey.
Hershey was clever; he always came when I called him. He liked to follow me around the house and sit on my feet while I worked at the computer. And he never ever once peed on me - only in his cage (and once on the floor, but we'll ignore that).

Me and Hershey.

I had Hershey for about almost two weeks. Then one day he got sick. He wouldn't budge from his cage when I tried to let him out. I knew something was wrong then because he is usually so excited to come out. Then he started having terrible diarrhea, poor little fellow. I felt bad for him, but I didn't know what to do so I patted him on the head and went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, he was all slumped over and I thought he must be feeling worse. But when I tried to pet him, he was all cold and stiff and quite dead. I sat down and cried for five minutes. Poor, poor little Hershey. I put him in a plastic bag and threw him in the trash. Now I have no more bunny.

7 March, again

What? You wanted to see some pictures? Very well. Here is what my apartment looks like:

That's my kitchen above. Microwave + gas stove (with seperate gas tank) + giant dirty sink.

To the left here is my lovely balcony with clothesline, another big dirty sink, and a clunky little washing machine, which thankfully works quite well.

This is my fridge and the TV I never use.

Below is my desk and laptop, which I use often.

Bathroom is self explanatory, I hope.



This here is my closet.

And this is my bed. If you look close, you can see my bunny peeking out from behind my pillow.

Enough of my apartment.

Here is my Monday morning class. They are very good little students.

More pictures to come. For now, I'm tired and going to bed.

7 March

Well, after many trials and beatings upon on the desk, I have given up trying to use the Jensens website to document my experiences in China. I've installed three different ssh clients and none of them can connect me. Neither can I access the site on my browser from this or any computer I've tried since I got here. I can only assume that The People's Republic of China is blocking the-jensens.org for malicious content. More research is required.

Oh well, this blogspot should work fine. Less work for me, actually. I boiled a gallon of water for storage today. I decided this would be cheaper than buying all my water bottled from the grocery store. However, the water has a nasty metallic aftertaste when I'm done. I may just break down and pay the 15 cents per liter price.