One month

Today is October 20th and I've been in Nanchang for a month! It's hard to believe that I've already been here for a few weeks. Many things are growing more familiar, but there are still many new things that happen every day.

The weekend was pleasant and pretty uneventful. We caught a bus to a different Wal-mart in town that we've never been to. I can't believe we didn't try going there earlier. The 20 minute bus ride was actually more than tolerable. We weren't crammed in with a million other people and I had my own seat to sit in! We reached the Wal-mart that was the exact opposite of the one downtown. There were probably more employees than people shopping. The whole store gleamed. It was nicer than any Wal-mart in America, except it still didn't really have anything you normally would buy in America.

I ended up with a winter coat that we've been told to buy. Right now I find it really hard to believe that winter is ever coming. It is toward the end of October now and it is still 90 degrees. I feel like I live in a perpetual weather time warp. It never rains and it never gets cooler than 70 degrees.

This morning I gave my first quiz ever. I thought it would just take maybe 15 minutes, but it ended up being about 35 minutes. They did pretty well on the quiz, but they took forever to finish it. It was also challenging to get them to be quiet while they were taking the quiz. I had to remind them not to talk to their neighbor for the answer.

Then I had a short lesson on traveling for the remainder of the class. At the end I usually open up the floor for a couple minutes of questions about the lesson. One kid, who always asks the most serious and depressing questions, asked something totally not pertaining to the lesson. It went like this:

Student: "In America when strangers come into your garden, what do you do?"

Me: "Oh, you mean people's yards around their houses?"

Student: "Yes, of course."

Me: "Well, usually that doesn't happen. It's never happened to me."

Student: "It happens all the time! I watch it in the American movies. A stranger will walk into your garden and you have to point a gun to his head."

Me: "Hmmm... I think that rarely happens. Most movies you see aren't really true."

Me to the class: "Don't believe everything you see in the movies! It's usually not that way. I've never owned a gun and I've never been robbed."

Class is over.

After class another student came up to the podium and begged for a "foreign magazine." When I went home this afternoon all I could find in my apartment was an old Time magazine from 2006. I guess that will have to do.

Note to friends and family: Feel free to send me magazines (or food)!