We're Going To Be Friends

After the “exhausting” day of teaching yesterday, I got a day off today. Actually, once all of my classes start Tuesday will be my longest day. I will teach 3 classes back-to-back (6 hours total) on Tuesdays, so the day off on Wednesdays will be welcome. I spent the day cleaning my apartment, again. Yes, it is like the third time in a week, but I think I have finally gotten the apartment clean enough to maintain the cleanliness from here on out.

Tonight, we had English Corner (E.C.) in the city. Mo invited me along and we had dinner first at a restaurant not far from the school near where the E.C. was going to be. She also showed me a good place to take my dry cleaning. Not very many of my clothes need to be dry cleaned, but a few pieces will be, so it was good information to have. Anyway, at the restaurant, since we don’t speak the language, we just walked into the kitchen and pointed at what we wanted to eat. We also ordered meatballs. I must admit that I was a little sketched out about it at first, but once I tried them, I was sold! They tasted about as close to meatloaf as I am going to get here and came in gravy! Those meatballs, along with the potato pancake-thingy we got and I was a happy little girl. Not exactly an all-American dinner, but sort of an Asian take on it.

English Corner was interesting. We all crowded into this little room in a teahouse and just talked. Many of the locals that come to the English corner are well-connected or good people to know, like the lady at the police station who takes care of our visas and residence permits and a lady who has taught English in the city for 30+ years and knows just about everyone in town. Also, it was nice to get to meet some other foreigners who live in the city but are not teachers at our school. There was a young couple there that seemed pretty close to my age, which is nice since everyone at our school is old enough to be my parent practically. I did not really get a chance to talk to them as I was busy talking with the locals. This may be a good opportunity to make friends outside of the students on campus.