let's see how much i can write in 20 minutes

I see that I really dropped the ball here. But, to be fair, I had no idea that i could access blogger just by going straight to the blogger homepage. I always just went to my blog and clicked on the blogger symbol at the top of the page to edit it.

anyway, there are about a million things that I should have updated about, but it's hard to think of them all at once. i went on another Hash run on October 21, which was really beautiful. We got to walk through rice fields and orchards of mandarin oranges. The weather was perfect and we once again had an excellent time. Pictures are on kodakgallery. The only downfall was that this time, the food was honestly the most atrocious stuff i've ever seen at a table. Really, you'll know if i've been in China too long if I don't get disgusted at a bowl of chicken claws (with the toenails and everything) sitting in front of me on the lazy susan. Puke.

The most exciting thing that happened the following week was the halloween celebration that we had, coupled with the fact that Mike bought a plane ticket to visit me for thanskgiving. So...if he can come visit me for 3 days, certainly any of you can come visit me for at least that long. If you buy tickets far enough ahead you can get round-trip for about $800...just look at www.kayak.com. Halloween was awesome-- the saturday before, Shannon and Dania and I decided to throw a toga party here in the dorm in Dania's room. We had a lot of fun, and went out to the bar after the party, in our togas. On Monday and Tuesday (the 30 and 31st), the kids dressed up and brought in candy and trick-or-treated in our office. We had halloween parties (read: showed movies) in our classes and it was really, really fun. So no need to worry about whether or not Halloween exists in China. I can guarantee you that it does.

Other than that, I haven't really been doing too much that is exciting. School has been pretty busy, since this week is midterms and all last week we had to prepare the exams and have them approved by the administration. A few weeks ago, we had parent-teacher meetings. They were completely surreal for me because I didn't feel like I was old enough or experienced enough to be talking to these parents about their children. I think it's funny the amount of responsibility that we've been given with little to no training. Oh, and one of the parents of one of my best students told me "You're so beautiful. My son told me that his English teacher was not very pretty and was sort of chubby, but I guess he was lying. " Seriously, what is it with Koreans telling me I'm fat? I wanted to hold it against her son but I just love my non-native students too much. They're in 6th grade, so the big topic of conversation almost every day is boyfriends and girlfriends. Apparently some other 6th grade students kissed in a class room during lunch and it was rumored that they were "going to do it again after school!!!" My students were so excited about it. I thought it was hilarious.

Other than teaching, I've been working on my law school applications and buying/watching dvds. It's so hard not to buy at least 3 or 4 dvds/tv show seasons at a time when they're less than a dollar for each disc. I might have already mentioned this, but I bought what I thought was the first season of LOST on the street for 20 kuai (about $2.50). It turns out that it's the entire first and second season. The only problem with it is that there are chinese subtitles that I can't get rid of...but that's only a problem when Sun and Jin are talking in Korean, and even then I can get the general idea of what they're talking about just by seeing the visual.

I also started trying to be more active, by running after school a few times a week. Once it starts getting colder I think i'll join the gym down the street...but since it's still in the high 60s or mid-70s every day, I think i've still got a little bit of time.

Anyway, I'll try to think of more to write about, but I apologize in advance if i'm not able to update over the next couple of days. Tomorrow, 4 of my friends and I are going to Hangzhou, a beautiful city 2 hours outside of Shanghai for the weekend, since we have Monday and Tuesday off from school (because of midterms). I'm looking forward to relaxing and trying to get my mind off of these applications...but somehow I don't think it's going to be possible to totally forget about them. Looks like i've got some serious work ahead of me in the next 24 hours (including grading all of these freaking exams).

More soon!