Typhoon Nuthin'
Well we had buckets and buckets of rain but no wind, and it was pretty much all over by noon. The typhoon went north of us so it was really anti-climatic for all of the preparation that had gone on around town and the school closures. I guess Shanghai really got hammered but we were quite disappointed :).
Sue's First Teaching Day
Sue went to her first day of teaching today and had a good time. The students took pictures of a Real Western teacher with their cell phones, so Sue took out her camera and said "SMILE!" and shot right back. Here's one of the girls having been caught taking her picture.
Sue teaches freshmen, and they are primarily English majors. She has all girls except for 4 boys. A much different mix and skill level from my classes!
Our Neighborhood
Our neighborhood is being absolutely transformed at an incredible rate. This husband and wife team were laying a new sidewalk. She would bring in the granite bricks and he would cut them and lay them down. They layed our whole street in about 2 days. Incredible!
Here's a pic I missed from yesterday afternoon - Sophie got picked up from school, and some other Dads were there picking up their kids. Dads and Grandparents appear to be very involved with child rearing here. In the morning it is mostly Grandparents who are dropping the kids off at school.
And here is Sophie at home tonight after a "Dad-erday" since school was cancelled due to the storm, and Sue was teaching. The kids and I played computer games, card games, and watched movies, and watched the rain come down. We ventured out around noon to go to the bank and the PC mall to look for a new computer mouse for the boys.
Peter and Jack love the PC mall - 3 floors of all kinds of electronic gadgets but unfortunately not many bargains. I got a couple of 1GB USB drives for about $12US each that will be great for transferring files to school. I had to bargain pretty hard to get the price down that low and walk away a couple of times. Bargaining with 3 kids maybe better because the seller can see I'm on a limited time frame, especially when Sophie starts to squeak!
1 comment:
Tim,
Thats a good way of looking at the bargaining issue, the seller would give you a less prices possibly quicker because of the kids, in this country the more children you have the higher the price or the harder it is to lower it because the seller feels that eventually you will just give in so that you can leave and/or the children will pressure you if you did not buy what they wanted.
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