Super Bowling

I bring you a tired, post-bowling update! Here's a reverse recap:

Our whole class (excluding two of the Russian girls - one is home for the weekend and one is visiting a friend in Shenzhen) went bowling tonight. We split up into two teams and had a very exciting, low-scoring competition, with a high score of 120 and a low of 7 (with 5 of those points scored in the 10th frame). I proudly announce that I clinched a win for my team... after bowling a horrendous game. Oh well. Each team won one and lost one, and we had a lot of fun together.

This all happened after we ate dinner together. We had that Chinese Competition this afternoon - more on that in a second! - and our class decided to go for Korean food. Best of all, our teacher came with us. She's really fun and about our age (25 I think?), so it's always good when she comes along... even with the obligatory reminder to review our vocab before class tomorrow. We tried to treat her to dinner, but she gave us 100 kuai and told us that she was treating us to bowling! She's so nice.

Anyway, that Chinese Competition! It ended up being a lot of fun. There were three parts: speeches, trivia, and performance. I missed the speeches because I was working, but I saw the other two sections and the performances were the best. I don't know why they wait so late in the year to do this, because there were at least 100 of us crammed in a classroom laughing and cheering on our fellow students, and it was a lot of fun. Today, all in all, was a lot of fun. Not bad for a Thursday!

Work is going well. I teach adults every week day and middle schoolers on the weekend - 8 hours a week in total. I'm not the best teacher, I guess, but I'm not the worst in this city either, so that's good. The adults are more fun but their English is horrible to non-existent, and the middle schoolers' English isn't bad but they're middle schoolers, not my specialty. Most - but not all - of them are well-behaved though.

Class is also going well. We have all our midterm grades back, and as usual Tom and I scored almost exactly the same: 100% for writing, 95% for speaking, 80% for comprehensive and 70% for reading. Our reading teacher... is not very good, which explains the two low scores (I lost most of my points on my comprehensive exam in the reading section... grr). Luckily, these grades don't count for anything! Woohoo!

The weather is getting cold. We haven't broken freezing for a few days and I think it's supposed to get to 0F tonight. Best of all, Tom and I still haven't bought coats, and I'm still wearing thin ballet flats. Actually, I get stopped several times every day with strangers telling me to buy warmer shoes. So we're going Saturday at the latest... perhaps even tomorrow after evening class. But on the bright side, we're adjusting to the cold. I almost don't want to give in so early in the winter.

Tom's about to run to the net bar, so I'll give this to him to post. Hope things are good at home. We'll try not to go so long between updates next time - but we're busy with fun things, so if we do, take it as a good sign.