life continues to be busy and interesting. unfortunately I tend to forget most of the interesting bits before I can write them down.
monday morning was rather tiring, and after the health check thing we got back to school just in time for the beginning of class, and a quiz. so there was no food until lunch... we were quite hungry. I can't remember where we ate, though, so we must've just gone to the cafeteria here. I don't really remember much of monday at all - we had a new writing class in the afternoon which was quite easy, and I think I just goofed off after class, then tried to figure out how to actually get stuff done this week.
tuesday I got bored enough to start doodling in my textbook. hte class is still doing chapters we did back in canada - but I think by next week they'll have caught up, and then things could get tough. at least the teacher for the grammar class is easy to understand now. I couldn't understand any of the teachers on the first day, but lin laoshi speaks fairly clearly and throws in the occasional english word to clarify, so by now I don't have to concentrate on listening at all - my mind automatically figures out the pinyin for what he's saying and I just see it in my headso I only have to worry about getting hte meaning of it.. and I think even that is slowly becoming automatic. :)
wednesday morning we had a quiz again, and it was easier even though I didn't really study. we only had the one class, so I did some homework and goofed off for the rest of the morning. after lunch I got a few chores done, but spent more time reading webcomics. still haven't caught up on the backlog. :) I eventually got out and went to the bank - turns out withdrawing money from my credit card *is* slightly cheaper than using my debit card. 6.98 instead of 6.58, if I calculated correctly. of course I have to move the money to my credit card ahead of time to avoid paying interest.
I spent most of wednesday afternoon shopping. needed some new clothes - some of mine are wearing out again, and I didn't bring a huge amount with me. didn't have any decent sandals, either - it's way too hot for shoes here. the cheap plastic sandals I bought in zhenjiang were starting to rub skin off my feet :( so I went around to a bunch of little shops... it was quite hard to find what I was looking for. everything was so.. fashionable, and I wanted comfortable, practical stuff. somehow I did end up getting everything I wanted, though :) I'm quite surprised. I probably paid more than I should have... I chickened out on the bargaining for most of the stuff. really need to work on that. at the end I was trying to buy a cheap hat near the school, and decided I'd really try bargaining... and learnt a new phrase: bu huanjia. no bargaining. (I can't seem to get chinese chars to show up properly in html pages; anyone know what I'm missing?)
anyways, it was fun. then for dinner, we went to a vegetarian restaurant that pete had seen in a magazine. it was very fancy. normally fancy places make me feel quite uncomfortable, but it was actually quite nice. the food was delicious, and pretty cheap for the quality (although of course it was a lot more expensive than cafeteria food). the magazine had said 60 kuai per person, but for us it ended up being more like 35... we didn't really order much, though. enough to satisfy my stomach, but I could've easily eaten more.
now.. well.. it's past 10pm, which feels really late when class is at 8am. but I don't wanna go to sleep, I have so much energy :) maybe I'll read one of the books I bought.