feelin' alright, doin' okay

I've been pretty busy here these past few weeks.  I teach about 16 hours per week, and go to Chinese class for about 12, and there's also 8 hours each week on the bus going to and from the new campus, not to mention any time spent preparing lessons and studying.  Fortunately next semester I won't be teaching as many classes, so I should have time to travel and study more.

Despite being busy, I'm still enjoying myself here.  My Chinese is slowly (very slowly) improving, but as I've been saying all along, if I would put more time and effort into studying, it would progress more quickly.

I haven't really done anything out of the ordinary lately, other than going to give a speech to a student-run English Corner on Sunday.  The idea is that the students get together to practice their English, since it's hard to learn a language alone.  Unfortunately the meeting was a lot more of me speaking than them, but I suppose I was the guest speaker, so what did I expect.

Lately there's been lots of talk about moving to the new campus.  From what I understand, this year is the first year for the new campus, and it's still under construction, but by the middle of next month, they have to have all of the departments and offices moved there.  Almost all of the undergrad students already live there, but very few teachers do since their apartments aren't ready yet.  One of those apartments is apparently for me, if I want it.  I'm pretty sure I can choose either to stay here at the old campus in Xianyang or move there.  It's a tough decision.  The new campus is in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest grocery store a 20 minute bus ride away, and almost nothing within walking distance.  By US standards, that's not a big deal, but here in XIanyang I can walk to anywhere I could possibly want to go, and a 20 minute bus ride goes clear across the city.  So it is by far more convenient to live here.   On the other hand, I do have to spend an hour each way on the bus to go teach, and I can't really interact with my students outside of class since we live in different cities.  By moving there, I could probably practice my Chinese more with my students, but I'd have less interaction with teachers and other people in the community.  I'll have to think it over a while longer.

Now, though, I need to run to Chinese class.