David's Big Adventure in China

Happy Holidays from China! I enjoyed a nice turkey dinner for Thanksgiving at restaurant with many other foreigners. I really stuffed myself. About a week after Thanksgiving I went to a nice restaurant that has a big buffet and serves a lot of barbequed meat similar to a Brazilian restaurant. Among the many kinds of meat was dog, so I gave it a try. It was quite tasty. I don’t know what kind of dog it was. I asked my students in class one day how many had eaten dog and at least a third of them had eaten it. There were a few in the class that had a dog as a pet and had also eaten dog. Christmas eve dinner was a pitch-in dinner at a teacher’s apartment. Christmas day was just a normal day with classes as usual. The school told the foreign teachers that we could take the 24th and the 25th off if we wanted but the students still needed to go to class and have work to do. I skipped two short classes but went to my other classes. In one class we had a little party and gift exchange (see pic’s). I haven’t made any plans for New Year’s eve yet. New Year’s day is a holiday for us.

One way I stay connected to the USA is by listening online to some of my favorite radio stations from back home. I sometimes listen to KFOG which is my favorite radio station in the San Francisco bay area and I also listen to a couple National Public Radio stations (one in Tampa and one in Colorado). I have posted pic’s of some of my recent local entertainment such as visiting the new car show at the convention center and joining my students for a bbq at a local park. As you can see, they also use sexy girls here to sell cars at the car show. The sexy models attract more photo-graphers than the cars.

This semester is almost finished with finals beginning in about a week. I’m looking forward to finishing the semester and heading to the states for about 3 weeks. I will arrive in the states in mid January and look forward to seeing many of you during my visit. I hope you all are having a great holiday season and are not too affected by the financial crisis. Let’s hope a strong recovery begins soon.