And we're back . . .

I could not be any more aware that it has been much too long since the last time I posted. An indescribable amount of things have happened since then, and each day that passed without a post, the forthcoming post became more and more looming. There are a few reasons for my lack of blogging, on which I would like to expand at this time.

First, it turns out that I have a real job with real responsibilities. Additionally to that, the kids that I am teaching are real kids and they are all trying to get a very real education. I show up to the office between 5:45 and 7 each day, depending on the amount of prep work I need to complete before classes begin at 8:30. I teach either three or four classes each day, and must juggle the assignments, lectures, and grading for each. At the beginning, this was a logistical nightmare. I have made some progress in my acclimation and have almost fallen into a routine on a few occasions, but to no avail. I try to leave the office at our approved time of 4:10 each day, and I refuse to bring work home with me.

By the end of the day, I am left beaten and bruised by obsolete grammar lessons, poor interpretations of history, and incessant traffic jams in the hallway. At that point, all I want to do is go home, throw on my pajamas, and crawl into bed for the rest of the night. But somehow everyday, and without fail, on my two minute bike ride from the office to the apartment, I somehow miraculously regain all the energy I lost over the course of the day, and after only a short rest, I am ready to go out in the great city that lies beyond the meager gates of Shanghai Zhong Xue.

This leads us to the second reason why I have not had the opportunity, nor have I made the opportunity, to maintain this blog. The night might find me at the coffee shop reading and writing, at dimly lit bar in the corner of the city, at a posh expat restaurant with friends, enjoying the relative privilege we possess in this country. I try to make the most of my hours out of the office, although lately (especially after the addition of an Ikea couch in my living room, a DVD player, and proper knitting supplies) I have found myself more and more content with simply staying in and enjoying a movie or two from Baise DVD.

These two reasons in culmination with the fact that the last thing I want to do after a long day of creating word documents is to create yet another one . . . especially if that document is a long account of what happened that day. It is an issue of proximity, I think, for those who wish to know more about my time here in China. The people I work and play with in this country continue to know more and more about me as the people I left behind in the Untied States seem to move continually further away.

Now that I have a little more control over my day, simply because I have at least a slight idea now of how to do my job, I should be able to more easily find at least thirty minutes a day to write and update the blog.