The Week in Review

We really wore ourselves out with Monday's Shenanigans, so there is not much to report now. But, considering I have some time on my hands, I whipped something up for your blog reading pleasure.

Tuesday was a casual day in the office. A gangsta casual day for Nicole.

I got this card in a pack of cookies I bought at the convenient store on campus. The girl looks cute and innocent, but as you can see below, she is making a desperate plea against child molestation.

Only four. Honestly.

If I had pictures from Wednesday, they would be of me and everyone else in the office staring at a computer screen, correcting Chinese teacher's comments (written in English, of course) to the students/ parents. I thought I had finished on Tuesday, but no, of course not. There were some strange, convoluted (due mostly to the fact that they were in Chinese) instructions that we "missed." As such, we had to do the grading again. It was a bit mind-numbing. To make it a little more fun, we started playing "That's what she said" ( a la The Office) with the ambiguous strange, and sometimes inappropriate comments made by teachers. There is an ongoing and, as of yet, inconclusive discussion concerning whether or not to post the "That's What She Said: Student Comments Edition" list. Any input to the conversation would be greatly appreciated.

Skip to Thursday, and a trip to Pho No. 1 on Taikang Lu.

The raw meat cooks in the hot soup broth. Po No. 1 is definitely one of the best places in the city to get a big, hot, steaming bowl of Pho.

The Pho before I got my hands on it.

An obliterated and demolished bowl of Pho.

I can do some serious damage.


Tiny pot. Enough Said.
And don't forget, "A person of low taste is more interested in themselves than in me." Taikang words of wisdom.

Denis and Nicole reading at Vienna Cafe, where we waited too long to watch a screening of a terrible Cantonese movie. It turned into a giggling slumber party, as people from our school piled in an spouted off witty and ironic comments about the movie.

Digital Macro of the bottom of my water glass. Just thought it was a neat picture. I am honing my photography skills.


It is parent-teacher conference day, and I am writing this post between meetings with parents. The room we are in is ungodly cold. Only an hour and fifty minutes left, and then we are free for the day. My mom is coming in only a few days, and I am going out tonight to put together some preparations to make my kind of crappy China apartment a little bit nicer for her stay. I am trying to remember what it was like to have US standards for things, but those days are far gone. I have been almost fully assimilated, which is going to make walking around the city with my mom hilarious. The things I hardly blink an eye at now will send her into hysterics, tears, screams, or fits of revulsion, respectively. I am looking forward to being reminded of what it was like in my first days and weeks in this amazing city.

Well, that's all for now. Zaijian!