Near and far

Another eventful month has passed in Beijing, and my - how time is flying.  I was talking to a coworker about how if the first 3 months went so quickly, the next three are bound to go even faster, which is a bit of a daunting prospect.

Most of the events from the past few weeks are illustrated with pictures, however, the KISB news is pictureless, and worth noting.  This past week was packed with midterms: 3 per morning for every student, 7th through 12th grade.  Although I balked at the memory of myself in 7th grade if I would have had to take a midterm exam (much less 12 of them), the students seemed perfectly attuned to this schedule - I suppose it is the system they are prepped for.  In my new teacher naivete, I had assumed that a good strategy across the board to get my classes to achieve the required 80+% average would be to give students a study guide with all the questions on it that were on their exam, let them figure out answers, go over the answers with them, and let them know the correct answers if they hadn't gotten them on their own.  The exam results were a clear indicator that I was simplifying the process far too much.  My lowest level seventh and eleventh grade classes still had averages of 63% and 65% respectively, mid-level tenth grade hovered almost precisely at 80%, and my mid-level twelfth graders killed it with a 90% average.  Clearly, I will need new tactics for the second half of the semester for my lowest level classes, but I thankfully have another week of vacation coming up to sort that out.

We made a quick trip out one afternoon to the Tiananmen square area to see what it was all about.  We were too late to see the pickled Mao spectacle (maybe another day), but here we are outside of his solemn mausoleum.

A couple weeks ago, I made the dreaded visa run up to the Mongolian border, marking the end of my first 90 day stint in China.  To make sure all visitors to this desolate border town know that their true claim to fame is dinosaur fossils (not, as most tourists may think, cheap visa renewals) they lined the sides of the highway between the airport and the town of Erlian with hundreds of these statuesque dinosaur re-creations.

And here I am, inside the shining chariot that carried me across the border and back.  Things you can't see in the picture: the steering wheel column was held together with electrical tape, the entire "trunk" was crammed with suitcases full of crappy cheap clothes to be resold in Mongolia, and the jeep eventually became packed with 9 people.  

Here is that chariot, sitting majestically in the central square of the border town on the Mongolian side called Zaman Ud, I believe.

Also in that square: open air pool tables amidst the swirling dust storms.

The following weekend was blessed with the much more pleasing adventure of taking a 10km hike along an unrestored section of the Great Wall that led to the touristy area of Mutianyu, where the wall has been restored.  The first hour was a relatively icky vertical ascent that definitely made me breath heavily, but here is the view through one of the windows of the gaurd tower that it lead to.

 Red-faced me, still recovering from the climb.

 See those clouds in the back?  We were preparing to get hailed on briefly.

 My good-natured companion, and coworker, April.

 My first rugby game.  Tolerated with a few tepid beers, and several moments of thinking "Ah! Who's the one on the bottom of that pile of hefty men? I hope it isn't John..."

Finally! We made it to the fabric market!  The top stack are John's fabric choices, the bottom one are mine.