We drove through the town in the back of a small tin box on wheels. The door did not work well on the taxi, having been damaged. I was left having to hold the large suitcases to keep them from falling over during the ride. I noticed all the little shop houses and the numerous strange people out in front of each and down along all the streets. I noticed the melons stacked in large piles in the shade of trees along the road, and then the military base with the guards standing stiffly like statues at the gate. We traveled across a busy intersection of trucks, and soon came to the front entry-way of the school.

The gate was opened for us and we passed inside and up a small concrete walk to a gray brick and concrete building that was to be our home for the next year. As the taxi-driver helped me unload the bags, he looked at me smiling and said in broken English—"you like V.I.P."

I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or sincere and this would not be the last time that I was left confused over the sincerity of people I talked to. We carried our bags up the steps of the hotel and Mr. Zhou introduced me to Mr. Yong, who was in charge of the hotel, and said that he would help us with anything we need. My heart was already sinking on our drive through the city, and now, as we were led down a dark and dank little hallway, half underground, just opposite the other main entrance of the hotel across the lobby floor, and came to the last set of doors on the left, my heart was about to break. All I was really thinking about was how hot it was and how I got us into this mess and how we might get out of it again. Mr. Zhou opened the doors and we saw our new home for the first time. Needless to say both Rosie and I were extremely disappointed. I tried to be optimistic about things, but couldn’t help being disappointed and somewhat depressed by our circumstances. The rooms were filthy. The floors dirty. Huge mosquitoes buzzed about the damp, still air and left stinging welts on our arms, coming through the holes in the screen door. The furniture was dilapidated and odds and ends. The bathroom was flooded with filthy water from a stopped up drain on the floor—the bathroom walls were filthy and the tub too.

Mr. Zhou showed us the room next door, and said that Mahala could sleep here, but since there was no easy access to this room from the others, I decided it would be better to have Mahala sleep with us in our room, and requested if another bed might be made for her in the center room. A couple of women from the hotel staff looked a little put out, but they found the metal frame of a single-sized bed and a wooden platform that fit across it. We folded up some heavy quilts and put across the bed to make it soft, but it was still very hard. We had little time to clean up and square things away. I was exhausted by the trip and just threw the bags down and sat down in one of the dusty chairs. I didn’t know what to do next, I had felt very bad for the situation. I felt entirely let down by the Chinese—they had given us shitty living arrangements and had deceived me—I felt fundamentally I could no longer trust them and I think Rosie was feeling very bad.

Mr. Zhou seemed quite anxious either to show us off or show us around the campus, and insisted that we eat a meal at the faculty restaurant just up the road. I remember by then feeling more than a little irritated by Mr. Zhou. He showed up about an hour later, finding us in a state little better than he left us in, and expecting to take us to eat our first dinner. He told us the chef had made us French Fries and chicken. So we strolled about the campus in the evening twilight. It was a week before school was to begin and most of the students hadn’t arrived yet. Some students were playing cards near the front entrance of the school, by the main gate. Everyone just stared at us. We walked by the library, and though Mr. Zhou bragged about it, he did not show us inside even though I asked to see. We made our way around by a new building being built, and then up another set of steps under some nice cedar trees. Mr. Zhou seemed to take great pride in the school, saying that it had opened its first Master’s program and was growing. We found our way to the restaurant where we were supposed to eat and were greated by a young Chinese lady in an "ao dai" type costume and we were led to a little room with a round table, a small coffee table and a dirty, leather vinyl couch. There was a gaudy posterized picture of a tropical setting on the wall. We sat at the couch as Mr. Zhou poured us tea. We were immediately struck by the filthy conditions. The tabletop looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for ever. I found pubic hairs in the tea cup and in the tea, and therefore didn’t drink any. Then we saw a huge rat along the wall by the entrance. As hungry as we were, I lost my appetite by all these things. All of these things caught me completely off-guard and shocked me a great deal. And Mr. Zhou went out to the kitchen and came back with a couple of bottles of cold beer and some glasses. And soon the young waitress brought in the plates of food. The french fries were large cut, and a little greasy, but otherwise good. The trouble was that they were mixed with Chicken heads and necks, and I immediately lost my appetite at the site of the eyes, beaks and goblers, with many of the heads chopped cleanly in half, staring at me from the plate. Mr. Zhou poured my glass full of beer and insisted that we eat the Chicken—he said that it was a delicacy that was only served to honored guests. It was another example of a kind of surreptitious facetitiousness that I could not trust—was it a joke to watch the new guest eat food not fit for dogs. He insisted we toast to our successful journey and to a good year. I raised my glass and we clinked. Rosie looked about on the edge of tears. They brought in a fish to eat—it was cut up but had the look and consistency of some kind of pond or river fish, like a cat. I ate a little bit of it, but Rosie turned her nose to it and ate little. I poked at the potatos but avoided Chicken. Mr. Zhou repoured my glass which, in my thirst, was quickly finished, and asked me if I was considering staying on a second year at the school—it was a surprisingly direct and off the wall question for such an indirect man, and it was the first time that my mind began to change about China. I only said to him, I don’t know, I must think about it. He did not ask me this question again the rest of the year. He insisted that the chicken was good, and then I explained to him, apologetically, that where we had come from we wouldn’t even feed the chicken heads to the dogs, which was a statement quite honest and true. In Malaysia I had fed our big black dog chicken heads and rice one time—and when he turned his nose to it, I went downtown and bought regular dog-food. Then I caught Mr. Zhou off guard by insisting to him that he take the plate back to feed his own family who must also be hungry after the long trip. I think I lost Mr. Zhou’s naivete that night that took me for an American fool, and I gained a bit of respect from him afterward. We had about three glasses of beer, which he asked me how it was—Ji Gong Shan beer, and I told him it was good but a little sweet for a beer. He wanted to order more bottles but Rosie insisted we finish and get Mahala back to bed. So Mr. Zhou, upset that we didn’t eat the meal, and making the point of telling how much this meal cost the school, lead us back down the winding stairs in the darkness back to our room. On the way back he menioned under the awning of being able to see "Chinese squirrels" around under the bamboo sometimes. In hindsight, the only "squirrels" I saw on campus were huge rats.

Today is Friday and it is about 9:55a.m.

What are yesterday!

We reached the campus at 5:30p.m. in the evening. The taxi drove us to the hotel where we will be living for the whole year. I was so tired by then. We walked down a dark, musty hallway leading to the back of the hotel. Mr. Zhao opened the doors to two of the rooms. There were the bedroom and living room. The third room was separate from these two rooms.

All the rooms smelt like mildew because it had been shut up since the last foreign teacher left. The windows were all locked so there was no fresh air circulating.

Our living room had this furniture. There was a long brown vinyl sofa that had a tear on the seat, 2 black vinyl armchairs that has seen better days, 3 book shelves, 2 ancient typewriters that did not work, an umbrella stand, a low wooden cupboard, a refrigerator that was not plugged in and an old washer that the hotel maids rolled into the room while we were there. The previous teacher had cleaned the floor so it did not look too bad except for the smell and the mosquitoes buzzing around. The curtains were an ugly green. Bedroom number one had the following items: 2 black vinyl armchairs, a closet for clothes, a night table, a television on a cart, a desk and a double bed. I asked Mr. Zhao for a single bed so that Mahala could be in the same room as us. The maids brought one for us. The television does not work too well. The volume control is at one decibel only that is high. We can only get 5 channels out of a possible 12. There was an air conditioner that works if you can put up with the high level of noise that it emits. The previous occupant had plastered over the windows in the bedroom with newspapers. I wonder why? Privacy perhaps.

The bathroom was the worst. I cannot even begin to describe the condition of the bathtub and toilet. The whole bathroom was dirty and smelly. The bathtub had rust stains around the edges and it had gray gunk growing around it. The sink had the same stains.The exposed pipes were rusty and there was a bare bulb above the sink. There are exposed pipes coming down from the ceiling of the bathroom and disappearing into the floor. The floor was dirty and slimy. It was worse around the toilet. The toilet does not flush too. Toilet seat looks dirty. I was totally disgusted with all of this. We also found out that water collects on the floor of the bathroom. That accounts for the slime on the floor. The drain must be clogged and no one has bothered to get it fixed before we came. Hugh and I have agreed that the school will have to fix the clogged drain.

I hate going into that bathroom. The floor is perpetually wet. It smells in there. We have been careful not to let Mahala step on the floor. We carry her into the bathtub and wash her there. It is intolerable. We are supposed to live like this for a year.

That first evening we found out that there was no hot water. So all us had a cold shower. Poor Mahala was in the bathtub while I poured cold water over her. She started shivering and at that point I hated Hugh and myself for submitting our daughter to this terrible living condition. I knew then that I would never get use to this place. It hurt me so much I literally felt pain in my body. It is intolerable.

Still Friday.

When Mr. Zhao comes in the afternoon, we are letting him know that we want certain repairs and improvements made. I have not looked closely at the third room yet. I am sure it is the same if not worse. In fact I do not care to look at it.

The kitchen is dark and dirty. Only one light bulb works in there. There is a rusty gas stove with a gas tank attached and a cupboard for your food and utensils. We saw a rat in the cupboard when we checked the kitchen this morning. A few bowls and plates that had seen better days were still in the kitchen. Nothing of any consequence that could help me prepare our meals.

Everything here is so dirty. I hate this place already. It is not up to any minimum standards. It definitely is not Mr. Zhao had written to us about. All around this is a major disappointment.

Surely the school could have cleaned up the place a little before we arrived to make it a little cleaner and nicer. After such a long, tiring trip, to come to this is such a let down of the highest degree.

There is no toilet paper so this morning we had to go out and buy a couple of rolls. I am not happy with this place. I never was happy with the thought of coming here in the first place. Now I know why. Sanitary amenities are lacking. I hate walking on the floor because it is dirty. In fact the carpet in the hotel was the same way too. None of our experiences so far has been a pleasant one. It takes forever to get to a public restroom. Then you find you are stranded because there is no toilet paper to wipe yourself with. You are shouted and prodded by authority figures in uniforms. People spit everywhere they please. There are no ice-cubes and nothing cold to drink. The sodas are warm. The food is bad. I expected drawbacks but this is too much.

Hugh agrees with me but he is trying to salvage a bad situation. Too much money has been invested in coming here so he is trying to make it work. I have told him if certain changes in our living conditions are not improved then I am leaving here with Mahala for the States. Even if the some of the conditions are met I might still leave before the year is up. I cannot see myself living like this. I refuse to use a bathroom that is dirty and cook in a kitchen that has rats crawling in the cupboard. I would rather be poor in the States than be rich here.

Right now I am so unhappy that all I really want is to leave. Hugh is keeping his spirits up but I am slowly breaking up inside. I feel it coming. I am not even motivated to clean up our living area. I am so depressed. I cannot do anything. I refuse to live like this.

Mahala came in and told me she misses her grandma. Then she started crying.

We gave Mr. Zhao the list of things we wanted taken care of. It is now up to him to do the rest. He told us he would look into it. I also told him I would not teach because I wanted to be with Mahala. In reality this whole situation has made me so angry that I refuse to do anything to help the school. They have let me down and I am just reciprocating. My excuse to him was that I had no formal training in teaching. That threw him into a bind because the English department had scheduled the classes for me already. I do not care, that is not my problem. Let them solve it.

He felt peeved about my decision and my request to have certain repairs done to the apartment. I told him I simply cannot allow my daughter to be walking into that dirty bathroom. Otherwise I will leave. If that happens Hugh will leave too. In a sarcastic way he mentioned that after the three star hotel in Shanghai this old hotel must disappoint me. Was he implying that I should be lucky to be here in this place and that my expectations are too high? I expect a toilet that works and hot water to clean up with. Yes he is right about my expecting some decent standards of living.

We smell something bad. There is probably a pig farm close by. Or else the smell is coming from the bathroom with its clogged up drain.

I am so tired. I feel that my life is endlessly changing never getting better. It either stays bad or gets worse. It see saws between those two levels. I had to travel thousands of miles to find the worst level.

Upon arriving here yesterday and after we have had a look at our living premises Mr. Zhao took off. He promised to come back in ½ an hour to take us out to dinner. We were tired but we agreed because we were also hungry. The dinner will be at the school restaurant.

He came back and took us for a walk around the campus first. Then we arrived at the restaurant. It was getting dark by then. We were shown to a room and sat down to a round table. The floor was dirty, vinyl table clothe had grease spots on it, mosquitoes were buzzing around us and it was hot in there. Mr. Zhao switched on the air condition. Instead of cold air we felt warm air on us. Then Mr. Zhao turned on the fan. It helped circulate the air but the fan made a rattling noise all the time it was on. There we sat waiting for the food.

Mr. Zhao had ordered chicken, fish, potatoes and fried rice. I have to give him credit for trying to please us with the meal. He poured tea for us into little teacups. I saw a strand of pubic hair in my tea. I put my tea cup aside and did not mention the hair. Instead I shared some syrupy drink with Mahala. The waitress brought in a plate of French fries and a plate of chicken. The chicken dish was made up of chopped heads, necks and claws. Though the chicken dish might have looked good I could not in all honesty eat the heads, neck and claws. Mr. Zhao then informed us that his son, Ah Mor, liked this particular dish. I felt like telling him to take it home to his son then. The waitress brought in the other food. There was fried fish, a bowl of soup, fried vegetables and fried rice. We ate these but left the chicken alone. All of us felt tired. Mahala just nibbled at the food and was restless. She kept telling us she was sleepy. Hugh had a couple of glasses of local beer with Zhao. Towards the end of the dinner I saw a rat scurrying along one side of the wall in the room and exit through a hole by the door. I had seen enough. We made our excuses to Mr. Zhao and walked back to the hotel.

We got back to the room and I had nothing to do but to make the beds as best we could and to go to bed, we were so tired. But at night I woke up in the middle of the morning, about 2. A.M., and woke up Rosie and took her in the other room to talk with her about our situation. I had realized how hopeless everything was. I almost felt like we were helpless and like prisoners—that they may even try to prevent us from leaving if we wanted to. The shock of China was immediate upon me and unrelenting—the rats, the food, the lack of ice, the dirtiness and squalor of everything. These were not the same Chinese I had known in Malaysia, who for the most part were very clean in their homes. I felt extremely perturbed that they would think of dumping us in such unsanitary conditions. Rosie was insisting that the drain be cleared in the bathroom, and I agreed whole-heartedly. I told her then I wanted to go back as soon as possible—if necessary even to leave everything but our most basic necessities. Rosie finally went back to sleep and I stay up the entire day until the next morning cleaning the floors of the room and moving the furniture around into a half-suitable arrangement. I moved the refrigerator to the other side of the room and plugged it in. The floors were filthy, and I scrubbed them with water and rags trying to clean them. I began cleaning the walls. The next morning Mr. Zhou showed up and a pulled him aside and said frankly that the situation with the bathroom was unacceptable and if he didn’t have it fixed soon we would turn around and go home. He didn’t say anything but promised it would be done before the end of the day, and soon left, a little off balance, I think.

So I continued cleaning the place the next day, scrubbing all the walls. I had Rosie go down to the little shop and buy soaps, rags, and things to clean with. The kitchen area we had set for us was also extremely filthy from grease, and Rosie insisted that she would not cook there until the Hotel came and cleaned it up. Rosie told me she wanted only to go home, and refused to help me do anything else. So I set about cleaning everything by myself.

The next day was spent trying to clean everything and settle in as best we could. Neither of us felt like settling in and did not unpack all our bagsat first. I moved furniture from one room to the other to make a more suitable arrangement. Mr. Zhou showed up with some silverware and glasses—little else. He told us that we would have to go back to Zhengzhou to have medical exams. Rosie adamantly refused, and said she would not submit to shots. This bothered Mr. Zhou greatly, especially to be refused I think by a woman, but I supported Rosie’s wishes in this regard. I believe we only had a few styrofoam bowls of noodles to eat that day, not very appetizing.

Later Mr. Zhou showed up with a Mr. Liu, Mr. Lu and Mr. Xu, who were from the English department and were to tell me my teaching assignments. We had but a couple of days to settle in before school started—it left us little time to get adjusted. In a way it was good to begin the routine of teaching right away, in another way we would have needed at least a week longer to get our feet on the ground with our diet and regimine. I was a little disappointed by what information these gentleman offered me. They caught me off guard while cleaning, and I was in my shorts. I felt embarrassed and they seemed a bit embarrassed too. I told them about my research interests and the computer I had in the bag, but they all seemed disinterested in this and to dismiss it all. I asked them what classes I had to teach, and they told me my assignment. It was only three classes and was not a heavy schedule at all. Rosie had been offered a teaching assignment too, and they had scheduled classes for her, but she refused to do it, and I had to explain to Mr. Zhou and everyone her feelings. It was too bad, as we would be then earning far less money, but she obviously was not comfortable with the idea of standing in front of a class. I considered it to be a growth experience for her, but she would not seize the opportunity in the way I hoped she would. Mr. Zhou was very disappointed. They showed me the old books for the classes, and I commented about their age. The short skinny man seemed to get annoyed and said in a very authoritarian manner "they are new enough" The teaching materials were entirely inadequate, and I had few syllabus materials prearranged, as until that point no one told me what I would be doing exactly. They did not stay long. They seemed more interested in my daughter than in anybody, and they wanted to take me out to a dinner. I avoided this, having been forwarned by Mr. Zhou that it was their intention to get me as drunk as possible so that I would make an idiot of myself. I considered this under our circumstances extremely irresponsible and so made excuses everytime I was invited out by them. Soon they stopped inviting me.

In the evening we walked out around the campus by ourselves. People only starred uncomfortably at us. It was cool in the evening. We walked down by the shops in front of the school gate, and then around the campus.

A young boy who had a plunger to try to unstop the drain—by then it was already night. He worked the drain a little and mostly managed only to bring more sediment up to the surface. I helped him work it, but we both soon decided that the plunger was inadequate. Mr Zhou came around to inquire about the progress and told me that the regular plumber was hard to find. When the left, I saw a huge centipede crawl in behind the sink, and I informed Mr. Zhou of this as well. It crawled out of reach behind the enameled pedestal of the sink before I could catch it. It was fast and big, and it struck fear into us. We went to bed early and relatively hungry—not having eaten much but dried noodles that day. Food was soon becoming another dilemma for us. I woke up early again in the morning, jet-lagged, and when I found the floor of the bathroom relatively dry but filthy, I set about cleaning the bathroom as best I could. I scrubbed it with a scraper and a steel wool pad, and even managed to fix the toilet to flush by haning a makeshift wire inside to bowl. We had managed to open the hole up a little bit so that it slowly drained by morning, but quickly filled back up again with the first rush of drain water. When Mr. Zhou showed up about 9 the next morning, he saw it dry and relative clean, and was almost going to give up on the plumbing job as it appeared to be fixed. I insisted that the drain was still clogged and it still needed repair, so he reluctantly went to look for the plumber again. Then I told Mr. Zhou that we needed a "snake" to run down the drain pipe. So they left and the next morning Mr. Zhou showed up with an older looking man and a helper. They brought with them a little Chinese motor and a snake, and they began snaking the hole, but the motor broke and the snake got all twisted up and wouldn’t run down the hole. They spent more time trying to repair the motor and fix the snake than actually working the whole. The tore out the ceiling to look at the lay of the plumbing above us and then went next door to check the drain there. The plumber finally gave up and said that the drain was completely clogged and that the only way to clear it would be to chisel a trough in the concrete and bore another hole to an exposed drain pipe that drained the sink. I helped the plumber to chisel the hole and bore through the old iron pipe that was partially rusted. He managed to cut a small dime sized hole—and I was surprised to see the water drain at all. Mr.. Zhou brought a bottle with a pair of iron tongs to capture the centipede, but it did not reappear while we worked and I think he was more disappointed by not capturing the centipede than by not being able to fix the drain pipe. He almost treated me with disbelief that there really wasn’t a centipede when we looked but couldn’t see it. It showed its head a couple of days later and I crushed it to death—it would be the first of some thirty or forty centipedes I killed about the apartment. When I told Zhou I had killed it he seemed very mad and disappointed about it.

So the water began to drain slowly, and the plumber wanted to patch up the wholes in the door sills when I told him I saw and heard a rat crawling about at night. We had no cement to fix the old drain whole, to force the water from pooling up there and going instead to the new hole we had cut in the pipe. I volunteered an old t-shirt of mine I had turned into a cleaning rag. We stuffed it down the hole. Lacking sand for the cement that the hotel ladies produced, I remembered the pile of sand outside one of the buildings we walked by and I took Mr. Zhou with me to fetch sand in a small bucket. He complemented me for my acute observation. We found sand and the plumber skillfully mixed the concrete, sand and wter to the right consistency and then filled the drain hole stuffed with my t-shirt—we used the excess cement to patch any rat holes and the bottoms of the door sills that had obviously been gnawed away by the rats. I took to finishing cleaning the bathroom after they left. I noticed that Mr. Zhou did not insist to the plumber about fixing the toilet bowl, even after I asked him to, and even when the plumber himself took notice of it and was going to open the bowl up. Afterward Rosie told me she thought she heard Mr. Zhou tell the plumber in Chinese not to bother with the toilet as it was not important. I didn’t catch this, but believed her about it, and it made me less trustworthy of Mr. Zhou. I realized he was more interested in his centipedes for Chinese medicine for mosquito bites, than he was in our plumbing problems, which were more of an annoyance to him on Sunday. I must say, that from that point I really began disliking this fellow.

Saturday

@7:00a.m.

All of us woke up at 3:00a.m. Went back to bed around 4:00a.m. Hugh gave Mahala a cold shower this morning. That made me cry because the water was cold and she was huddled in the bathtub. Hugh told me to quit crying. How can I stop? I see my daughter shivering with cold standing in a dirty bathtub in a dirty bathroom with a toilet that does not flush. There was no water pressure. I am not feeling any better in spite of Mr. Zhao’s assurances that he will get the plumber and electrician in today. The electrical wires are all exposed. I want the electrician to at least check all the outlets to see if it is safe to use.

Today is the third day we have been here. My feelings towards this place have not changed. I still feel miserable and depressed. I have not eaten anything except maybe 2 pieces of dried crackers and a cup of coffee. Hugh is angry with me because I am feeling depressed and does not seem to want to do anything or be bothered to do anything. I cannot help feeling this way. If the situation improves than my feelings might change. Until then I feel sad and hopeless.That is the bottom line.I try to get a grip on my feelings and thoughts but it is not working. I feel so helpless.

Mahala just told me that people are spitting from the rooms above us and the spit is hitting the floor in front of our rooms.

While sitting on the sofa, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a rat. I must have spooked it because it ran into the bathroom. I jammed a baseball bat that we brought along with us into the hole by the bathroom door. I hope it is trapped in there.

Mr. Zhao came by. He had bought us an electric kettle, a knife, 6 glasses, a stainless steel mug, 4 forks and spoons. Hugh and Mr. Zhao checked the bathroom, no mouse, it must have gotten away by another route.

On the first night we stayed here, we saw a centipede crawling in the bathroom. We tried to catch it but it got away. It is still there in the bathroom. Probably behind the sink.

The maids from the hotel cleaned out the kitchen for us. They washed everything in there. It was nice that they did that. They moved all the furniture from the kitchen outside and scrubbed them down then left it to dry in the sun. I saw a rat sniffing around the furniture. Must be the same one who got away. The plumber is still not here to fix the bathroom.

It is Saturday evening.

We took a walk outside the campus. There were shops selling a variety of goods mostly household stuff, stationary and plastic wares. We tried to buy some food but it was difficult telling the hawkers what we wanted. It got really frustrating. We gave up after a few tries. All of us have not had a decent meal since we arrived on the campus. We have been surviving on snacks, dried noodles (the ones that comes in cups) and sodas. Our diet is getting monotonous.

The plumber has not been yet.

I think to myself? How are we going to last a year? Mahala feels insecure and has been traumatized by the trip and the experiences we have been through since arriving in China. I feel that way too, except I feel angry at our situation. Mahala misses her Grandma and mentions her all the time. I feel bad and feel just as lost as she does. I would give anything to have this not happen to us. I feel I cannot manage being here much longer. I do not like to walk out because people stare at us wherever we go. I wish I had a phone so I can call Grandma and talk to her. We feel so alone here. There is no one who can help us.

Mr. Zhao came by in the evening. He has been busy so he could not get in touch with the plumber.

A young man just knocked on our door. He has a plunger with him. With Hugh’s help, they have been trying to unclog the drain. It does not seem to be working. They have been at it for the last 10 minutes. The young man is not the plumber. He works for the hotel.

8-30-98

@4:20a.m.

We woke up later than usual today. I started my period yesterday. I had bought 10 packets of sanitary napkins before we came. Thank goodness.

Hugh woke up at 3:00a.m. This morning because he heard a rat in the room next door. He went looking for it without any luck. He had to use the bathroom. The floor was dry. The water that had collected there must have slowly gone down the clogged drain through the night.

Hugh bought himself 4 cans of Pabst beer yesterday night. He enjoyed it.

All of us have not had a hot bath or shower since we arrived. That was on a Thursday evening.

It is now 8:30a.m. Mahala is running a temperature of 99F. We gave her 2 Tylenol and hope that will bring her fever down. I had a cold shower. Before that I fell outside the bathroom and hurt my knee. The floor was slippery. We have been walking in and out of wet bathroom with our sandals. The bathroom needs to be fixed real bad. I got angry with myself for falling and feel unhappy than ever. Hugh has been trying to cheer me up but it is not working. I feel sadder.

I cannot get any decent good food. Right now I wish for a good American breakfast.

Mahala is playing in the bedroom. She is so good. I hate to see her in this situation. It is our entire fault.

Mr. Zhao informed us that we have to submit ourselves to another medical examination. That will cost us another US$175-00. Before we came here we have had all that taken care off. I told him I am not going to put my family through another medical and then have to pay for it. If they insist, then we shall just pack our bags and go. Besides I do not have much faith in their medical practices and their doctors and we would have to travel to Zhengzhou to get it done.

It has been a long day. The plumber finally came to fix the clogged drain. He is a young man in his early twenties. Mr. Zhao was with him. The plumber must have worked on that drain for an hour. He simply could not unclog the drain. He gave up and called in another guy who could have been his employer or his more experienced coworker. Both of them worked for another hour but finally stopped at 11:00a.m. After some discussion between the plumbers and Mr. Zhao, we were informed that they would come back in the afternoon around 1:30p.m. They plan to break up the floor and create another drain so that the water can flow out of the bathroom. The plumbers came back at 2:30p.m. They are breaking up the floor now.

8-31-98

The day after the plumber finished in the bathroom I went back into it and finished cleaning it out as best I could—I scraped all the old lime-residue and filth off the floor and the walls. At least things could be minimally clean. I was a little sore at Rosie for not helping me out more with things. Mr. Zhou came early today on Sunday to take us downtown. We rode the bus with him and went down to a "supermarket" where I splurged with my remaining Chinese money and bought Rosie the necessary kitchen utensils—a wok, cutting board, some pots, etc., and some basic canned goods and condiments. The bus ride was interesting. Though it was crowded, the people regularly got up to give their seats to children and women. Everyone seemed to make sure that no kids were standing—unlike buses in Malaysia where nobody seemed to care who stood or not. The supermarket was a bit disappointing—there were not that many foodstuffs there and they were relatively high priced.

On our way back I had Mr. Zhou take us to the outdoor market near the school, where Rosie looked at things but didn’t buy much, and then to a rice seller to buy a bag of rice. Mr Zhou pointed out to us the good dinning places and ordered some soup at a hawker near the main gate of the school.

@7:30a.m.

I heard Hugh cleaning up the bathroom at 6:30a.m. this morning. He is scraping up the floor. The bathroom is finally fixed. No water collecting on the floor. The toilet still will not flush. There is no hot water. Mr. Zhao has informed us that we only can get hot water from 9:30p.m. until 10:30p.m. The last few nights when we cleaned up around that time there was no hot water at all. He is not been truthful to us about things here.

We went downtown with Mr. Zhao yesterday after the plumbers had finished. We took the bus and it cost us I yuan each. The bus driver nearly hit a dog along the way. He braked suddenly and that sent a lot of passengers hurling forward. Luckily no one was hurt.

We entered the supermarket. There were not a lot of foodstuffs on the shelves. Everything was dusty. It was really sad. I bought some powdered milk, instant coffee, and a can of Spam Ham. There really was not much to buy. Hugh bought me a cutting board, a rice cooker and some household utensils. I noticed a salesgirl on each aisle. They each had on a blue stripe shirt. One of them grabbed Mahala by the shoulders and turned around to face the other sales girls. That made Mahala uncomfortable and it made me mad. I guess they did not know better.

We took a taxi back to the campus and unloaded our purchases. We walked to the market with Mr. Zhao. The open-air market is about 2 blocks away. It consisted of a row of sellers with a dirt path running down the middle. Items on sale were vegetables, eggs, noodles and dried ingredients. Meat (mostly pork) was hanging on hooks. If you wanted chicken you pick one and the lady seller will kill it there and then for you. On that trip to the market I bought myself 10 eggs. I did not buy anything else because at that point the goods in the market looked dirty. There were flies on everything. Then we walked to the rice shop and bought 10 kilos of rice. I have two choices right now, to go hungry or eat packet noodles.

On the way back we bought ourselves 2 packets of fried rice noodles or "mee fern". I ate a few spoonfuls.

We had our first warm bath yesterday by boiling up two kettles of water. We poured the hot water into plastic pails and added cold water to it. We got into the tub and poured the warm water over ourselves. At least that made us feel clean.

Hugh called me to the bathroom. While scraping the bathroom floor, he had managed to get a piece of cement under his finger. As usual instead of asking nicely, he orders me to find him a needle. At that point I really do not know where all our things are. I could not find it. He got into a stinky mood. He seems to think I should be able to produce the needle as soon as asked. He made me feel that I should know where those needles are. He made so mad that my resentment at being here came to the surface. I felt like telling him that it was not my fault that he hurt himself. We had a big argument because of that. Throwing insults at each other. It was all over a needle. Mahala got upset and started crying. We have had more arguments the one week we have been here than in the whole of a year. How are we to cope? It seems so hopeless. Mahala’s unhappiness shows in her drawings.

Mahala and I walked out and bought Hugh a needle. I had to act out what I needed to the shopkeeper. It is so frustrating.

We did not ask to come to this place. It is dirty, there are rats crawling around and rubbish piled up everywhere. The people just look the other way. Spitting is common. All of us are unhappy and miserable. My knee is bruised and is hurting from the fall yesterday. I have so much anger inside of me. I blame Hugh for bringing us here.

He is so self-opinionated he won’t listen to anyone. He does what he wants to. We carried all those books here for nothing. The school will provide the teaching materials.

I did my laundry this morning. I soaked all my clothes in the bathtub. I had to literally bend over the tub to wash them. It was hard, as the water was cold to touch. I hung them out to dry on the clothesline that Hugh rigged up for me.

Mr. Zhao came over with the secretary and dean of the English department; the latter was Mr. Lu, the former Mr. Liu. Mr. Xu secretary of the Foreign Affairs Office came too. I did not sit with them, as I was busy unpacking. I think the topic of conversation was about the classes that Hugh is teaching.

It is now 9:30p.m. All of us have had a hot bath.

We had a busy morning cleaning up the place. My heart really was not in it. I just did it so Hugh would not get mad again. Hugh managed to repair the toilet with the few tools that he had. He fixed the doors that were loose from its hinges. I sorted out the clothes and Mahala played with her Barbies. Then she got on the computer and played with her C.Ds.

We took another walk later in evening. Mahala and Hugh played catch with the baseballs and mittens. We had an audience of little children. They just stayed and watched but were too shy to join. A lot of the students are coming back in. Classes are starting in a few days from now. We smelt urine as we walked by the girls’ dormitory. We met a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics along the way. He spoke some English and we had a short conversation with him.

9-1-98

@8:20a.m.

We woke up at 6:00a.m. this morning. Both Hugh and I have diarrhea. I have stomach cramps. So far we have been careful with what we eat. I feel sick and lethargic. I do not have the motivation to get out of bed at all. This place depresses the heck out of me. I had expected a better and cleaner environment to live in but was let down big time. First impressions are lasting impressions. Hugh is outside sweeping the cement sidewalk in front of our apartments.

The only people besides Mr. Zhao that we are in contact with are the young couple who runs a little shop in the hotel lobby. We make purchases of cookies, dried noodles, water and sodas from them. The maids say hello whenever we go down to the lobby to get hot water. We are supplied with 2-thermos flask filled with hot water. When it is finished we take the flasks out to the lobby. The maids will replace them with fresh hot water.

I feel homesick. The food here is not appetizing. It is not the Chinese food we get in the States or in Malaysia. I cannot find any loaves of bread yet. The Chinese pastries here taste different. There is no butter or margarine. We cannot find any ice trays to make ice cubes. We are in the "boondocks" here. The population of Xinyang is about 400,000. The city services the farmers around here. I suspect the sellers in the market bring in their produce from their own farms and sell them in the city to earn extra cash.

I ate a bowl of noodles for lunch. The instant kind.

Two young men came by to visit Hugh. They are Grade 4 students. They stayed awhile talking with Hugh.

Mahala wrote a letter to Grandma. I cried while reading it. All she had on it was "I miss you very (10X) much". It just hurts.

Mahala and Hugh took a walk together and brought back a dead moth.

9-2-98

@7:25a.m.

Today is the first day for Hugh.

We were woken up at 6:00a.m. by a loudspeaker that is on the rooftop of this hotel. It blares out music, exercise music then the news. It will do that for every school day. We really do not need an alarm clock. It wakes everybody that is within listening distance.

Hugh’s first class is at 8:00a.m. He does not finish until 12:00 noon. He has classes everyday between those hours and an extra class on Friday afternoon. It looks like a full schedule. Mahala and I will be together until Hugh returns from classes.

Yesterday evening we had another visitor. Julia came by and she is a Grade 3 student. She talked a long time with Hugh and did not leave until 8:30p.m. or so. Observing Hugh interact with the students that he has talked with so far, I feel his enthusiasm. He might actually enjoy teaching here. He talks about subscribing magazines for the students and having them come over to work on the computers. I am afraid he is getting carried away again as usual. We will have to stay here for a year and I really do not want that to happen right now. He can stay but I am going. I am afraid of him spending more money that we don’t have. He has a tendency to get carried away projects. Very impulsive. Examples are when he bought the Macintosh, putting the deposit on the new apartment, trying to make me open a restaurant and the big one coming to China.

All Mahala and I want to do is go home to the States.

My first class was a surprise for me. It was in the morning, at 8:00 A.M. on Monday, and I was to meet Mr. Lu in front of the Hotel and he would walk with me to show me where the class was to meet. So I waited for him outside of the hotel, and he came a little late. I had my new clothes on and my green bag slung over my shoulder, and he told me "You look very professional, that’s good" and we walked across the main field and in through the front door of the first classroom building and turned right down the halls. My first impression was how dark it was in the hallways. He pushed on a wooden door that had no doorknob and it swung open to reveal a class of students sitting in straight rows. I recognized Julia, who had come to visit us. I didn’t know any of the others. Mr. Lu introduced me to the class, and they call clapped for me as I came inside. I stood on a small cement stage in front of a half-round wooden podium. I wasn’t sure of where to begin, and I introduced myself to the class and told them a few rules—no spitting was one of the first. Do the work I expected, blah blah blah. The class asked me a lot of questions, and we spent most of the first period "getting to know each other." I then had each member of the class stand up and introduce themselves in English to me. I told them afterward that the next time they were to repeat the exercise, and I expected them to be able to say it very loudly and clearly--"Hello, my name is so-and-so" and I wrote down on the chalkboard a list of questions I wanted to learn from them. How old were they, what was their full name, where did they come from, how many people were in their family, what did they most like to do, etc. After this part, I told them a little about myself, where I came from, what I did, and about my family, whom the word was out was Chinese. I don’t remember much about this first period, except, strongest in my mind, was the incredible sense of disappointment at the sparseness and dilapidation of the classroom—the broken windows, unpainted, scratched walls, the dirty old black-board, the trash piled into the corner of an old concrete floor. Exposed wiring, bare overhead florescent lamps. And, perhaps mostly, the oppressive heat of about 28 bodies stuffed together in narrow little wooden desks, sitting on hard wooden benches, on a hot late summers day. In the second period, we read the first chapter of our main textbook. I had the students stand up and take turns reading, slowly, a descriptive piece about a market bazarre in Merrakech. I could barely understand the students as they read their passages, so soft did they speak and so unintelligible was their thick English. But soon enough for all of us the final bell rang at 9:50, and soon everyone was flooding back out into the hallways once again. I met Mr. Lu again outside, and he led me to my second classroom. We wound our way up a stairway, down the main path, and around the same building where we lived, and up four flights of stairs, and, at the very top, in through another old wooden door without a knob. On the way he told me that this grade had received 17 new students who were "paying students" and who probably did not have the same English proficience of the other class. The total number of students in this class to start with was 57. And this classroom was almost twice as large as the first, long and a little narrower, but it was chalk full of about 50 or sixty students, some without even desks to sit on. Mr. Lu gave the class the now standard introduction and I received the now standard applause as I came into the class. I stood at the podium on the same small raised concrete platform before the blackboard in front of the class. The class was so crowded with students that they went all the way to the very back, and when I spoke, the people in the back couldn’t hear me at all. I had all the students standup and give the same introductions, and told them that I expected them to practice this for the next period. Many of the students spoke so softly that they were completely inaudible to the rest of the class, especially for the students at the back of the class. The sound of other instructors teaching loudly in neighboring classrooms wafted through all the open transom windows on the inbound wall, and the noises from outside came through all the broken and open windows on the outboard wall, such that the acoustics of the room were terrible. I tried talking to the students, and told them about myself. I gave up the spitting part, feeling bad about what I had said in the previous class. The class was so large, that few people spoke or asked me any questions. I was concerned with being able to handle such a large class, and decided that they must be split up between the two class. They were parallel to one another in every respect—Class I and Class II of Grade III. As I launched into the first chapter of the book, the students who read couldn’t be heard by the other students, and then, I had the bold and foolish idea of commandeering the center of the classroom and having all the students move their desks around me in a large center. It worked communication wise, but the desks and students were jammed all so tightly together, that they had hardly any room to move and it became stifling hot. Many of the students were "fresh" students who had transferred in and they complained that they didn’t have any books, and I made them all group up and share books, a thought that maybe wouldn’t have occurred to them otherwise. So in the second period we again read the first chapter of our textbooks, slowly, unintelligibly. I asked them questions about the meanings of words in the texts, and we did a few exercises at the end of the relatively short reading. The bell rang at 12:00 noon and I was relieved when everyone in the building soon flooded down the hallways screaming and calling and talking loudly, down the stairwells and outside onto the narrow street to go to their lunches. And I met Mr. Lu outside again and he asked me how it went and I told him that in the second class there were far too many people and if we couldn’t arrange to have about seven of them transfer over to the other class. He said he would look into it for me. I insisted that it was important to reduce the size of the second class and to even out both classes in order to teach more effectively. Though the first class was crowded and small, they lived in the lap of luxury compared to any of the other classes, and they knew it too.

9-2-98

@12:40p.m.

Hugh came back at twelve noon. He looked hot. There were no fans in the classrooms. He has 71 students in one class and another 29 in the other. Looks like big classes. I cannot figure out what he is thinking about now. I think he might be a little disappointed with the size of his classes. Being the first day he had problems making the students volunteer any information.

Mr. Xu, the secretary of the Foreign Affairs came by with a young man. The young man works at the hotel and he was trying to fix the toilet. I call him the handyman. I told him that the toilet sometimes flushes and sometimes don’t. He removed the lid to the toilet tank, fiddled with the mechanism in there then proceeded to tell me that the toilet works fine. We shall see. Mr. Xu was helpful. He told us to contact him if the toilet acts up again. He was concerned about our diet. I told him I might consider catering if I can find someone to do it for me.

I made Mahala start her schoolwork. I really do not know if this will work out. I seriously doubt it but on the other hand I do not want her to fall too far back on her schoolwork. We shall see.

I just had another argument with Hugh. Most of our arguments seem to lately center on finances. He has accused me that I have a bad attitude. He said that I was rude to his students who came by to visit. What does he want? It has been a heck of a week for me. He is thinking of buying audiotapes, yesterday it was magazines. Does he think money grows on trees? He should ask the school to get those things for the students instead of buying it himself. I just do not understand why we have to supply all this stuff. We have spent enough money just by coming here. My attitude will improve when our situation here improves.

I feel bad, feeling miserable. Mahala and I talked about it. She hates it when Hugh and I argue. I asked her if she wanted to go home with me. She said only if Daddy comes too. I was thinking if Mahala agreed we could stay with Grandma, Mahala could go to Leffingwell and I could find a job. I could support Mahala then.

Our marriage is really going through a testy time right now. Hugh has always told me that if I cannot take the heat I should bail out. I am seriously considering it right now. I know Mahala will never go for it. I can never leave Mahala; it would kill me if I did. I feel trapped. Here I feel alienated and I have never felt like that since I married Hugh.

I feel those students who come and visit have an ulterior motive for doing so. They want something from us and were not too shy about asking for it too. First they made Hugh comfortable first by saying all the right things then they ask. One cannot blame them. They have so little and this is the only way to acquire things that will help them get ahead. I am just seeing them for what they are. Hugh thinks that they are sincere, they may be. I hate to burst his bubble.

I understand from Hugh that the classes are pretty bare and the students do not have a lot. Knowing Hugh, he will probably let the students consume all his time. He is planning to set aside his time to conduct interviews and also to work on the computers. It is beginning. Pretty soon the students will be running his life.

We just ate dinner. Eggs, rice and noodles again. I am tired of this diet. Our cash is running out. We will have to go downtown to change our travelers’ checks soon. I wish I could call Mom. It would help so much.

In the afternoon I came back to our little rooms without much to do. I began entering the names of all my students that were written on papers into my computer to make up class lists and a database for them. I had no other schedule of classes to take until the following day, when I was to teach a Journalism class in the morning, to grade four. I was intent, knowing now what I was to teach, on trying to figure out desperately how I was to effectively teach it. Fortunately, my grade one oral classes were not to start for about a month later—the Fresh men students not yet arrived to their new school. In the afternoon, Julia showed up to sit with us almost the entire day, and I found her chronic annoyance a little bit frustrating as I needed time to put together whatever syllabus materials I could muster. In the evening, I remember, one of the students in my second grade III class showed up at the door—his name was Apollo and I remembered him clearly from the class as talking more loudly than most of the others, and seeming more seriously intent on his studies. We talked for a while, and I advised him and any of the new students he knew to consider moving over to the other class that had fewer students and would be less crowded. He told me he wanted to become a translator in English and wanted my help to learn English better. I told him I would try, but he had to wait and see.

His first assignment was the following afternoon to go with us down to the bank to try to change more money. He had told me his room number and I went into the boys dorm and up several flights of steps to find his room. I was shocked to see the trash in the hallways and the condition of the rooms. There were eight bunks with boards and thing mattresses that looked more like quilts—several of my student’s whom I recognized from my class were in their underwear, sleeping on the racks. There was a central table cluttered with tea jars and orange rinds. The place seemed dirty to me. I knocked on the door and asked for Apollo. He had stepped out of the room for a minute but soon came back. I said hello to the other young men in the room. I asked Apollo if he could follow us downtown to help us change some money—we had only a little bit left, and I was anxious to make some more. So we took another bus downtown to where the bank was, but we had to wait for the bank to reopen after the extended afternoon lunch break. The bank resumed hours at 3:00 P.M. We went in to try to change my traveler’s cheques but they told us they couldn’t change them. It never dawned on me that American Express traveler’s cheques would not be acceptable in China. They told me it would take several months to clear, and they would have to be held in the interim. I got Apollo to ask if any other place changed the cheques, and the teller told us he didn’t know. I was more than a little mad at the situation, and becoming even more angry at Mr. Zhou for not telling us beforehand that our travelers cheques were no good. That way, I had less than a 100 yuan left, and about 1000 U.S. in traveler’s cheques, and I carried those 10 $100 dollar traveler’s cheques for the remainder of the year in my wallet, and did not use them until after our return to the United States. Desperate to change them, we found a fairly nice looking Hotel nearby, and I went in with Apollo to the reception desk and he asked them if they changed American Express travelers cheques. They told us no. I pulled out my "Gold Card" and asked them if they had ever seen such a card before. The girl told Apollo she had never seen such a credit card before. At that point, I gave up trying, and half defeated, we made our way back on the bus to the school. We stopped at a small bakery near the bus stop on the other side of the busy intersection, and there we bought some bread to take back with us.

9-3-98

@9:20a.m.

Well, it has been six days since we came here. It has been the longest six days of my life.

Mahala is practicing her cursive writing. Hugh is in class and won’t be back until at least past ten. He has a cold. No wonder, all those cold showers. Wonder what we are going to do today. There are no bookstores or shops that we could go in and just browse.

The school is like a community in itself. We are isolated within the school campus. I should try and send Mom’s letter off but I lack motivation. It is going to be a long year and uphill all the way.We gave up everything to be here. We have lost more than we have gained.

Mahala is doing her math. I hope this home schooling business works out for her.

Hugh just came back. In his third class he has 71 students.

It is 4:55p.m.

We went down to the city to cash our travelers’ checks. We had Apollo with us. The bank only takes American dollars and will not accept the checks. If we cash the checks it will take us at least 40 days before we receive the cash. This is a bunch of baloney. I have never heard of a bank refusing to cash American Express Travelers checks. That leaves us in a bind. Hugh does not get paid until the end of next week and we have only 68.70 yuan to our name. We even tried to cash the checks at one of the bigger hotels downtown. The receptionist has not even seen a travelers check before. We showed her the American Express card. She had not seen it either. She could not help us. That was a wasted trip.

Mr. Zhao did not inform us that in Xinyang one couldn’t cash travelers checks. You need to go to Zhengzhou for that. Really, this just about ices the cake here.

We tried to call the American Express Office in China but could not get through. We tried to call Mom, could not get through either. I guess we will have to call from the Foreign Office. We came back to the hotel feeling very disappointed.

I walked out to our patio and found that someone had taken a "crap" in the yard. They had covered it with a piece of paper. Hugh disposed of it. He scooped it up with a piece of hard cardboard and flushed it down the toilet. I forgot; the toilet still does not flush. You take a bucket of water and pour it down the hole. That takes care of everything in there.

There was also a pile of bricks that had been piled up in a corner. It looked like someone started a fire in it. There were ashes about.

While we were cleaning up the patio, Hugh told me what he saw in the men’s dormitory. It was dirty inside. There was trash all along the hallways. There are 8 students to one room. They each slept on a bunk bed. In the room there is a long table. It must be the same in the ladies dorm too. We have to put up with the trash, dust, garbage, flies and the smell. There is simply no avoiding it.

We still need to get our hands on some money so that we can survive the next week until Hugh gets his paycheck. We need to work on that still. I wish I was back in the States and this is all a bad dream.

It is in the evening now.

I feel that I have been deceived. Hugh has told me that his plans are to be here for only one semester. But every time he has a visitor the plans change. He has all this ideas that he wants to implement. I know those plans will take more than a semester to get off the ground. So, are we staying or going? The way I feel right now, I wish I could be back before Christmas. The semester does not end till late January. I do not think I can last that long.

We were sitting outside this evening. It was windy. We heard a loud thud. It landed right outside the door and Mahala was standing right there. A piece of concrete or slate had fallen off from the upper floors and had taken a piece off a branch of a bush. Luckily Mahala was not hurt.

I saw a schizophrenic while in town today. The woman seemed to be in her twenties. She had a bruised left eye and was not too clean. There was one on the campus too. He was a man and had a grin on his face. He seemed in a world of his own. I wonder if he was the one who crapped in the backyard?

I feel hopeless. I had a job but had to leave that. I feel we always have to do what Hugh wants and needs. Never Mahala’s or mine. I know he means well but there is no future in this place. I feel lonely, hungry and unhappy.

When we got back to our rooms in the late afternoon, I found that someone had left a feces covered with a small piece of paper on the cement behind our apartment, and had built a little fire hearth to burn a little collected rubbish. As Mahala was outside, a huge piece of cement stucco and tile fell from the upper floor of the building and crashed down to the ground, almost hitting her in the head at the moment she crossed from the doorway to outside. It landed within a foot of her, and would have surely killed her if she were there at the wrong time. I looked up and noticed many loose tiles on the top floor of the building. I picked up the tile and went back up to Mr. Zhou’s office and explained the circumstances to them. Mr. Xu thought I implied that someone may have knocked the tile off on purpose, but I explained to him that I thought it was probably the wind that blew off the loose tiles. So they sent someone from the hotel to the top floor and they knocked off the loose tile. I brought them down to show them the place where the feces had been. He explained that it was probably a child or a worker who did it. I felt a little perturbed for the security of my family there.

I was at a loss of what to do for money and I immediately went up to Mr. Zhou’s office to ask him if I could place a telephone call to my Mom. He was reluctant to do so and kept insisting that I could pick up my pay early, but I insisted, because I felt uncomfortable without an extra reserve of cash in case we had to pull a precipitated "great escape" and needed the case for this and he made an appointment to meet back in his office after my morning classes the following day to put the call through. Rosie and Mahala met me at his office at about 1200 A.M. and we placed the telephone call. I believe we woke my mom up in the middle of the morning. Rosie immediately broke down in tears, and so did Mahala. The Chinese men found it a little embarrassing and one of them made a quiet exit from the room. I talked briefly to my mom and told her to express to us a couple of hundred dollars as soon as possible, explaining briefly our situation. Mr. Zhou afterward insisted that I could collect my first months pay early, and he made an appointment to go with me after my first class the following morning to pick up my pay. I was grateful for him to do this, but was a little embarrassed. The next morning I met Mr. Zhou in front of his office after my first class and I went with him for the first time to the small disbursing office at the top of the hill. The ladies in the office were friendly, and talked to us, as they cut the pay. I had to sign a form I didn’t know what it said, and Mr. Zhou quickly explained it to me without leaving much time for any questions. I collected my first pay check about two weeks before schedule, and felt more at ease about our situation only after that.

The second class was not unlike the first one. Things went well, as I had all the students stand up and reintroduce themselves, with a little more enthusiasm and command presence, and I used my little tape recorder and taped their voices, and then played it back for them. They were quite embarrassed to hear their voices and laughed at it. We read the same first chapter over again, and worked on the exercises at the end of the chapter.