Yi dian, Yi dian

I'm slowly assimilating further into life here. This past week, I used the most Chinese I have ever used to help my kids understand the song "This is Halloween" contrary to my initial intent to stick just to English so that they could hear English for the entire 40 minutes they were with me. Well, I had some kids really excited for music, others ready to burst out and sing "Let It Go", some who didn't care, another who wanted me to try explaining more in Chinese than I'm really capable of, and others who heard from friends that there was candy and a movie involved. A more successful day than others I guess. I wish I'd done more on the oral part of class, but it was a fun day and I did build them up enough to at least name the monsters they saw in the movie.


I finally got QQ, but I'm still struggling with not knowing anything about how it was set up. One of the computer assistants in one of my classes offered to help and other students laughed, a lot asked me to wait so they could write it down, and another asked me to go over the word "password" in both Chinese and English since I know enough Chinese to say "I don't know my password". Which means it was kind of silly of me to give my QQ info out now, but I also wanted to be sure they knew I couldn't respond immediately. It's really frustrating though to just be on my own and trying to figure this out when I had no hand in setting up my account. And to repeatedly be told I either have the wrong phone number, not enough information to get a new password, or just no response at all.

I managed to set up a Taobao on my own and even input my address for shipping, but I haven't totally figured out how to set up my payment options. I may need to ask someone for more help with that. I really want a powerpoint clicker for my classes and a DIY air filter. I've also heard that since there are so many things that are hard to find from just going into different stores that Taobao can be a real lifesaver. I've already found that 3 ring binders, while not impossible to find, are really tough to come by and I have yet to find plastic sheets like I used to have in orchestra. It's actually easier to find binders here with pre-loaded plastic sheets inside, which will probably work for what I have in mind anyway. I wanted to start a binder of the things covered in English corner for whoever couldn't come or wanted to go back over everything but now it's looking more like it'll be a bunch of English songs that I'll leave with a vocab list so that students can work through them if they wish.

A snack popular in this area. There are stands selling duck treats everywhere here in Zhuzhou. These are wings that have been soaked (cured?) in some special spicy solution. These are mild, but eating one wing makes my lips begin to buzz. It's unbelievably delicious and the flavor hung in my mouth for nearly a week after I had it for the first time. Beijing duck is nice, but I may be giving more money to Zhou Hei Ya in the future...

I may have a new favorite snack here too: Zhou Hei Ya's spicy duck wings. They're really tasty and the taste just kind of hangs onto your tongue and haunts you for a while. It's kind of addicting...I'm sure Zhuzhou has many more goodies hiding around if I keep probing, though I am hitting the point where a sandwich would be more than welcome. I splurged on prosciutto not too long ago and it didn't last me the few days I hoped it would because I just wanted something different badly enough that I pretty much ate it in a night. I'm sticking to arrabbiatta pasta for my Italian fix from here on out. Peppers are pretty easy to come by in Hunan and the ingredients are still probably cheaper than one pack of prosciutto.


I'm finding my way here slowly, little bit by little bit, yi dian yi dian.