The 1001 annoyances of enrolling in school

I had a dark time this afternoon. The whole college thing has not been getting off to a very good start...the placement test was very difficult, out of my league, so I placed in the lowest class, which seems too basic. This morning I found out the section I am in has classes until 6:00 which will definitely not work for me -- when Michael is teaching or traveling, I need to get Sophia at 4:20, Helen at 5:00 and in between Thomas gets off the bus. There is no one around to ask for help until Monday..and I am a small basket case -- I so want this to go well. Sophia woke up today, Saturday, saying -- "I am not going to SCHOOL!" Is this really worth it? Plus if I have class in the afternoons, she has to stay all day every day, which is not what I had planned.!! Ugh! Its all the usual annoyances of a new job/school/etc. except in a foreign country where you have only a vague idea of how to go about each step. On Monday I will try to get my section changed and/or move to the higher class -- not sure which! It will be very interesting to be in class -- the students are from all over the world. I took a campus tour the college offered the new students, just for fun, since I had been living here, but I did get up on the roof of the administration building for some overhead photos. This is northwest towards our building and the temple...our building : Zhuan Jia Lou 专 家 楼 (literally : "Experts Building") is the second of the white buildings in a row on the right. In this picture you can see how close we are to the mountains...love it.

Here is a better view of the temple on the mountainside. The renovations are finished so I need to go back some day and take some more photos.

And the jewel of the campus is Furong Lake..


Sophia in school has been delightful for me, as I have been able to feel more freedom, just to walk around, run errands, etc. I took a friend to see the Xiamen flea market, which I enjoyed infinitely more without Sophia's tantrums in the stroller. The bad news is I now know how to get to the flea market on the bus, which is dangerous for my budget, as it is filled with such interesting things, and I want them all!

We saw some folks near the market playing mah-jong, which I love to watch...especially at the beginning of a round the way the players set up the board is fascinating.
I actually own a lovely set, inherited from my grandparents, so I should really learn to play - add it to the to do list!

I just finished reading the two books I bought in Beijing, and I would really recommend them..Red Dust by Ma Jian and Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Red Dust is a personal account of China in transition in the early 1980s, when an artist feeling suffocated by the slow pace of China's opening up spent three years hiking around the country. The better book is Wild Swans, which many people have read, as its been out a while, but the author has also written a biography of Mao (Mao: the Untold Story, now in paperback!) which I believed is banned in China (it makes a nice housewarming gift if anyone is coming to see me, however). I couldn't believe I was able to buy Wild Swans in Beijing, as I thought it was banned from sale here as well. It tells the spellbinding story of three generations of women --the author and her mother and grandmother-- and in particular the inner life of the author during the Cultural Revolution. I read it many years ago, but re-reading it here in China was very, very powerful.