New Schedule

Well, the gravy train is over. Up until now (well for the past week, that is), I have only had six hours, that is, three classes of American and British Culture that met for an hour and a half once a week. I knew more classes were coming, and today I got the word. They have added three classes (an hour and a half each) or oral English. I gather that one class is a rather low functioning class while the other two are supposed to have pretty good command of the language (relatively speaking). The low level class meets tomorrow and the higher functioning class begins to meet next week. So my schedule is: Monday, 2-3:35 & 4-5:35; Wed 8-9:35, 10-11:35 & 2:30-3:35 and Thursday 8-9:35. That is twelve hours and they are supposed to add one more class.

On another note, I've been doing Tai Chi in the mornings. For those of you who don't know tai chi is an ancient chinese exercise, sometimes called shadow boxing, in which you go through a series of movements in a sort of slow motion sequence, movements that are supposed to imitate a fight. I had seen some people practicing unde the tutelage of a teacher and just started watching them and was soon invited in. They are very nice and go out of there way to explain things to me (one of the students speaks English). There is the teacher, Master Wang, a tall and slender 61 year old man who looks about ten years younger. He is the teacher. There is Teacher Chen and his wife, who are not much more than five feet. He is 67 and she probably about the same, with equally weathered faces. I believe they lived in inner mongolia if I understood the translation (perhaps they said western virgnia, i don't know). Mr. Chen is farily knowledgeable but his wife seems to be learning. Mr. Chen will often break out of his own routine to make sure I am getting it right. Then there are four or five students--a few more seem to have joined since they saw the mei guo over there learning and decided to jump it. The practice starts at 7:15 a.m. Unfortunately I can't go on the days I teach at eight, andnow that they added one more eight o'clock class, that cuts out one more day of tai chi, and I am truly sorry