The weather went from miserably hot to all of the sudden cold and rainy. I am a little scared of acid rain as well because there is just so much pollution in the city; but what can you do? Last night I had office hours and my students started coming at 6 and stayed until 11 when I finally made direct hints I had to go to sleep! In the US, when you are thinking about leaving or you want go, you make subtle suggestions about having to leave and slowly you leave. For example, you might suggest you have to wake up early tomorrow and better get going. In China, there are no subtle suggestions and lingering around. All of the sudden, a student will just stand up and say, “I have to go now.” He or she will quickly run to the door and leave. It happens so fast and it makes me wonder if I had said something to offend. It was exhausting, and bless their little hearts, but some of them do not talk and it is up to me to keep the conversation going. This year, if it teaches me anything at all, will teach me how to be a good conversationalist. If I can talk with awkward 19-year-old Chinese boys, who only know broken English and have not done much in their lives except study a lot, and keep it up for four hours, then I am the conversationalist queen!!

We started to talk about September 11 and many of my students admitted they were happy when they first found out the news one year ago. Others told me, “It is sad, China hates terrorism too and is committed to fighting it and God Bless America!" I thought, well, ok, but is that what you really think or what you think I want to hear???

Many of the history papers I received are very patriotic and complimentary towards the United States as well. For example: “The United States is a great and proud country with much interesting history.” A lot of the papers have the exact same sentences and there is no textbook, so I am wondering what they have all read. It is going to be a struggle to get them to be thinking out of the box and differently about history.

I have also received some great essays about their perceptions of Mao and how history has portrayed him differently over the years. They compare him to Columbus and Lincoln. So at least some of them understood my first lecture on interpreting history by who writes the history. Others were a little confused. For example, someone wrote, “capitalism in the United States ended when the slaves were freed.” It is hard because they write what they think maybe I want to hear since history can be a personal issue and I come from the United States. Many of them add comments in between the sentences, like, “just like miss Heather said, because she is so beautiful and smart.” While I am not advocating that any of this should be edited, I still think this might not be the best way to learn how to write a history essay.

Last Tuesday was Teacher's Day and I received a lot of flowers and cards with poems. I also received many phone calls, a coca cola, and other nice gifts. It was seriously adorable. I do not think you would ever find that in the US.

My boss is always playing ping-pong every time I come into her office to talk with her. The whole office is always playing ping-pong. I have never once found them working when I came in.