Chou muggy muggy

Shanghai is wet. The air is hazy and the school floors are being mopped three times a day. The city seems to have recovered from its brief cold snap, and is back to being warm and muggy. Everything's damp, and it makes the local stream toilets smell worse than usual, intensifying my desire to stay away from them. I wonder how long this weather will last. It's nice that my hands aren't freezing on the handlebars every morning, but I do wish my pita bread hadn't sprouted mold. Oh well, I'd eaten most of it anyway, and maybe I'll get some more once I've been paid.

I feel like I'm adjusting to Chinese food pretty well. I usually get it at the school cafeteria now, though that's as much from the lack of a decent Western choice as anything else. But I like all the vegetables in the Chinese option, and I don't share Emma's finicky eating habits, so I should be fine.

Speaking of Emma, she's leaving soon. As is Dheny, one of my Australian roommates, who's leaving next week. Melissa, who runs the Language Center (and handles our extra classes), is taking us out to a farewell dinner for Dheny and Emma tonight. I'm not sure whether to anticipate or dread this, given the last two school dinners I've been to. I'd be much happier if the school just took us out to a cheap dumpling place, like the Daniang Dumpling chain that's all around Shanghai, instead of treating us to strange animal parts in fatty sauces. I don't want to be ungrateful, though, and I'll enjoy the company no matter what. Even though I sometimes have trouble getting along with my roommates, we're all able to stay friendly and talk around Melissa. Besides, even at scary Chinese banquets, there's always something I can eat. The main problem is that by trying everything, I end up overfull, without any memory of eating anything good.

Other than my inability to enjoy fancy food, I'm pretty happy with the Chinese food I have. Now that I've gotten used to what sorts of ingredients can be found around here, I can start to experiment a little and start cooking more. I definitely need to get a rice cooker, which won't cost that much and will make my life much easier. I can make timpano and tiramisu and moussaka, but I still can't cook rice. It's kind of sad.

It seems that my co-teacher is not going to show up this afternoon. This makes the third Chinese teacher today who's skipping out on a meeting. I think I'm going to ask them each for a copy of their schedule and start stalking them all, because I can't plan a team-teaching lesson without the other half of the team. One of them I suspect of deliberately forgetting, as she's been trying to find a way out of team-teaching ever since she found out she has to. The others are probably busy and forgetful, and also not too eager to team-teach. I wouldn't mind not team-teaching with most of my classes (except the 8th grade class, who needs the extra attention) but I'd rather not get in trouble when Spring or Trevor looks into the classroom and sees the Chinese teacher grading papers in the back and thinks I'm just using them as an assistant. So I'll try to drive it home to them that they need to team-teach these classes, and if they're still unwilling to cooperate, I guess I'll talk to Spring about it. I first need to think of a polite way to say "If you're not going to work I'm going to talk to Spring," because I'd feel bad complaining to our supervisor without giving them fair warning. It doesn't help that one of them doesn't have the best English, and so explaining anything to her is a chore. One of my 6th grade students (from Hong Kong, so she's a native English speaker) was complaining about her to me, but I just shrugged. I'm not very good at school politics, but I know better than get into that mess.

I have that sticky swollen feeling at the back of my throat. I hope I'm not getting another cold. Time for more oranges!