It's Friday

Tomorrow, I'm off on a trip to Suzhou. The school has arranged it and is covering the cost of tranportation. My books on China have quite a few pages on this city. The gardens are supposed to be amazing. But then, all the gardens around here seem pretty amazing. Suzanne, did I tell you the roses were still blooming in Beijing. I think my last few postings might have been a bit confusing. Sorry about that. I have a hard time with the pictures and it is very slow posting them. Also, on the page I am actually writing on is different than the page you end up seeing as is the order of the pictures. For a week now I have not been able to view the page you actually see and I don't know why. Blogspot has been doing some updating of this service and I'm not sure if that is the problem or not. There is no way to contact the people who control the site even if I just go to blogspot.com it just takes me to this page that I can type on. Yahoo was down last weekend too and I couldn't order the flowers from Sears that I wanted to send to Richard for our anniversary. I felt like the computer gods were conspiring against me. Yahoo is back and the flowers are ordered.
I have been giving a lot of thought to the question of culture shock since I thought of it several weeks ago. I've asked the others that arrived with me and they haven't really noticed any culture shock. I hope tomorrow I will see Mary who is from Waterloo. She lives and works in Puxi and I think it will be different for her because she is in an area that is completely Chinese and not as clean and modern. If I really think about the differences that are what we would consider gross - spitting in the street, some of the toilets when you are out shopping, people littering (although it doesn't look like people litter because there are lots of people out there cleaning the streets) and even the differences in some of the jobs - the guards who must have the most boring jobs in the world, the garbage collectors and the long hours many people work it makes me wonder why don't I feel the shock of it all. Am I just so insulated in my own little world that I don't think about these things or just not care enough about others or don't have enough empathy to understand what it is really like for them. Lots of little things are just annoying - no online banking, you have to ask for your bill in the restaurant, clerks hovering over you and trying to sell you something you are just curious about and just not being able to ask a clerk where something is. It's a lot of food for thought and I do want to develop a deeper understanding for this part of the world so I think I will have to try to develop some discussion with some locals.
Let's move on to lighter topics. We are celebrating 2 birthdays this week. Tonight we are going to a Janpanese restaurant for one and on Sun. we will bring cake to surprise Lizabet who is the wife of one of the teachers. Did I mention it's Friday. My electric bill this month is only 69 RMB. My first month it was 811. It was hot I left the AC on all the time.
I need to buy some lullaby tapes for here. Wendy, I'm going to e-mail you about this.
All right, I have run out of things to say. I hope you are all well and enjoying your work.