Tom Riggle's Blog – February 2012 Archive (3)

The trip itself was not without its irritations, but that would be a different story.

But we really liked Dandong. For me, at least, the highlight was waking up that hill to the pagoda on the summit. It was a little over a km. There was plenty of good nature, larches, aspens, interspersed with the occasional park feature like bump car rides and kiosks. Also a moderate amount of people, so you never are alone - at least on the main paved wide path that circles…

A quick question on getting Wi-fi: Do I also have to get a subscription or account, or is the price of the wifi unit the only thing I need (as my boss assures me)?

I have used my father's wifi back in Kansas, but have never actually set up a wifi account, so this is all new to me.

My school here in Jilin gave us an old computer with slow dial-up connection, but I also have my laptop which I brought over - good thing too! The old dial-up is good…

I enjoyed, for the most part, my first teaching day in China. There certainly were a few surprises, but one of them was not that I didn't have any assistants - in any of the classes. Somehow I expected that. But it was no problem. As a former substitute, before my more steady teaching job, I learned the value of having plan A, plan B, and plan B in my bag of tricks.

A bigger inconvenience was the lack of whiteboard markers. Does anyone know where one can buy those?…