The beginning of the END

Things are slowly starting to wrap up here, which I'm viewing as a positive development really.  My last time has been spent on domestic jaunts, the last being to a place called 'Qufu', famous for being the birthplace of Confucius.

The highlight of the trip, oddly, was walking around in a graveyard:

It was a nice place to be because you had to go off of the path to find the more interesting stuff, and because the people here are afraid of nature that meant a complete lack of spitting/peeing tourists.  I walked around there for hours enjoying the quiet.

Since then it's been a question of going into work each day, trying to get the material covered before the exams next month.  Part of the challenge is staying motivated with a group of students who largely 'checked out' of school quite some time ago, or so it seems, in this increasingly hot time - and I say hot because I've taken to running (thank you expensive Hong Kong shoes) and have done more sweating in the last while than any other in recent memory.

The other thing I've been doing is running a Japanese club, where I teach elementary aspects of Japanese language and culture.  It's a bit of a stunt admittedly (I like the idea of promoting Japan in china), but it's been a nice respite in a semester of 'best behaviour'.  Recently, I even taught 16 kids how to make sushi:

(note: this will be the only set of student photos to exist here, as small revenge for the thousands of photos of myself that exist on chinese microblog sites)

It was a fun, if slightly messy, time, and a nice diversion from the day to day.  As it stands there are now less than 6 weeks remaining, a polluted drop in the grimy bucket, all things considered.  I only have two more trips planned before my soujourn here is over:

Taishan part deux

Seoul, South Korea

Oh, it's go time (almost)