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My relationship with Nanjing, and my life here, continues to grow and change but now that I've been here for almost half a year the pace has slowed down considerably. I've settled into routines and familiar paths, and situations that used to represent daily challenges are no longer hassles. While I still make new discoveries every day and run into trouble once in awhile as I try to figure out how something works, I genuinely feel like I'm making a life here. I have a close group of friends at Xi-Yuan, and a strong sense of community. At school my relationships with teachers and students have settled into an easy and pleasant rhythm as the teachers and I trade stories, advice, and cultural comparisons and the students gain a better sense of what I expect from them. In some ways, this routine makes it harder to explain what my life here is like because most things about my daily life have become so familiar. But that in no way means that my daily life here has become less remarkable.

Nanjing, the City That Never Sleeps In
As for Nanjing itself, I'm perpetually fascinated by this city. Many of my friends and family at home have had a hard time imagining what a city in China is like (besides what they know of the major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong). Before I came here I was just as unfamiliar with and curious about what modern China is like. Living in Nanjing has both answered many of my questions and fueled more.

Like most cities, Nanjing is lively place that teems with activity. People here start the day very early (car horns start blaring by 7am at the latest), and the traffic and noise usually don't die down until late at night. Meals occur between specific hours and if your appetite is off schedule, then finding something besides snack foods and instant noodles in the convenience stores can be a challenge. Despite the rigidity of meal times, in China time isn't as compartmentalized in daily life as it is in the US. The days flow much more fluidly from the type of days that I'm accustomed to in America. For the average person in China, the concept of the "weekend" is blurry-most people work at least six days a week, if not seven. Days start early and finish late, and would seem exhausting except for the fact that during that day people make time for everything they need to do. Tasks aren't generally regulated to fit either a work/school or home/personal period of the day, and people take the time to do things as issues come up. Lunch breaks are often at least 1 ½ hours long, and many people use the time to go home and reconnect with family, or run errands, or mix business with socializing over lunch. People in Nanjing tend to have a relaxed view of time, and though there is constant traffic and movement, very rarely does the city have an overall frenzied, rushed feeling that I've experienced in other cities around the world. This is not to say that this pace isn't stressful and deadlines don't push people's limits, but it is much less compartmentalized than the sort of schedule I'm used to in the US. Nanjing manages to strike a good balance between a laid-back feeling and a satisfying hustle and bustle; I get the sense that people here are fully engaged by life and all it has to offer, while taking everything in stride.

One of its many charms is that Nanjing is extremely easy to navigate on foot and by bike, and I've taken several opportunities to explore its layout. Even though modern grocery stores can be found all over the city, open air markets are still in abundance and street scenes often reveal a great deal about the daily lives of people here. Although I can ride my bike to school and get there in less than ten minutes, sometimes the few extra minutes it takes to walk to school are well worth it. On foot I can slow down to appreciate the sight and sound of the old men who gather along the sidewalk of a busy boulevard with their birdcages, chatting to each other and giving their birds fresh air and sun. When I walk I have more time to smell the meals cooks prepare in their tiny kitchens lined up in brick stalls along the alleyways, and I can look over the fruit in the baskets of vendors on all the corners. However, when I ride my bike I can get past the tubs teeming with long sinister eels more quickly, so whether I'm feeling brave enough to go slowly past the fish vendor or not largely determines if I ride my bike or walk to school on any given day.

Even though I have spent a lot of time wandering around the city, and am now familiar with it, giving a precise description of the physical features of the city is difficult. Nanjing is going through a rapid metamorphosis and nothing is better evidence of this than the construction sites on almost every block. With everything around me rapidly changing as buildings-homes, businesses, neighborhoods-disappear/magically appear overnight, I find I am tentative about fixing descriptions to the city because I never know if one day will be the same as the last or the next. Neighborhoods that felt familiar one day suddenly feel slightly off kilter the next as one of its buildings is knocked down or the scaffolding is removed from a new building. This city is caught in an almost surreal suspension of time in which remnants of its past life coexist with the forerunners of a future city. Huddled in the shade of skyscrapers, people happily patronize restaurants that sometimes amount to little more than shacks. Next to glittery, expensive and expansive department stores, little kiosks sell brand-name rip-offs and no-brand items. On the streets some people drive their own luxury sedans, some people take taxis, the buses are almost always packed, and the bike lanes are a breathtaking jumble of pedestrians, bicycles, and motor bikes. Crumbling communist block housing stands next to towering, gleaming office complexes which symbolize China's determination to develop a market economy. There is plenty of pollution-air, noise, and olfactory-but often just when I feel fed up with the grime and noise, the sun will come out and the city will charm me with its plentiful trees and parks and the easy pace of life. In all of the upheaval of such a rapidly changing city, one thing that remains constant on a day to day basis for me is that Nanjing will always offer up a new sight, taste, or smell, and everywhere I go people are willing to share it with me.

Teaching
Now that I've completed a semester of teaching, I have a much better idea of my role in the classroom here. Having a native speaker in a language learning context is invaluable, and I think that if nothing else my students have benefited greatly from simply listening to me speak; I have definitely seen a marked improvement in their comprehension throughout the semester. Beyond being a native speaker, I've discovered that my access to American culture, and my exposure to other English speaking cultures, is very valuable to my students. The teachers at the school do their best to encourage us to focus our lessons around aspects of American life, and I've learned that often a lesson about American pastimes or holidays provides impetuous for my students to learn the language in order to gain some access to a culture they only know through exposure to media. Even though I chucked out my dreams of guiding my students through discussions in a manner similar to the classroom environment I knew as a high school stu dent, I now know that the work of improving listening and comprehension skills for my students is very valuable and important. I also have discovered that once students grow more comfortable with listening to a native speaker, they become more comfortable with speaking. So while fluid conversations are not likely, I feel extremely satisfied that the responses I get to my questions have not only increased in volume, but they have also increased in quality and accuracy.

As I had been warned would happen, several times throughout the semester our schedules were changed unexpectedly. However, from what I gather from past reports, Fang Laoshi has made a concerted effort to inform us beforehand of schedule changes and there have been few occasions when we didn't know of a change at least the night before. These breaks and interruptions made it hard at some points to get a feeling of continuity and forward progress in my classes. Since we only see our students once a week, a cancellation often meant that unexpectedly we wouldn't see one group of students for a long time. When one of my classes hadn't seen me for two weeks, I felt bad asking for the homework I assigned the last time we met and expecting them to pick up with our lesson where we broke it off. Sometimes I would find myself backpedaling, trying to refresh students' memories about what we had been working on and where we were going. The large time gaps between classes sometimes created a false sense that all of our work and progress had been lost. But I was also frequently pleased and surprised when the students bounced back into routine and picked up the general object of class again. Also, every once in a while these gaps worked to my advantage when I could dump an unsuccessful lesson plan in favor of making a fresh start.

As this semester progressed I developed a strong sense of the personality of each of my classes and I was able to adjust my plans and expectations accordingly. Eventually, the Senior students became more and more friendly, and the Junior students began to settle down as they became comfortable with their speaking skills. Ever aware of my role not only as a native speaker but also as a cultural ambassador, I tried to incorporate nuances of education that I am familiar with from my own education, including as many creative opportunities in my classes as possible. With my youngest students, the Junior Is, I embarked on a long and drawn out art project of making paper mache turkeys. My thinking behind this activity was well intentioned-paper mache is a common activity for American school children to engage in, and the project also gave me tools to compel the students to communicate with me (they had to ask for all of the materials by name and tell me how and why they would use them). While this was in many wa ys a wonderful project that the students enjoyed and learned from, I would not recommend that other fellows undertake such a project-finding appropriate art supplies turned out to be a time consuming and frustrating search that took me all over the city and ate away at my mornings. Also, there were certain moments when the project easily slipped from my control and the students ran wild. Often, at the end of the day the classroom looked like a sticky war zone, and the custodian scolded me for backed-up drains in the bathroom. But I think in the end it was a worthwhile undertaking; the students were much more vocal throughout the whole project and I think the chance to break up the routine of their day was welcomed by all of them. It was harder for me to find a way to tap into the urge to communicate for my Junior II students, but every once in a while I struck on something that got them going. As I mentioned in my last report, a lesson on Dodgeball motivated them beyond simply listening and regurgitating words and phrases. They also especially enjoyed a lesson on sarcasm and relished thinking up new ways and situations to convey sarcasm, though I hope I haven't done any future fellows a disservice by arming them with a lingual weapon.

In November the Senior students displayed a keen awareness of the world around them-we began the month with a discussion about the American presidential elections, and their awareness of it was astounding. In fact, on Election Day I was asking one of my classes if they knew what was going on in America and one of my quieter students burst out "Bush, 246, Kerry, 188." He had even more current information on the vote tally than I did! The students were surprisingly vocal with their questions about Bush and Kerry (none of them shied away from asking who I voted for), and a lot of them showed an amazing concern for the outcome. In one class, after the election results were in, one girl very eloquently expressed her sadness and confusion over Bush's victory (almost everyone I've met in China is anti-Bush); she grilled me about why Americans would chose Bush again. I felt a bit uncomfortable speaking for America, but I tried my best to get them thinking about what people want in a leader and how people respond to a leader's actions from different viewpoints. In light of their interest, I decided to hold our own elections; each student was to make a brief speech campaigning to become the leader of China and at the end of all of the speeches, the students were to vote for their new leader. Even though a lot the students grumbled that last year they did this same thing with Justin, I noticed that these lessons were some of the smoothest and most involved that I've had with the Senior I and II classes. Everyone campaigned and everyone voted. While I'm pretty sure the voting was based largely on popularity rather than on rapt and careful attention to individual platforms, the students displayed a political consciousness that surprised me. Beyond the typical environmental protection promises (plant more trees!) and education reform visions (less homework, fewer days of school!), some students argued for social welfare programs, health care reform, and relief for HIV/AIDs victims. The pledge to help HIV/AIDs victims in China was especially surprising considering that the government barely acknowledges the problem. These campaigns showed me that even though once and while these students may appear to be comatose in my class, they are vibrantly aware of the environment around them.

Cultural Differences in the Classroom
Even though a lot of the campaign pleas for educational reform I heard during our mock elections seem like the typical grumblings of school kids about too much homework and not enough video games, these kids aren't just trying to scheme their way out of some homework. From what I have observed and asked questions about, the education system in China is in need of a great deal of reform (much like in America, but from a different angle), though I wouldn't know how to begin trying to make reforms work in a system that is currently so entrenched in the overall fabric of society here and that has so much momentum. Students here face tremendous pressure to do well in school, even from a very early age. How well you perform in elementary school determines what kind of middle school/high school you can go to, and the type of high school you attend, along with your performance there, will determine if you have a chance to get to university (a low percentage of students in China get to go to university, although th e numbers are increasing rapidly every year). And while some students can rely on having well connected and wealthy parents who can grease the wheels for them, even these students must perform to a high standard. All of this creates immense pressure in school-our students are usually in school six days a week, from around 7am to about 5 pm. If you are a Junior or Senior III student facing entrance exams for high school and university, respectively, you have classes until 6:30pm, and sometimes on Sundays, too. Often students have to attend tutoring sessions for various subjects outside of school, and it is not uncommon for parents to give their children homework in addition to their schoolwork. Many of my students complain that they only get about 6 hours of sleep a night because they are so busy with homework. As one of my students put it, the education system here leaves kids with no time to themselves because they are constantly functioning as students.

When I think about these conditions in comparison with my experience of education in the US, I can't imagine this lifestyle. Sometimes I don't know how complete burnout isn't pandemic in schools here; and certainly there are serious problems that come up. Last year there were a few suicides in other high schools in the city, and I know that the welfare of the students is always on the minds of the teachers here. But it is hard to stop the flow of the system, and so at the moment most teachers do their best to encourage their students to try to work as well as they can within the system. Despite all of this, however, the education system here is working in certain ways for the students; the students in the classes we teach are incredibly well educated and will hopefully have bright futures. And even with all the pressure they face, they are often cheerful, happy kids who run around outside whenever they can and who like to goof off in class whenever they can. Though they would like to give the impressio n that their lives are all work and no play, I see that the students often take time to unwind whenever they can-playing sports in the courtyards, catching up on the latest computer game technology, or finding a way to indulge a hobby. Also, the same system that pressures them offers support in the form of encouraging teachers and parents.

The enormous pressure that students face in China isn't the only major cultural difference I've run across in the classroom. I think that one of the problems I have been facing in my teaching is that I am not familiar with how classrooms and education routines work here. My ignorance of these standards, combined with the fact that generally my students don't know what to expect from a foreign teacher, has contributed to some frustrating situations. I have been trying to run my classroom in a manner that I am familiar with and sometimes I wonder if that is a totally inappropriate approach. When I ask my students to be quiet and listen to each other during class, is that a basic expectation in a Chinese classroom or am I asking them to follow a pattern of behavior that is completely foreign to them? The students certainly seem to expect that they can carry out conversations throughout the period without distracting me from my teaching or other students from their learning. I often find myself struggling aga inst what seems like natural behavior to my students-students will literally tell other students word for word what to say to give the correct answer if they don't know it, students prefer to memorize phrases rather than let conversation flow organically, and copying each other's homework (or letting one student do all of the work in group work) is a common occurrence.

To help figure out some of these clashes-if there is a cultural misunderstanding at work in every struggle or not-I wanted to observe students in their regular classroom settings. In early December, Justin and I had the opportunity to observe one of Fang Laoshi's classes, and that experience gave us both quite a lot to think about. We sat in on one of her Senior III classes (high school seniors, a level we don't teach), early in the morning (it started at 7:30); two factors that may account for some of what we observed in the students. These students are under enormous pressure-that added to the fact that they are about 17, 18 yrs old, combined with how early in the morning it was, may help explain why they were so sedate throughout the whole lesson. However, these factors can't possibly be the sole reason behind the order and participation we saw throughout the entire class. For the whole class, the students were quiet and they paid attention-for the most part. I noticed that a few students weren't payi ng a whole lot of attention, but they were at least quiet and did not try to chatter with their neighbors. And these students even answered Fang Laoshi's questions when she called on them! When the bell rang, they sat patiently and waited until the conclusion of the lesson before rushing out of their seats! It was a definite revelation to sit in on her class.

A few weeks later, I was able to observe my colleague Grace's class, and it was a completely different story from Fang Laoshi's. This class began at the same time (7:30am), but the students were Junior I level (about 7th grade, a level I teach), and they were full of energy. During the entire 40 minute lesson, I don't think there was moment of silence. The noise level never reached an uncontrollable level and most conversations were about the correct answers to questions, but there was a constant murmur. Students chatted to each other when they weren't under a direct spotlight, and several times an answer would be muttered all the way around the room before the student called upon spoke up. Some students even got out of their seats to get closer to a friend and quickly discuss an issue. A steady flow of students streamed from their seats to the blackboard as Grace asked questions and told them to write their responses on the board. The answers that went up on the board were thoroughly scrutinized by t he students before Grace could even turn her attention to them. I sat in amazement at the controlled chaos, and after class I could only smile when Grace sighed and said to me, "They are noisy kids, aren't they?"

Observing both classes has given me a lot to think about, and it has also helped reassure me in certain ways. Now I know that my bewilderment over my student's behavior (their constant chattering to each other, their reluctance to answer questions even when called upon, the rough housing and fooling around) isn't completely unfounded. I often wondered if this was common behavior for them in their other classrooms, and I can now say yes and no. I think that some of the behavior I have trouble with in my classes such as rough housing, eating and drinking, listening to the radio, and playing with cell phones, are signs of students testing the boundaries with a new teacher. And some of the behaviors, such as students chatting while I'm trying to conduct class, supplying answers to each other, and working from a highly structured and memorized routine are simply what these students are used to. Since observing those two classes, I have been more tolerant of the chatting and I can understand the reluctance and silence that meets a lot of my questions. It was apparent that in their other English classes the students were answering formulaic questions taken directly from a text sitting in front of them, which may explain their ability to answer all questions. Usually I ask questions which require the students to make a connection or a conclusion about something we are discussing, and they rarely have a text or memorized answer to back them up. So now I try to blend my expectation that they listen to each other speak with my expectation that they answer questions without a text to supply the answer, and they have gradually caught on. In similar ways my other expectations reinforce one another and my students have increasingly become adjusted to them. While sometimes I wonder if it is my place to impose Western ideals of education on my students in this way, I remind myself that I now try to integrate as many Chinese standards into my teaching style as I can while remaining the cultural ambassador they want me to be .

Holidays
During this past semester, there have been a few Chinese holidays that people have been eager to share with me. For the Mid-Autumn festival, which celebrates the fall harvest and an ancient legend of a heroine who flew up to live in the moon, the school invited us to eat lunch with the other single teachers and staff members. Since Mid-Autumn festival is a time for family (as almost all holidays in China are), single people far from home and without families of their own are encouraged to get together in the hopes that maybe they will find a special someone and soon be on their way to getting married and having a family. While I didn't find a soul mate at the lunch, it was a fun meal with traditional dishes symbolizing a long and comfortable life. After the single people's lunch, the school presented us with boxes of moon cakes, which are special, very sweet, little cakes that people eat this time of year for the festival. That night we were able to enjoy the huge, luminous moon and join an outdoor celeb ration going on next door. Although the festival is a time to celebrate with family, everyone welcomed us into their celebrations without hesitating.

Just as everyone has been eager to share Chinese holidays with us, our friends and students have been curious about American holidays. While Halloween and Thanksgiving aren't widely known in China, I've found ways to celebrate each that have been fun and rewarding. For Halloween we asked the school to help us buy some candy for the students, and I had a week long celebration in my classes as we discussed the holiday and my students brought in masks and costumes to trick-or-treat for the candy. I think the students were a little hazy about the reason behind such a seemingly ghoulish celebration, but they caught on quickly enough to the concept of trick-or-treating. Some of my older students even played a trick on me by rearranging all of the desks in my classroom when I told them they could only have one piece of candy each. I gave them more as a reward for latching on to the trick part of the custom, even though I then had to go out and buy more candy for my other classes. When it came time to discuss Th anksgiving, I found that the students were well versed in what special foods are involved in the holiday, but unfamiliar with its history or meaning. So I gave them a condensed version of the history and used the opportunity to get to know more about my students by asking them to share what they are thankful for in their lives. To celebrate Thanksgiving personally, Justin and I opted out on the very expensive Thanksgiving dinners a handful of restaurants were offering (there is only one turkey I know of in China, and it lives in a petting zoo) and instead had a quiet and pleasant meal with friends at an Indian restaurant. Improvisation has been the key to celebrating and discussing American holidays here, and sharing them with my students has given me a chance to look at the holidays with a fresh perspective.

December turned out to feel like the most month bizarre for me here. I think that a large part of its strange feeling for me was experiencing the CHRISTMAS holiday in CHINA!! It was completely disconcerting to enter my favorite Chinese supermarket shortly before Thanksgiving only to hear that the usual Chinese pop music had been replaced with blasting Christmas music. And the atmosphere just got stranger as inflatable/hard plastic Santa Clauses started popping up all over the city, along with miles of tinsel garlands, plastic Christmas trees, and even a Christmas palace in front of a swanky shopping mall (complete with a flying Harry Potter statue). I didn't expect to run into many acknowledgements of a Christian holiday in China, but China seems to have embraced the commercial aspect of Christmas even if most people here don't engage the traditional religious and social aspects of the holiday. Several Chinese have told me that Christmas is regarded here as something akin to Valentine's Day-young couples use it as an opportunity to have a special occasion for themselves away from family. In addition, Chinese also regard it as an excellent opportunity to engage in conspicuous consumption (just as everyone in the Western world does), so at least the shopping frenzy was familiar. I was still astounded at how flooded the city was on Christmas Eve; everyone had trouble getting taxis, and finding a table at a restaurant was very difficult. It was definitely a time for everyone to see and be seen in the upscale areas of the city. People paid extraordinary sums of money to attend a huge dinner/banquet/show at one of the city's best and most famous hotels-a friend who coordinated the children's choir there said that each ticket cost around 2300 Yuan, which is more money than the average person makes in a month. The days surrounding Christmas really illustrated for me some of the rapid changes taking place in China-this country is beginning to think differently about its relationship to the world, and in its strug gle to become a dominant world influence, many people are embracing standards and traditions that to them symbolize the power of the west.

Even though it felt slightly odd to experience China on a large scale embracing Christmas, on a smaller scale there were many nice things that made the season feel familiar and comfortable. My friends in the foreign community in Nanjing banded together to create a warm atmosphere similar to what we are all used to from home. We celebrated with holiday gatherings that included improvised touches from home like a pancake breakfast and a dinner with roasted chicken and Christmas crackers followed by classic Christmas movies. It was nice to feel like I was part of a community and to be able to go beyond the sumptuous glitter to celebrate the holiday with friends and good times. Also, the genuine interest of my students in the holiday, and their enthusiastic wishes that I have a merry Christmas made me feel as though they were genuinely interested in sharing a special holiday from our culture with us. As they traditionally have, the students began lavishing us with gifts and I really did feel that the student s were showing us that we are a welcome part of their community now.

Adding to the strangeness of the season was our role in the annual Christmas/New Years pageant the school holds every year. Since both Christmas and New Years fell on weekends this year, Justin and I didn't have to teach on those days. But in the week between the two, the school took a day off to hold a show featuring skits performed by the students and teachers. Every year it seems that the Grinnell fellows are expected to work with some of the English teachers to produce a skit in English with some of our older students. Originally, Grace, one of the teachers who was coordinating our skit along with Fang Laoshi, wanted us to teach some of our students a song from The Sound of Music, as they did last year. However, this year, since Justin had already done that and since I've never relished the thought of singing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" in front of strangers, we suggested that a baseball skit would carry a more American theme (even if it isn't exactly seasonal). Since we'd been playing baseball wit h our older students in the courtyard of the school for the past month, we had attracted the curiosity of several other students and teachers eager to learn more. A baseball skit seemed like a good way to introduce some baseball basics to the entire school, so that they could become more familiar with what we had been doing.

Working on the skit took up quite a lot of time; Grace wanted us to have several rehearsals a week throughout December and we had to constantly modify our skit to suit the flux of students participating (we started with 12 senior students and wound up performing with only 8 as students silently dropped out or became ill). The experience exposed me to a Chinese sensibility of performance (or at least Grace's particular sensibility) which seems to heavily emphasize song and movement. Unfortunately, Justin and I originally designed the skit to involve minimal song and plenty of speech/explanation. This lead to several hilarious discussions and compromises with Grace about the style of the performance (her goal was to soften what she called the 'lesson' aspect of the skit, and our goal was not to overpower the subject of baseball with too much song and dance). In the end, I think we struck a good balance, and the kids involved seemed to have a lot of fun. I truly enjoyed getting to know some of the students on more familiar terms. Their performance was also excellent, despite the challenges of last minute role changes, confusion over microphones and set order, and vying for space with about 5 million other students backstage. The entire show was a truly chaotic, fun, and entertaining Chinese experience. Watching half of the performances from backstage, and then from the audience, I was truly amazed and impressed by the range of talents and interests on display. There were performances with student-choreographed dances to pop songs, recitations of traditional stories, the usual band pieces, scenes from traditional Chinese opera (including fight sequences), and a silly enactment of a well known legend by some of the teachers. And I learned that even during an assembly for their own entertainment, with performances by peers, teachers, and principals, the kids constantly chatter and move around; the auditorium remained at a constant dull roar throughout the whole show. I have no idea how performers are able to maintain concentration in the face of so much movement from an audience, but a noisy and rambunctious audience seems to traditionally signal that they are truly enjoying themselves and the performance. And now I no longer feel so bad about similar behaviors during my class.

Right after the show, Justin left Nanjing to go home for the winter break, so we said our goodbyes and I joined the teachers for the annual New Year's banquet. Professor Cunningham and his family were in Nanjing for the winter break while he taught a short course at the university, and they were able to come to the banquet as well. Just like the banquet at the beginning of the school year, all 300 teachers and administrators were at this banquet and it was filled with speeches and boisterous rounds of toasting. Having the opportunity to share a good meal and jolly moods was a wonderful way to start winding down the school year, but I noticed that things ended more quickly than usual as teachers rushed off to get home to their families and to start preparing end of the year exams.

Since Justin left a little early to get back to the US, I took over both of our classes for the last week we were supposed to teach. In order to handle 50 students at once, and as an end of semester treat, I showed a Christmas movie to the kids. I also made the mistake of handing out during the movie end-of-the-semester surveys asking what the students liked about class, what they want to learn about next semester, etc. Of course, the majority of answers indicated that watching the movie was their favorite part, and next semester we should watch more movies! In one way, I liked having the combined classes because it gave me a chance to get to see some of my new students for next semester. But I also felt that it was sort of a lousy way to wrap up the semester with my classes in the sense that we didn't get to talk together about the past semester. I didn't even get to have a real 'last class' with my Junior II's because the school gave me a surprise New Year's holiday that Monday (I think maybe the whole school had a break).

And then I had to face the daunting task of grading-a thoroughly frustrating and enlightening experience. I've discovered some flaws in my system that I hope to work out next semester, but beyond that, putting a 'final grade' to our work this semester has been a truly delicate mission. In evaluating something as intangible as spoken language there is always a struggle to be fair and impartial, but when it comes down to it, it is a judgment made based on rushed and uneven exposure to my student's skills and development (hard to get every student to talk enough to evaluate every class in under 40 minutes). I also had homework and test grades to factor in, but I didn't want to give them too much weight since these don't necessarily give an accurate picture of a student's speaking and listening skills. Grading has literally taken me days to work out, and I'm glad to be done-I also think I came up with accurate evaluations despite the flaws in my grading system. In addition, I had time to reflect on how to impr ove my teaching for next semester. I think that a lot of the flaws in my grading system can be ironed out if I make my expectations explicitly clear to the students at the beginning of next semester. If I can also incorporate more of the discoveries I made about teaching and language learning this semester, I hope to make next semester even more productive.

Although my students still have school, they won't have my English class while they prepare for final exams. So with the end of my semester comes my winter break, and I plan on heading off to discover new parts of China. I think that travel is a great way to start a new year; I'm looking forward to the challenge of traveling and the opportunities it brings for me to push the limits of my comfort zones here, and to boost my confidence with all that I have already learned. I'm also looking forward to returning to Nanjing and continuing and improving upon my life here as a teacher, a student, and a friend. And as always, I'll be thinking about everyone back home. I hope everyone has a wonderful new year.