Excerpt from e-mail to family on Day 2 (another one)

Sent August 27, 2004 @ 19:56

it's 7:39pm right now. I just finished dinner. I ate with the other math teacher and his wife at an authentic pizzeria. They wanted to find something on the cheaper side, and that's what we came up with.
A pizza was $16. But it would fill you up. We ordered two between the three of us to share. I ended up paying $17 on the bill because we needed to pay for tip (tax was included in the prices, but tip wasn't) and the drinks each cost around $3-4 although was only had pop and stuff.
After finishing this e-mail I'm going to take the bus home and relax.
Things I noticed that I either forgot to mention:
- when the street light goes from red to yellow, the red light stays on while it turns yellow. I guess this is to make sure that people don't get confused if it's going to turn red or green if they're just driving by and weren't early enough to witness the change
- one car had chinese characters emblazoned on the back winshield.
what were they? the first character was something I know for sure.
the second character was something i've seen, but don't rememebr what it is. it's like li of li chi (strength), except has a dot on the top, instead of the top being part of the downstroke. shoot. i don't remember what the first character was, but i knew how to read it and tried to remember it so that i could tell you in the first e-mail. i guess five hours is too long for me to remember.
- i've seen two chinese restaurants so far. will try them at some point i'm sure, just to see what they're like.
- I've seen some asian people wandering around. Haven't heard them talking, so don't know if they speak chinese or french or what. or if they're tourists, or live here...

Since the last e-mail:
- opened my bank account. I'm apparently Mrs. "LJ", because they don't have the other options.
- downtown has lots of cool stores (of all kinds). haven't gone in any really, becuase i'm saving that for tomorrow. La coste, Kookai, The Body Shop, Bata (shoe store), H&M. A creperie, a chocolaterie.
- There's a market Saturday morning that I'm going to go to.
- Lots of cafe#s (European style) that look amazing.
- I think for the first time, I was really excited. I think seeing the stores, the cafes, that was great. But I also got my first moment of panic about preparing for classes. I'm still really worried about teaching these courses.
- beside me on the table, is the teacher's timetable (which I'm not sure if I'm supposed to see - I'm using the smae computer I did yesterday). I'm apparently not teaching biology, but teaching the 3rd math course that I feel even less comfortable with. But the other math teacher, from the looks of it is only teaching two courses? I'm going to have to ask about that next week, because the principal sure didn't tell me about that third course. I mean, I didnt do ANYTHING to prepare for that course. I didn't even ask the teachers at "ACI" about it. But I do notice that in the first semester, I've got 12 Calc kids, 6 Geo kids, and (yikes) 17 in the course I'm not as fond of. 4 calc and 5 data management for the second semester. Can you say SMALL?!? Wow. Seems like most of the studnets here aren't taking math/science courses. I mean, I guess their
interests lie in the arts/humanities. Lots of peopel taking "issues in Human Rights" and other such courses.
- seen 3 McDonalds. I've seen a poster for something with Shrimp in it for there. Will go in tomorrow to tell you about it.
- the husband and wife (who's born in 1980, so I'm not the youngest by that far - I saw the passport when we were doing bank stuff - husband's in 1975) met when he was teaching at a Canadian school in Malaysia. They got married in 2000 (they'd known each other for two years prior). Last year they were in Canada (where he was teaching - I'm not exactly sure if she can teach - she's here "helping with the computers") and the year before that they were in the International/Canadian?!? school of Milan. He was teaching Physics, and she was "helping" with the elementary school.

I think that's it. I'm going home now, and hopefully there'll be something good to watch on tv. (Oh, appently there's a DVD drive on my laptop. Too bad I don't have any DVD's with me)

Cheers,
Limin