� David @ 7:56 pm

I bought a DVD player last weekend, cost me about 20 pounds for a muli region and mp3 player. Thought I ought to buy it as DVDs are about 50p each here in Changchun.
If there is a DVD of it, then it will be on sale here in Changchun.
There are MASSIVE stores that sell electronic goods, and I have never seen so many DVDs on sale in one place.

This weekend I also got a Short Wave radio, one of my students told me that I could get the world service – so that is something I will try and do tonight.

Also I saw my first foreigners outside the college for three weeks, a bus of them infact! I managed to speak to one of them later on, when i was in the supermarket, and it turned out that they were Germans who spoke very good english. They were an orchestra who were playing that very night in Changchun as part of a tour of China.

Today I was teaching from 8- 10 and from 3-5. The weather is on the turn, yesterday some workers came around and turned the heating on in my apartment. It took three of them to turn the two taps that reconnected the water supply.

It is almost always sunny here, with not a cloud in the sky, but what strikes me most about the weather is that the temperature drops so rapidly so quickly. Come mid aftertoon it gets very very cold. I�m reliably informed that January and February are the coldest months.

Have found a good Chinese teacher, and I have a 2 hour lesson tomorrow – 8 hours a week in total.
Today I managed to order my meal and pay for it all in chinese!!

I have just got back from my evening meal, where I had some chicken in a kind of stew, egg and tomato fried and some tree fungus (which tastes very good!)
Considering it only cost me 20 rmb including beer it wasn�t bad. I think that it is cheaper to et out here than it is to buy the food at the supermarket. For example, at most lunch times I go with a couple of other foreign teaches to a restaurant on campus, we have �goo la roe�, which is a very good dish of fried chicken and vegetables. That and drink, usually tea, cost me 11rmb. If i want to but this at the shop it would cost me about double that – still very cheap though.

I have to teach for 6 hours tomorrow, finishing at three – long day ahead. I am extremely tired, infact I am always tired – I think most of the foreign teachers are exhausteda lot of the time. I have taken on another extra 6 hours of teaching a week, that fits nicely into my schedule at 80RMB an hour – which works out at almost adding 50% more to my final take home pay!

anyway, must go. need sleep.

The weather today