A day in my life

Here is my day: I wake up and run/walk at the canal to much waking up of Chinese bodies. Then we all have breakfast in the hotel ( a huge buffet of strange things each morning) and walk to school (about five blocks) past morning dumpling sellers and the electronics store blasting distorted music and play Frogger across three intersections (there is sometimes a very military looking traffic controller but we can't see any difference between when he is on the job or not). We drop off laundry next to the school or buy frozen water from the store, then we go into the break room to greet all of our assistants and plan for the day. We have three 45 minute classes in the morning, a two hour lunch and then three 45 minute classes in the afternoon. At the end of the day we are exhausted so we buy a different flavor of ice cream every day on the way home. Now that the kids know us it is like we are movie stars and they try to walk with us as far as they can and we try to talk to them but they are pretty shy. After a half an hour or so of rest, the night is finally ours and we try to negotiate our way through strange Chinese streets or bars.