friday night there were roses

Up at five and six to manipulate hunks of dough make it feel like I'm working hard, but then at 7 and 8 I'm back in bed with that giant tattered gray sweatshirt that once was Robbie's and the laptop, appropriately, on my lap.

As expected, the teaching schedule has been changed one week in and Tuesday I will have an unknown percentage of new students and never see again an unknown percentage of the old ones. They rearranged everything so the classes are thirty-some rather than forty-some. Which is really good. The slightly more questionable detail is how one class gets four straight periods on Thursday afternoon. That's 2:30 - 5:30 and a heck of a lot of oral English. We're going to have to do yoga in the middle or something. I can't really imagine that it will work well. I pushed a bit to see if schedules could be switched, but Mr. Z the secretary wasn't budging.

LW and a cousin talked and talked and talked over tea by the river. ZX listened, mostly, and occasionally wondered over to stare at the water. I pulled my chair out into direct bright sun and studied radicals. Thought I should like to tell Tim about 思, which is a field over a heart, and means to consider or miss deeply.

After xifan at ZX's parents' we lingered a bit longer than usual in the dining room drinking in the warm, scented air of spring by the window. The TV showed long shots of HuJintao being greeted in Mali by great cheering crowds. The Chinese expats and then Malians dancing on the sides of the street. We didn't actually hear how much money had been loaned, only that it is interest free, and probably includes plenty of infrastructure projects (for Chinese contractors and workers to complete, of course). ZX's father said with humor, "My money goes to Africa, and your money goes to the banks in the US" . . . then tied on the apron and moved into the kitchen to wash the dishes.