Better late than never!

Sorry about the delay folks, but this week was filled with me pushing things to the last moment, mostly work-related items, so the blogging had to suffer a little bit. Thanks to Gina's oh so subtle "hint", I've gotten back on track with the whole blogging thing, so everyone thank Gina for being attentive (Thanks Gina) The sun has finally burnt through the fog and rain that dominated last week, and the weather has been beautiful. Lots of blue sky and sunshine coming my way!

This week wasn't too terribly exciting, aside from Friday's event. I had my classes and library hours as usual, and even invigilated an exam on Monday. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, invigilation is a fancy word that they use here to talk about administering an exam. Using invigilate makes me sound like I'm doing something quite complication, and I think that it might be funny to include it on my resume some day. In the middle of the week, we had rehearsal as usual, and I managed to fall down the stairs and possibly sprain my ankle again, for what would be the 7th time. One of my professors thinks I should go see a Chinese bone-setter for my ankle problems. I told her that I would have to get back to her on that one.


I think that Friday was probably the best day this week, mainly because I finally got to see one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, give a lecture at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, but getting there was a bit of an epic journey for Hong Kong, because in order to get from Lingnan to HKUST, which are on completely opposite sides of the New Territories. It takes about 2 hours, because you go by bus, then MTR, and then another bus, and then a short walk across the campus to the lecture hall. I also met up with a few of my colleagues, Preet and Alastair. Preet and I were all sorts of giddy, because for us, this was something akin to meeting one of your favorite movie stars, and then being able to listen to them talk about their creative process and what makes them work. She was a great lecturer, very entertaining, witty, and a little bit feisty. I really didn't know that much about her, so this was a first for me. What else was interesting to me was that the Consul-General of the Canadian Consulate here accompanied her to this lecture, and they arrived in cars with flags, all diplomatic-like. Apparently Canada's biggest exports, next to hockey and beer, are Margaret Atwood visits. She generously sat for more than an hour to sign books, and when it was my turn, I went blank and the only thing that I could manage to say was my name. I'm also sure that I just stared at her for an awkward minute or two before I managed to pull myself together to mumble my name at her. So now I have my own personally autographed copy of one of my favorite novels, The Handmaid's Tale, which I am reading again, for the millionth time.

This weekend revolved around attempting to finish marking my journals, and then moving on to the next stack of journals for Kristina, and scoring exams for the psycholinguistics class. Somewhere in there, I also managed to get all my errands done, and send in my application for my mainland visa. Americans still can't get multiple-entry ones, unless you're a businessman, but they said I could get the double-entry, which turned out to be half the price that it was last year. I guess that we are starting to see the effects of the new president over here! (You can always tell where the relationship between China and the US is by visa prices and availability) I'm also getting excited about planning a trip to Yunnan in April with my friend Megan. Yunnan looks like it is going to be a great trip!