Another busy week.

It's Sunday morning. The weeks are flying by now. Last Sunday, we went to brunch at Frank (the upper school principle) and Louise's (humanities teacher) house. I was a little nervous about it at first, because I wasn't sure who else would be there, but it turned out to be great. Dan spent a great deal of time talking to Delinda (a Chinese teacher) about the origins of French. She claimed French was influenced by Chinese and Dan argued stubbornly that it wasn't possible. For whatever reason, he was convinced (and wrongly so), that an alphabet couldn't come from a character based language. I'm really not sure who was right or who won in the end, but the argument lasted a while.

I spent some time talking to several different people and eventually, when most people had left, Dan and I stayed a little while longer to taste whiskeys with a couple of other teachers. It's odd, because I was convinced that I didn't like whiskey, but whatever Frank had was really good. They were all single malt and I guess that makes a huge difference and we tried three different kinds. I think both Dan and I were surprised that we actually liked it!

Tuesday, I had climbing club again. It's getting a little more interesting, but the kids are still kind of a pain in the butt. There is one child who cannot follow anything we're doing and neither Bruce nor I can figure out exactly why. When I tried to teach him how to tie the knot for his harness, I showed hime 6 to 8 different times, using different techniques. He still can't do it and this is the third time we've had climbing. Apparently he was no more of a whiz with belaying. It doesn't seem to be a language thing, but I have a hard time believing it's spatial either since he's in fourth grade.

Anyway, after climbing I went to the hutong. Dan and I went out for dinner and then to the police station. Apparently, letting somebody stay with us wasn't a great idea. A cop came by the hutong when just Peter was there and told him that we all needed to register (let the cops know we're living there). I had been under the impression that because we were registered elsewhere in Beijing, we didn't have to register there as well. I was wrong. So, we walked down to the police station and asked several different cops whether we needed to register or not. They were all soooooo nice and it is so painfully obvious that cops in China don't have much to do on a regular basis (aside from pushing paper work, anyway). They even had a sign on the desk that said, "Please speak nicely to us" in Chinese. Softies! Long story short, they didn't seem to think we needed to register, but they took my phone number and said they'd call me the next day. Imagine cops in NYC doing that. "Hey, I'm not sure, but I'll find out and call you, ok?" Yeah, right! They did call, though! Not the next day, but the day after. They told us we had to register and what we needed to bring. So, that's what we have to do today.

Wednesday, I had soccer practice. It was fun, and I have a great group of girls. They're really keen to learn and they're always willing to try something new. They had their second game on Thursday. They only played six on six, which was good because that's how many kids we had for the game. The girls totally outplayed the other team, but lost by one unlucky goal. We had more shots, but since we were playing with really little goals, it was tough going. I'm really proud of them! Our next game is Tuesday against WAB, though. They're supposed to be really good, so I'm just hoping we don't get creamed!

Oh, yeah, and this week I did something really cool. I figured out how to simplify the reports that we have to do for midterm and end of term. It took me all afternoon on Wednesday to figure it out (I had no idea what I was doing to begin with), but when I finally did, I was estatic! Basically, I created short cut keys for fillng in a grid. It isn't too complicated, but I got a lot of praise for it (and, more importantly, I was proud of myself)!

Friday and Saturday Dan and I didn't do anything other than exercise really. I made chocolate chip cookies to totally undo all of the good things that we did, though. Today, we're planning on going in to the hutong to register and then hopefully do some climbing.