Three More Exams

Thursday 2:00-4:00 Varied Majors (Optical Info Sci, EE, Warfare Technology, etc.)

Thursday 10:00-12:00 (21 Int'l Trade & Econ; 1 Comp Sci; 1 Software Eng)

Thursday 4:00-6:00 Varied Majors (Econ, German, Photoelectric Info Engineering, etc.)

Six down, two to go!

These three classes had their final exams today, while Grace and our guests registered at the police department and toured Tian'an Men Square and the Forbidden City.








These have been terrific classes, and none of these students will be in my classes next fall, because I only teach one sophomore course and it is exclusively for English majors, so we said our goodbyes and they all pledged to visit their former teacher during office hours!











Tomorrow morning at 8:00, I have Freshman English Net Reading and at 10:10 Junior Audio-Visual.  After that it's a lot of grading, averaging and posting... looking forward to having all that done!

They're Here!

Jonathan, Nathan and Grace on subway line 10, the second leg of our 3-hour trip home from the airport

With the time change and extended lay-over in San Francisco it was a 48-hour hop-skip-and-jump, and they were still smiling upon arrival!

We have so been looking forward to having Jonathan and Nathan with us to explore the beautiful country that has been our home for the past ten months!

Visit from Family

L2R: Jonathan, Grace, Greg, Bonnie, Nathan and Will at our wedding (6/19/11)

We are looking forward to hosting our first visit from family family.  Grace's older brother (Jonathan) and oldest son (Nathan) are en route... scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon, after an 11-hour layover in San Francisco.


After wrapping up our final exams this weekend, we'll do a tour of Anhui province and Hong Kong; the latter being the birthplace of Grace and Jonathan... a city that has likely changed a lot since they were last there as preschoolers (1960)!

My First Three

Monday 8:00-10:00 - 36 International Trade & Economics Majors

 These three classes have taken their Oral Final Exams, the core of which were 116 one-minute speeches... they did a terrific job sharing about their successes and failures of the past, hopes for the future and thoughts on a full range of other subjects!

Monday 2:00-4:00 - Varied Majors (Computer Science, Software Engineering, Law, etc)

Monday 4:00-6:00 - Varied Majors (Automation, Photo-Electric Engineering, etc)

Now their teacher is busy grading the written portion of their exams, entering scores, computing final averages and submitting them electronically... hopefully, before administering the next five!

Final Exams

Grace administering an exam to two of her Oral English Sophomores

They're scheduled to start next Monday, but Dragon Boat Festival Day is next Wednesday, so that Final was this past Wednesday, and in order to have three days off together Saturday becomes Monday and Sunday, Tuesday... That's the way holidays work here in China... So the weekend moves to Monday-Tuesday giving us a three day weekend (Mon-Wed) surrounded by seven and two day work weeks!

If you were able to follow all that, you know we both have our Monday finals tomorrow (Saturday)!

Office Hour

Pretty hard not to love these guys... this is the group that gathered "just to chat" Friday afternoon.  We all cram into the office and talk about whatever is on their minds... final exams, life in America, the news, suicide, marriage and dating, God and religions, how to confront a roommate who is keeping you awake at night, places to eat around campus, stress, language/idiomatic expressions, places to go in China and the best way to get there, driver's licenses (none of the students in my office at the time had one... one planned to get one in the summer)...

Cool Connection

Three of the gentlemen pictured were headed from their homes in North Carolina and Tennessee to a neighboring country of ours here in China to do a little building... Glad Grace and I got wind of it, and had the day off to meet them for dinner at Annie's (our favorite Italian place in Beijing)

The man in green is father to one of Tim's best friends; the one in red is his predecessor as goalkeeper coach at ACA!