Shandong University English Lecture (山東大學)

Came to our lecture theatre almost 10 minutes early today only to find that everybody still beat us to it. I'm slightly curious whether their previous lecture was already in the same room or whether the Chinese students simply are that strict about timing. But either way, today the lecturer seems to have wanted to do all the code teaching, without giving us an opportunity to play with the students until after the class.

The visibility today was … I'm not too sure if the english ever invented a word for this. I would say foggy, but fog is usually made up of water, and is a bit less smelly. We were later told that today's pollution rating in Weihai was 200. Beijing got up to 400. I have no idea what those numbers mean, except that it's a scale that goes up to 1000, which would presumably mean 'dead on sight'. We were contemplating whether we pack the tele-lens before leaving Australia, or the macro lens. We haven't used the macro lens up to now, but it still has far more potential in this country.

One thing which would probably kill me about having to be a student here are the showers. It would appear that someone on some management board came up with the great idea that if they put all the showers in one building, the plumbing would get much easier. And low and behold, a five story bathhouse, the size of a decent library, was born. Keep in mind, it snows around here, and there is no heated underground passage between the student dorms (some of which are a few minutes walk away) and this bathhouse.

But we have weekend coming up! Panda bears, islands, and hopefully numbers below 200.