The past few days have involved a lot of reading of good writing, and a few emails to friends back home, and through all of it I have quickly realized that the biggest problem for me is going to be a lack of stimulating conversation for a while. Between classes and work I have very little free time, and with those two I am either working in broken Chinese (speaking it myself or only understanding little of what is being said), or severely handicapped English with my students and many of the people I work with. Of course, my fellow teachers are all fluent in English and intelligent people, but we also don’t sit around and have the sort of discussions that I would have with friends back home, it being a work environment and all.

The logical next step here is to get out and find those people, but that has been slow in coming. I am not an exceedingly social person as is, and the combination of an unfamiliar place and many excuses to be “busy” have made it even less likely I would find myself out on the town. Hoping this will gradually evolve of course, but for now it looks like I will be relying on lot of reading and some blog posting to keep my own communication skills sharp. [Oh, woe is me, he says from Shanghai.]