What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Sans gmail. Sans hotmail. Sans working internet. Welcome to Chinanet.

The Indo vols have been dealing with sickness, the Viet Nam vols with heat and us China vols with lack of gmail. Now who’s got the brunt end of the stick (holla LNY)?

I have a couple of offline posts waiting to see the light of the internet- but they are stuck on my computer- and I’m at a wang ba typing on a keyboard so old the keys are rubbed off. I didn’t realize that I have decent typing skills until now.

Walked the Nanjing Wall today. A stub of it at least. We walked 15 miles - well maybe not that far but figure in the heat index, careening cars and mopeds and the non-OSHA compliant sidewalks and you’ve hit 15 easy. The city wall surrounds a big lake with a couple of big islands in it. They call it an oxygen park - and just happen to charge 20 RMB to get in. I skipped that and walked around the lake next to the wall. We met up a bit later and walked down the top of the wall with a really amazing view of the city and wall. Maybe when the Chinanet is working again I can post a boatload of pics.

Class is pretty intense - we are blowing through vocab like it’s going out of style - and my retention rate is in the dumps. Let’s not even get into it that learning a romance language is a walk in the park for the simple fact that they share a bloody alphabet. 12,000 characters later I might be able to read a newspaper. A morning commute newspaper. A real one would take another 35 years. Try 16 differant meanings for the word shi counting only 1 of 4 tones. That small, pitiful wimpering noise you might hear is my brain. Ouch.

Going to try to deal with internet woes tommorow - it will be a full day afair - I might even go into battle with the word “internet” in my vocabulary. I don’t expect it will help much.

Wish me luck.