In which HOLY PATOOTIE BLOGSPOT IS WORKING!

So blogspot works... youtube works... facebook is still down but I'm able to reconnect with part of the world again!  I wonder if it has anything to do with the UN declaring that blocking internet is a violation of Human Rights... in any case, I hope that it's the start of something permanent!

 Actually, a LOT of things happened since I last wrote.  Soooo this might be a little TL;DR but whatever!

I got an X-box!  They are a little cheaper than consoles in America, so I was a little happy with that.  Then I had to get a chip in it so that it could play hacked games.  Normally I don't like to play copied games.  I know that gaming companies are working hard to put out the coolest stuff and when we copy games all willy nilly, it stiff them a paycheck.  HOWEVER there is no store in China that sells legitimate games.  It's really sad.

One of the stores is selling the newest X-boxes which can't be hacked.  I asked them what games they had available for it and they said, "Ah, we don't have any non copied games right now but we could special order them for you!"  That would cost me the American equivalent of fifty bucks.  However I walked to the store right next door and bought an older, white box and found out that hacked games are the equivalent of 75 cents.  75 cents!  So I picked up Fable 3, Alan Wake, Dead Rising, Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age Awakenings.  At the store to test the X-box and make sure it works, they popped in Crackdown.  And forgot to take it out.  So free game, woo!

Pleased with my vidya purchase, I went home promptly to play Fable 3.  I had contracted some horrible vomiting disease from an egg sandwich, so I had two days of free time and plenty of bed rest available to get me through the game.  However.... I beat it in about 6 hours.

This made me mad.  How could everyone tell me how awesome a game it was if the play time was six hours? I want to spend both days playing this game and there's no way that something so critically acclaimed could be so short!  I went online to find out how people could like it and I saw what I did wrong... apparently you can buy houses, buy businesses, start families, build relationships with people in the community... that takes time.  Nobody in game mentioned that you could do any of that stuff, so I blew through the meat of the meal by picking around the important looking green stuff at the edges.  I haven't gone back to play it again, but I plan on doing that soon.

Finals week was last week here in China.  Part of the reason it's been so long since I've updated is because I was really busy with that (that and the VPN has decided it doesn't like me anymore.  It's 3am right now and it's the only time it's worked).  Finals has been going surprisingly well.  Lots of my students decided that they want to do short plays and skits instead of just presenting information, and I was more than willing to let them do that.  Like I mentioned on Facebook, one group wanted to act out the last scene of Se7en.

You can tell she's a police officer on account of her back sign.

I forgot to bring my video camera, but I did get pictures.  They had four people, Morgan Freeman (the police girl up there), delivery guy/helicopter guy (girl in the hat), Brad Pitt (a guy) and Kevin Spacey (a girl with a picture of Kevin Spacey in front of her face.  She ripped it when she got shot.  Art!)

Then there was a group that re-did Merchant of Venice and performed it (supremely funny, I have video and I need to edit it together, but it's going up), some acted out an episode of The Big Bang Theory, some did an episode of Growing Pains... I seriously had no idea that these students were so creative.  Some of the presentations that they wrote and gave were really interesting and I was really impressed.  Nobody got less than a B.

So now the summer starts and I'm ready to travel and have lots of fun!  Well.. except I'll still be working.  4 days a week I tutor at that Korean school and I don't know if I can take time off.  But there's a new high speed train that goes from Beijing to Shanghai in four hours.  I'd love to take it and go to Shanghai for two days... it's totally possible I'm sure!  Fingers crossed that I can get the time off to go.

I'm starting to get all of the packages that everybody has been sending me.  It's like... I don't hear anything for a month and then bam, two days ago I get a message that I have something, then another message, then a FedEx message that I can't tell if they will deliver or if I have to pick it up at the distribution center... It's exciting!  Still haven't gotten my Arbitrary Day package, but I've lost hope.  I think I'm just not going to do any more Reddit exchanges until I get back to the states.

I did get a copy of old-school Starcraft.  Actually, I was given it by the Korean guy running the tutoring school.  Seriously, they take their Starcraft... well... seriously!  They're always playing it in their time off and if you don't play then you actually might not be able to make friends/join their social circles.  There's really no equivalent for it in the states, but everyone here plays the game.  I got a copy so that I could relate to the students more, and one of the students is trying to teach me a little how to play so that the younger kids will respect me.  It's like biting a dog's ear... until you whip their butt in Starcraft, the kids never really respect you.

It's straaaange.

Alright, maybe not so much TL;DR.  I'm off to bed, gonna try to get some sleep.  It's 3.30 am now and I'm definitely ready to curl on on my concrete bed and head off to dreamland.  Ciao!

Oh, by the way, I went to the biggest Dinosaur Museum in China today.  Pictures and details in the next post!  (putting this here to remind myself)