A slow week

I have not written much this week because we have not had much activity. We have eaten out quite a bit. This is mostly due to the fact that it does not cost much to eat out in the evenings. I think that we have eaten at home about two evening meals this week. In general we go with some of the other Westerners. This makes our dinners a bit of a social activity along with just getting food.

I have been working on an essay for California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Other than that, I have been reading the Enders Game series, by Orison Scott Card. My book selection remains limited to what I can download from the Internet for free. I am just starting the third book, Xenocide. I ended up reading the last, the fourth, first. However, I read the first, Enders Game, several years ago. It had been so long that I had forgotten most of the particulars of the story.

Dominoes in the parking lot

Zeneta did go to a couple of my classes this week. I do two basic formats. She sat through one of each of the two types of classes. At one of the classes she talked to one of the class monitors, Sally. We invited Sally to dinner with us on Thursday and she has agreed to help Zeneta work on her Chinese.

Zeneta in Class, Sally is to the far right.

The monitors are students that are there to assist the administration in dealing with the student group. It seems that when a student declares a major, they are assigned to a student group. That group then is assigned a class schedule. The class monitor then deals with conflicts and issues with the schedule.

We had dinner with Sally and then she returned to our flat and Zeneta then spent the rest of the evening showing her pictures.

On Saturday Zeneta and I went into town to do a small bit of shopping and then returned to out flat. I got a bicycling raincoat, it is interesting, there is quite a bit of a selection of raincoats. They are specialized by the task that is to be done in the coat. I wanted to go and look at some other bikes. However, Zeneta was not interested in doing much walking.

The chain on my bicycle is staring to make the noise that it was making last time, just before it broke. I feel that the only way to fix this issue, for me, is to get a bicycle with a derailleur and tensioner. The bicycles here are simply not up to the standards that we expect from bicycles in the west. Even the better ones are, what we would consider, department store quality.

Zeneta has been riding her bike a bit more. It is down stairs, where she can get to it easily. She has been going for rides with Michelle and Bronee.

Zeneta keeps checking at the office about when we are to move. We have been told that the college intends to move us to a newly renovated flat. However, there is no firm date as to when this is to happen and Zeneta is very anxious. I think that her main interest is that this new flat will be on a lower floor.

Yesterday I went for a ride by myself. I rode to the back gate at the University. On the way there I rode through several of the housing blocks on campus. On campus are not only the dorms for the students; but also housing for many of the faculty and staff members. Out the back gate there are several shops set up in tents and some new housing that is under construction.

I followed this road, which is behind the campus, as it went through this part of town and eventually reconnected with the road in the front of the campus and rode back home. It was a nice ride and I took a few pictures.

That evening the English teachers all went to out to eat and found an Islamic restaurant. The advantage of this is that none of us are comfortable eating the pork, or the fish, here and we liked the fact that these things were not on the menu. We also liked that the menu was on the wall, with pictures, so we were able to order rather easily.