Creature Comforts

My two tireless journalism students and I spent four hours at our local super super market yesterday buying a new cell phone, a dvd player (only about $30 US) and all the food and kitchen equipment I need--wok, rice cooker, chopping board, knife, bowls, ingredients for the spciy tofu dish Marcus likes. We spent most of the time trying to translate things like soy sauce, chili paste with garlic, corn starch, bok choy, etc into Chinese so the students could find them. They have a small keyboard that translates words. By the time we got done, it was too late to cook so I took them and Marcus and Nina to a nice campus restaurant we hadn't tried yet next door to our apartments. We had them order and we got kung pao chicken, spicy home-style tofu, a gigantic bowl of noodles, two vegetable dishes, tofu/vegetable soup. We have enough leftovers to last us to days so I may not start cooking right away. I thought the meal might be expensive but the total came to $15US.
We watched a few minutes of Seabiscuit on our new dvd player and went to sleep.
I took Marcus to his first day of school by taxi early this morning--he looks great in his white shirt, blue tie, blue shorts and black leather shoes-- but the school has now arranged to have one of their minibuses pick him up and drop him off across the street from our apartment. We arrived early and Marcus headed to his classroom, where his teaching gave him some morning warmup writing exercises and math problems--he jumped right into it. The headmaster invited me to sit in on the morning assembly. He had the kids playing some games and singing songs and they all seemed to have fun.
Nina is off to her first day of classes in acupuncture and I'm looking forward to hear what she's learning. Our language teacher--she works at the front desk here--is coming tonight for our first lesson.
Will have to figure out how to use the gym--I'm getting an id soon--and how Marcus can get in some ping pong, tennis and basketball. He's been working hard on his Torah portion. I had to pull a few teeth (take away his psp for a day)but he's really on it now.
Natural disasters the news of the weekend--another earthquake in western China, flooding in India, Gustav threatening New Orleans. And we also try to keep track of the presidential and pennant races.
More to come soon.