Do not read yet, much much more to come... blogger posted it to soon, come back in a few days!

the blogger wars have been insane; i am trying to post this everyday, but i am losing the battle. I will keep trying, but it's getting to the point where it is not worth the effort. oh well, we will see

if anyone is checking this, i apologize. i have been having a few different computer problems and the tend to meet here on blogger! i will have this finished soon, i promise!

Please do not read yet, i am fighting with blogger.... I should be done with this by tommorrow afternoon...

Pigboy( one of my favorite students) you sassy thing, you....

Yes, it has been awhile since I have posted anything. There are a few guilty factors involved. First, The Chinese Government has blocked Blogger! I don't think I have talked about it that much for obvious reasons, but many of you probably know about The Great Firewall of China, which is the Goverments attempt to be able to filter what Chinese Internet users are viewing and perusing. When I first arrived here, I rarely ran into any blocked sites, but they are starting to get a little nuts. A important side note, the firewall has always been what i think has been best described as "creaky". Sometimes you can get to certain sites, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't access perfectly "legal" sites for a hour or two. I guess trying to provide service to a country with 1.3 billion people is a factor, there may simply be too many users. Also, I believe that while the goverment is scrambling to build up and maintain the Wall, a large number of it's citizens are quietly but continually chipping away at it; simular to what you see in Other countries with "illegal" downloads and PaySites. However, recently, the Wall has gotten stronger and more effective; I think that it will start to creak and chip away again. Anyhoo, they blocked You-tube, Blogger and many other sites. I was using some proxy servers for awhile, but they were only really good for sites where you just load and read things. Then, for a night, they blocked hotmail. I was livid; what damage could one out of many email providers do (turns out that the chinese goverment, like most people in the world, dislike Micrsoft!)? I had been looking for descent internet tunnels the entire time I have been here, but was unable to find one that worked right. Finally, last week, a freind of mine turned me onto a good one, and i can Blog again! I love living in China, but the interenet blocking thing not only is a giant pain in the ass, but also goes against pretty much everything I believe in. The official excuse seems to be to protect children from harmful things, which there are plenty of on the internet. Of course, this excuse is a time honored one when it comes to censorship. While it has some merit, the fact is that if you try hard enough, you still can find plenty of porn on the web, and other arguably malicious things! Since blogger is blocked, i feel I can speak my mind freely now. As I have stated before, daily life in China is surprisingly free; people seem to do what they want. There are strict laws for everything of course, but people seem to ignore the ones that don't make sense to them. Of course, there are other things in a big- picture viewpoint, but generally, it's fairly free here. I think that this rampage with the internet is a remnent of the previous China, certain element in power think backwards. But in my opinion, it is doomed. China is rushing foward with an American-based model of society, eventually, I feel, this will transfrom many elements of the culture. From what I have heard, things have changed drastically in the last ten years; The rapid assimulation, intiated by the Goverment, is moving faster than they can keep up. I think, I hope, that the changes for China have only begun; but only time will tell if I am right. Anyway, thanks to my tunnel, I can Blog, watch You-tube, and occasionally look at naked chinese ladies on the interweb! I hope that this blog being blocked means that I am safe from prying eyes: watch me log onto tommorrow and my computer blow up in my face!

Another reason that I have not blogged in awhile is that I have been lazy! The school year ends in June, and I am tired! This semester has been easier, I know what I am doing and am becoming much more adept at lesson planning, classroom control , yadda-blah, but teaching does tend to suck the soul right out of you. I am usually pretty tired after class; less than last year, but still tired. However, I think my stanima is growing, so hopefull I will be less lazy next semester. i think i have bloged fairly often this semester, anyway...