Less than a week till the Lunar New Year

• Some students have told me that they are in a holiday frame of mind, and so they can't concentrate and feel giddy.  I tell them that in the West, people get in this frame of mind in December as Christmas approaches.
• I am not in the holiday frame of mind.  I got five days of the countryside to look forward to as well as lots of crowds and traffic jams.
• Most of the students tell me they will visit with their families during the Spring Festival.  Exciting? I ask.  Not really, they say.
• It is not as easy to put podcasts on my Ipod Touch as it on my Nokia phone.  With the Nokia, I could do a simple cut and paste from any computer.  With the Ipod touch, I can download podcasts directly, but because I am in China, many of favorite podcasts can't be downloaded.  And so, I do have to sync the Ipod with my laptop at home.  This involves manually deleting old podcasts in different places in my computer files and in the Itunes program before I sync.  Still, I love my little Ipod touch.
• Pardon the lack of blogging.  I got a cold and and I got Tony.  Both take away from my blogging.