(no subject)
For whatever reason, LiveJournal loads really easily in China! I have not been able to access any social networks or email. Which is nice on one hand. On the other, the only app on my phone that works is WhatsApp. And considering that I don't remember any of my passwords, using a VPN has not been useful. (Also Gmail rightfully doesn't trust my VPN log-in attempts but it keeps trying to send me a text message to my American number, which I can't access anyway because I don't have roaming.) Plus, trying to tweet through VPN doesn't work. Just, ugh.
I landed at 6.40, about an hour after I should have arrived, and got a shuttle bus (paid twice more than I should have, probably) and got to the hotel like twenty minutes before my panel. YL has been great in introducing me to people. Most of the papers have been in Chinese but the powerpoints are bilingual, so it hasn't been totally lost. Then again, most of what I'm getting is that there is some hella exciting scholarship in Chinese SF which I have zero access to, haha. I did sit through all the panels and meals even though I was really tired, because damn if I wanted to miss the day after missing an entire day yesterday.
The plan today was to grade all day but I managed to meet some folks at breakfast who were interested in taking a walk out to the Lama Temple nearby, so I got to go sightseeing a bit. Folks have been really nice to me and talking to me as much as they can in English, which makes me feel bad because there's no way for me to do the favour and try to speak in Chinese in any limited fashion, either, since my vocabulary is so nonexistent.
But now I'm back in the hotel, with no internet, so I might as well try to do as much grading as possible. Maybe even a bit of writing.
I landed at 6.40, about an hour after I should have arrived, and got a shuttle bus (paid twice more than I should have, probably) and got to the hotel like twenty minutes before my panel. YL has been great in introducing me to people. Most of the papers have been in Chinese but the powerpoints are bilingual, so it hasn't been totally lost. Then again, most of what I'm getting is that there is some hella exciting scholarship in Chinese SF which I have zero access to, haha. I did sit through all the panels and meals even though I was really tired, because damn if I wanted to miss the day after missing an entire day yesterday.
The plan today was to grade all day but I managed to meet some folks at breakfast who were interested in taking a walk out to the Lama Temple nearby, so I got to go sightseeing a bit. Folks have been really nice to me and talking to me as much as they can in English, which makes me feel bad because there's no way for me to do the favour and try to speak in Chinese in any limited fashion, either, since my vocabulary is so nonexistent.
But now I'm back in the hotel, with no internet, so I might as well try to do as much grading as possible. Maybe even a bit of writing.