Internet Woes!

Not all Internet is created equal. And by that I mean that the security in China leaves something to be desired. For the past week I've been fighting with my computer trying to figure out whether the Internet problems I'm having are spyware, censorship, or a virus. Anyway, I thought I would pass along some helpful knowledge from friends who I have consulted on my computer problems. There are two good, free programs to download in addition to a regular virus scan if your computer is having problems (or if you want to prevent it from having problems.) The first is called Ad-Aware and is something I've been using for several years. The free version is a pain because you can't set it up to automatically scan periodically but the program works great. I try to scan my systems both in the US and in China about once a week and pretty much always find something. The other program is new to me, and is called Spybot- Search & Destroy. If you're a computer person you've undoubtedly already heard, and probably used, both of these programs. For those of you more like me, who don't know what to do when the computer doesn't behave except pray, hopefully this will be helpful.

Anyway, things seem to be working better now, at least for the time being, so I should be back and posting more regularly. Not much new is happening here. We did a presentation to the seventh grade about American culture that turned out to be a big hit. We were afraid that they wouldn't pay much attention because the whole thing was in English, but we showed lots of pictures which helped. They were especially interested in food and music. For a break we taught them how to do the wave which they seemed to really like. We left a little bit of time for Q & A at the end, not expecting them to willingly raise their hands, but they had tons of questions. It was a nice change from the high schoolers we are in class with who won't do anything other than stare down at their desks.