Thanks China Daily, for restoring my morning ritual

I think I am pretty adaptable. I lived in Japan many years ago and felt that, when I moved to China to work as a teacher, I was prepared to find a vastly different world than the Hawaiian island home I'd left behind. But I seriously missed one ritual I had maintained all my life; reading the newspaper with my morning cup of coffee. Real coffee, not those horrible instant packets. A newspaper in English, not in Chinese. Neither was available and I felt both losses keenly.

After a few years of having access to only an occasional paper from Hong Kong, the local China Post kiosk began to carry the China Daily. I immediately made an arrangement to have one saved for me every day. I now had a local source for real coffee and was delighted to reinstate my beloved morning cuppa and paper.

I began to clip items that would inform my students and began to be on the lookout for those which would instigate discussion. Most articles I clip are used for classroom reading. We cover new vocabulary and then we discuss the topic.