Course creation woes - captcha code not showing up

I’d like to create a few courses to help my son review his school subjects, he has sort of gone off studying and I’m trying to make it interesting for him. ANYWAY… On the create course page, I can fill in all the boxes, when I click create course I get an error message saying that I missed a field, however I never really did, those available I filled in. After research I found that the CAPTCHA code is not showing up AT ALL, and that’s what the page wants me to complete before I can create a course.
Has anyone found a way to have the CAPTCHA code come up? I have tried all the tricks suggested on the Internet, I’m probably being blocked by my ISP, which is sort of weird, because CAPTCHA’s on other sites are coming up. I’ve tried on my phone and with different Internet connections, well I guess it has more to do with the fact that I live in/on MLChina.
Any advice?