Jan 1 Caught up!

Happy new year, happy 2008!
Apologies for the poor updating, I don’t have much time and this keyboard is whack. But! I am in Hong Kong which means I can access WordPress for the first time in weeks and weeks. Thanks, relatively free media. Man I love the internet. Anyways, tons of updates for you to [...]

Dec 29 Holidaaay

Merry Christmas (and a belated Happy Chanukah, and Happy Solstice, Happy Eid, and Happy Kwanzaa; Happy Diwali? When is Diwali? January?)
I had to work a half day Saturday, then had Sunday off, then had to work Christmas Eve. The two days off, then work again Thursday, Friday and half of Saturday, then Sunday, Monday, and [...]

Dec 21 “Have a holly jolly Christmas”, and we do mean that in the command verb form

Just had a really awkward “tea session” at school. If you’re thinking “tea session” sounds friendly, yet authoritative, you’re right. It was too acknowledge the “two important festivals” for the foreign teachers, Christmas and New Year’s. We had tea, ate some fruit, got some gifts, listened to a little welcome speech and then Mr. Li [...]

Dec 16 Twenty four

Don’t have much time to write at the moment. Birthday was pretty decent. A few of the teachers from school, Lindsey and I went out to a nice little out of the way place for dinner and drinking. The Sleeping Wood, and it’s one place in central Guangzhou “without loud wankers” as James put it [...]

Dec 10 Winning over the cafeteria ladies

I knew today would be a good day, because it started with a triumph at breakfast. As I’ve said, you get three items for breakfast, plus soy milk and congee (if you like congee, which I very much do not). I usually get a tea-boiled egg and two buns. So, first of all, I noticed [...]

Dec 9 Open Day is over!

Well, the open day was Saturday, and I think it went pretty well overall. I took lots of pictures, which I’ll try to put up soonish. Speaking of which, there are also pictures of the trip to Macau up now. The debate went pretty poorly; or rather, it went just as I thought it would. [...]

Nov 30, some summary

Well, WordPress isn’t working, so I’m writing less, which is too bad, because I’m not thinking any less. I’ll keep writing posts and put them up whenever I can I guess. Let’s give a quick roundup about my love-hate relationship with China (all of which are extremely typical of expats in China):
What I love about [...]

Nov 26 Decisions are made. Not my decisions, unfortunately.

Well, my students saq me angry. Very angry. Very quietly angry.
My students did choose to debate gay marriage. My students did spend a week and half preparing research and arguements. The school did decide that they COULD NOT debate such a thing. Nelson (my Chinese teacher “assistant” in this matter) did have a meeting with [...]

Nov 25 Night owl

Been going out recently with some teachers I work with, mostly Katherine and Steven, who are quite different but both quite fun. I forgot, living in Iowa, that I rather enjoy staying out until 2, 3, 4 in the morning. That one time we stayed out until 7:30am was a bit much, but it happens.
We [...]

Nov 22 How’s the food?

A favorite conversation topic in my family is food. We like to talk about food we’ve eaten recently, food we’d like to eat, restaurants we’ve been to recently, restaurants we’d like to eat at soon, different places where we’ve eaten, and so on. Generally, these conversations take place while we’re eating. So what do I [...]