I’m not a total weirdo, but for most of my life, I’ve always done things a little different. I’m blond, blue-eyed, 5’5″ and visually I’m your average American (I’m statistically average as just about everything about me, height, weight, shoe size is ‘average.’) But I’ve always done things a little
A Few Viral Videos for you to Enjoy
Time for more Chinese related videos! It seems like a day doesn’t go by without some viral video or picture being spread around Facebook, Weibo or Weixin. So I thought I’d share a few of the especially good ones. I know a lot of my readers are outside of China,
A WTF China Moment
I had an important document I had to print, but all the print shops near my school are closed and shuttered. So I had to go to downtown Lin’an and find one. I didn’t know of an exact location, so I just got off the bus and started walking. I
Solitude and Craziness
So before I go traveling I have about a month of doing nothing. The first few weeks flew by, with lunch and dinner appointments, friends birthdays (In Shanghai and elsewhere), and hangouts with students and friends. But now everyone has gone back home, all the foreign teachers have left for
Winter Holiday
For the past 3 weeks it’s been winter holiday. Time for my yearly conundrum: what to do for spring festival?China during Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Years) is hell. Known as humans largest migration all 1.3 billion Chinese people take trains, planes and automobiles to get back home. All hotels
The Last Class
Three and a half years ago I met class 105 and 106. (In China the classes stay the same, with the same students taking all their classes together, for 4 years.) Both freshman classes, new to university life, I was hesitant to say the least. Freshman not only have the
Learning English by Using Chinese
My little hairdresser was looking at my Chinese textbook the other day, and noticed that I had written pinyin (or the alphabet version of the words pronunciation) under the Chinese characters so I could pronounce them. “You know, I used to do this with my English homework,” he said. “What,
The Class that Took a Lifetime to Prepare (Literally)
Sorry, I’ll admit this is a long post about my favorite students and class that maybe no one will find interesting except for a few foreign teachers who have done something similar. I know it’s going to be a bit boring for my readers at large, but hey, it’s my
The Years Most Popular Posts (and my Fav)
It’s the time of the year when bloggers do the wrap-up posts and I might as well join the gang. As a teacher I tend to think of things not so much in years, but in semesters. I’d say my first semester could be summed up with one word: friends.
Chinese Scrapping, or Gua Sha (aka, massage from hell)
I wrote awhile ago that I had recently rediscovered the joys of a good massage. You don’t go for the comfort factor, most massages in China are the pressure-point style ones and must be endured, but I find that afterwards it feels really, really good. I don’t go that often,