“What meeting?”, Hot Pot, and a View on the state of US Politics

My alarm clock buzzes me into the waking world. I reach to the bedside table, ready to swipe it away and retreat to a more comfortable place, when something catches in my mind. My alarm doesn’t buzz, it rings. And my phone doesn’t ring, it buzzes. I open my eyes fully and see it’s a call from … Continue reading “What meeting?”, Hot Pot, and a View on the state of US Politics

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had great Halloween. Dan and I sure did. This week I taught classes about Halloween in America. We went over vocabulary and sentence structures, took a quiz that told us whether we were witches or warlocks, and reviewed with pictionary. My students pointed out that it was strange that parents would send … Continue reading Happy Halloween

Fall in Jishou

You can always feel the edge of a season, like a thumb pressed slowly against a knife blade. There’s something deep in the brain that sounds the alarm, that tells you: Get ready. In my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, the first sign of fall is that good rain that cleanses the air of its summer haze and makes it clean … Continue reading Fall in Jishou

Our (re)action, now: a framework

First, a little Victor Jara to soothe your soul and get you in the revolutionary spirit: Alright. Feel free to leave that going in the background. This week, a start of a discussion of the following article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/moral-dilemma-we-face-age-of-humans-180952909/ Rick Potts gives what I think is a good framework for a discussion on how our thinking needs … Continue reading Our (re)action, now: a framework

Zhangjiajie(张家界)/National Day Part 2: Chinese Tourism

(Part 1 here) You stand and you stare… And then the sounds come rushing in. People laugh, people talk, people pose for photographs (“qiézi”, “eggplant” is the Chinese version of “cheese”). There are horns in the distance, and five hundred feet climbing rough-cut stone steps. Vendors yell, children yell, everybody yells above the noise. Then, a … Continue reading Zhangjiajie(张家界)/National Day Part 2: Chinese Tourism

This will be short–our departure time for Zhangjiajie got moved up and I don’t have much time. Life in Jishou has been good. Teaching has been better and better, though challenges seem to keep popping up. It’s not an easy task to make a lesson that gives students the feeling of learning, but also lets them do 80% … Continue reading