Let’s just say everything is still falling into place. I had hoped by this point to have a plan for more than the first week of a two-month vacation. I’ve sent countless emails and couchsurfing requests, hoping to find a place to work or stay on the cheap, somewhere that would allow me to explore … Continue reading The Plan: Spring Festival
First, and most importantly, this pen exists: Something interesting and unexpected has happened to me recently: I’ve started to actually feel like a teacher. Instead of going out to experience new parts of China on our own, Dan and I have stuck in and around Jishou to carry out our teaching duties. Class is proceeding more or less … Continue reading The Unofficial Responsibilities of an English Teacher
What a week. I’m so excited about people and freedom right now. My PiA boss, Alex Jones, got in around 5pm on Thursday. After dinner with all of the people who could call themselves my boss (a surprisingly large number), we had office hours. Alex is a much-beloved teacher of the Princeton in Jishou summer students and … Continue reading When Boss #2 Comes to Visit
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
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
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
360 by bike 