A Travelogue and (occasional) Sketchblog
I’m getting itchy. Like… under my skin. I’m getting tired of a bunch of things here – mainly my inability to form connections due to the language barrier, that damnable wall I hit every time I try to forge some new communication with someone, or when I have a question I want to ask but [...]
It’s always worrisome when I blow my nose and huge blood clot comes flying out with the excess.* It’s like a projectile present straight from the brain.
I skipped my promo class bullshit today because I was in no condition to perform the singing et dancing routine they have me do before three classes of 60 [...]
Ugh. I’m pretty sick (see last post, beer related illness). I just woke up a couple minutes ago thinking that it was at least 6 AM after tossing and turning for what felt like all night. Then I discover that it’s actually 3 AM. I have a public demo class tomorrow afternoon, which is the [...]
If there’s any one thing that’s happened to me in China so far that has made the entire experience worth it, it’s been the connection I’ve managed to forge with this family:
There’s something about precocious children. They’re so… precocious. And Friday nights too, good things tend to happen on Friday nights for no apparent reason other than it just so happens to be Friday night.
It’s been pretty dull here lately, and I’ve been rather lonely since my non-school related friends dwindled in number from two to [...]
A solid, good day of class followed by good dinner with some of the Chinese Teachers and a good drink with the other foreign teacher. A pretty good Divali, I’d say.
Of course, as it turns out, all that gathering and wearing new clothes is supposed to happen tomorrow, and I mix it up every year [...]
Crap, today’s Divali. I didn’t find out until 10 minutes ago. I have nothing new, so wearing all clean clothes and a shirt I haven’t worn in China yet will have to do. And I’ll have to try and drag the CTs out to dinner tonight, if they have the energy.
Despite my rather dismal outlook on my social situation, I find that I can always count on my la mian people to perk me up. I went and sat down for a bit of the ol’ xihongsi chao dan (shang mifan, of course) expecting little but some dinner and then a short walk home to [...]
…everything is so freaking hard here. Not that I didn’t bring it on myself knowingly coming to a relatively remote city. Nevertheless, the circumstances that keep getting in my way are particularly… I don’t know, it’s like someone’s actively seeking to thwart me.
…begins with today’s stupid cooking bullshit:
This is what happens when you try to cook an omelet under the following conditions:
1) With water instead of milk (it comes in little bags which are hard to reseal if you don’t want to use all of the milk, which I didn’t).
2) On a stove that uses numerical temperate [...]