Sunday, September 03, 2006 Withdrawl!!! Current mood: awake Category: currently caffinating... Fashion, Style, Shopping I MISS RESALE SHOPS/THRIFT STORES!!!! Last night my mom called me from downstate Michigan where she's been staying with my stepdad in the hospital for over two weeks. My stepdad, Mike, needed some extra clothes for his physical therapy (other than the hospital stuff and the stuff he came down in), so my mom had to go out and buy him some... and the best place? Of course the resale shop...Salvation Army, baby, all the way. So she told me how she was looking forward to [View Full Entry]

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Preface Well ni hao, zenmayang, etc. Yesterday, my dad asked me why I haven't posted another blog recently. I told him that nothing too exiting (tai xingfen) had been happening in my life recently (apart from being in China...hehe). Just now, walking back from Shiling town, I decided that I could probably think of a few new things to blog about. Then when I logged onto the TravelBlog website, there was an excerpt from Alistair Watter's blog expressing my own recent blog dilemma by defining some blogging terms. So I'll quote Watters below: "Blog Lag Blogging about events in the past, [View Full Entry]

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It seems that recently, I feel that nothing particularly exciting or distinctive has been going on...but I'm sure there are a few things I can mention, so I'll do so! The main factor in my recent business has been the addition of the new cross-cultural communication class for the Party representatives who will travel to Thailand to do some kind of business venture. I spend a lot of time preparing materials for the class, but once I get there and present them with the material, I'm not quite sure how to facilitate discussion since I really know very little about Thai [View Full Entry]

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Excuses, excuses Well, I figured I better make a posting before my blog seemed officially inactive. I realize it's been a bit of time since I've posted. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth (or into the stagnant ponds on campus)...I've simply been busy with classes and a cluster of new developments. Adult Oral English So, my blog-absence began in early April when I started teaching a new oral English class for non-English department teachers. I teach the class on Thursday evenings from 7-9 p.m. The addition of that class makes for a busy day. I have my [View Full Entry]

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Update So, firstly, warm and love imbued birthday wishes to my Grammy Edna (April 1st), my mom and dad (April 3rd), and my step-dad Mike (April 5th). Our family certainly is good at birthday clusters. If all you birthday-folk were here in China, it would be appropriate (and expected) for me to cake you in the face with some highly fluffily frosted pineapple filled birthday cake. Of course you eat the cake, too, but the having cake in the face is just as essential (I had mine in September). So, in Chinese, Shengri kuaile! Zhu yiqie shunli! (“happy birthday! All the [View Full Entry]

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A day with Jason So, for the remainder of this past week, I spent time getting better and doing lesson planning for the upcoming week. On Saturday I had planned to do a lot of lesson planning, but one of my oral English students caught me at the cafeteria at breakfast fresh after my morning run (sweat still dripping slightly on my brow). He wanted to know if we could practice his pronunciation right then and there (he talked with a third-year student who told him that his pronunciation is really bad, so now he is a bit over-worried about [View Full Entry]

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Well, going into day four of the sickness routine, I decided to call the Peace Corps medical office. After describing my symptoms, they diagnosed what I had presummed: food poisoning. All due to some deadly dofu (Chinese for tofu). Anyway, so I'm instructed to eat plain foods, diluted juice, ginger tea, and drink lots of water before meals. Sadly, this fourth day of Grrrr-ness means that I won't be able to have home-cooked Chinese with my friends tonight. But they said when I'm better we can do it. Anyway, I snapped this picture on Saturday at Longquan because BBQ baby birds [View Full Entry]

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Well, the long awaited entry on my trip to the Longquan Peach Blossom Festival is now here—held up due to the havoc wrecked by the aforementioned tofu (more on that later!). So, let me preface this entry by saying that my trip to Longquan with my favorite friends turned out to be one of my best days in China. Hopefully my description can do justice to the day. Background info… As with all festivals and exhibits in China, the opening day is the always the busiest one, and any “shindig” of any sort is apt to be full to brimming with [View Full Entry]

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So, my last entry was after playing "Fighting the Landlord" with my friend Jeff and his girlfriend. That day we planned to have me cook some American food for them later in the week. We chose Wednesday as the day, and so on Sunday I set about gathering the ingredients needed to make an American dish in China. This involves making a trip to the Carrefour (a huge multi-level Meijer’s type place) where I can get things like the bow-tie noodles that I used. Then I made a trip to a special store for foreigners called "Sabrina’s," where you can get [View Full Entry]

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So, last night my new student friend Jeff called me to ask if I wanted to come to his apartment off-campus to play "Fight the Landlord" ("Dou Di Zhu" in Chinese) with him and his girlfriend. This is a game I really like cause it's a card game (so more my style than majiang), and also I'm actually kinda good at it. So, he asked what time would be good; I said whenever. So 10 a.m. it was! So, I met him at an agreed on spot and then he led me to his apartment which is above the little market [View Full Entry]

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