K: There and Back Again

I've never really calculated how much time it takes to travel between the US and China because I always lose track somewhere between the multiple layovers and the international dateline. What the flight attendant says it is when we land is what time I accept that it is, so I'm always gambling my next connection that she knows what she's talking about.

I've been back in China for two weeks today after making a very quick trip home to bury my Grandmother. There are many good things that came out of that trip for me - like  spending precious time with family that I hadn't seen in two years and getting a few more days with my parents.... and I finally figured out how long it takes to make that trip. It works out a bit like a logic problem. If K leaves her home in China on Tuesday morning, travels to America and spends four days there, and then returns to her home in China on Monday night, how many days did she spend on airplanes? If I could turn the answer upside down at the bottom of this post, I would, but since I'm not that savvy, the answer is three... it takes three days to go from here to America and back.

Since I've been back, I've begun teaching. Two weeks in I can confidently say that teaching this term is a blast. I'm teaching a course in the Good Book as it relates to Western Literature for sophomores... at the university's request. My favorite things in one place: The Book, literature, and teaching. The students are into it too, or at least they're good fakers. The first week I sold 62 Textbooks to Chinese college students. I'm still marveling. My other class, for teachers who are preparing to take the British entrance exam for foreign graduate students, begins this week. That one will rock because it will be a small class of mature, motivated students who need a lot of practice speaking... and though not universally loved, I think pronunciation drills are really fun.

My other project since I've been back has been making our new apartment home. It's really coming along and though it's not finished yet (I've still got to get some pictures framed and hung, and organize the office, and I think I want new curtains... to name a few), we did have our first group of folks over for chili on Saturday night, and if the house is ready enough for them, then I guess it can be ready enough for pictures. 

N: bachelor, baccalārius, 單身男子, εργένης

K has been gone a week.  She gets back tonight.  She spent a quick week in Pennsylvania attending the funeral of her grandma and visiting with her family that lives in the area.  I know she enjoyed it but funerals can be tough.  Her grandmother lived to be 99.

So the past week has been a journey back to the time of being a bachelor.  Not really though.  I never lived alone when I was a bachelor.  I mean Levi and Tahoe were around.  Scott was there.  Peter too.  And Deulen.  Oh Deulen.  Remember when you jumped off the third floor….into a large pile of snow…wearing….oh nevermind.  It was awesome though.  I know because there are pictures.  *chuckle.  Let’s also not forget the hair sandwich, snow pants, Crazy Jet Fighters and NBM.

So this week has not been filled with people jumping off of balconies in states of undress. Much time has been spent planning lessons for my senior oral English majors and putting a syllabus together.  For nine weeks I get 5 sections of seniors for 4 hours a week.  Seniors are pretty awesome.  Some are already packing their bags to try to find jobs and I can tell they have ants in their pants.  There is such a difference between our current school and the school we were at last year.  We loved our school last year, but opportunities to be involved with students are exponentially higher here.

Before K left we went as a team to a new park in our city.  I think the park was called Forest Park.  Apparently they have planted 70,000 trees as they developed the area.   I liked the water spraying to music thing in one of the small lakes they have.  I’ll give you both pictures that I took on the train of the team.  Neither is too good, but if you mentally piece them together, you’ll see that our team is 8 adults and 4 kids.  Age 3 to…. older than 3.

N:Old News is Good News

Written a week ago, I couldn’t simply delete this.  Nothing really new to everyone, but it does give me an excuse to post some pictures of the NW.
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We traveled to Seattle and the Portland area for our last couple days in the U.S.   Visiting with friends was good and being able to hangout in the NW was awesome.   We left from Portland after having spent a couple days at A’s parents house (A was there too).  The team formerly known as Club Med spent time motorcycling around the family farm, picking blackberries, eating, and running a few errands.
      We were in Beijing for 4 days meeting up with other teachers, training, and new team stuff.  Kim and I also managed to squeeze in a visit to the second largest Ikea in the world to buy some chairs. Priced nicely we bought two and had them immediately shipped to Yinchuan.  For a cultural outing we went to an artsy area of Beijing.  Some have described the area as something similar to New York’s SoHo.  Being the highly selective artsy guy I am, I thought the best thing was the Mao Zedong rice sculpture.

We arrived to Yinchuan on Tuesday.

Most of our time so far has been setting up our apartment.  The school painted the apartments over the summer and, after they sanded off the rough look of the paint, left a fine layer of dust to clean up.  I don’t know how many times I’ve swept and mopped, but I continue to plague the floor with imprints of my sandals in the dust.  I think I’m making some progress though.
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