Connections and Absences

Written in one sitting in the morning…slightly blurry and strange. Enjoy…? Last night, the last dream I remember having was about one of my students. I was in the school gym after an event of some kind. Perhaps a basketball game, perhaps the seniors presenting their portfolios projects; the specifics are fuzzy, like many of

Togetherness In Times of Isolation

Random and wandering, as usual. For those of you who have read through some of this blog, I have a history of having my movements limited by government mandate. While I was living in China, there were long periods of time when I was only allowed to leave my apartment to go to work at

你是我的菜

It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve written a post here, so I figured it was time for a bit of an update. Or a summary, or at the least a few salient points. Or not: every time I’ve attempted to sit down to write, I’ve learned (and relearned) the impossibility of summarizing years of

The more things change…

I’ve been somewhat remiss from posting for…a year. My bad! Things are going very well (in short). This is from a recent trip to the plateau. As soon as I arrived in Xining this June, I started a list of things I saw as “Major Changes” since my last visit: New ring road highway around

An Acknowledgement of Profound Ignorance

Sorry for recent silence! This has been a very busy spring. Also, I can’t get a picture up here… “Stop talking about this.” Ms. Zhang abruptly turned towards me, her razor-sharp whisper a dramatic contrast from her previously cordial tone. “We can’t let the others hear.” We were in a second-floor barbershop, an upper-crust establishment

Adventures Continue!

Cliches about having not updated the blog for ‘too long’ aside, I simply wanted to share recent adventures and happenings rather than delve into some deep sociocultural morass of ethics and behavior. We’ll see where that gets me. The last few months have been quite busy. To wit: I haven’t updated since Halloween. Many things

Updates! Chaos!

Random stuff. Above pics are from a late September trip to Thousand Island Lake. There has been so much work recently that I haven’t had time to even think about updating this blog! So, for now, I’ll do a quick-and-dirty overview of things that have been happening and things I’ve been thinking about. When I have

All Things Converging

The past month has felt like a massive convergence of people, places, tasks, ideas, thoughts, and pretty much everything else. Each day, avalanchings of oldness and newness and all of the associated paperwork and logistics seem to come lashing down onto my head, with little time or space for breath, movement, air. Maybe it’s been

News About Town

Also quite random – but more of an update.  As stated in the previous post, it’s been a long, mostly office-based summer without much in the way of blog updates. However, when I say this, I start to think back over the past few months, and in doing so realize how many different things I

Screw the Frostian “Two Roads” Imagery…

Not sure where this one came from/is going to. Also, pics are random; more to come. August has been a month of alternating extremes: at school, days of intense workaholism and days of utter boredom; in life, periods of intense responsibility and of carefree relaxedness; times of complete emotional involvement and of utter detachment; pressures of family life and friends’ troubles