The Post Modern Talko

Nothing but curves

2015-05-28T15:27:00.001+02:00

I take an all together unwarranted amount of pride in how well I eat shrimp cocktail. My procedure has been finally tuned to enable maximum sauce and zero splash. That's phase one.
Phase two consists of a practice-made-perfect-pinch along the shrimp's one unbevelled edge which, when executed properly, leaves nothing but the most chitinous of crumbs behind.

The champagne bubbles. The cellist inhales audibly. You shift you weight elegantly from one polished shoe to one polished shoe and I am still engaging with your anecdote as I chew, swallow and politely relocate my leavings. But a part of my smile, even as perhaps my left hand traces my clavicle absently, part of it--maybe just at the corner--is for this scrumptious triumph alone.

I really have no business taking pride in this.
It's an achievement on par with being able to take my bra off with my shirt still on.
I.E., most people who eat shrimp have in fact mastered this.
But so have I, damn it--and if it makes me smile, allow it.

Most humbly I admit that I haven't swam such well charted waters with litchi fruit. But I have finally taken my Chinese language proficiency interview which will go on my description of service at the close of my tenure with the Peace Corps.
I won't even lie, I tried to game the hell out of. I predicted questions my tester might ask and had follow-ups of my own. I memorized the times and days of the weeks for each of my classes--no easy feat for someone as non-temporal as I. I could describe my favorite coworker, the habits of my students (including a well chosen fault) and had carefully selected three hobbies.

She wasn't having any of that.
I told her I like to read science fiction but that my favorite book is The Great Gatsby.
Had she read it?
No? Had she seen the movie?
No?
.....
What about the principal actor, did she think he was handsome?
She doesn't know the principal actor--not his Chinese name nor his English.
Had she seen Titanic at least?

Useless.

No, she hadn't but would I kindly EXPLAIN THE PLOT OF 了不起的蓋茨比

In English I might have said....

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is little more than a Modernist reshaping of Don Quixote's epic tale. Fitzgerald tacks on a love interest, infidelity, questions of the existence of god, feminism and the Great War in attempt to appeal to modernist sensibilities, but rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

In Chinese I was a whole lot more like...
There is a man. He has no money. He loves a women. Her parents say she can't marry him because he is poor. She is very idiomatically desirable. She marries another man. He smokes and drinks all day. He is a bad man. But then Gatsby gets money. He asks her, why not now?

It was going well enough I suppose, but my whole charade came tumbling down, tower of babel that it was, when I failed to conceive of a suitable translation for vehicular homicide.

She didn't even ask me what my mother does for work.

I learned the word nurse for nothing.

Don't believe me; just watch.

2015-04-01T15:47:00.000+02:00

I had a small panic attack the other day while getting my hair trimmed. As I watched the stylist elicit tricks from a blow drier that my best efforts could never conjure, it occurred to me that I haven't lived in a country that expects tipping of me for a services such as his since 2010.
Yup.
Right about then, my eyes got wide--
I don't actually remember how to do the math or have a base sense of when I'm being generous or unexceptional.
I was white knuckling the arm rest trying to move decimal places in my head and remember some trick Sebastien taught me when I realized there's probably an app for 'that' and no one will expect a tip for another 4 months.

I got a chance to share the X files with some folks in Lanzhou city for Pi Day. I never noticed the show had developed its own fake brand of cola called Perk or just how funny technology and fashion was in the mid 90s.
It was so clear to me why Wes Anderson's formalism feels so right to me. Triangles everywhere in that show--and not all of them in Bermuda!
Apparently they're doing a reboot but I can't probably be bothered to watch it. Ask my stepdad and he'll tell you that my room at 16 was modeled after the Lone Gunmen's hideaway. There were nebulae, glow in the dark stars, and Alien conspiracy quotes all over the place. Plus X-Files books and fan art, TV guides and entertainment weekly clippings....maybe even some fan fic that I'm too shy to share with everyone up to and including Sebastien. (All monsters courtesy of Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy)

I even bought a 'Mother, Should I Trust the Government?' Pink Floyd poster--and not for the music, which I've always considered needlessly tangential.
But that was a few life times ago by now and I have more engaging matters to attend to. For instance,
I'm going to graduate school in New York City.
*Cue old El Paso Gif I'm too lazy to create*
Yes, New York City. The New School. hahaha, this was never the plan.
It's a cray tale, buy me an ale to hear the rest.

I've started volunteering down at one of the four local primary schools in Yuzhong.
I go there every Tuesday with English majors in their first year to work with the kids. This week I had to use their textbook and they are much further along than they should be for their level.
We were working on sentences like, "who made this? What is this? Who is this?"
But the textbook wanted them to talk about holidays for a whole calendar year when they don't even know how to identify the months by their names in English.

Grades 1-5 lining up for the end of the school day dismissal

I will work with a new class after the Tomb Sweeping holiday.

I got a chance to share the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower with my film class again this year.
It feels really awesome to have gone from being Charlie and growing into being Mr. Anderson. I always have the students write a letter to Charlie, giving him advice for his next year of high school and inviting them to share their stories. It would be easy to pick out some of their more comedic lines, E.G., "Here in China we're not so exposed to sex, drugs and Christianity" but that would just turn a moment with the mirror into a cruel farce.
What I hear a lot of is how lonely they felt in high school.
How they had no lives beyond studying.
One of my students even came out to me as part of the LGBTQI community and shared the story of their sibling finding out. Later in the week, I gave them a side hug and a thanks for the letter--but I plan to respond to all of their letters personally before the week is out.

Shout-out to all the adults who make it safe for kids to come out to them.
And if you never found one,
live long enough to be one.

I will talk more about the New School in future updates. Promzies.
I have to get things in order before the weekend's travels to Zhangye to see two of my faves, Rainesbanes and Kulleh.
Hopefully the Air Quality Index will be below 300 by then.

Champagne and Disco

2015-02-06T08:51:00.001+01:00

I was sad to learn that c'est ce plus ma vitesses isn't an idiom in French because I've been thinking it a lot. "This is more my speed, the Ho Chi Minh." The term is over--our in service training is complete and now Sebastien and I are traveling with our good friend Phuong-Anh from Paris all up the Vietnamienne coast.

We also took a bus across Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. I may speak more about that in an upcoming post.

Mais, Saigon c'est plus ma came--Phuong-Anh's family even cooked for us!

There is a cultural thrum here that will resonates with Americans, but won't feel good. It's not guilt so much as culpability.

Miss Saigon was the first opera I ever saw and yesterday I saw the place where the last chopper left Ho Chi Minh. I also saw the war remnants museum and was forced to consider how phrases like "search and destroy" "mopping up" and "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning!" must sound outside of a cineplex. Let alone how it must feel for them to read, "If it's dead it's Viet Cong."
For me, war was just a word, a joke I made with feigned seriousness, a card game, a brightly colored plastic pistol who's ammo was mother's kitchen sink. This war was a movie to me. An evil to be sure but untangible. phony, surreal. The support we gave to the southern government and the havoc it left the world with is our parent's pain and our parent's parents pain. But it is our legacy and our children's children's legacy as well.

I almost cried a good seven times but was determined not to make their suffering about me. I thought I was alone in this but Sebastien confessed that he spent a lot of time biting the inside of his cheek. How any scientist could willingly develop a chemical that destroys all plant life and not consider the environmental impact, globally as well as locally is so illogical. If all you are is a cog in a system you are not half as smart as society hoped you'd be when they trained you in the art of science.

And while I'm on this high horse of absolutes let me further say, that If you are a U.S. Citizen, and you have the wherewithal, seeing this museum and educating yourself about our part in Vietnam's history is your civic duty. I strongly believe that.

Last night we took a train to Nha Trang from Saigon. Vietnamese trains differ from Chinese in a few key ways. They have cabins for their hard sleepers, soap and western toilets in their bathrooms and no place to sit while you eat.

Today we spent the day at the beach, tomorrow we will put on our wet bathing suits and take a boat tour.

I have 80s hair. South west spandex circuit hair full of sand. Salt water is the best medicine. I am so alive in the surf. I have a tremendous respect pour le puissance de la mer. You wouldn't understand why I love the ocean so much. But as I age the ghosts that are with me in my memory would remember me as I was on the sand. Head full of sand. High tides and lows.

I love Chinese, I love Chinese people. When I fell in love with French I suddenly had the chance to eavesdrop on the conversation quotidian. When I began studying Putonghua the Chinese were eager to speak with me, give me their phone numbers before their names and invite me into their homes.... as a tutor.... so that their children can pass the only test that matters.

Step up ni de game, la France.

Sent from my IPod

Please excuse errors due to night bus difficulties.

On the boorishness scale of one to Kanye West, aim for Wilde

2014-11-23T07:05:00.000+01:00

Do you know how many times it took me to read the Communist Manifesto? Viele. At least five, even.

One time I was reading it in an airport--back when I still had that beautiful red Go-Lite jam pack as my main get about. I noticed a guy watching me furrow my brow as I whetted my finger in preparation for that pleasing slice a deft page turn can illicit.

Picture, if you dare, a more cocksure Erin with the androgynous, tousled short hair of an anime character. はい , very bishounen in a hoodie and Northface vest, sporting the same pair of sambas as back in high school--always forcing TSA officers to say, "Sir, uh, ma'm," now sitting propped up against a wall, defiance in her angle of repose, on the floor near a plug which she is not using. This fella made one of those older-man-faces older men make at people they think they've got figured out.

But I was already pretty sure there was a MacArthur fellowship in my future by then, so I gazed back, unaffected. In fact, I had already forgotten him by first boarding call, though it turned out we were to be seatmates.
He had Bob Ross sized hair in red, not quite repellent but definitely ineffective--so I let him lead the conversation. I was about 19 or 20. I'm terrible with ages and always really uncomfortable when people need to talk about theirs, so I never asked but he couldn't have been over 35. His girlfriend was with him. He criticized her for reading of one of those vacuous sex tip and style mags before turning to me and asking me about my book. I found the whole interaction disquieting, given that I believed most hetero-normative women to be readers of such fluff and he hardly could have just noticed that she was into that sort of relaxation at that very moment.

I was in college, so I talked about that. He worked as a therapist for "kids coming back from Iraq" but he meant solders. He asked for my email address as we circled above Logan, preparing for our final decent. I drew a heart in the window-steam my breath left behind that had nothing to do with him. Boston's veins were laid open like a cyborg autopsy below us all.
His companion visibly stiffened at his contact request. He didn't notice, or he didn't care. I turned away from the slowly corkscrewing skyline to study him more fully. Perhaps he was less motivated by carnal forces and more inspired by the opportunity to mold or influence--by the time I made it to Uni, my life was littered with such men: grandly tolerant of my arrogance because they saw a little bit of themselves in me. Or perhaps they just enjoyed the attention. Or perhaps they didn't fully know their own minds. It hardly matters now.

To mine own, his eyes said, there's something about you--right at the corners of each them. In my memory they were grey, almost leaden but I can't be sure now. I am sure his beard was patchy. Dry skin poked out from under it in places, needing to be sloughed off. I twice politely tried to rebuff him, citing even a lack of pen or paper but he persisted in making it seem like no big deal, so that eventually and through the powers of compromise, I was able to get him to give me his instead--with the intention of never writing him.
Plot twist: He asked his girlfriend to lend him a pen and even had the audacity to rip a square from her magazine. Her poise and self-possession impresses me even today.

Spoiler: I never wrote him.

But I made a plan to in a lucid dream I had where I was climbing the tennis court fence behind my house. I was thinking of posing these questions to him: If I can feel my muscles doing work in the same way I do as when I'm awake, is work happening? Are the same synapses firing as when the activity is being carried out in reality? Is there activity happening in that part of my body and can we somehow harness that to help people workout in their sleep?
WAIT, He might realize how lazy I am if I phrased it that way, perhaps it's better just to focus on the brain activity...He wouldn't have cared much about the synapse stuff, that was just me flexing. It would have intrigued him to hear of lucid dreaming and he would have enjoyed being dreamed about.

Yes, sir--it would have been the kind of email that makes a man sorry he resigned his lease and bought a couch with the sort of lady who lets you put her down in front of strange girls you both meet in airports.
He deserves to be sorry after all. Doesn't he?

And what about me? Why is it that all these self assured dirty words only work on the friends outside my head? And why did it take five go's to read a document which, all told, is less than 100 pages and fits so cleverly into a pocket?

Well, the copy of the manifesto I had with me featured a sizable amount of prefaces and forwards and notes and remarks by anybody who ever bought Marx a cup of coffee, and me being me, I just couldn't bring myself to skip over those self-important boring bits to get to the juice of the fruit. Or the Fruits of their labor, whichev.

This has been a very breathy way of excusing why I haven't written to you in so long. Order must be respected!
排队, punks!
I mean, I've been busy and all, but I kept telling myself that after my next adventure I would finally document them all for you.
Sebastien's birthday, Fourth of July, Summer project, Beijing, Mongolia, the start of term, Hotpot November, my birthday--all of them demanded a place on the muse's pedestal, and my most of me insisted that I treat with them chronologically and I still need space and time to veg.

A photo posted by Erwin from Berwin (@mctalko) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:49am PST

See the sky from the sky

I'm teaching 8 classes: four sections of Freshmen Pronunciation and four more of Junior Oral Spoken English. I also have office hours and English corner, the random speech contest and the occasional D list celebrity appearance to make. But this year I'm also the layout editor for the Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment internal Peace Corps China Newsletter, the training coordinator for the peer support group Volunteers Serving Volunteers, a charter consultant for an LGBTQ group within Peace Corps China, and I've been attempting to apply to graduate programs and teaching positions outside of the lower 48.
In my free time I've been re-blogging a lot of pictures, reading books and hanging out on Wechat with anybody who's cool enough to have that app.

So, the question of course is 'will I ever get back to you on the subjects mentioned above?' I mean, mabes, but there's just so much here and now--and so much more music to play.

And as to moral of the story, I suppose it is that sometimes you've got to skip right to the chapters you want to read, to the person you really want to be. Or be seen as. Or be seen with.

Cheers before beers, my sweetlings. Off to boldly go...

Dear NASA, please stop.

2014-06-16T16:43:00.001+02:00

I am of an age when there are very few joys left to me. I’m too old for space camp, Jane Goodall’s too old to need me as her intern, and if I wanted to be an astronaut I should have made better friends with math and gone to space camp before I was too old!

Yet I’ve never seen a good reason to stay tethered to this earth. After a father-daughter trip to the Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science, I offered to take a walkie-talkie into a black hole and radio back what was on the other side. I was actually a little surprised that no one had thought to do that sooner. I should have been mad at the head pat and chuckle my bravery elicited from my step-father but then again...

Without being too self-deprecating I can safely say that I’ve been coasting through life on privilege, entitlement and an amazing sound track of party anthems and sad-for-myself-songs.

I’m the proverbial cricket surrounded by all you damn ants and in my crooked smile lazy way, I’ve sort of always assumed that although I’ve put my Chapstick through the wash countless times over the last few ~~years,~~ weeks, colonies are going to need warm healthy bodies to terraform the lands and write long form epic poems about our last days on earth. I mean obviously.

Question I might ask myself as I brush my teeth: Would I trade any lovers, successes on the job or potential offspring for a chance to eat freeze dried ‘space’ ice cream, guilt free on the reg, at zero g’s—absolutely.

Truth be told, I'd think I’d make a comely redshirt--and the requirements can’t stretch largely beyond wanting to go and not being a convicted felon, right?
[From the PA]
This deck is being sealed off—death by emulsion immanent.
And me and all of my willing compadres would be like, sure, great, as long as the command team is safe on the bridge!

But really tho, I figured as long as I kept doing push ups, crunches and the occasional run and I’d simply answer the call when it came.

Then I read this drivel about how extroverts will be terrible colonists and shipmates and I just want to punch a face off a face!

First of all—current post notwithstanding, I’m not the kind of extrovert that has to post articles about how hard it is to be socially awesome because... well, it isn’t. Or at least, it hasn’t been hard since I stopped needing to be a class clown.

Secondly, I LOVE small spaces. My blood pressure goes up in a fun way when I think about how much I enjoy being in a one person tent as it rains—all safe and snuggled into my sleeping sac.

Thirdly, I am pretty good at entertaining myself. I make pictures. I make songs. I write about the deep dark darkness of my heart—I’m basically this cartoon.

And finally, although I do like people, sometimes I just want to be by myself for days.
Check out this tweet, published 12 hours before the article went live, and 3 days before I read it:

It's cool that people keep inviting me to hangout and stuff, but I think even I deserve a break from how obnoxious I am in public.
— 麦琪 (@McTalko) June 13, 2014

For real, I am the queen of breaking off plans. People are like, dude last night ok, at like 4 in the morning, you were adamant that you wanted to go hiking at 7 am today. And I just look at them like:

Listen, I can’t help that I enjoy the company of others, but if that matters then the fact that I am used to being ignored by those I want to impress or be loved by should count for something as well. Plus, I am seriously good at packing. Most recently, I brought rope with me on an overnight hike and we totally used it within the first hour of said hike.

Specifically, concerning the article: The sample size was small and anecdotal. More testing! I volunteer! NASA, seriously...seriously, NASA...you want my cute butt in one of those adult daipers almost as much as I do. Here check out this Go-Pro footage I shot from my first mission to Mars back in 2009:

The Anthropological Significance of Carrying a Watermelon

2014-06-11T17:14:00.001+02:00

Any time someone, up to and including the Peace Corps director, Carrie Hessler-Radelet, has asked me,

I’ve told them earnestly that I've wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer since I was a small child. Yet as anything else that gets said over and over again, eventually it can start to sound strange...

For instance: Why would a five year old be talked to about the Peace Corps anyhow?

My mother for one, wanted no part of it. I was given a choice at that age, I could be a doctor or a lawyer. I chose lawyer because doctors are rarely depicted in television with their feet on their desks. I set my first office up in the laundry room with great success. According to Car Talk, the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe was taken so I wrote "my office" in blue pen on a piece of plywood that also served as my cubical wall.

Recently, I started to think that I may have gotten interested in the Peace Corps much later. Time can feel very elastic for me, maybe I just felt younger in my memory. I can recall quite vividly, for instance, that my principal made a big impression on me when he revealed he was an RPCV from Zambia. Not just because it meant that this authority figure with a Wario mustache was once a twenty-something dude who went through reverse culture shock, but also because he taught Animal Farm under a dictatorship. He was as impressed with me for understanding the significance of his doing so as I was for his bravery. Teachers had power was that lesson...maybe I'd first heard of the Peace Corps then?

It wasn’t until I started watching Dirty Dancing with my American Film and culture class that a few things started falling into place...during the opening scene...

YES. This was it! I teared up when I saw this hug! Mannn, I loved my dad so much. We had matching pink polo shirts and I felt like a boss any time we wore them around town together. I'm sure that I latched on to the the latter detail and the Peace Corps line planted a seed.

This was an important film for me and has been different each time I've seen it. It was hilarious right before I left for college when I realized Robby the waiter was the kind of douche who reads Ayn Rand--it makes so much sense! And I didn't notice how condescending Neil (the boss man) was towards Baby when he asks her if she was going to study English until this go through.

A lot of my older analysis still applied...

But what is watching Dirty Dancing like for 18 and 19 year-olds living in modern day China?

I can't speak for all of them, but I can tell you that my quest for universal truth has lead me to this understanding: all students, everywhere, invariably love writing on big pieces of paper.

So I set out humongous sheets of paper and had them walk around in small groups answering questions. Presented without edits for grammar or otherwise are the questions and the anonymous responses of my 26 students.

Prompt 1: Write things you liked about the film:

"The main actor is in muscular frame."

"I like the dance at pretending sex"

"The music in the movie."

"Their pure love regardless of class and social status."

"We can see the diligence and honesty of the woman"

"The plot that the father mistakenly though that Johnny abandoned the female dancer after knocked her up."

"The scene where Baby and Johnny practiced lifting in the lake."

"The brave of baby"

"The understanding of their family."

"The Final Dancing is very successful"

"The leading man is handsome, sexy. I like his muscles."

"The heroine's father (kind, wise, handsome.)"

"Her haircut. (very fashion) cute."

"Happy Ending"

"The heroin is the same old with us. We can feel her inner thoughts actually."

Prompt 2: Write things you didn't like about it:

"The plot is not so interesting."

"The clothing is not beautiful."
"There is no handsome guy in the movie. (Too ugly the actor)"

"There is no pretty girl in the movie."

"Their dances are too dirty."

"Their love developed so fast."

"The film is out of style"

"The hair of Baby is terrible"

"Too many rude words."

"The size of Baby's breast is small (A cup)"

"The song was too noisy"

"The figures in the movies is so barefaced and according to our Chinese culture, we can't accept that crazy atmosphere."

"It's too traditional"

"At first, the parents are stubborn."

"The dancing style is too open for some people."

"We can guess the ending which are very common."

Prompt 3: Write about how the movie presents a world similar to China today:

"Her father interferes his daughter's private life."

"Young people tend to have a passion for new things they like."

"To be a male dancer in the bar or club is not very respectable."

"It's hard for two from different classes to have their love accepted."

"Rich people have money and time to go on vacation."

"The poor people are tend to be looked down upon by rich people."

"Someone working at art are always looked down upon."

"Doctors have high status in both countries."

"The fathers in both countries have more power to make decisions."

"The young teenagers want to be free, and they don't want to be controlled by their families."

"In some people's opinion, dancers are not a stable job."

"The parents are strict with their children."

"The barrier is always father."

Prompt 4: Write about how the movie and China today are different:

"They have clear stratification."

"Sexual life is abundant"
"Their clothes and cars are outdated."
"Today China's clothes are more fashionable."

"Chinese society conservative timid be busy with life and pressure."

"Work at the thing they want [verses] be forced to spend time on something we actually have no interest."

"When Chinese people attend a party they seldom danced."

"Not many Chinese know how to dance."

"Chinese doctors don't have as high status as western."

"The Chinese parents are so conservative that this couple will finally die because of love."

"Chinese won't have such haircut as the girl."

"Chinese girls today are less likely to have sex before getting married."

And a good time was had by all! So glad I get to be with this gang again next year.

Over and outty 500.

On the Lawn with Strawberry Slush

2014-06-06T13:04:00.000+02:00

China is never too shy to teach me; just yesterday a lesson was made possible by an email I wrote to my student, "Dang! I have a conference call in the morning so I won't be able to pick up the meat!" And he wrote back, "My name is Deng. I know you are learning Chinese so here is the Character..."

We settled it in person when he showed up with the meat.
For my secondary project which all Peace Corps volunteers must do, I've decided to creat a youtube/youku channel where my students cook traditional Chinese dishes. They loved the idea because there is a very popular show on right now called, Bite of China. So far we have two episodes in post production.

Jai YOU!

This is the first weekend in over a month that Seb and I haven't been back to the city. Making memories is exhausting.

We've been camping, hiking, s’moring, snoring, drinking, playing and tournament-ing. I really enjoy being there and seeing all of our friends, especially the 18s who will be starting their new adventures elsewhere soon, but there is a lot of installing and dismantling that has to occur when you stay in a hotel room every weekend.

We've lost many an item in the fray that is the to and fro and I think I deserve to spend a little time alone with our plants and my desk.

You like my lock-screen image? Yeah, I've been making a lot of easy graphic design type stuff lately including these images:

It's cool that I'm getting better at this sort of meow meow because I'm the new layout editor for The Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Peace Corps Newsletter. Should be fun once I read the desktop publishing manual.

My oral classes are going crazy well; I've been taking them across the US one class session at a time and we've talked about every little piece of Americana that I can—from BBQ, to the Amish, to the foundation of hip hop, to Brunch, and to our last class meeting where we talked about county fairs.

I am not going to lie, hearing them plan a trip to Cape Cod’s county fair made me almost as nostalgic as the walk I took the other night where I could smell the tall summer grass. It's strange because I never remember the county fair being fun. My mom would make us walk around to all the craft tents and stuff before we hit the rides, which meant that the first half of the day was miserable for her and the second half was miserable for me. (The inverse was also true.)These experiences were so impacting that it coined the personal idiom, "I didn't come all the way to the county fair just to hangout at the craft tents." Which feels less obvious in it's meaning now, but was intended to be analogues to the sort of thing that gets said in masculine fonts during a red bull advertisement.
Anyway, I think I should experience it as an adult and bring my mother so we can do all the old lady crap she's always loved and maybe I can try some of that fried weird stuff I distained my whole life for being too American.

Things are far from great in the US socio-political front but it really feels like we're living in a time where signals are getting boosted and opinions are getting traction that have been deserved to be heard for a long time. Take this N.E.R.D cover

Zero Backlash.
But just recently, Pharrell Williams had to apologize for this Elle cover.

Yes, the second one is more flagrant but I definitely saw the first one and was like...Ugh, I might not put that in my Ipod.
Or during our in-service training where we had a closed LGBTQ group, Closed P.O.C. group and an open Asian American group sessions respectively. Ten years ago understanding that these groups would have things they needed to discuss in privet was at the frontlines of radical. I'm so glad to see them seeping into the mainstream.
I have to remember things like the Sisters of the Sun episode of Cosmos or the fact that video blogs like Anita Sarkeesian can have an impact on equality when I get discouraged about where we are and how far we need to go.
But I need to go, because this ice coffee I just made needs its own fandom.

Imagine if you only knew 100 words in English and two of them were Terracotta and Warriors

2014-04-12T08:32:00.000+02:00

It’s not every weekend that you get a chance to visit a UNESCO world heritage site. And yes, living a mere 9 hours from an cultural experience short listed for the seven wonders of the world is at least worth considering visiting—but that doesn’t make seeing the Terracotta Warriors a forgone conclusion.

I mean, nobody wants to be this guy but...

When I told a buddy over lunch that I was going to Xi'an to visit 秦始皇兵马俑, he masked no attempts to dissuade me. When he spoke of his visit, it felt less like he was describing a trip to a museum and more like he was saying it wasn't the best sex he ever had ( he was also less than pleased to have paid for it.) Dude was frowning the whole time over his bowl of Niu Rou Mian, chopsticks half raised to his face when he told me I should really get ready to be disappointed and that I should probably see the three pits in the reverse order of 3, 2, 1 if I wanted to end on a high(er) note.

This sentiment was loudly echoed when I and my merry accomplices, (see figure one)

figure one

had the pleasure of joining Tim King of Alert the Audience at his friend’s house for a rooftop BBQ.

Tim has carved out a great Expat community of really exceptional people. He claims that it was this particular bar that brought them all together, but even at my travelers glace I could tell theirs is deeper than just drinks and giggles. Maybe it's becaue Tim's also from New England, or maybe because I've been following his blog for so many years--but I took immediately to them. It's like he seems to have chosen friends I would have chosen for myself. I wish I had more time in Xi'an just to chill with all of them and party. But they wasted no time telling me what a bad idea it was to see the Warriors.
To the above advice they added that all the photos you see are heavily shopped and you get the sense that the soldiers go on and on but they really only go back 20 rows.

For an adult of my age and weight class, I should be better at visualizing large sums but such knowhow escapes me. Be that as it may, 20 rows sounded like a lot of intact ancient pottery to me. But what do I know, really?

I had some interest in Ancient China, specifically Xi’an and particularly during the Tang dynasty thanks to a book I may have mentioned on this site once or twice called Under Heaven. However, the terracotta warriors are from the Qin dynasty.

To give you a little context here are the major dynastic periods in China...

Read them from right to left using Frère Jacques as a Mnemonic device.

The first problem with seeing the Warriors is getting there from Xi'an. There was the craziest, longest, most disheartening (read as soul sucking) line to get on the buses going to Bīngmǎyǒng.

Luckily for me, two of our party can read and speak Chinese at level that kind of make me wish I hadn’t made so much time over these last few months to play video games and read books….but only sorta.

Anyway, they found us a bus with a much shorter line which was leaving immediately and had that take us to the site. We even each had seats!

We entered the park, I paid my fee and walked around under greasy streaks of clouds, fully prepared for what I was about to see to not be that cool and also possibly to be rained on.

Although, honestly—it was cool.
And it barely sprinkled.

Maybe it’s just because I used to pick up shampoo bottles while half looking at myself in the mirror in the throws of an Indiana Jones fantasy, but I’ve always considered Archeology to be one of the more bitching sciences.

"You people" can't take care of this. See Also: It belongs in a museum.

Part of the problem from my point of view is that the curators never should have translated 坑 as pit. Granted, that’s what kēng literally means but "pit" does not evoke in English what "site" does. These are archeology sites. Most of “Pit two” isn’t even fully excavated yet. Is that not awesome? Are you not entertained?!

They are actively unearthing 2200 year old works of art beneath the same roof that you are permitted to view them! Who cares if they’ve only found 20 rows so far!!!!

Don't make me quote it...

In the end, it was beneficial to visit them in reverse order and flow against the wall of people that were also experiencing them. The bus we took was the 419 but the 306 and 307 get there if you are willing to wait in that super long line. Personally, I think that if you or your mom wants to see these I would recommend going through your hostel. Ours had a 220 RMB (about $33) package deal which included a ride there and back, beer and the emperor’s tomb. I would have gone for if I wasn’t able to get in on a student discount.

Verdict: Being prepared for a disappointment made seeing it for myself better than I was currently imagining. Thus telling everyone how much of suck-fest it is might be nice of me to do in the hopes that they super enjoy it. If you go, do it with a tour group instead of me because there were things I enjoyed way more while in Xi'an. Don't get me wrong, it was noteworthy, but not something a person with my level and interest in both Chinese history and the language needs to see again. It's a bit like going to the top of Eiffel tower. It isn’t free and some people never get to see it at all. Why should I see it twice?

Hangover Remedy for the Pizza-ly impaired

2014-03-30T18:02:00.003+02:00

My Pizza Game is outta this world!

But if I don't feel like making it myself and I still want to have some here in Lanzhou, I have to ride the bus for at least two hours—a task I’d be hard-pressed to undertake so insouciantly. And yet, it has widely been observed that after tomatoes left the New World, Pizza quickly found firm footing as a staple food group amoung many human cultures and has long been celebrated chiefly for its curative properties and great toppings.But when you can’t have it and you still need Pizza's help keeping down the rainbows, we at the Post Modern Talko suggest you follow these easy steps for crafting your own small batches of fries.

Protip: It only has to be done well enough that your mom would have been too tired to force you to do it again.

[Reading over my shoulder] Sebastien: What potato?
Me: Nothing.
Seb: Is it a potato that went bad?
Me: …

Redaction: The thickness is really more important than the length.(LOL)

I went with ground Sichuan pepper, salt and soft white "healthy choice" sugar.

And honestly, we're cool with this.

But you could toally fly solo with a season of Adventure Time.

Those Dishes will get done, man--you can relax.

And really, if you can't muster the will power to get those dishes done the next time you're hungry you can always fall back on a bag or two of your old friend, Microwavable popcorn.

*smert

Well that's about all we have time for. I hope you feel better!

Chinese Train Culture

2014-02-09T06:53:00.000+01:00

Recently we boarded a plane that was leaving lands of summer for the more August company of Autumn. Arriving around 4 in the morning all told and taxied in, we slept until just after Hello Chengdu's 12 o'clock check out, ate a meal and promptly caught a bus for the train station. Just outside its dominion we purchased the dried noodles and snacks that would sustain our twenty-hour voyage to Winterland.

Moi qui n'ai connu toute ma vie que le ciel du nord...

Jolie, non?
Duì, hěn piàoliang !
I promised once to talk with you about train culture here in China and so I'd like to share what I think I've learned.

There are four ways to travel by train. Hard seats or soft seats. Hard sleepers or soft sleepers. The hard seats and sleepers aren't as hard as they sound. I've never had a soft anything so I can't speak to whether or not the increase in price is justified. For our purposes, I'll explain what I know best: Hard sleepers.

First let us examine the characters for the different beds. Note please that I have an impressively un-academic understanding of Chinese, the culture and the character writing system. I have attempted to verify all that I am telling you with the internet but I am in no way an expert on these matters or pretending to be. To follow will be much anecdotal observations, and though I can't help but paint at times with a very wide brush, the brushes I paint with are mine and I'm not ashamed of their lines.

Now let's play a little guessing game.

上铺 (Shàng pù) I will tell you that the first character Shàng, said with the fourth tone and denotes a position of either up or down. Judging just by what you see, is 上 the uppermost bunk or the lower bunk?

How about this: 下铺 (Xià pù) Does 下 look like the bottom bunk or the top to you?

How 'bout a freebie?
The middle one is easy: 中铺 (Zhōng pù) Zhōng is clearly a rectangle divided in twain, thus remembering it means middle 中 is something a laowai can do on the first glimpse. Zhong also the first character in China (中国) Or as it is translated sometimes in English, 'the Middle Kingdom.' (Zhōngguó) (Also why Chinese websites often have .zh domain name (other times its .cn, FWIW.)

So anywho-- have you come up with your answers yet?
Well, Shang pu is the top bunk---> 上铺 and xia pu is the bottom ---> 下铺

When you get on a train you hand them your ticket and are given a plastic card to hold on to. Often this exchange happens right at the door, after you've found your gate, your platform, your track and your car-- so amidst all those small victories, befuddlements and shrinking and expanding crowds, you don't even have time to point at the characters on your paper ticket and ask your new bunkmates which bed should be yours. You have to remember if it's a shangpu or a xia and sadly not all Gryffindors are the Hermiones we could be.

Atanyrate, the meanings of 上 and 下 were hard to memorize for awhile because they look to me as though they should imply the opposite of what they do. And yet, just as with your first language, there doesn't need to be a logic beyond representation for a word to mean one thing or another. However, I've had it explained to me that the longest horizontal line signifies the ground. Shang 上 means above in that case and xia 下 means below, pretty obviously. These days I use these two characters měitiān in my classroom when I'm lowering or raising the projector screen so I now have a working understanding of what they mean.

Of the topmost bunk I can say it is frightfully high. I bet I would have loved it as a kid. But it's the least expensive for a reason. There is no headroom and you have to climb higher than any bunk bed we ever had at my house.

The middle bunk isn't much better. But at least it's closer to the ground.

The bottom bunk as you might expect is the most desirable bed because it allows for sitting room.

This can really mean the world to you on a train ride exceeding 15 hours and it offers some amount of communal space.

Chinese people expect to share the bottom bunk with strangers when they need a place to sit down. This interaction is often unacknowledged. You don't ask permission, you simply sit. This is not perceived as rude because space is at a premium in China. However they are aware that these protocols do not necessarily correspond to non-Chinese. In fact, they often have to be invited to sit on my bottom bunk, more than once before they will take a small, small corner.

People who's opinion I had thought to rely on, e.g., David Sedaris, would have me believe that people are just shitting and spitting basically everywhere in China-- in the Walmart even! And you do get some outdoor pooping, especially from potty training children, and one does occasionally hear a guy really hawk up a mean loogie, but the despite what I thought I knew before coming here, I have learned that the Chinese are very concerned with cleanliness.

A few examples.

One: They take their shoes off. You already knew this. But this is also true on trains! You cannot under any circumstances expect to wear your street shoes up to your bunk. If you are grossed out by walking around in your socks on the train, pack some slippers. Everyone does.
You cannot step on the bed--anyone's bed-- wearing shoes. This goes for hard seats as well. If you need to adjust your luggage on the rack above your hard seat or sleeper you flip the cover up and step directly on to the surface where no butts or hands will touch. Only a barbarian would stand on a seat wearing shoes. This goes for park benches or any other kind of chair on offer.

Example 2:

They cover their sleeves with 袖套 (Xiù tào) Many of our students will wear these protective covers for their lower arms to class. As students move from classroom to classroom xiu tao keep their arms from touching any communal surfaces. They can also serve as a function of expressing their personality or sense of fashion.

Perhaps for every reason David Sedaris would have me fear or revile, our students tend to keep their bags and phones off of the floor. If they have to charge their phone in my class and can only find a baseboard wall socket to do so, they will put down a piece of paper under their phone or reconnoiter a spare chair.

I have found that putting my bag on the ground can make restaurant owners very uncomfortable and they will often put it on to a stool next to me, smiling and nodding the whole time. The first couples time I made it clear that this wasn't a problem for me and was polite but unnecessary, and yet as I have learned more about the culture and as I try harder to assimilate and mimic without being asked to, I find that my feelings concerning the floor and the bottom of my backpack don't need to come between me and my host country. We're still debating low-cut tops.

Speaking about restaurants you will often find vendors of xiǎochī (小吃) or Shāokǎo (烧烤) or even the wait staff at your favorite Huǒguō (火锅) establishment will wear plastic spit guards.

Spit guards: more proof that they care so hard about cleanliness.

I enjoy train travel although certain aspects do offend my sensibilities.

Smoking is allowed nearly everywhere in China and even in places where it's technically not. I find filters stubbed out under my desk at school and I simply abhor running up 5 flights of stairs so as to not be late for my next class, while all at once suddenly realizing I've been sucking in second-hand smoke for the last staircase and a half. There is no escaping smokers on the train. They hotbox the squatter or chain smoke between cars.

Electronic cigarettes please become cool!

I believe I mentioned to you befor that I've seen older folks trade a shang pu or a zhong pu with xia pu folks for a seriously great upgrade without offering money in return. I've now also seen a mother and child upgrade to bottom bunk as well. In part there is some randomization involved in bunk buying but I could never...well, I'll admit that I did ask a woman on the TGV to trade seat with me so Seb and I could pass a sandwich back and forth, but switching beds for free would be more than I would be willing to ask of a stranger. But it's both a cultural and personal difference and I accept that.

Well, I think I've given you a lot to mull over.

For my part, aside from a few PCVS inviting us out for drinks, I've just been holding up in our place reading, playing video games, painting miniatures and preparing food.

I like being on vacation but I also like oscillating between staring out windows in my PJs and putting new grooves in the couch; it feels good to be responsible to no one but Maslow.

I leave you with a song that helps me keep perspective when my expectation management is out of whack.

It's also good to remember that any time spent in summerland is a good time spent indeed. Oui, parce que il me semble que la misère serait moins pénible au soleil...

A note slipped in your locker

2014-01-29T16:03:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting in a rooftop garden on top of the hostel where I'll still be sleeping for the next few days. I'm relaxed and warm because we spent the day on the beach with some other PCVS, the Chinese Lunar New Year is only a few days away and thus all the local businesses have a likeness of pinky pie on their door. This makes me think of one of our best friends Alberto: a believer in the magic of friendship and an unabashed bronie.

I haven't really talked with him in awhile but was on my mind while I watched a snippet of Eat Pray Love in one of my cohort's TOEFL trainings via Peace Corps, last week in Chengdu. He's Italian so he probably wants to punch that film in the face. But he's also very nice so he would probably just facepalm and move on.

Eat Pray Love, b.t.dubs is apparently a film I never want to see---and not just because they reduced Italian Culture to "dis-a-voice" and hand gestures, but also because it's a safe bet the other two cultures hit the chopping block as well. SERIOUS QUESTION: Does Julia Roberts learn to speak Hindi or are there just not enough cognates on their menus?
Two weeks in Chengdu was exactly how long it took me to realize I have no integrity. I mean, I throw my trash in the bin so perhaps "No integrity" is an oversimplification.
Back story: About seven Gansu-ren (self and Seb includzies) decided to leave our province and go on a short overnight trip before hitting Chengdu for In-Service-Training. Somehow the tickets got effed up and we ended up arriving in The Du a day early. We also had hard seats instead of hard sleepers for 15 or so hours of the trip as well as no where to sleep in Chengdu upon arrival. But we persevered. We had fun and all and all, we went pretty hard.

We ended up crashing in the Peace Corps Library. I slept in hat, coat, vest, two shirts, heavy socks and slippers--I had on three pairs of pants and still wasn't warm enough. It was cold and leg crampy and I was less than high-fivish in the morning.
Around sunrise I walked towards Sichuan University Western gate, head down in line behind the others, wheeling my suitcase through steamy streets and a smog filled zaoshang it was overcast and the overtone was bu hao.

En rout to check in to our hotel we walked past a bar called Savage. The Savage Bar. I scoffed, rolled my eyes and snuffed.

It really wouldn't have been so bad if they meant to invoke a mood but the logo has a Native American on it. I told myself I would never frequent such a terrible and thoughtless establishment. Terrible name. Horrible. Insensitive. We all agreed.

As it happens Savage bar was in the midst of their grand opening and as a promotion they were having an open bar from 8-12 every night for the exact dates of IST. Survey says...no integrity~

But also no regrets. Shit was funtastic!

I'm finished now, but I've been drinking coffee with coconut powder in it, a speciality in the province off-Mainland China where I am. My hostel is at the foot of a a fishing village on the peninsula that is a part of a city called Sanya. There is a beach involved so I'm clearly vacationing. I'm using so much of the new language I acquired during IST. And though I'm miles behind many of my fellows I understand a lot of the Putonghua that is spoken to or around me. There is a saying in French that goes "It's Chinese to me," meaning something is incomprehensible. Doesn't feel that way anymore and even as a struggle I'm getting better all the time. Legit: I talked a guy down 15 RMB for a dress today. I'm going pearl hunting tomorrow.

We hadn't planned to be in Hainan so we didn't pack things like flippy floppies and non-winter clothes.

It's a long story but the tickets were cheap.

Parts of it are funny, but some of the laughs are cheap.

I'll tell you all about it soon.

I'm almost done with 1Q84. I have so much about it to say.

But we're coming on fast is the year of the Horse. My little pony. My first Spring Festival in China. The sound of the surf has been helping me to think and I've come to certain understandings about who I want in my life and why.

E.G., I feel like a friend like Alberto could go anywhere in the world and still be important to me and Seb. Some folks are just like that. Some people aren't. Sometimes people can't be what you need and really, after awhile, you need to just stop asking them to try. Art will save you when no one else can fill a hole. I'm living proof of this truth.

I want to talk to you sometimes about the line the Chinese have taught me that separates love and duty, where I stand on it and with whom.

But my hand is cramping. This page is full. The bell is ringing. AC Slatter just called me preppy again. I've folded this sheaf of paper into a heart and now it is the note I shoved in your locker between classes. I should have been paying closer attention but I wanted get things right for you. I was still listening, the parts that came through were vivid and honest and they sounded like the surf to me. So save me a seat at lunch, there's still so much more to see and to say.

Posting like it's 1999. (Dial up.)

2014-01-01T07:19:00.000+01:00

As I rolled the stiffness out of my neck for the first time in the morning and swung to a sitting position on the edge of bed I had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. Not really, but I've loved that rejoinder since I was 11 years old.

Truthfully what I was actually doing while my head and eyes lolled about on their pivots was searching for discarded clothing. I found a pair of leggings and a pair of longjohns both in arms reach, I scooted forward somewhat and bending, clamped my paws around a pair of wool socks. Glancing about I spotted a thermal shirt and sweater and I pulled them both on inside out to go over the tee shirt I wore to sleep.

Making progress, I left the bed and drew open the curtains.

There is ice on the inside of my window as I stretch first my right then the left leg on the sill, exhale bend further, reflect that I haven't slept with clothes on--even in winter, for at least 8 years. Sleeping next to another person usually makes clothing superfluous on multiple levels, I find. But here I am, now sleeping in at least a shirt, layering up on New Years day for a trip down to the back market to buy baozi for our breakfast.

Typically I send Sebastien on such missions because in the time it takes him to get there and back I can make the bed, make the coffee and redistribute the distilled water we made the night before.
I'm not sure I've told you that we distill all our water as per Peace Corps China's requirements. Boiling water gets rid of the giardia spores and e coli bacteria true enough--but boiling alone can't remove the heavy metals or pesticides. So we have a semi-portable distiller that we scour with a steel wool between uses. It's nice because aside from providing potable water it also warms up a room.

On my way to the back market, home to 40 some odd restaurants and ten to fifteen push cart food-truck-esque stands, some part of my mind notes with a dry smile that I'm quite cold. I consider how lucky I am to live within walking distance of both so many affordable restaurants and my workplace. I pass the petitely stout coal colored dog that always contrives to force unwitting customers of his caregiver's magazine stand into buying a second hotdog on a stick for him.

I caught his attention once for holding a bag and I promise you, his charm is a current only the hungriest or cruelest could swim against. There are a lot of stray cats and dogs on our campus and none of them are angular. Each slop of their extremities are rounded and full. Maybe you've heard that the Chinese eat cats and dogs but this isn't Leningrad, this isn't even the period of starvation associated with the Great Leap Forward, this isn't even Guangdong province, so no cats and dogs are eaten here. I'm not supposed to pet them but many of them come when I click.

Having left my home a good five minutes ago, I'm currently wearing three pairs of pants, three shirts, a leather jacket, a vest, a scarf wrapped three times plus a woolen hat and still I'm thinking of the siege of Leningrad.

We just finished reading City of Thieves and though I'm stiff-legged and chilled in the joints, I'm not trudging through two feet of snow on a suicide mission to get my ration card back. It's a wonderful novel, makes you feel sick or scared at the top of the page and will having you laughing at boyish behavior by the middle.

I take a few more cold breaths, try not to cough and decide I would never be able to survive a siege. Ok, maybe a short one but not for 900 days. Three years of almost nothing to eat and nightly rooftop duty? Nope. Dead. Someone would have killed me for my boots after the third time I flew off the handle because I was tired, hungry or both.

I arrive at the restaurant where the baozi laoban is standing outside, pulling small stuffed buns off of banana leaf mats and wrapping them in double-fist-sized plastic bags two or four at a time. In my best approximation of the tones involved I tell her I want four pork, two beef, two potato and two cabbage. I think the measure word here is "ge" but I've never bothered to ask my tutor if baozi has it's own measure word, e.g., pieces or bottles or bowls of. She understands me, atanyrate and takes my five RMB which is less than one American Dollar and I unsnap my vest and unzip my coat and arrange the buns like a clutch of small kittens under my breast before redoing the whole careful affair and shoving my gloved hands into the pockets of my vest, being mindful not to the let the metal of my house keys leach the warmth from my right hand.

Sebastien's has several oral exams today to give in French. I made him take a bottle of water for this morning's session because his voice was nearly gone by the time he made it home for dinner yesterday. Exam-wise, I've given one already and will give four more on Thursday, three on Monday and one next Tuesday. After that I have to get all my grades shoved into Excel files and off to the official computers before Seb and I join the throng of PCVs heading back to Chengdu for our mid-service formation.

We had the American traditional meal of Chinese food for New Years Eve and Sebastien finalized his exams while I studied and sang.

In terms of our home life, Christmas was a lovely experience. I woke up early and snuck out of our bed, fired up the glue gun and made a bad choice about what to glue and where. But a stocking and several gifts seemed to be hanging over a craypas fire--a charming effect was achieved, I feel. All in a days, really.

Having to plan and host the Holiday program for my school on the other hand was way more work than it needed to be.

I think most normal people over the age of 12 abhor the ubiquitousness of Christmas music and its insistence on happiness, Christianity, whiteness and snow. That's why I'm sure that the saddest I've ever been in China was two weeks ago when I was hunting around the big supermarket in Lanzhou proper, looking for a something or other for the aforementioned Holiday program.
Melancholy of any sort was something I wasn't expecting to feel because I usually enjoy shopping by myself as I eschew list-making on principle; thus if I fail to visit every aisle I won't know if there was an impulse buy I might be missing (!!!)
But on this day, to my great misfortune, they were playing nonstop Christmas music--being there alone I had no one in English whom I could grouse to--specifically on the injustice of moving all the way to an Asian country and living in a provice populated predominantly by Buddhist and Muslims only to still be subjected to "Let it Snow." I tell you I came close to crying then and not just because I was there to buy 10 boxes of hot chocolate.
Don't get me started on the injustices I've suffered at the hands of hot chocolate(!!!) >:(
I'm pretty sure that's the best face made of text anyone ever came up with. What can I say? Emoto-iconically speaking, I have classic tastes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I can't really complain and not want to smack myself because hardship was always part of the Peace Corps price and my so-called hardship amounted to not being a fan of a holiday while being asked to be its cheerleader. We made the best of it, Seb and I.
He definitely said, "I know, I know, I know." punctuated by mouth covering kisses more time than he really should have had to.
I'll probably need to do it again next year, but with a little luck I'll be teaching the same courses and will only have to fine tune my efforts in that regard.
We showed the movie A Christmas Story to anyone who wanted to see it on Christmas day. As the film plodded its course and bits and pieces came back to me, I worried about how they would react to, "Eat your dinner, there are starving people in China," as well as the blatantly racist rendition of Deck the Halls. It turns out, that if you haven't seen a movie the whole way through in all thirty years that it's been on Television, you should watch it before you show it to 30 or so people.

Actually, they laughed at both those situations--and again when the restaurant owner chops off the head of the duck--not that this negates why parts of that movie are fucked up, but maybe it's good to show the sides of the US that are fucked up, in fairness to any dream--deferred or otherwise. Mayhaps we'll show Home Alone or Die Hard next year-- keep the time-honored films a'comin!

Sebastien had his French Students over for a Crêpe making extravaganza last Friday night and they pretty much lost their minds dancing to Mika's Elle M'a dit. The second time they played the song, Sebastien and I were invited to dance in the center of their group and as the track wore on and because all I could see were his eyes, I knew we were making a moment. After the students took us outside to light off fireworks and send lanterns into the sky, we wondered home to enjoyed a cup or two of hot wine with a German colleague who speaks impeccable French.
Our students truly spoiled us. We were gifted scarfs and apples and oranges and pomelos. Green tea cakes and a lemon curd pudding. Frittered octopus balls. Candied strawberries and hawthorns. Popcorn and caramel popped corn. Roasted chestnuts, cookies, chocolates, fake flowers and fun.
Speaking of eats, We dined on spare ribs paired with red wine, green beans and mashed yams for Christmas dinner and then we relaxed much more fully then we could have in a spare bedroom at any of our relatives' homes.

And that's a good a reason as any to gâches ta vie.
Alors...on dance.

The Frivolous Now

2013-12-09T17:13:00.000+01:00

Lucky kids of my generation either owned a Mario 64 or were well acquainted with some gremlins who did. I was 13 and living at boarding school when mine arrived in the mail. My dad had gotten me the system and 3 games for my birthday that year.

At Kurn Hattin Homes, campus life was highly regimented. We lived in cottages of 12 persons and had demanding schedules where sports, chores and homework were concerned. The other girls and I were permitted to play N64 only after all of our more pressing and various mischiefs were managed. Being of an age, my best friends and I would jump through any number of good behavior hoops so as to be permitted the right to callous our thumbs far past our ascribed 9:30 bedtimes on weekends, but frankly, we were the make-your-own-lane types when it came to Toadstool's Turnpike.

I mention this because lately I've been feeling a bit anxious. Not like, in that debilitating, pre-Sebastien-reading-me-to-sleep-era anxiousness that had the power to torment and exhaust, but a bit more akin to how you feel when the Koopa troopa invites you to race him up the hill after the vanquishing of the game's first mini-boss. When warping into the world of Lanzhou Daxue, at the crest right before the ridge that is the end of my first term here, a race with a quick koopa is as easy a metaphor for me as it was for Nintendo, a la Aesop.
I can almost feel myself leaning forward on my knees, biting my lip and pulling my arms up closer to my face as I struggle to turn right.

I'm working harder than that ecosystem that was set up in my high school marine biology classroom where the byproducts of one tank became the base materials for the next. The students are getting it--they're feeding into it. Heck, they're mummichogs in tank two. My plans are working. My efforts are counting for something and we are having so much fun.

I'm particularly pleased with an adaptation of a training method I learned this summer called partner dictation. The way it was introduced to my colleagues and I, it was primarily intended as a pronunciation activity, but I'm employing it in in all 8 of my classes and thus have dramatically cut down on the time I spend lecturing. Here's the trick: any information I need to teach them, they can teach each other through the dictation--while working in pairs and simultaneously ameliorating both their listening and speaking comprehension!!!

I'm keyed up about my lesson on contractions with my Freshmen this week but I'm probably most satisfied with my Whale Rider assignment from last week with my Juniors.
When I designed the syllabus for the latter's class I made sure that they wouldn't just be learning about US culture--in fact I was pretty determined to learn a few things about the English-speaking world, myself!

For their midterms, I had them do group presentations on various occidental governments and now, for the last few weeks of class before finals, we are using those same cultures' popular literature as a backdrop for exploration of oral English. As mentioned above, for New Zealand we used Whale Rider.

We teed off with small groups-- an agree/disagree pre-activity-- then moved on to partner dictation, where I divulged the main plot points. Next it was on to a rotating partners scheme of making scene predictions and we wrapped it up with a second rotating partners activity (two lines instead of two circles) wherein they reacted to a podcast and interview with the text's author, Witi Ihimaera. All told they practiced speaking, listening, watching, moving and predicting--not a lot of energy to play on their phones with all of that going on. ;-)
Of course it all came together when Sebastien and I did a screening of the film on Friday night.

As a filmic endeavor it's stirring, but I have to admit I was most deeply moved by the actions of two young men who were defending women's rights to gals who, during the agree/disagree activity, were espousing openly that females are not as strong as men and that it isn't their role in society to be leaders. When evidence to the tune of, "more men are politicians therefore men are more capable politicians," start flopping out of people's mouth's and falling to the floor like dead tennis balls, it's so hard to remain non-authoritative and uninvolved in the conversation. Thank goodness for feminists like these boys. I may have teared up a little when they both approached me after class to have a copy of the film.

Questionable sanitation practices? Doesn't matter, had hot pot.

Gansu-giving was great! I think I ate my weight in brownies and chicken. My team had the hot streak for the night's beer pong tourney and it was amazing seeing the old Sichuan Normal University crowd + the 40 other Peace Corps volunteers'n in country friends.

Over the last few weeks, Sebastien and I have improved our pizza preparation technique and even tried self-serve hot pot. I gotta say, I really like the taste of brain. I'm not even sure what kind of brain I had this time, but ~~lobe-ally~~ ahem, globally speaking, brain is super yums to the max. It's hits the teeth like eggs, yet coats the tongue like butter. I reveled in the sensation, bite after bite and kept waiting to get grossed out. Didn't happen. As the flavor goes, its reminiscent of liver mixed with whatever sauce you dipped it in. Still prefer tripe, tho.

Partying and all that is fun or whatever, but I'm in love with simple Saturday mornings that get spent half asleep wrapped around Sebastien's breathing pattern, where all I need to do once we get up is fill my face with baozi and sit in a sunshine-soaked room reading or being read to.

It's an uphill road race, true enough, but I've already defeated the miniboss. Totally excited for in-service training next month, and then a vacation before next semester...

So many open windows--and the options all feel so picturesque.

Woo-hoo!

Erin and the Container Hearts

2013-11-22T11:35:00.001+01:00

I've put considerable thought into what matching tattoos on Seb and I would look like. Currently I'm lobbying for bookends. Not like the sad ones from that Simon and Garfunkel song but pretty much the sad ones from the Simon and Garfunkel song forty years before it's relevant enough to evoke sadness.
Anyway, he's not the tattoo sort--but he will be if he ever falls into a coma.

My birthday has come and gone in a flash and a flurry of other people's kindness. Seb and I went into the city and partied last Saturday night. We tried to go to this American restaurant called Charlies Kitchen, but it was not to be. Mingtian as a suggested reservation time is the last thing you want to hear when you haven't had a burger in 4 months.
We still had a goodly amount of fun. Our friends gave me a succulent and we ate copious portions of succulent meat at a German restaurant. We were there with a German exchange student who was a good sport about the whole thing. Plus I learned three new drinking games, including two played in Chinese.
I also palled around with a pair of puppies. Total success as evenings go.

My birthday wasn't technically until Tuesday and Sebastien woke me up before my 9 o'clock class with coffee in bed and a cake and cream puffs on the table. He likes to hide my presents. It's really cute because I usually forget until my pillow is suddenly lumpy. The pinnacle came attached to the card which read, "Something to celebrate your father by and complete quests left unfinished." The box he handed me was playing the Legend of Zelda opening theme for NES and turned out to be my kindle on to which he had installed NES and SNES emulators. He had including not only my personal favorite titles, but all the games I used to watch my dad play and am super nostalgic for as well. Upon unboxing I hit start onceand tapped Fred into the account of the first character bank, because as I reminded Sebastien for at least the fourth time, my dad named his saved game after me. For dinner that night we made pizza from [post Universe invention] scratch and my student gifted me with a scarf she describes as being China red.

Sebastien's parents sent a second package to make up for the one we all assumed was lost in the mail back in September and they both showed up on the same day. We now have 4 pounds of coffee and something like 27 chocolate bars. Best of all, the oatmeal cookies from the September box were still edible. Or they were until we consumed them all.

I finished Infinite Jest two Fridays ago and read the Magician King and The Book Thief in quick succession. I love the idea of books that have books of their own. It lends such a richness to that universe. Midterms went smoothly for us and this weekend we're heading back into the city to do a Thanksgiving approximation with the other Laowai we know.
It's hard to remember a time in my life where I didn't hate Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. They were never the best of times. Lots of yelling and stress, kids table ranking--plus whose idea was it to start mashing up carrots and turnips? Why is that even a thing??

I sometimes think that if I could just have my own little family in a far flung corner of the world I could enjoy these sorts of events. But the duty of family is always scraping at my knees trying to get me to cry a lot and eat food I don't enjoy. If it weren't for novels or the X-Files marathons of yore, I'd have never have made it this far.
I'm sure we'll make the best out of this gathering. I'm really looking forward to seeing faces of people who I haven't talked to offline with since this summer.

For our contribution we made chocolate chip cookies, three kinds of crepes, roasted red peppers in an olive oil, rosemary and garlic marinade, and we'll share our last terrine that we smuggled into China from France.
Speaking of France, Sebastien's colleague, Jerome, went recently to Beijing and brought us back a Camembert....
These aren't exactly what you would describe as lean times.

There is snow on the ground and there are slippers on my feet. There's a scarf around my neck and hot cider in my cup. I'm wearing flannel in a tidy living room, and as I sit here upon my couch dipping an "extra" chocolate chip cookie just deep enough to leave morsels only slightly cold on the inside. I am relaxed and warm and I can't help thinking of something a Chinese American friend once told me, "White people smell like butter."

Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and embrace who you are.

Red bean everything: the adverb game

2013-11-05T13:10:00.001+01:00

There were 7 Koopalings and 9 sons of the dragon. Coincidence? I certainly don't believe so. My favorite S.O.D so far is Suanmi. He's easy to confuse with a lion and can be found guarding doors or at the bottom of incense burning receptacles do to the fact that he's a sucker for smoke and fire. After him, I guess I like Puloa, he typically adorns bells and is known for his roar and love of noise. You can see him around Suanmi's neck, if you look closely.
I super dig that each of the nine sons have a job to do, whether it be protect against flooding or keeping homes safe. Even if they are just giving strength to worriers or liking music, I find fascinating the various ways humans have explained our world throughout history, and it's even more interesting when we endeavor to channel some sense of universal will for protection or betterment.

You see, I don't have the same appreciation or memory for history that Sebastien does, but there is a special place in my imagination for folk magic.
The other day I learned that where we live, Yuzhong, translates to "In the middle of Elms." This made me think of Yew trees which knew to be a wand type from the Potterverse. Thus, I started looking into the magical properties of elms and pulled Sebastien into the hunt to differentiate between Alder, Elder, Edritch and Eldridge. But surely the most wisened among our readership was quick to surmise that, yes, I was, as a result, late for class.

Oh my Glob, I love my apartment. It feels so rewarding to have a clean space and to be able to sit in a different room than Sebastien if I want to read a book curled up on the couch...because we have a couch now. And by so doing, I don't have to hear him jog his foot incessantly. Everybody wins! It's been way too long since we've had our own space and if feels so good to put as much food as we want in the fridge and hang our clothes out to dry with zero competition for those resources. Related: I have two favorite candies, so far:

Sour plum in brown sugar

And another one that can't find a picture of online that's kind of like prepackaged mini dunkaroos. I think I'm coming down with a bit of a cold, but we've been knee-deep in that good kind of busy. Maybe moving towards a little too busy now that we've been volunteered to plan the staff Christmas party. But at least our Halloween event went stupendously!

We had over 100 students in attendance, a large portion being non English majors. We passed around huge bags of candy, gave a short cultural presentation on what one typically does on Halloween, and showed two films, "Sleepy Hollow" and "Zombieland", before giving away prizes during Sebastien's monster trivia game. (Chapsticks.)

On Saturday we went into Lanzhou to kick it with some Peace Corps peeps, but also invited along a Canadian exchange student who we were sure was cool enough to hang. I'd vouch for her, she would not screw up the heist. We had a lot of fun out at dinner and back at our private KTV room, and it is only right and proper therefore that the highlight of the evening should be singing Killing in the Name Of with a China 18 whom is the personal owner of a cool first name. Great times.

But coming in at an uncomfortably close second in the category of all time weekend highs would definitely be waking up in a friend's apartment and getting a chance to wash my hands with warm water for the first time in 4 months.

November 3rd was a Sunday and kind of a bummer because it was the anniversary of my Dad's death. He's been dead a year but it keeps feeling a lot longer. I'm no wiz when it comes to that sort of data and it had been a dog's age since we had a talk that wasn't about a hammer, such that, I almost forgot that back in the before times, we would spend hours on the phone between visits. He'd tell me about his latest yard sale or the last bike he rebuilt, and how his tin soldier collection was going and I'd share stories of my life with my Step-dad, edited out to save his feelings. Looking over my shoulder through the lends of age, I doubt very much now that he would have cared or been hurt.

My father was the self-made sort. He could fix almost anything, but he dropped out of engineering school and always wore this shame like the sort of chip on his shoulder that the monkey on his back couldn't eat. Here in China, however, his experience would have counted for more.

My parents weren't happy together. My daddy slept on the couch for most of the marriage that I was cognizant for---that is, until my mother started to complain about the smell and he moved all his stuff to the basement, where he lived till he moved back to Chicago.
Though I love 'em, each in their own way were--the both of them--- poor examples of how to be a decent partner. Even so, my parents loved me.

Growing up, that was the hardest part to master about my feelings: the understanding that their adult relationship was separate from what I was allowed to feel for either of them. And anyway, he listened to my bad dreams and assured me my teddy would protect me from future nightmares. He taught me how to install drywall, when to use blueboard, how to fix a toilet and just why they call it a jigsaw. I didn't agree with his politics or some of his principles but he was a man of many maxims and I hear myself repeating them to others with an assurance born of inheritance: "measure twice, cut once," "any job big or small do it right or not at all", and my personal childhood truism, "promises were made to be broken."

Promises or no, his death day corresponds with the folk tradition here in China where one burns paper coats and paper money for the dead so that they will be well provided for in the afterlife. Only the oldest siblings may burn offerings; the younger siblings are allowed to kneel and touch their heads to the ground three times in a gesture of genuflected remembrance.

I'm not really the sort to try out other cultures traditions just for the hay of it and so I was still at square one when considering how to mourn him....

Am I suppose to be feeling something...?

Burn a candle? Listen to music? Lay on the couch all night and cry? As it happened, I was in the midst of another bout of giardia on the third, and I was in and out of the bathroom for much of the day. During that time the toilet's inner workings needed to be jostled and plied no less than three times. I caught myself humming a song with no tune and found myself smiling at his memory. I'm thankful that he never let my gender be a wall between what he thought I was smart enough to learn.

Sometimes during Christmas, when I just can't help it, I reimagine the afterlife that occupied my childhood, where god had princess Leia buns and everything was done in seipa tones--him and Zack are there sitting on a cloud strumming harps. Or maybe he's this very instant waiting around for his coat to catch on fire, pissed that there's no paper money for him even in the afterlife. In that context, it's easy for me to imagine him saying, "Excuse my French, but the fucking Chinese were right!"

I miss you Dad, but in a sort of quiet way I like to pretend isn't there. Don't get me wrong, I haven't forgotten you--my husband's computer broke the other day and I wasn't scared to take the back off to examine its guts or go down to the back market and bargain for the right screw driver in a foreign language. Thanks for being the kind of parent who handed me the reins, let me take apart my toys and help me put them back together. I think it must take courage to stand back and let your child live their life. So thank you for letting go of the seat so that I could wobble out into the world alone on my Schwinn, believing in my own two legs and the steadfastness of my grip. I promise to pay it forward

D list celebrity gossip

2013-10-29T14:14:00.000+01:00

The computer clock in the corner of this screen reads 1:34 AM when it's actually closer to 13:30 on what feels like a Friday, but is not. It's disconcerting how betrayed I feel by this machine for insisting on the wrong time. Especially considering I've set it to the proper time on at least three occasions, previously. Yet, here we are again, wrong time being checked and reaffirmed as the wrong time every couple of edits. I'm sipping a mug of hot water, a predilection that sounds far less eccentric to any persons who've lived in China, as I type on the ancient desktop that came with the apartment.
Sebastien's computer is sitting on the kitchen table, guts turned out, in the pile of rice intended to soak up the coffee he spilled inside it this afternoon.
You really have to feel for him--he has been working tremendously hard on prepping his two sections of Sophomore English writing and his Oral French and French Listening course, respectively. He was just putting the finishing touches on his latest presentation with twenty or so minutes to spare before class when his hand slipped and the coffee and cup made contact with the track pad and his slacks.

My phone is also broken and our hotplate just crapped out on us last night--on top of the two puters in two months that met their death by liquid! Death, I say! Liquidy death, of dooooooom. Technology has been pissing in my Cheerios lately, man.

But I can envision worse fates...

Globally things are really swaying along. I feel on top of my work load and am getting to practice my small talk around campus.
Being a white woman in China is kind of like being a D list celebrity....
People are like, "hey, weren't you in that ...thing...yeah, totally, can you pose for this picture?"
I may have just gotten off the train I've been riding for 24 hours. I'm likely sweaty, caring most of what I own on my back--all while smelling like second hand smoke and other people's instant noodles.
But sure, I'll pose for your picture. This is flattering! (Even if it will never make the front page of Reddit)

Some of my other white colleagues are less than enchanted by their rise from obscurity. When I ask them why, they say they don't like being valued for being exotic. They don't like getting invited out to dinner because it makes their Chinese host look good. They're not interested in what this will mean to your QQ or Weibo friends if you take a picture with them.
For me, like them, tokenization is something I'm renting. As soon as my stint is up, I go back to being regular boringly-named-Erin of no cultural significance anywhere in the western world. That doesn't mean that I don't regret not being able to kiss my husband in public or dress as provocatively as my Chinese coworkers without out it being news. I too have my, "stop staring at me" moments. Sometimes, I truly would rather just just enjoy a beer with my friend then practice English with a stranger. And should I feel like crying, I'd prefer be a true nobody than even a D list version of me. But I am borrowing these feelings from people of color and or actual celebrities.
It's good for me. I'm learning.

We just invested in a Kick-Starter project for a gluttonous amount of miniatures to paint and I get a bit of a tummy swirl anytime I think about it. I'm also beginning to enjoy instant coffee. I've had to work at it, but the adjustment was swifter than beginning to enjoy actual coffee. I love Chinese food. I love it. I may even enjoy it more than French food, if we're not talking apéro...
But seriously, the better I get at preparing the more and more I want to eat it.
And don't even get me started on our favorite Baozi/Jiaozi joint!

On Friday we're planing to host our first program for the community. My excitement is considerable. Halloween has never been a high stress holiday and so I'm always happy it's happening again. True, as a blood sport goes, it doesn't have the best candy--but candy it does have in droves. Seb and I are going to do a short presentation on the festivities, pass out some candy and screen a scary film.

On Saturday we'll head into town to try and appease the Techpriests with money and hope to retrieve data or more from both our paper weights. We've also got a dinner and KTV date with some PCV folks living over in Anning, should be memorable..

I guess all this ammonia byproduct in my breakfast bowl has really got me considering the transient nature of technology as apposed to how permanent it always feels. When so much of what I like to do by myself requires music, or a computer, or taking pictures or making music, how by myself am I really being? The fake time is now 4:22 AM.
So now, if you'll excuse me--Sebastien really needs a hug.

Love serving love

2013-10-20T17:57:00.002+02:00

I took a short walk today. I was wearing a thermal shirt, jeans, an unzipped vest and jacket.The sky was a single underwhelming color above the mountains, which spun off like echos of themselves in every direction. I clenched my jaw against a breeze and lambasted myself for having not equipped the scarf I've lately worn around the house. After a few more strides the wind blew again, this time with no claws, and as it trickled away, I was suddenly aware that it was warm enough to smell the tannins of yellow leaves and the stark dark greens of juniper trees.

I haven't written you for the entirety of the government shutdown. I confess that this was of course completely premeditated on my part. But as I'm finding it difficult to staunch the flow of my ingeniousness, I should also like reveal that I pronounce nuclear in the same manner as former president George W Bush. A terrible sin I know, but I as also say "rum" in lieu of "room" and "pup" when I mean popcorn, I'd prefer chalk the whole distasteful association up to our shared regional accent, (given that Mr. W was raised in New York City's parking lot, the great State of Connecticut.) I tell ya, political infighting and the back and forth of stubborn statesmen always feels like a slow game of tennis to me. Even as I lick the salt off my lip and scratch the court with my shoe, I don't miss how obsessed I used to be with domestic politics. Erins can't survive on bread and circus alone.

My computer made its final hard return a few weeks ago. It was a loss both great and untimely. Ichooch was a stalwart companion, a willing voyager and a guileless victim in the conspiracy between an unfathomably water-tight canvas tote bag and its accomplice, a significantly less than water-tight water bottle. This tragedy has most cruelly subtracted from the time I can spend dicking around on the internet, prepping my course or pursuing my interests. I don't know if I will be able to get my data back either. If that's not bù hǎo to the max I'm not qualified to say what is.

I had a mind to make a little video out of all the various clip smidgens I had gathered in France: a lot of parties and parks, loud bangs and people I might never see again; the kind of memories the mind naturally sets to music. I had also been making a playlist itunes folder of all the songs I wanted to sample. I am very busy hosting office hours, playing Ultimate Frisbee, teaching classes, planning, correcting, answering emails and meeting my colleagues. But I still have free time beyond my ascribed duties. (Yes, I am duty bound to play Ultimate.) #hardship

It's not that I don't enjoy spending time with Sebastien painting figurines

or making dinner with students

Or even just hanging out out in Lanzhou with other PCVS

but it had been my intention to do a glitch hop project with all the shiny little rings I'd gathered. Cuz sometimes, I just want to be alone with a creative endeavor on my plate and nobody in my way.

It's true. Wǒ yǒu shì. I've been reading when I should be studying, but I've been studying just the same. I think that after two years of living in this country Sebastien and I will have a functioning level of the language. It will never be my favorite, Chinese, but China will always be part of me--no matter where I go from here.

Infinite Jest is almost over. I really don't enjoy the Canadian terrorist subplot. I bet there are innumerable people who quit that book because of all of the French that gets tossed in. If only they knew how much of it was grammatically incorrect! Now, I'm no grammar ace of French or otherwise but there have been sentences that I just KNOW are wrong. E.g. In French, one can often substitute the noun with its gender after it has been named. And so I get what he was trying to do when the wheelchair gang of Quebec separatists complementing the soup (feminine) and asks if "c'etait toi, faisait-elle" ? Dude, what you tried to do there--I get it: third-person singular imperfect indicative, a tip of the hat, sir. But pronoun substitution just does not apply here, either technically or colloquially. Page 486, for the curious.

Most unfortunately, after doing a small amount of research I found a fair few of the good people of our own world wide web defending D.F. Wallace's incorrect usage saying that he made this and many other errors knowingly. Norman, s'il te plaît....

Merci

This assertion of blind faith is beyond ludicrous to me. The Emperor has no clothes, people! It doesn't make sense that a character bent on Nationalism and a separate state would use incorrect French. Mais, c'est pas grave--David s'not perfect--that doesn't make him any less a genius.

So for all of you who gave up because of piles of French in italics, come back. Let's all just take a few breaths and admit Wallace didn't always know what he was talking about. He has no idea what Boston is really like, who lives there and where they live, but when he describes a tree you may find you need to pull the book away from you face for a moment in quiet amazement, or it might just make your chest bump like a pair of sneakers in a dryer. He didn't get it all right--but it's still fine entertainment. ;) And we can still be impressed that he did it all without Google.

Incidentally, I'm reading an easy book in French and I've also been reading Fifty Shades. It had real potential to serve us softy a scoop the non-vanilla sex world but it been much more effective in boring me with word repetition and spreading confusion as to what the subconscious is. Yet, I don't begrudge fans of this book for enjoying the sex there within because it isn't as though Heterosexual men don't have power fantasies of their own, and not just heteros, obvs. People's tastes come in all shades of gray beyond the ascribed 32 flavors and power dynamics are an amazing aspect of sex.

I actually really enjoyed the emailing back and forth as a plot device. That at least was refreshing! However, it does get a little tiresome when every single man in the book can't help but make a pass at the protagonists, who, by the way, considers herself mal a droit and ugly.

E.g. "My eyes are too big for my face." God, that must be terrible, said no anime fan ever.

"I'm too skinny." ...Most women feel that way, don't worry.

And then of course you have the happy couple who argue bitterly every two or three pages before cranking out a few rounds of insecurity fueled make-up sex that get progressively more pedestrian each go.

Sexual fantasy is one thing but it is unnerving to imagine young people holding this up as an example of how they would like their relationships to go. I understand being impressed by power (though I prefer the power of intellect) and I definitely get wanting to date a guy who wears a tie, but half the stuff she puts up with have the Life Time Special, "Not Without My Daughter" written all over it. I find it curious--and I do mean curious--that someone could sexualize such attention...

Remember sweetlings, you don't come out ahead from people willing to throw money or time at all of your mishaps. In fact you should be weary of such safety nets--these people don't actually believe in you. They're insulting you. What they'd like to dress up as love is really just their own fear of obsolescence--were you realize your wings were never truly made of wax. Sure, they might want to save you the pain of failure, or bask in the fact they were integral to the sunshine of your achievement, but they do all of this for their own ego and at the detriment of a true success. So fly high, my pretties. Pump those wings and soar!

[Oh, and if you want to sound authoritative when talking about wine then just consider going to a degustation, asking questions and tasting things. Once you've tried a glass that you think you'd enjoy more of, buy a bottle and start experimenting with others made from the same grape, in same year or of the same region. Bam. Sophistication.]

Having finished both a Storm of Swords and the Drizzt Do'Urden origin story, Sebastien is now reading Under Heaven to me--captivating barely begins to describe it. It takes place during the Tang dynasty in the former ancient Chinese Capital of Xi'an a short ride by huǒ chē from where we live! Beyond my amusement via proximity, there are quiet a few cultural points we've had glances at personally and see nods to in the book. The second book was called the Chinese embodiment of Game of Thrones by Salon dot com--purveyors of provocative titles and various opinions; so you might want to get hip to this. Prose like whoa. I means it.

I like explaining things to you, but I love being able to talk about books with Sebastien. We have this ability to start in about a character without naming them and the other quickly picks up the thread and begins analyzing the situation as though these are people who exist beyond the pages and outside of our minds. It feels almost like a secret and it makes me reach out for his hand.

Ask me about my obsession with the 9 sons of the dragon or the stellar deity 寿星 next time we talk because I've grossly overused my time on Seb's computer. I think I'll head out for another walk and think about all the stuff I haven't had time to write down. Love, all.

The songs we sang last summer

2013-09-11T13:38:00.000+02:00

It's finally time to get the master list up of all the great bloggers and even better summer mixtapes. More will be added as they roll in, but you'll find any and (eventually) all at the end of this post. I'm very pleased to have AE guest posting and I sincerely hope you dig his tunes. If you like how he writes, make sure you head to his page and become a part of the conversation!

***********

The summer of 2013 has been a long summer, as all summers are once you finish college. Seriously though...who thought it would be a good idea to condition America's youth to have 2-3 months off in the middle of every year and interrupt their learning? My guess is it was an old man who was afraid of losing his job to younger competition. It works.

Wow...that got tangenty quick. Where was I...

As a huge fan of music, I tend to soundtrack my life. As a child I used my portable cassette player to make sure I entered every room to Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero", and I'll still exit my office to theme music (typically the 4th Movement of Dvorak's "New World Symphony") after a particularly good training. Not surprisingly, my summer had a soundtrack, which I want to share with all of you.

My 2013 Summer Soundtrack (pops to new window)

Mark Crozier and the Rels - Broken Out In Love
As a huge wrestling fan, I feel the introduction song is one of the most vital parts to opening any event. I chose to use the best entrance song I've heard in recent times to open this mixtape. Bray Wyatt debuted this summer with "Broken Out In Love" as his theme, and while his buzz has died down, his chilling entrance music is still catchy.

AFI - Too Shy To Scream
Speaking of catchy, I've been on a huge AFI kick for most of the summer. While my typical listening has been AFI's darker pieces, the upbeat "Too Shy To Scream" seems more appropriate for a Midwestern summer that was cooler than normal, both to my surprise and my delight.

Mumford and Sons - Thistle and Weeds
Name a good Mumford and Sons song besides "Thistle and Weeds". If your answer was anything besides 'there aren't any', you won't be moving on to Final Jeopardy. "Thistle and Weeds" has been stuck in my head for a few weeks now thanks to its appearance in an episode of Grey's Anatomy my girlfriend was watching, which has been a pleasant development considering how easy the song is to fall asleep to.

Maybeshewill - He Films The Clouds Pt. 2
I've been listening to a lot of classical/instrumental music over the past couple of years, and I've come to rediscover my love for music that relies heavily on the piano. That said, every song could use a good guitar solo, and this song has both. "He Films The Clouds Pt. 2" sounds like it belongs in the video game Katherine, which in and of itself is high praise considering the beautiful soundtrack that game possessed.

Garbage - The World Is Not Enough
You want a voice that relaxes, empowers, and charms you all at the same time? Listen to a Garbage album straight through. Shirley Manson has one of the greatest voices in modern music history, and this is one of the band's best songs.

Wu-Tang Clan - Bring The Ruckus
There's a running joke at my job about how everyone in my department should consider using Wu Tang Financials as an investment firm. The joke is an homage to a Chapelle's Show skit that portrays the rap group as investment brokers, quoting heavily from "Bring The Ruckus" and "C.R.E.A.M.". I chose the former for this list thanks in part to a chant of the song breaking out at a USA Soccer match.

Leningrad - Fish
I have no explanation why I like this song so much. It was just that damn catchy the first time I listened to it that I've relistened to the song 2-3 times a week since I first found the song in June. I blame the trumpets.

Tommy Heavenly6 - Black Paper Moon
At the end of this spring into the beginning of the summer, my girlfriend and I watched the entire Soul Eater anime series. Of the various anime shows/movies I've watched, Soul Eater has been my favorite, and "Black Paper Moon" was my favorite of the two theme songs the show used.

System of a Down - Aerials
I tend to go in cycles with SoaD. I'll go 6-12 months without listening to any of their music, then I'll suddenly go on a binge where they make up about 40% of the music I listen to at a time. Early in the summer, I was winding down one of my SoaD kicks, though Aerials has still stuck around, becoming my go to song to calm me down if I'm getting angry at traffic on my commute home.

A Perfect Circle - Judith
You want a great motivation song before going into a long day at work? Park your car, close your eyes, crank "Judith" to 11, and rock out in your car. Not only with the random hobo walking by your car not fuck with you, you'll be psyched and ready to conquer the day.

**************

Master List:

Jorge's Souther Hemisphere "Summer" mix

RIO's Hope this lasts forever

Erin's Music to laowai

Katie's Summer reflection

Martin's incredibly music oriented summer

Risha's Summer or Monsoon mix

To participate in the next Mixtape all you need to do is create a playlist between 10-15 tracks in length. You can post said list on Groove Shark, soundcloud, 8track or my preferred site: http://everyonesmixtape.com/ (You're also welcome to make your list available for download.)

You then write a short post about why you picked each track, and then that post goes live on another bloggers' page.  In this way you could enlarge your readership, make new blogger friends and hear some new music!  The tentative due date for posts to go live is November 15th. If interested, please send an email with your URL to mixxtape.makerz at gmail.com so that we can start looking at the numbers.  Thank you very much--I'm really looking forward to seeing what inspires you this fall--musically speaking.  

And so my watch begins

2013-08-29T07:48:00.001+02:00

I drew the duck blue--or rather, I posted the oath of the nights watch because the Peace Corps vows are substantially less evocative. The real bit of excitement comes and goes with the first line when the US ambassador to China asked us to protect US constitution from its enemies. I don't particularly consider myself an ignorant person in matters of State, but I do admit I had always assumed all founding documents were well guarded and under glass. But hey, that's showbiz for ya—I shook his hand and called him Sir, nonetheless.

My TEFL group. 25 of the 70 sworn in today!

My friends and colleagues will soon all be on different trains going on to do what we've been trained to do. We finished out our last week for PST in a hotel together away from our host families and indulging in over priced western food and the friendships compulsory to willingly foot that bill.
I love how in my little niche we can go from discussing radical theory right into a dick joke, get roaringly drunk and watch an old movie or just make eye contact and laugh at this friggin otha guy ova heair, ked.

We had one pretty cool after party where a more sober lot came into our room and discussed books and what we were reading the way some might have gone straight to sports. I was pleased that so many folks in attendance had tasted Infinite Jest for themselves.

Now that I have hit the four hundred page mark of this book's vintage, some of the rust and worship has come apart in my hands exposing criticisms and chrome. Foremost in my appraisal I find that I am disappointed by Wallace's sense of class consciousness.

Late in his career, he wrote an article for Harperd Magazine in defense of prescriptive grammar, titled, Tense Present. For those of you not familiar with the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive grammar, the latter accounts for normal use of spoken (in this case) English by all of its speakers. For my own reasons, I will avoid the use of the word dialect as we explore these ideas, but a descriptive interpretation of grammars allows for rules which are grammatically correct because a body of speakers uses them to enforce rules the speakers themselves determined.

If you read even just the abstract of Wallace's you see he quotes Webster's third edition five basic edicts in defense descriptive grammar:

"1 — Language changes constantly;
2 — Change is normal;
3 — Spoken language is the language;
4 — Correctness rests upon usage;
5 — All usage is relative."

Over the course of the essay, Wallace tries desperately to poke holes in these concepts but they still hold water for me. He seems self aware enough to recognize that both his privilege and elitism exist but doesn't, in his writing, step away from these yokes. I want to discuss specifically his use of racial slurs in the first 300 pages of Infinite Jest.

One of Wallace's spiraling story lines is about a lower-class white male bent in full supplication to his heroin addiction. Wallace gives us a first person/omnipotent perspective into the daily quest for a junk fix. Having lived in Boston for many years, and being apart of the blue collar culture that helps to create the spoken English there, I did not feel the character's language to be authentic. I can see that Wallace researched it and that he took notes. But words like "pissah", when used by his characters or referenced to by the narrator, feel as though they themselves are in need of ironic quotation marks.

Setting aside that bit of class consciousness, we see that the junky considers going to black dealers, whom he refers to categorically with the N word.

Now I've already said that the character's lines don't feel believable to me but the use of the N word here is artfully done because Boston has had a long tradition of civil unrest and highly segregated ethnic neighborhoods still flourish to this day.

My point really is that as a writer your word choice should matter. I don't want vulgarities or slurs littering my text just to prove you're edgy enough to do it. Nor do I feel words should be off limits. I chose not to use the N word now because I think it would add nothing to your experience as a reader. Abbreviations are common in our language and I don't apologies for not wanting to offend my readers.
As a reader myself, I expect to be able to suspend my disbelief, to forget I'm reading and to watch scenes unfold in my mind--I can believe that a white Bostonian junky would employ racial slurs--that feels real to me.

But later when a named character who is obsessed with tattoos refers in passing to an unnamed character known only to reader by the description of his two tattoos, a swastika and the N word, I fail to see the point.

The swastika establishes his level of racism and his willingness to display it. Merely writing a racial slur in all caps proves nor adds nothing to my experience as reader or your expression as a writer. All I've learned from that sentence is that you're unafraid to do it. What has been added to the discourse by this? That you're above the rules? That people who are hurt by this word should get over it because you are?

If you've always belonged to a group that racial slurs don't effect the display of such boldness is not only ineffective in promoting the softening of that slur, it's uncultured and ignorant as well. It shows a lack of class consciousness and a willingness to leave unexamined your own privilege and your responsibly to people of this world who do not look or feel as you do.

One might argue, as some of my friends have, that words themselves are arbitrary. And while that is in essence true, the word for black could as easily be the word white, the meaning that those two words depict is not arbitrary at all. There is history in both those words. Thus one might better say, we have arbitrarily chosen them each to hold in context two discrete concepts that we wanted to differentiate between. So that at least, if words are arbitrary, their meanings are not.

Verdict: I'm going to finish what I started.

As a writer, he's not to be discounted.

It doesn't sit well with me that he's wasted words.

Nomenclature and popular wisdom have changed since first publishing.

My own elitism drew me to read this book.

And so off I go to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies domestic and foreign, bearing true faith and allegiance to the same, taking this obligation freely without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, ready and willing to faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps--because on this very day, I begin to live out a childhood dream.

Sebastien and I have been married for three years. Our anniversary was August 27th. To celebrate that and passing the Chinese language exam we had New York style pizza with friends in downtown Chengdu. Last year at this time we were in Lisbon, the year before--Budapest. We've lived in a different city for each year of our marriage so far. Together we will board a train to Lanzhou tomorrow where the next phase of our life waits like so many packed boxes.

The End is nearer

2013-08-25T14:01:00.001+02:00

We've been in China for two months. This morning we moved out of our host family's apartment amongst chirping and chiding and much henpecking. Our host mother made us slippers and topped off our train travel snacks with three pound pears. Last night they took us out to dinner for Sichuan's famous hotpot. We ate pig throat, chicken stomach, cow tail, octopus, bamboo shoots, mushroom, cow stomach, duck blood, cucumbers, sea kelp and pig brain.

In terms of how it all tasted, much of the non vegetables had the consistency of the boiled octopus. The duck blood and the pig brain being the exceptions to the rule. The cubes of blood were as soft as tofu and for me lost in the sea of garlic, cilantro, ouster sauce, numbing peppers and oil. The pig's brain, Sebastien and I agree, had the constancy of scrambled eggs but tasted like liver.

We had our language level assessment on Friday. I did an alright job. I was able to talk the tester about my hobbies and living in France. I told her I like to blog and she asked me how many hits I've had since I started blogging. Hilarious. That was all part of the schema though. The test had four parts: warm up, probe, role play and wind down. The probe is supposed to take you further than you've studied and see what you can make of it. I could not tell her how many hits I've had of all time. But I was able to say about how many a day or per week.
My role-play was from the last chapter in the book. It could be she chose it because it should have been fresh in my mind or because she thought I could handle it. Either way, my class never got there. It was supposed to be about setting up a hotel room for your mom to come visit you in Beijing. My class did go over objects in the house that could break so I was able to ask if there would be a western toilet and an air conditioner or if there was a restaurant nearby or a market place.
She told me my tones are good and I have a large vocabulary but that I need to work on my pronunciation. I told her that I'm translating every sentence I say to her from French before I speak it!
I've spent a lot of time thinking about why that might be...

French was my first second language and as I've just lived there, so it's still very fresh in my brain. I also have an emotional attachment to it. I need to keep speaking it though because I can feel my tongue getting lazy.
It's funny, I told our Dean that I wanted to join or start a French club given our familiarity with the language and the land and it turns out they realllllly needed a French teacher so Sebastien will teach six hours of oral French....in lieu of oral English. Lol, He was pretty pissed off at me for a moment there. No more than I would have been in his case; probably less in fact.

But I reminded him of the time, about five years ago when he insisted I take the Praxis 0014 exam and become a lead teacher. I was quite satisfied with my wage bracket and comfortable with my workload, in short my misgiving were many--not the least of them fear of failure. I signed up but was only able to take the test in Baltimore and had to be on my way before the first Marc train from DC. So we took a cab. Yes, we--as in my incredibly supportive partner and myself left our North West DC apartment before first metro and cabbed it to Baltimore. He awaited me patiently in the lobby of the testing center headphones on, working on his writing project. And you know what, I passed that test.

I think this situation with the French class is much the same. He feels that he isn't a strong enough French speaker to teach it but I believe in him and know he will learn so much as he goes. I'm in his corner not only because I love him but also because I want to live up to his example. And frankly, I really wish I was half as ready as he is to teach French.
Well, it's his turn to use the internet so I should get going. We have just one week left of training before we all head out to our respective sites. Part of me acknowledges I could be out making memories with my colleagues but this hotel's bathtub isn't just going to fill itself...

And we're all so hungry to live

2013-08-17T15:35:00.000+02:00

When I write something here, I like it to feel like well-chewed food--for me at least. For you, I want it to be as sumptuous to the eyes as it is glide-worthy down grandma's gullet. Yeah, I brought up your ma's maw because stout cooking can't all be glitter and gauze. There's got to be some practicality and peristaltic compatibility if it's going to be digestible. In terms of tastefulness, I feel it should be thought provoking and a little saucy.
The problem I encounter most often is the more I have to feed you, the less time I have to plate it for you.
And we're all so hungry to live.

We've been back in Chengdu for one sleep cycle, having spent Sunday through Thursday either in transit or at our site for a short visit. Seeing our cohort again was pretty sweet, even if I did end up dancing to Empire State of Mind in an overpriced expat bar infested by our lot.

It was our buddy's birthday so we all chipped in a couple R.M.B each and bought him a fancy drink. I'm not sure how that became the Friendship Volunteers bar of choice, but I'm glad I got a chance to experience it. We'll only be with our host family for another week. After that we all move to a hotel and then head off to our sites for our two-year term of service.
The train ride to and from Lanzhou took twenty hours each way. Sebastien and I were lucky enough to have what's termed, "hard sleepers"

I was on the topmost bunk like that Grampa and toddler....the Darjeeling Limited, it was not. But we slept well enough and had a few basic conversations and successful negotiations of public and private space. For instance, it's normal for folks to sit on the bottom bunk even if they didn't pay for it or know you. They did not even ask before sitting on other Chinese people's bunks in fact. Whereas Sebastien and I had to gesticulate excessively before they would consider sitting on his.
One elderly lady even managed to trade a topmost bunk with a bottom bunk with a young man not from her family on the grounds that it would be too difficult for her to climb the ladder. The gentleman was not compensated and he and his girlfriend lost their hangout spot just like that. I think this is a testament to what people are willing to ask for and give in this culture. And I find it quite interesting. Sanitation wasn't a huge problem even with my head cold and a visit from the 'frailty, thy name is woman,' gods of tampons and cramps. But it was at times, challenging.

I trust we had a taste of what it feels like a diplomat during our three day tour: We politely overate. Went willingly into question and and answer sessions in slow, deliberate English and agreed affably to courses of action that left us wondering what our other options might have been. But our cross was hardly the only one being borne in that precession. It really helped me in staying positive--despite the sore-throat, sleep deprivation and cramps to remind myself that all of our guides were going well out of their way to accommodate our unfamiliarity with social codes, the language and everything unseen and in-between.
Besides, the campus is beautiful and we'll have a good mix of what we both were hoping for to keep us comfortable and comforted in the years to come.

Well, I have a couple of syllabi to create, a short paper to write, and some laundry that we should get hanging on the line before dinner....and I really need to stop putting off my Kendrick Lamar rebuttal.
I'll post pics of the flat once we're really settled in and probably have more to say about train car culture once we do it for a third trip.
Oh and one last thing: If you like making mixtapes annnnd you blog, consider participating in the summer mixtape blog ring. All you got to do is send an email to mixxtape.makerz [at] gmail.com with your blog address before the end of August. Your post will appear on another blogger's page and there you'll have the opportunity to and explain the songs that populated Summer 2013 for you to a whole new batch of readers! It's a great way to meet new bloggers and hear new music--so get involved!
I need a caffeine reboot, right about now.
I hope the holes you dig this week are the kind you don't mind stepping into and that the people who populate your life are as happy to be there as you are to have them.

Better make it.....Gansu!

2013-08-11T06:47:00.002+02:00

The time has come to be sorted into one of the four regions where Peace Corps is currently sending Us-China Friendship volunteers in China. We'll be 30 miles outside of the city Lanzhou in the province of Gansu.
You've got to marvel at the game design Peace Corps has going. We're heading by train to tease our senses or perhaps test our mettle with or against what is soon to be our port of call. While there we've been advised by the tutorials from above to complete several important fetch quests.

The trip should take about 20 hours. Upon arrival, we are to set up a bank account, acquire a cellular phone, network with the locals, and draw a map of our site. We'll be in the region for about three days before we head back. Of the ten or so people I was really hoping to be placed near we were lucky enough to be in the same region as two of them. We're about 45 mins away from two pretty cool guys whom I hope we'll be friends with but much further from anybody else who went to the same university for TEFFL training.
In fact, one of my best friends here in China is going to be so far south that it would be easier to meet up with him in Vietnam than it would back in Chengdu.
Right now we're negotiating with our host grandparents who insist that they find a friend to drop us off at the station in lieu of us taking two buses or an expensive taxi ride. The grandmother actually got up in the middle of her lunch to find us a driver, even after I successfully used the phrase she so frequently aims at my good intentions, "Mei guanxi."
Apparently, the host father normally gives PCVs a ride, but he's on vacation with his immediate family at the moment. She found us a ride and now we're due downstairs in an hour.
I gave her a side hug and told her to eat.
She laughed and agreed.
I'm on the lookout for something she could use, or eat or love on this trip.

I guess I'm a little nervous about sanitation on this trip. Chinese people will wear spit and breath guards when preparing or serving food. It's taboo for teachers to sit on desks. They even hand-wash their underwear and socks to leave the rest of the washing-machine load unsullied. That is to say that that they are very concerned with cleanliness. But the toilets in public places are as bad and often worse than a row of portapotties at a four day concert. Plus you have to provide your own TP and there will be no hand soap. Sometimes I'm kind of proud of the environmental shortcuts China takes but damn, ya'll, sometimes I just can't hang.

I have a few more observations I meant to share with you but I've been very busy with language training and health and security sessions -for instance we had a really great language/security crossover exam that I want to tell you about when I return.
I have to find out about at least one class I'll be teaching the first semester and turn out a syllabus for that before I do, however, so I shall have to leave you here in the lurch.
In case I have more time to post photos than I do to update you, you can always check out my flickr feed here: American Barbaric

What manner of men or gods are these?

2013-08-03T11:01:00.000+02:00

I know that almost nobody but my mother-in-law has actually been awaiting this update so I will start by thanking her for my nook with an ode.

An ode to brand new nook:

Untapped trapper-keeper of knowledge made arcana,

You are the flower of the foundry--

though cast in plastic thou art,

Thine lithe form was lathed with love

Think you not it lamentable opium tea be no longer dispensable au Carefour

At least I am like to outlive tuberculosis

How romantic.

I love my digital reader because I can finally lift a copy of Infinite Jest without throwing my back out. This is my first attempt and thus far, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm also a bit flattered as I consummate the deed because an advisor on my graduation committee who gave notes on my senior project/novel remarked somewhat sheepishly that my meanderings reminded him--perhaps alarmingly--of Dave's opus. Had I read it, he left unasked with all but his eyes.

No, but I had heard of it I assured him. I was as then, far too arrogant to read anything that might influence me and was vastly more aware of the 3 linoleum tiles that spanned the distance of our conversation.

Tennis? Boarding-school? Drugs? That's my life too, I confirmed.

He laughed good-naturedly.

With laurels like these, who needs goals? Even still, occasionally I reconsider revising. Fittingly, as a work it's much messier than any of the computer labs I composed it in. Nobody said it directly but upon scroll-through, one notes it is all but unstructured, willfully obtuse and silly as a tired child. Wittgenstein would have swept it unthinkingly into the gutter. (Tis the system.)

Obvs, I still relish such, in my view, charming indulgences; hence le blog.

Frankly, the more of his ouevre that I encounter, the easier it becomes to admit I don't write as well as Wallace. Know at least that the yarns I spin in secret are more honest than these in their self effacement, not simply teaming with the cubits and chaos of this basic bitch showbiz stuff I figured out on certain acid trips or decided while editing my linkedin account.

In terms of my week, Chinese has been beating me like a redheaded step child. Mother may have coined that phrase. She would oft times look to my sister, [The redhead] as she invoked it, which I always felt added to the sincerity.

We did a pretty nifty activity a few days back where each of we six were given two strips of paper with a single phrase, respectively. The rest of the students had to listen and then create integrative statements based on whatever the reader could manage to pronounce.

We also had our site placement interview a couple days earlier and we did our best to dress professionally. For example, I wore a hair clip. It's hard to tell if we just threw in with the flee circus of data collection or they mean to actually let a comity preside over the decision. Such compromises bound up by the needs of so many often yield the same results as adding no input at all. But at least we feel apart of the process.

Friday was our final class with our, shall we say, practice students. I showed them the Adventure Time episode from season 3 where the cute king tries to make the guys bend to his will.

Just why I showed them this is now strictly academic.

I'm really hoping I'll have fewer mandatory working lunches with Sisyphus since George Bush is flying his mission accomplished banner over my two weeks of teaching. Yet it's far more likely that le zone vert is about to be Fallujahed by language training, vaccinations and certain unforeseeable addendums to the agenda.

But in fairness, I think I'm going on a hike tomorrow.

Double Happiness.

2013-07-24T14:53:00.001+02:00

Last weekend Seb and I went with the family out of the city and tried crawfishing. When we piled into the car I certainly didn't expect to be spending the afternoon hanging strips of meat into a pond off a bamboo pole, drinking green tea out of a pint glass and eating watermelon. But when in Chengdu...

That Monster in the middle is Seb's!

Sebastien and I were told one evening last week that we were invited to a dinner for our host father's cousin to fancy restaurant on campus. I'm a pretty big fan of places I can walk to so I readily agreed. He told us it was to commemorate his cousin's baby's first hundred days. Apparently it is a very important tradition in ensuring the heath and luck of the child. Alternatively you can choose to commemorate the first 40 days and arguably it's a tradition more popular in the north. When giving a gift for this event one typically gives clothing or toys for the baby or a monetary gift with the base rate 200 kuai (the equivalent of 33 US dollars) This sum increases exponentially the closer you are to the family. Money for any holiday should be given in red envelops because the color is associated with luck and happiness. Even numbers are auspicious therefore you could give 400 kuai but not 5. Sadly we were only taught about the customs of gift giving the day after we celebrated this. Wah wauh. Jerks squared. But the food was great!

We're keeping good company here at Sichuan Normal University.
Originally, I thought there would be 19 of us because they called us the China 19. Turns out that's our year and there's a reason I wasn't named Einstein. (I'm not german, obvs)
They've spread out the 72 of us between three different Unis where we all study Chinese and learn how they want us to teach English. We're in class for about 6 to 7 hours a day, six days a week. Needless to say that in three short weeks we've already gotten pretty close with the 23 fellows at our school. The vibe is wicked positive because we naturally have a lot of common ground. Most folks within our group are experienced teachers, have lived abroad and have one or more other languages under our belts. I'm pretty excited by the opportunity to be around so many other teachers who understand why I want to be here, and as cheesy as it sounds, I'm excited to see what they have to teach me.

Language class: Whelp, due to uneven class sizes I had to do my bi-weekly Language evaluation with a different teacher. This put a few bruises on my ego because she was all geared up to test me on things we didn't cover. Colors? Fruit? Refrigerators and electric fans? Don't you want to hear all the adjectives I memorized?
I also had to face the fact that I've hobbled my progress by allowing my husband to order lunch for me. Neither does it help that our host family uses the local dialect around the dinner table. Unless I feebly interject something along the lines of, "I buy coffee at the store, everyday," I don't even get to do passive learning through listening.
My true gift where language acquisition is concerned is that I don't expect to understand everything. I can sometimes see my friend's eyes spinning as they attempt to translate whole sentences in their heads. France taught me to focus on the one or two words I did comprehend and extrapolate.

Say it with me, 朋友 !

They've arranged things so we design a two week curriculum for students in pairs. This is really awesome on Peace Corp's part because we have support and p2p critiques even as they've given the tools and expectations to realize a course, rubrics, scopes and sequences. It's a lot of responsibility for us but just imagine our TEFFL trainer having 250 lesson plans to read and give feedback on. My counterpart is a rad guy and a capable teacher so we had a lot of good pre-teach sessions. Our students range from 13 to over 20.

We've done three days of teaching thus far. We taught together on Monday but today was my first Kessel run. I'm really proud of certain elements from my lesson but feel like I still have a lot of distance to cover before I'm satisfied with how I'm preforming. I'll teach again Friday and then again next Tuesday and Thursday.

All my students had English pseudonyms, save two. I scribed them a hearty list of tight-jean names like Chaz, Kipp and Chloe but one of the two wanted a T word name so we went with Tina. The other girl picked Katie because my counterpart actually had names like Mary and Jane on his list.
Truthfully, I had misgivings with according them Western names--it feels like a denial of self--but then I remembered how much fun it was to pick one in Spanish class. Especially for the kid who got to call himself Jesus.

More next week, until then sing Tom Petty songs in your head for me!

I am not Trayvon Martin

2013-07-17T16:20:00.000+02:00

I've been pretty befuddled by the outcome of the Zimmerman trial. I'm trying not to loose perspective. I get that some people are annoyed with the media saturation the case and the aftermath have both received, but for the people who this verdict concerns directly (and by people I mean people of color) his murder and the upholding of the Stand Your Ground law are matters of personal safety and survival.

I won't insult your intelligence by explaining that further, because you know what your personal survival means to you.
It's a true story to say that I know a lot of white people. Many of them are not as well off as they would like to be. This affords them certain illusions about race and class. You see, lots of white folks in my hometown survive on seasonal work and unemployment. These kinds of white people can be tricked into believing that the fact that they are poor(er), and the fact that their lives are hard, means that they've never been handed anything. You'll hear them say that a lot--I've never been handed anything! Except the aforementioned unemployment they're ashamed to talk about and the white skin that don't wash off.
You can't blame people for rejecting this reality outright.
White privilege is a blind spot.
99 percent of the time, you can't possibly know you're benefiting from it because skin privilege is invisible. Cops not stopping your car, you not getting carded, not being frisked, people not thinking you're stealing a bike, not getting followed in a store, not getting talked down to when you try to buy things, not getting stared at, not feeling like you wish there was another white person in the room, not feeling like you have to speak for all white people, never getting told you're so articulate like that should be surprising or something, people never touching your hair as though you're their pet because it's so different--all that shit is the water around you that you've always been swimming in. You can't see it. It's normal. It's the luck that you've made on your own, with no god damn help from nobody.
Here in Mordor, one doesn't simply see the forest for the trees.
So I understand the knee-jerk reaction any person who considers themselves a decent human being would have: You didn't cause this, it shouldn't effect you.
But please look again.

Trayvon was stopped for looking suspicious by a man who was told by the authorities not to pursue him. If somebody came up to me in an unmarked car and started asking me questions, I wouldn't show them the deference I show a cop. LOL, Try that on me sometime if you really want to see what entitlement looks like. But before you do, ask yourself, why instigate the fight and then escalate it to the point where you believed taking a life was your only choice?

Jurors say that beyond a reasonable doubt Zimmerman feared for his life. His brother says he'll stay afraid for the rest of it. Well you know what, it doesn't make me feel better knowing that he'll always be looking over his shoulder. It makes me feel sick. It proves to me that guns are too easy to obtain and too final in their judgement. And it teaches us that this law is too ambiguous and needs a slap in the face.

I am not Trayvon Martin but my younger brothers could be mistaken for him. Having a black step father has allowed me to peek through windows of oppression, stepping away unscathed and still white. Being pulled over and frisked. The shame in a grown man's eyes. The fear it puts in me when I look at my younger brothers and in at a world I'll never know the codes for or be able to protect them in. No, I am not Trayvon Martin, but he could have been my brother. And it shouldn't have to be that personal if we really are the decent human beings we thought ourselves to be a few paragraphs ago.

I know not all my readers are white and I know not all my readers need white privilege explained to them. It was not my intention to alienate or exclude anyone with this post. It just made me feel sick inside to go on telling you about my life like I'm Doug Fucking Funny instead of acknowledging that in a country that can make me feel so proud with its cultural diversity and differences--and can feel so idyllic from afar--is still recovering from Slavery.
We are that ugly legacy, America. But we should be so much more.
Swim towards the sunshine, it's time to come up for air.