http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl Life as a Laoshi Thu, 18 May 2006 08:02:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There were American students that came to visit yesterday, on a 3-week study tour of China, hosted by Myrrl and Rod.  Students were all excited for me.  "Christina!" they said.  "Your homemates are coming to visit.  Are you excited?"  To be honest, not particularly.  I didn't feel like I had half ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/welcome-to-our-new-friends.html Sometimes I understand when my students talk about not knowing what to say in English.  I feel like that recently.  In Chinese, but also in English.  With people whose English is quite capable, even.  What should I talk about?  Did I get like this in the U.S.?  It feels even ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/needing-a-topic.html More quotes.  Here we are: "The more often [a person] feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel." -C. S. Lewis "I've found that it's relatively easy to raise a voice in protest, but unfathomably ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/quotes-and-my-blah-blah-about-them.html Yup, that's right. No guilt about not blogging. I do, however, have some guilt about not emailing/writing more often. Maybe there will be letters written during my time in Yibin. Does this mean that I'm depraved and past the point of conviction? Maybe. Hugh ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/i-dont-even-feel-guilty-anymore.html To risk sounding like a feeling-sorry-for-myself whiner, today was a crappy day.  Crappy in that my not-knowing-what-to-say-in-Chinese-ness feels like it's out in full force this week.  Crappy in that I got a bunch of the, "Ta ting bu dong!" ("She doesn't understand!") sentences said about me.  Crappy in that Lai ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/that-time-petrel-fixed-my-mood-again-2.html To risk sounding like a feeling-sorry-for-myself whiner, today was a crappy day.  Crappy in that my not-knowing-what-to-say-in-Chinese-ness feels like it's out in full force this week.  Crappy in that I got a bunch of the, "Ta ting bu dong!" ("She doesn't understand!") sentences said about me.  Crappy in that Lai ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/that-time-petrel-fixed-my-mood-again.html This is a quote I got from another blog--the blog of a SALTer in Egypt.  She was writing about a party she was at with a lot of Egyptian Muslim men, breaking down stereotypes, the fact that we get our information about people from news and not relationship, etc.  It's ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/more-thoughts-that-arent-mine.html I told somebody in my host family community the other day that I was here to learn about their culture, and they laughed and said they didn't have any culture.  Translation: Culture equals education, learning, knowing to read well, knowledge of all this classical Chinese stuff. Yesterday, Dean Zhao called Eunice ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/gettin-culture.html This weekend, Julie, a friend from Chongqing and CEE pastoral care person came to visit. I'm sure it was memorable for her because she got to have rice porridge at my host family's house this morning and take pictures of people in my uncle's pedicab, the new kind of ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/with-no-attempts-at-coherence.html This was an article recently printed on British newspaper The Guardian's online site.  It is, incidentally, about Chongqing, a municipality very near Sichuan Province, which, according to the article, now has a population bigger than Peru or Iraq (and adds the equivalent of the population of Luxembourg every year).  Chongqing ... http://blogs.bootsnall.com/brwneyedgirl/invisible-city.html