Three Days, Three Posts!

Hoowah! Force of will!

So I’ve been able to keep up with my latest resolution to update this thing more … at least three days going. How long does it take to form a habit in your brains? At least longer than a week, as that seems to be when my mind wonders over to something else. A glance at any random month in my archives can probably provide enough evidence to back that up.

I am still plagued by the question of why. Why is my mind so prone to scatter? It’s really quite frustrating. Frustrating for other people, too. Mainly Christina … she has to deal with me every day, anyway.

Good lord, I’m tired. I taught another three classes today and then Christina and I went to a nearby public pool to swim laps. I remain pathetically out of shape. Christina kept laughing when I tried to do the backstroke…. (though that may have been because of my random declarations of being “Michael Phelps” and “the greatest(!)”)

Two Chinese children stared at me while I changed out of my bathing suit.

I understand if you’re stealing glances out of curiosity. And, naturally, how could you not be captivated by this bod? But these two kids were staring at me, and while I stripped down. The Chinese really don’t get how unnerving that is to an American. They saw my penis. I guess, in all fairness, I did see theirs. But they didn’t seem to care….

They were talking about me, too. Even if I didn’t know the Chinese for “American” and “foreigner,” it was obvious they were talking about me. And the older gentleman they were with just chuckled at them. Made me grumble. I ended up talking to them very briefly (once I was fully clothed, natch), and, well … lied to them.

They kept referring to me as “American person.” That’s a common assumption here: that all foreigners (read: white people) = American. I wanted to rattle them, because they had so rattled me by studying my nakedness. I told them I wasn’t American, I was English. One of them seemed amazed I knew any Chinese; the other didn’t look like he particularly cared. I left after that.

A petty lie? Yes. I remain human.

They started it!

Leaping Calendars, Batman!

Well, I thought I’d post something today, seeing as it isn’t a leap year every year and wouldn’t it be lovely to have a February 29th in the archive.

So here we are. Not a whole lot going on . . . well there is one thing. It’s pretty inconsequential but, you know, I thought I would just throw it out here since I got nothing else going on. Christina and I have officially decided to pursue positions teaching English in China. Hoowah! We’ve actually been preparing resumes and such (sending them out, etc.) for a few weeks now, but it’s official because we have both told our parents.

So there’s that.

We’ll be gone for a school year. Right now we’re just sending our info to as many universities as we can find, hoping to get the best deal that we possibly can. We are both super excited, and our parents are (thankfully) very supportive of the arrangement. Her parents seemed a little concerned about how I would make it, but other than that . . .

Pretty exciting. And I’ll be sure to tell you all about it (assuming their pesky firewall doesn’t block blogspirit . . .).