michaelracine_新浪博客

Back for the summer(2008-07-03 09:03)

标签：杂谈

I got back to Traverse City yesterday. I'll be here through early/mid August, and then I'll be heading back toward Brown for my friend Danny's wedding on August 15th.

I signed on for another year at my same job in Jishou, so I'll be flying back to China sometime in late August.

Next term I'll still be teaching three or four classes in 9th and 10th grades, but this time I'll get each of my classes twice a week (this past term I just had my 9th-grade class twice a week, and the other classes only once a week). I'm definitely hopeful that I can help the students a lot more with the extra class period. When I only saw them once a week, no matter how well they seemed to understand what I was teaching them, they'd have forgotten it by the next les

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Earthquake(2008-05-14 01:25)

标签：杂谈

The school called everyone outside yesterday afternoon as I was going between classes. I hadn't felt the earthquake at all, but a couple of my friends said they were awoken from naps by their beds shaking. Nothing intense here; it just amounted to a missed class as everyone stood outside (as a precautionary measure, in case a stronger quake had followed here and buildings became unstable).

Since I didn't even notice the quake, I was surprised to hear that it was felt as far away as Beijing and Bangkok. Apparently the epicenter was about 400 miles west-northwest of here, in Wenchuan, a small town a couple hours north of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan (a.k.a. Szechwan). A 7.9 on the Richter scale, definitely no joke. It will presumably be a while before we know the extent of the damage in that area; the latest

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A Thought for Holy Week...(2008-03-22 12:43)

标签：杂谈

A thought of love for Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

      did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

      taking the form of a bondservant,

    being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form,

     he humbled himself

    and became obedient to the point of death —

&nbs

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Zhangjiajie, Take Two(2008-03-18 14:04)

标签：杂谈

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have more pictures from a second trip to the forest park in Zhangjiajie. This time, the sun was shining, we had a bit more time, and we saw a bunch of Rhesus monkeys! So check out the photos here. (I put them in with the photos from my last trip there. Round two starts with the monkeys.)

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Singapore(2008-03-17 23:27)

标签：杂谈

(This is the third of three entries posted today. To get the full story, you may wish to start at the beginning with 'The Road Way Too Heavily Travelled'. Otherwise, peruse as you will.)

Singapura, a fine island she is. My stay was not particularly long, but it was restorative. I stayed with my friend Erina, from my previous East Asia trip, and her sister, Susli, in the guest bedroom of their apartment. I enjoyed both of their company very much, and it was really nice both to catch up a bit with Erina and to meet some of her friends in Singapore.

Erina and Susli are both currently working as financial consultants, meaning weekdays they work something like 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and have things to catch up on over the weekend (when they're not on a p

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Hong Kong(2008-03-17 21:42)

标签：杂谈

I only spent one day and one night in Hong Kong. I'd booked my flight from Hong Kong to Singapore, but I didn't have any agenda there except to take a quick gander at the place. After a ten-hour train ride from Changsha to Guangzhou with three people in two seats (an a good night's sleep thereafter), the morning bus ride to Hong Kong was decidedly more comfortable.

I knew I'd gone someplace different when my English was more useful than my Mandarin. Cantonese is still the dominant language there, and if people have studied Mandarin, odds are they've studied English further (whether or not Beijing should like it that way). Also, I saw white people. I even saw some black people.

After booking a room at the Fort

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The Road Way Too Heavily Travelled(2008-03-17 19:40)

标签：杂谈

It was Sunday evening, the third evening after the lunar New Year, and I was preparing to head out the door to buy a train ticket to depart Tuesday morning for Guangzhou, whence I could take the bus across the border to Hong Kong (yes, although Hong Kong returned to Chinese posession in 1997, a passport is still required). I opened up the calender on my computer to check the date that I should require for the ticket, and did a double-take: today's not Sunday, it's Monday! Somehow I'd lost track of a day, and tickets are notoriously difficult to come by during the Spring Festival. I promptly exited the room and headed for the train station. The time, as I entered the ticket hall, was approximately 8 p.m.

A woman approached the people behind me in line, asking if they wanted her ticket to Changsha (the provincial capital).&

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Chinese New Year(2008-02-07 21:29)

标签：杂谈

新年快乐！万事如意！So it's now officially a new year in China (year of the mouse/rat). I'm sure most of you are aware that the Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is the most important holiday of the year around these parts. Following the lunar calendar, it happened to fall on the 7th of February this time around.

Day 1:

So the celebration began on the 6th, finishing out the old year (year of the pig) and staying up to greet the new one. I spent the day with my neighbors--Mr. Zhang (a math teacher), his wife, and daughter (a senior at my school)--and their relatives. First, we went to her parents' house for lunch. Tons of folks, tons of food. After lunch, we went over to Mr. Zhang's brother's house

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Finishing out the year two thousand and seven...(2008-01-04 01:01)

标签：杂谈

分类：Entries

Hi all, sorry it's been so long since my last update. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive narrative of everything that's happened since my last blog entry (as that would be an enormous and rather pointless task), I'll fill you in on how I spent a couple of our major holidays, and see where we go from there.

I spent the better part of the day on the 24^th giving oral exams. My liaison with the school told me to be done by the end of December, presumably so that the students can spend the next few weeks preparing for their final exams. So, I had students sign up for five-minute time slots to come and talk with me one-on-one, asked everyone the same basic questions, and assessed how well they were able to understand and communicate with me.

T

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Update 20 Oct. 2007(2007-10-20 22:10)

大家好! Hi Everyone!

It seems strange to say I’ve been here for almost two months. I suppose it’s good to remind myself that time continues to pass, as it motivates me to get on the ball and study Chinese. But I know many of you still don’t know too much about what I’m up to here, so I should fill you in.

I'm teaching oral English at a combined junior/senior high school, in a small city (around 200,000 people) called Jishou ( 吉首 ), in Hunan. My teaching schedule is quite light: Mondays, I teach two classes of sophomores; Tuesdays, an “English corner” with 7th graders; Wednesdays, an English corner with 8th graders, and a couple hours with a Chinese tutor; and Thursdays, one

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