Hangzhou Lovin’

While I’m in america, I don’t have a job and don’t have any good prospects for getting one (’cept with my mom, and my timmy the pilot said if I could take pictures from his plane for money, that would be wicked).

I think I am becoming a bore, all my conversations are “One time in China..” or “In china they do it like this…” That must get old at some point.

I think I should make it a point to listen to some good live music cuase china surely lacks that, but america is so damn expensive.

I love the green here, the parks seem so lush and abundant, but I hate the lack of street food.

I’m in St. Paul.

I’m in the twin cities for awhile then I’m gonna go back to wisco for some weddings.

light posting as I will be travelling alot.

Gotta spread this SARS thing far and wide.

back in america. It’s ok, it’s really not as much of a culture shock as i thought it was going to be, I just kind of slipped back into american life. (Which means sitting around my parents house all day and going out to eat mexican at night).

I knew I was back in america at the customs line, when some chick naccused a guy of staring at her tits.

America is damn diverse. I stepped off the plane at LAX and say Blacks, hispanics, asians and wite people. They all looked fat too. Americas are totally strange looking. They are lumpy, their limbs are ill proportioned and their noses are to big. Even asian americans look kinda wierd.

The streets here are so empty as well, but so many cars.

Still it dosn’t feel that wierd to be back, it almost seems like China was just a dream.

Oh yeah, I couldn’t change my money when I was at the Shanghai ariport. They said they needed a recept for something. i told them i was a “foriegn expert” and had a contract with a chinese schooll and had earned this money with my own sweat and tears, but they were just Ho’s about it. So if anybody in the states wants to make a blackmarket RMB/Dollar exchange look me up. (i got a lot of RMB).

Might be my last post for awhile, last post in China at that. I’m leaving on my journey home tommorow. It seems that the hardest part will be getting to the first airport. There are stories of roadblocks at every small town. Hopefully I don’t stumble into any quarintine on my way home.

I’m horrible at goodbyes. The only people I can properly say goodbye to are fellow unemotional males (”Well be seeing ya later.” “yup have a good life.” is how I like my goodbyes) .I couldn’t bring myself to tell my students that I was leaving until the last second. It wasn’t a good plan it just made it worse. It’s not that they were crying, but me leaving seemed to be the last little nudge that pushe them into depression. They have been so apathetic lately because Mayday holiday was cancelled and they can’t leave the campus. When I told them I was going they all just looked up at me with an accusing stare, how could you leave us, their eyes said.

But they are just my students, they will have other foriegn teachers and will go on with their lives. I never really got that close to them. For some reason, there is a wierd distance between me and my english majors, whom I have most of my classes with. The always treat me like a teacher and I never know what to say to them. Stll they gave me letter and little presents, telling of their admiration of me, something I’m definitly uncomfortable about. (It’s like when you walk into a classroom in china for the first time the students always clap. What did I do to deserve that?)

I also blew off some of my students requests for taking pictures with me, to do things with my friends. My friends are just more importnt now that I am leaving. I might not see any of them again, but things have been to hectic lately for that to sink in. Maybe I will be sad when I get back home. But I’m not really a remorseful person.

What else to say, but see ya later China, Get well soon.

Since I’m leaving soon, I’m cleaning up my computer, and I need somewhere to put my favorites. So I’ll thow them up on my weblog.

Daves ESL cafe

Norwegian (swedish?) google that got around the google block.

Stratfor, I guess I though this site was intersting

An article at the Asia times that I liked but didn’t really understand, about how the US economy is screwed

Some digitised travel books about china that I never read, looks intersting.

Some book I wanted to read

Maxspeak, a lefty econminst’s blog I read almost every day.

Some Iraq war information, can’t remember why I bookmarked it.

Why the hell did I book mark this?

Guess i thought this paper on exchange rates was intersting

Laowai.com, I thought it was an intersting chinese expat site, but it is never updated

If you ever feel like learngin econ, this is a useful glossary

This has my address in xinxiang and pictures from the old teachers

useful homebrew calculator

I liked this blog for awhile, then it got boring

I think this is an articel about the middle east, that I tought was intersting but too long to read

if I understood econ this would be useful

I don’t know why I linked this, it’s a bunch of hack opinion peice writers

An urban legend I taught my students at halloween

Check if a site is blocked in China, very useful

Google ESL directory

Tongue twisters

Online magazine about Beijing

This story is ok, but it get’s boring when he starts bitching about his girlfriend, sould qualify as a china blog.

The incredably useful online china tools

Why did I bookmark this?

Chinese schools in china

Intersting article about hte bubble and the fed

Mark’s esl site

FREE PUBLIC PROXIES

A site with decent free online lessons

China Job page

Chinese language info

One of the best bloggers alive, d-squared

A fun game I use in class and stole from hello laowai, hello

hella chinese crap

A chinese techer job placement agency

Best sars page, sarswatch (plus he links to me!)

Thats about it

besides the porn…

Here’s some bullshit i wrote in 20 minutes for our schools english newspaper.

Enjoy

Improving your english

Besides, �Do you like to eat Chinese food?,� and �Do you have a girlfriend?,� one of the first questions I get asked in China is �What should I do to improve my English?� I find this a very difficult question to answer. For one thing I am a native speaker. I learned English when I was a baby, so my experience cannot be of any help to you. I also feel that the questioner is looking for an answer that will make learning Chinese easy, but there is no simple solution. Only through hard work can one master a foreign language.

However, different ways of studying English do yield different results. If you sit in your room and memorize every word in the dictionary, you will know a lot of English. If you try to talk to an English, you will find it quite difficult to communicate. Imagine a Chinese person that never spoke in natural sentences, but only rattled off unrelated words. You would think he was crazy. This is what you would sound like to an English speaker, if you study English only by memorizing words.

Another way of studying English is to read many English books. This method is much better than just memorizing words, but it still has it�s drawbacks. Of course reading English books will improve your reading ability, but it will also help build your vocabulary, and improve your writing. This is because it is easy to remember new words that you read in a story, and if you read a book that has good writing in it, you will learn how to write well.

The drawback of this method is that it does not improve your speaking. When you write something, you have lots of time to pick the correct words, and you can check to see if you have used the proper grammar. In speaking you have none of these luxuries. You most come up with the proper words to express your feelings on the spot. You must know the proper grammar instantly. The only way to learn these skills is to practice your speaking. By this I do not mean sitting by yourself and saying English words. You must speak to other people.

�But I do not know any native speakers to talk to!� I hear you lament. This is a problem, but it is not hard to overcome. While it is useful to talk to native speakers, it is not essential to learning English. Wit so many Chinese people and so few native speakers in China, you will be lucky if you can get to talk with one for ten minutes. Don�t despair, there are many Chinese people very eager to speak English. If you want to learn English go out find like minded students and all of you will learn English quickly.

Everybody studies English for different reasons. If you only want to pass a test, maybe memorizing a dictionary is a good way to do this, but you won�t be able to communicate with anyone. If you want to be able to write and read, than reading many English books is a good idea. But I think the goal of any foreign language student should be to communicate with people who speak that language. To do this you must practice that language with other people. In the end that is the only way you will truly master English.

What else, yeah the elections, Who are the democarts gonna run. here’s my breakdown of the important canidates, (i.e. those with a vague chance of getting the nomination)

Lieberman - Mike Dukakis squared, will never win against bush. 1st of all he comes off as a pussy, and can’t have that in a time of war can we? Secondly, to the general voting public his policies are indistinguishable from bush. Not electable as president.

Kerry - I’m not sure what to think about him. The media likes to spin him as a clinton clone without the Charisma. This isn’t really good. I think the media will be to hostile to him for him to get elected.

Edwards - Young, seems to be pretty smart, decent politician. I’ve read some bullshit from him lately, but as for the declared canidates he has the best chance of winning in my opinion.

Gephhart - Democratic Bob Dole. Boring as hell. Cold get the nomination. Will only beat bush if the economy or Iraq goes poorly.

Dean - Maybe he can pull a clinton, but I think he is to liberal to get elected. Vermont hicks can’t get elected as president any way (only southern hicks can)

Grahm - hmm, pretty conservative and “stong on defense,” he’d have a shot at beating bush, but I don’t think he can get the nomination.

Kuchinich (sp?) - If the democrat’s take a lot of acid and decide to become the green party they will nominate him. It would be interesting to see what would happen, but the public is pretty moderate so he would probably lose to Bush, (whough would pretned to be a moderate in his campaign, then go back to his conservative ways).

The others in the race right now won’t win.

But the two democrats with the best chances of winning are not in the race right now.

they are Gary Hart (He’s got a Blog!)

and General Wesley Clark.

Of the two I would love to see Clark get the nomination. Not because of his policy ideas (though they seem decent), but just because of would a little prick Bush would seem next to him. He couldn’t pull that bullshit carrier landing propaganda stunt with Clark in the race.

Fuck bush went awol. It’s disgusting to see him say he supports our troops, when he is the one who sends them in harms way.

Allright here’s what to think on the US front, (that means Iraq)

just sit back and wait. Shit’s still to confused to be able to make any sense out of it. Things certainly don’t look good for the US what with everybody but the Kurds calling for us to get out, but things could change for the better in a year… Or they could get a lot worse. Just wait and see.

As to the lack of WMDs, eeven I’m a little surprises. I thought that Saddam was conatinable, but I didn’t ecpect him to collapse that easily.
Anyway, except WMDs to be found, but it will just be a small cache of mustard gas or something equally harmless. Despite this, the president will cite this as a huge gain for Christendom, or some other bullshit.

Oh yeah, This is why baghdad feel so quickly. It wasn’t exactly a military victory. The special republican guard was bought off by the americans, no question in my mind. Not that this was a bad thing. whatever it takes to end the war with fewer casualities is a good thing. But it kinda makes all the talk of a agreat military victory, sound kinda empty.

I realise I havn’t been telling y’all what to think lately, so here it goes.

SARS - Not great, but not terrible. The SARS virus isn’t that infectious and it seems like it is containable if people are on the look out for it. This means that people in Developed countries don’t have much to worry about.

China will continue to have a large breakout and excpect the News to continue to get worse for the next couple of months, but then due to the draconian measures everybody is taking it should die down by the time I am due to come back to China to teach in the fall. Right now India is scaring me, the goverment there seems to have no interest in accuratly reporting SARS cases.

As for personally living with SARS, it is all getting rather routine. Most people have stopped wearing masks around the city and it FeiDian isn’t always the main topic of conversation. The most annoying recent devlopment has been that most housing complexs are closed down. In China everything has a wall around it. At my housing complex, the old retired people sit at the front gate and suspicously watch every one who comes in. Now they have been given red armbands, that I presume say “SARS protection squad,” and look even more suspiciously at people coming in. If they don’t know you, you can’t get in. Or at least that’s how I think it works, No body bothered to tell me.

The other big thing that’s happening, is that some dude came back from beijing and ran away from quarintine when the police tried to stop him. Now they ave all these posters up over town, that have a fuzzy picture of he guy. They tell you if you see him to either stop him or run the hell away so you don’t get SARS.