plans

I came to china with out a real agenda. My aim was to get to know what it is like and experience living in this country first hand. However some of my friends came here with a very specific and long term goal for themselves. I have been thinking about this recently and I am a bit puzzled, are there two kinds of people in the world? Are there more? I am happy without thinking too much about the future and what I "need" to be doing right now to make the future me happy. Yet my friends who have the long term goals are doing things now that make them unhappy in order to achieve what they believe will be rewarding in the future. This is of course not taking into consideration those people that I meet that have long term goals and yet do nothing to achieve that goal. I spoke with two guys last night and they had finished their MBA and were in china to learn chinese, yet they hung out at western bars talked to westerners and did little to nothing to make their goals achievable. It struck me as very odd. Why have stated ambitions if you are not willing to do the work? Is it better to say that you are here for fun and leave it at that? Or is that just an easy way to avoid the truth which for me is that I have no idea what the future holds and therefore I refuse to plan for it? Just something I have been thinking about recently.

weird, wild, stuff

As I am teaching a course on the introduction to western civilization I have been trying to introduce the ideas that have helped shape the way the west thinks differently than the east. I have gotten to the part about christ and the whole christianity part and to my surprise the students here, while they have heard of jesus they know nothing about the life or teaching or beliefs or anything. Now I am an atheist. I have a very strong belief in nothing. I dont want to teach the students about christianity, but it is a really important part of the shaping of the west. So how much do I tell them? Do I present it as a story, some peoples beliefs? Is it important that he is born of immaculate conception? Really hard choices for me to make. I think that I will go with the pure history of it. The belief system is up to them to figure out. I will teach them the actual history, try not to put too much bias into my explanation. But it is really odd that these students have never been exposed. It really is such a huge part of the culture of the west. We have fights still about this in our courts and it influences so much of our discourse. It is no wonder why we as different cultures have so many misunderstanding. I have a hard job out ahead. How to make them understand without advocating for any particular belief system.

happy patty day

And last night is a bit of a blur. Went to an Irish bar with some friends and of course there were specials to be had, namely a bottle of Jameson for 200RMB. Oh and a funny Guinness hat can with the bottle. Thats cheap, like the same price at the supermarket (packey) so I drank a bunch of that and then went for a walk to another bar, along the way I saw a brown pot a little bigger than my head. Now it was a nice pot sitting there in the trash shame to let things go to waste so I picked it up without thinking. I just wanted it to grow some plants in. Well I walk into the bar and let me tell you, I have never been so popular, everyone and their mother wanted to talk to me about my pot. I started telling people that I was a leprechaun and the pot had gold at the start of the night but as it was late I had no more. People just believed it. I guess they figured why would I tell them that, or they thought I was insane and wielding a large heavy pot best not to argue with me. The thing that got me was how few people said I was tall for a leprechaun. I guess they have seen tall ones before. At any rate I got the pot home safely and will get some dirt and seeds for the thing, what should I plant? goldenrod?

spring is in the air

Ah spring so lovely, so refreshing such a grand time of the year. The birds sing more, the forsythia has exploded like a bush full of yellow popped corn, and the willows have a sheen of green upon their boughs. I do so love the spring. It makes me want to go outside and lay in the grass and soak it all in.Alas Today is one of my longest days with 5 total hours of work I missed a good portion of the day, however I did stare longingly out of the windows of the classes that I was teaching. I thought about taking one of the classes outside for lessons but the few times I have tried that it never works for me. Perhaps next week I will give it a shot. Ah one thing that I dislike about the spring, mosquitoes. I have had a mosquito in my bedroom for the last three days, I am not sure if it is the same one or if there is a sign on my door that says "all you can drink blood buffet" because I lay awake for the better part of the night waiting for that bastard to land on me and bite and just as I nod off it lands, I jump awake smack myself super hard miss the thing get angry and turn on the lights and look around for it. I never have any luck finding it eventually I go back to bed, lay awake waiting for it to land nod off....repeat ad infinitum. All in all though my legs are happy to be out of pants, my arms happy to be in short sleeve shirt and I am happy to be alive in the springtime.

well, well, well

So yesterday was supposed to be a day of rest. However as it usually does life got in the way of my rest. I was so busy that I didnt even get to go for a run. It all started the night before. I foolishly invited some friends over for dinner and when I got up I realized that I had no food to feed them, thus it was off to the store for supplies. Now I must tell you that Sunday at the grocery store is like hell on earth. After battling through the throngs of bodies I checked out. Got home and realized that I had a shitload of lessons to plan for the week. I had forgotten that the class on monday has a quiz and I needed to write it up. So I took care of that, then I needed to get some drinks for the guests, and make copies of the quiz. After that I still had to cook and clean. For the love of all things holy, why did I invite others to my house for dinner? At any rate dinner was fine, and this morning I woke up and realized that I had forgotten to post. Not that it really matters, just trying to stay in the habit. perhaps I will write another one later, if I am not asleep.