fraumadame in China

You don’t really know someone until you climb a mountain with them. Three English teaching colleagues recently let me into their family lives on a Sunday outing to bei bei, a district north of the city. Where there is a mountain, there is a way. Our way began by little red car led by GPS. [...]

 It was somewhat familiar being greeted by an over-eager golden mud-color clad monk clanging a gong and wanting payment for a prayer. It seems that wherever you go there will be a nun or a monk hard at work, requesting payment to pray. The nun here looked to be about 85 but she still knew [...]

  Very last minute; very Chinese! At the very last minute I discovered that I would have five days off for Tomb-Sweeping. This was an unexpected bonus of time. It was the moment to visit Guangxi, fly to Liuzhou and enter the world of the Miao ethnic minority. Luckily Yao Dong was there to organize, [...]

March is the month which sometimes breaks me. Back in November I knew that winter was coming and I prepared both mind and body for the inevitable. There were celebrations we all associate with mid-winter and our minds were taken off of our physical discomfort. There were life-size mechanical Santas beckoning you into the appliance [...]

Looking for small but finding only large. Seeking fewer people, only discovering more. What is it about China?! I had asked Tom one of my students if I might visit his home town which sounded to me like the typical home town of many of my students. The fall semester would have ended. The campus [...]

  Mosquitoes not withstanding, West Bali National Park kicks butt.  You can look out on the Bali Sea  from a minimal human encroachment, almost invisible to the naked eye as you approach by boat.   You feel so insignificant.   You surprise a dozing doe settling in for the night in a thicket by the path, [...]

  Fully unaware of the actual start date of the Festival of Lights, we began celebrating some time in December. Although I am not a child, I often feel like a child in my present circumstances and therefore I received at least eight gifts, one commemorating one more day that the oil burned when it [...]

Semantic fields overlapping, concepts never before conceived of, mistaken identity labeling an exotic spice and stepping out for a maiden voyage; all aspects of learning Chinese in China. I am making baby steps and I am amazed and I am jazzed! No, I am not actually comprehensible most of the time, but I am along [...]

Just how thankful were we going to be? Last year at this time we were trotting off to a stary hotel for a fancy shindig with roasted turkey made by a German celebrity chef. It cost a few shekels too. Most inspiring this year though was the potluck gathering at the KateRich homestead where locals [...]

When you take the 288 out of chen jia qiao you may have to sit on a gradually-filling bus for a while since the driver is having his break and this is the origin of the route. Thankfully the driver is fully finishing his last cigarette before boarding. He carefully puts on his white gloves [...]