Tripping in Asia

Tomorrow I'm going to China!

I got my passport with visa back today. I also bought a Lonely Planet: Beijing guidebook.

Huzzah for 9 days in a communist country about which I know next to nothing.

T Minus 14 Days

I really want to go to the Netherlands. It's got so much going for it--renewable energy, legal gay marriage, legal whatnot (Amsterdam, need I say more?), being part of Europe...

Instead, I'm going to Beijing, China in 2 weeks! Just got the visa earlier this week. 9 days of checking out the Great Wall and China itself. I've already learned my first Chinese character--you put the character for Boy right next to the character for Girl and it's the character for Happiness. (I wanted to ask what putting two men together would be, but I didn't have the nerve, since I was talking to my boss.) And when I say I learned it, I mean I have it written down somewhere.

In other news, I'm going to be in Beijing for 9 days starting 14 days from now!

Happy Teacher's Day!

Yesterday was Teacher's Day. Presents, sweet! Chocolate, flowers, mouth freshening spray.. Hey, it's a foreign land. (And I drink coffee right before class. Don't worry, I'll take the hint.)

Today I got an additional present in my google news aggregator. California legalized gay marriage. I probably don't know enough about the legality issues to know what that really means, but I still like it.

So..have a good day. Happy weekend! Have a beer on me.

Poet Busted with a Giant Coffee

Feeling down? Need a quick pick me up? Try the fabulous, world-famous taste sensation, COFFEE. Wonderful feelings will course through your veins soon after imbibing of this sweet energy nectar. Just one sip will have you licking your lips. Just one cup will have you...heading for the bathroom?

Sorry, I was searching for a rhyme there and I failed miserably.

I'm back on the coffee, though. That's right, "on" "the" coffee. It's a drug, and I'm making no bones about it.

I didn't drink it for a while, but then I decided that I love it and there's no good reason to stop drinking it. I'm great at rationalizing things like that. It's how I always finish abstaining.

Feeling down emotionally? Need a quick eye-opener? Maybe a better perspective? Check out Brian Andreas' website, or better yet, one of his books. He reminds me of Damian Webber, that famous Buffalo poet who wrote such classics as:

The Microwave

How does that thing not give you cancer?

and:

Look Down

You're not going
to talk to
any of them,
anyway.

I do like short poems like that. Easier than a long poem to understand, easier than a long poem to subject your friends to.

One more thing I wanted to mention in this random collection of thoughs for the day: I'm a huge fan of facebook's new bookshelf application. Normally I think facebook is mostly stupid, but I love books and I love knowing what my friends are reading.

I also love the sticker application, which I suppose ties in with loving short, easy-to-understand poems. Check out bustedtees.com to a bunch of funny t-shirts, akin to the funny stickers.

Teacher? Student?

One of the good things about teaching that they don't really tell you about beforehand is that you actually learn a lot. I'm here to teach English but I'm learning about:
-the history of soccer (there didn't used to be rules and whole towns would play, throughout the whole town--sometimes, people died, so it was banned by 3 different monarchs. Unsuccessfully. And we think we have sports that surpass it).
-continental drift through reading units with the kids.
-incentives and how to manipulate the will of others through communing with the authoritarian within myself.

Mostly, I've learned more than I want to about that last one, and I have pretty good classes this semester so I'm getting back to focusing on things like the first two. This semester is making me feel like, yeah, I might want to have kids some day, after all.

That's this semester so far, anyway. Here's to sweet kids who turn into devils when they realize I'm a pretty nice guy.