Off the grid and lost in the fog

It occurred to me this morning that I have not spoken or communicated with really anyone that lived east of Wuhan. For those who are wondering if we are still here, we are. Things are great. Somehow earlier this month the cell phone went missing. No real problem when you have only a few friends that live in your building. I can imagine it would be a problem if you wanted to contact us. I guess it is hard for me to empathize because I can talk to me whenever I want to.
I was able to see my students real expectation for me as a teacher. It is humbling to know that all they really want from me is entertainment. I would say that it is subtle except on several occasions I had students tell me flat out that I should teach something else. Oh well. I entertain them some of the time, but most of the time I am going to teach them what I think they need to know. But what do I know about speaking English fluently- hah. I have only been speaking it for 20 years and graduated with a degree in English.
Despite the teaching gripes, I must say things are really improving around here. Noel is being Mrs. crafty and painting up the apartment and making homemade bread. Being married is great-- really.
Also, the spring has brought fog into the area. I really love fog. It is so eerie (which is such an eerie word to spell) and is so cool to look at normal things through the fog. On Saturday, we went with some students to East Lake. It is a large park on the other side of the city. Evidently it is the largest metropolitan lake in China. The picture was one that I took while strolling through the nature area. It was a very peaceful morning.
One last thing: if everyone who is on my blog reading list will email their posts, that would be great. Seems as if blogger and China are doing the ole' water and oil thing, or maybe the blogger gods don't like me. Oh, and while your at it, can you get someone to fix wikipedia, because it seems to have gone on Spring Festival for way too long. It is time to get back to work.

Comments

  1. Staci27/3/07

    AWESOME picture!!! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. laura27/3/07

    Hey patrick. I hope you are doing well in China with your new wife. What a life change! I've been checking in on you occasionally, but I always forget to post. Seems like life is super exciting right now. I look forward to hearing more about your adventures! Take care.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve and Joan31/3/07

    Do you mean that you can't get on to any of our blogs to see what is going on? If so, that is sad! Can you read our comments?

    Steve

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Systematic Cooking and the evolution of phones

Image
I don't mind eating the same thing repeatedly. Egg sandwiches in the morning. Roast beef sandwiches for lunch. Bagel Bites for dinner. All have been eating phases that I have gone through. Now that we are settling into our surroundings a little more here in Orange County, we felt a little more comfortable to just take it easy on the weekends. So, we cooked. I decided that I wanted to make a lasagna (and Noel made a great chili at the same time), which meant finding the top rated recipe on allrecipes.com. Badda bing badda boom-- 'I got me a whole lot of lasagna'. Thus, I get to have lots of lasagna all week long and and all I have to do to cook is stick it in the microwave. In some respects it is like the widow and her miraculous lamp. And on to the evolution of phones. The iconic figure of Zack Morris using his gigantic mobile phone during class sticks out in my mind as the essence of cool. Swing forward to 2001 and you will find Derek Zoolander, the top male m...
Read more

Busy, busy, busy

Image
Memories and thoughts disappear if not stored, recorded, written, or memorialized somehow. Of course, this immediately makes me think of pre-literate societies and what it must have been like to have only a few recorded memories, thoughts, pictures, or keepsakes not yet even 50 years ago. Now, every moment of every day is recorded, synched, uploaded, stored, and searchable to myself (or others). What then is to be done? Shirk the norms? Embrace the present culture? Moderate between the two? And yet, I have digressed . . . Yesterday's trip down memory lane truly allowed me to see the types of thoughts that were retained and more importantly the frequency. What seemed regular and consistent in 2006 and early in China, understandably diminished once marrying Noël, moving back to the States, further diminishing once beginning at PCA, and almost disappearing in Long Beach, and continuing through early Yakima and teaching, until now. What types of memories were retained? Well, I have ...
Read more

Snake

Image
It will have been fifteen years ago this year that I got my first cell phone. It was a Nokia something that had interchangeable faceplates. The phone-brick called people, received calls, and had games buried deep within the OS. My favorite was a this little gem: snake. The game was occasionally played but never mastered. Well, because you always died. The snake would eat too many apples, get too long, become unwieldy, and then you would run into yourself. My score never topped 200 and it didn't even matter. Scores on games on my phone didn't matter, because it was irrelevant to life. The phone barely mattered because I would rarely use it. I had other things to worry about. About this same time, in high school I start playing console games. I can thank Mike Stork for subsidizing the purchase of my first--a N64. That summer Mike gave me to do work around his property. It kept me busy and allowed me to save, and when I had enough money, I purchased the golden goose egg of the...
Read more