Qing Wendy

(Actually August 26, 2019 -- we've been struggling getting email access!) Travel is like a lock on the door.    Locks are cultural.    Each looks different.    Some are high-tech,and some are barely functional rusty bolts. The trick, when you’re in a new country, is to figure out how your small key works with the mysterious 2-dimensional hole on the door. This is a round-about-way to say we made it through the door.    Our planes were reasonably on time.    San Francisco (SF0) was stunningly clear.    Beijing was thick with smog.    Xi’an greeted us with a down-pour – which was cool and refreshing.    When we arrived, my UC-SD students met us at our apartment with food, and helpful instructions on how the apartment works. We absorbed as much as we could, fell into bed, waking multiple times during the night. The next day was when the excitement began, and why I led with the extended key metaphor.    Somehow, Dave and I managed to screw up the mechanism in the lock on

August 22, 2019. T oday I sold my 9 year old Prius car to Carmax.  I cancelled my AT and T phone service.  It really feels like I am leaving home in a few days.  I spent several hours preparing classes and thinking about what my future students will be like, how I can help them improve their English.  It is interesting to think about how English works, how it can be confusing.  Memories of diagramming sentences and memorizing subordinating conjunctions in middle school came flooding back.  No, I won't subject my students to that.  I am going to find ways to make English fun and hopefully give them the practice and skills they will need to communicate.  We'll see.   Prepping his class

  It is with great anticipation and a bit of anxiety that I prepare to leave my comfortable San Diego life behind to live, teach and learn in Xi’an, China for one year.  I will also help colleagues at the medical school with their technical English writing. I will be teaching conversational English, medical English and medical students at Jiaotong  University.  I owe this opportunity to my wife, Wendy, who found me this great job.   These past few weeks I have been organizing syllabi for my classes and trying to imagine who my future students, colleagues and friends will be.  I hope that they will get as much out of having me there as I anticipate I will get by being there. I am excited about working on my Mandarin, learning more about China and making new connections.  I hope I can play cello in a local orchestra. I look forward to to sharing my journey with you through this blog.  Thanks, Wendy, for all your hard work with setting this up!

Me and Pi starting to pack Many of you have asked me how one packs for a year.  I’ll be frank:  I don’t know.  On one hand, as Dave says, we’re moving to the country that makes our clothes.  Check your labels.  Pakistan and Guatemala are up there, but China beats them all.  On the other hand, I don’t want to buy new clothes.  As I start to pull apart my closet and put clothes into piles – yes, no, maybe – I realize that I like my clothes.  They’re me.  I feel as though somehow my confidence and history and sense of self is woven into the cotton fabric of some of the oldies.  The me-ness is as real as the seamstress who  cut the fabric and stitched the cloth in a cement factory, halfway around the world.   I wore that blue shirt when I interviewed for a job.   I always wore those pants under graduation robes.    That sweater is perfect for the airplane. Mary Morris, a professor at Sarah Lawrence, who happens to write a lot about travel, calls excess baggage a symptom of an i