The Archives

• Balloons, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  Latex Bribery

  06.01.10 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Teaching, I imagine, has quite a few similarities to parenting. Parents see their kids at home acting out, letting manners slip, saying and doing things they would never do around others. Then when they’re out in the world, they’re prefect angels and parents are like, “What? My kid?”
  Last week I had the bittersweet pleasure of [...]

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• From the Mouths of Babes, amuse bouche, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  On Lady Gaga and Enlightenment

  05.20.10 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  Since my brain has been bled pretty dry in terms of lesson plan ideas, I had my kids make dialogues in class today. Little did I know it was time for the teacher to become the student. In three separate dialogues, the kids exclaimed, “Oh my Lady Gaga!” This is new, red hot catch phrase [...]

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• Christmas, holidays, less food-related, students, teaching

  ******mas

  12.30.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Chinese people like to compare Christmas to Spring Festival, the Lunar New Year, the Chinese Holiday of holidays. Over Spring Festival, big cities are abandoned as people go home to see their families. Even in Beijing, which is renowned for its abysmal traffic, the streets are empty. All over the country businesses close, train [...]

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• From the Mouths of Babes, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching, tidbits

  I Don’t Know What That Is, Reege

  09.09.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  One of my favorite students just sent me the following text:
  “Hi,Ellis.can I ask you a question?how to analyse the reason on the fluctuation of the variable home mortgage rate”
  I was a film major specifically to avoid encountering questions like this.
  Thank God for Google.

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• huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  A Huzhou Home Companion

  06.14.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Every night, the speakers around school blast a strange, vaguely Celtic jingle, which means it’s 5:15 and time for the school’s radio broadcast. When I told Jennifer about it a few months ago she said, “You mean you have to listen? What if you don’t want to?” But when you come to China as a [...]

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• From the Mouths of Babes, huzhou, less food-related, students

  Hummer of Humility

  04.24.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  Welcome to the third and final installment of From the Mouths of Babes, or How I Went to Kashgar and Killed Class Time by Making My Students Write My Blog. Today’s installment comes from Wednesday morning Customs 0702/0704. This class is actually two classes combined together, and one day I walked into class to find [...]

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• From the Mouths of Babes, KFC, huzhou, less food-related, students

  Paper, Gunpowder, and the Weather Forecast

  04.22.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  Welcome to the second installment of From the Mouths of Babes, or How I Went to Kashgar and Killed Class Time by Making My Students Write My Blog. Today we will here from my Tuesday morning English 0801 class. I love this class—it’s full of some spunky, funny kids, and it’s probably the only class [...]

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• From the Mouths of Babes, huzhou, less food-related, students

  From the Mouths of Babes

  04.20.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  **Uh, sorry bout that folks! Turns out my internet prowess ain’t so slick as I thought, and the Great Firewall of China prevented me from fixing my gaffe. Here’s the first of the posts I promised.
  Since I’m in Kashgar, I figured I’d have my students write my blog for me! This is the first in [...]

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• KFC, Parks, animals, huzhou, less food-related, students, teaching

  A Serious Expression in the Middle of July

  04.13.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  “Hey, a preschool is asking for some foreign teachers to give classes…and they want to invite foreigners from our school. Do you have any interest in this job offer?”
  Silly me, I thought Hebe wrote that message in English. It wasn’t until I declined her offer that I realized it was actually in Chinese. Translation: “Hey, [...]

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• Shanghai, baking, dessert, home cooking, huzhou, students, teaching

  You Have No Ikea

  04.02.09 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Every year around this time, I wonder what was going through my mother’s mind as she was delivering me. Of course there’s “OWWWWWW!” and the whole “My life is never going to be the same” thing, but I imagine that as my mother was expelling me into the world, there was another thought pushing for [...]

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Plate of Wander

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