Radical Eclecticity

So I had an interesting conversation with my principal the other day. He asked me in an email when I was coming back in a way that gave me the impression that he wanted to discuss something with me. When I told him that I wouldn’t be back until the day before pre-planning starts for […]

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The Changzhou Apartment
Originally uploaded by mattlavery
I live on the fifth floor. In Chinese, 我住在五层的公寓. In china, though, the ground floor is not numbered. You don’t take stairs to get to the second floor, like you do in the states; you take the stairs to get to the first floor. That means that, every […]

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In an effort to reduce the onslaught of huge-ish posts, I may as well periodically toss out my little observations and call it good. This does sort of save me from writing for an hour when I don’t have an hour available. That’s never good, right?
Anyway, the observation of the day seems to be yet […]

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So here I am, sitting in Starbucks, all excited about hopping on their wireless Internet while I sip my coffee… and my computer can’t find it. What? you’ve got to be kidding me! Ever since I got to China I can’t find a single wireless network anywhere!
Wait…. ever since…. d’oh!
So there’s this little switch on […]

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<continues singing along with the Barenaked Ladies song>
There are now several things to discuss, none of which are the items I thought my next post would be about. So I guess the first thing I should tell you that I learned is to stop giving teasers and previews of blog posts. I will probably write […]

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Over the past two days, I have visited two schools and taught guest lessons at both of them. This was an interesting and highly educational experience, and both schools were very different. We went to both schools to coordinate first, and then I came back later to teach the lesson.
The first thing I noticed, in […]

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I figured I should write another post since I’ve been here for a bit less than a week. I’m getting settled in, and thoroughly enjoying my time here. I’ve made a couple of trips to Wal-Mart already, but both times I have been escorted so I didn’t want to shop in my normal wandering style. […]

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Now I can say, “I’m here!”
That was all… talk to you later.
Hmm… Ok, ok, I’ll elaborate. 
The first thing that I noticed is that, when speaking with locals, it’s really pretty easy for me to get the gist, and really easy to utterly miss the point, too. Nancy and Xu Xiaofeng picked me up […]

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I write this blog entry at 35,000 feet over the Bearing Sea. Of course, by the time anyone reads it, I’ll already be in China, but I have resisted the temptation to compose my words as though I was aready there. For one thing, what I write once I actually arrive will have a lot […]

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