...Means Merry Christmas! In Pinyin it’s written Shengdan kuaile, pronouncing the es as short “uh” sounds. It’s fine weather for it: about 20C (70° F?)...
Lately it seems foreigners are everywhere in Xiamen. We’ve only been here four (five?) months; how is it possible we missed all these foreigners already?Maybe...
One of our British friends generated an algorithm for determining the time to complete any given task in China:“Imagine the longest possible time you think...
This past weekend, while walking Bismarck through Huweishan Park, I met my first Chinese who was meeting her
first foreigner. Other expatriates had similar stories,...
Learning the language
Discovering that the Chinese name for most James Bond movies uses the phrase “Brave Escape”
The food, duh
Take-no-prisoners kitchen appliances, like...
Hey Transplants to the Pacific Northwest! Remember your first winter in [Oregon | Washington | British
Columbia | SE Alaska]? Remember how, after about 60...
For various wha-acky! reasons I’m tending the XIS kindergarten for an hour a
day. This is actually a really easy gig: I'm basically babysitting. The...
Life is slow and frustrating in Xiamen lately. Warm and dusty. I’ve about had it with nothing working right, shoddy design, and everyone basically being...
Singapore is the anti-Xiamen. Leaving China necessitated two forms, two passport reviews (and stamps) four lines, and more than an hour of waiting and paperwork....
The Chinese name for House (the TV show with Hugh Laurie) is “Hooligan Doctor” (流氓医生, Liumang Yisheng). Alias is “Double-Faced Spy Woman” (双面女间谍, Shuangmian Nujiandie).A...
Good
Bad
Slightly sweet popcorn
Slightly sweet beer
Owners of small dogs
Small dogs
Old guys doing inexplicable Chinese exercises like walking backwards uphill while...
The heat finally broke this weekend, but the humidity didn’t. Taiwan helpfully dispersed a typhoon, but Xiamen has been receiving a steady dose of light...
I’ve been clothes shopping lately, trying to fill my wardrobe with school-appropriate clothes. Before we left Portland I thought myself to be “about the size...
I'm delivering this post from a cybercafe, so apologies for the brevity. We've had two days of rain and the weather has cooled pretty substantially....
After about 25 hours of transit we are finally in Xiamen. Flights were all smooth, after a delayed departure from Portland. The delay actually worked...
48 hours until the plane departs...and we're having to cancel last-minute goodbye breakfasts with old friends because every hour is now accounted for. Problems have...
After unloading the majority of our possessions in Ellen's garage in Bend, we returned to clean the apartment. Apartment cleaning usually inspires bittersweet feelings (nostalgia...
Fuego Burritos
Arcadia Beach
Terwilliger Drive
Grand Central scones
Balloon sculptures shaped like Cookie Monster
Black Butte Porter
All my family less than an hour's...
So the Washington State Republican Party declared its hostility to the 14th Amendment. They have gripes with the part that reads "All persons born or...
Today's Salon features an interview with William Easterly, who criticizes U.S. foreign aid as stuck in a top-down model that hasn't worked since the 1960s....
In 1934, a swim coach at the University of Iowa speculated that breaststroke swimmers could gain a significant time advantage by bringing their arms and...
Once upon a time, barbers were surgeons. This offends modern sensibilities but there’s a logic at work here: after all, they use approximately the same...
