“Whitney is the fattest person in our class.” Bill didn’t even glance at the crinkled paper atop his desk. He spoke loud and clear, chin up, and with a pronunciation quality high above the rest. […]
Tag: culture
A Lesson in Chinese Culture
In the United States, I rarely use my horn while driving. Unless I can foresee something fatal or if I really need to communicate something to someone, I never use my horn. When it is used, it’s often considered […]
A Cultural Performance
In China, I’ve seen several cultural performances. Some interesting, others boring, and a couple rendering me speechless. In Yangshuo the show is set on the river with the karst mountains towering behind, and the performers […]
Controversial Photography
Of the fifty-six minorities present in China, thirty-five of them are located in Southwest China in the Yunnan Province. When photographing people, I’m often pulled toward the small babies with bare bottoms and adorable smiles, […]
An Unlikely Lunch
On a foggy, cold morning, we set off after a big breakfast for what we prepared to be a four-hour hike through villages and terraced rice fields. Within the first ten minutes, we realized the […]
Hainan Island 海南岛
When planning a vacation, you always imagine everything as going just as planned, and then when on vacation, this is rarely how it pans out. Never in my life have I had to sprint through […]
Students 学生
I’ve spent the last year teaching. It’s been the most amazing, rewarding, challenging, frustrating experience of my life. The challenge hasn’t been how to teach students how to say “I like bananas and apples, but […]
First Tourism Experience
For the last three days of our vacation, we thanked Jim’s family in as many ways as possible for everything they’d done for us, well, really just for all the food they fed us, and […]
Chinese New Year 春节
Although Christmas in China was more of just a normal day, Chinese New Year has made a valiant effort to replace it. As the Chinese used a lunar calendar in ancient times, New Year’s Day […]
A Salon Experience
When you travel for longer than a few months at a time, your hair begins to become an issue. In France, it took me almost 6 months to muster up the courage to go to […]