From the brilliant education blog Are We Doing Anything Today? comes No Dentist Left Behind.
My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don’t forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I’ve got all my teeth. When I ran into him the other […]

I love Yantai with the part of my heart that’s not full of the love-hate expats have for China. It’s hard to fully love a places in which all travel involves dealing with an Mandarin-speaking Whitmore. Here, I’m a G-rated Paris Hilton. Why Paris? Because I don’t do anything fame-worthy, most people think I dress […]

The other day, Young brought in his homework on Roman numerals from another class. I thought he wanted me to help him out with it, but he told me he was giving it to me because I like Rome!
Of course, the next day he tried to throw a desk at someone, so I can’t […]

A few months ago, Jay sent me a huge box of Magic cards. I had a brief dream of setting up a Yantai Magic league, but that was quickly squashed by scheduling problems. My Chinese students were already overscheduled with necessary classes and sports training, starting school at seven AM and finishing around nine PM. […]

I have a one-on-one student, let’s call him Young. He started with me a few weeks ago, his mom specifically requested a female teacher “to help him catch up” because he was “falling a bit behind” in Zorro’s English classes. Euphemisms, it seems, are universal, and I got him because of my success with difficult […]

Usually my local net cafe is full of boys and young men playing CounterStrike for hours on end or staring at the lao wai girl (your results may vary). As internet gaming becomes more popular, it’s having some surprising effects in China.
China is home to the Beijing Internet Addiction Treatment Center. It may not […]

When I was younger, I really liked playing text-based computer games. I played a lot of Adventure, a game without any graphics in which you controlled the story by typing commands, like Open Door or Take Gold. Often, you needed to be very specific about your commands. Unlock Door might not be work where Use […]

Pie2k is a webcomic my old boyfriend Matt writes about a bunch of crazy characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to his college friends. In one strip, a young man called “Miko” is waiting for a visit from his friend “Anja”, who lives in Massachusetts. Poor Anja is unavoidably detained on her way, and […]

When I was younger, I could tell when my mom had a deadline because she’d turn on the Greatful Dead and drink a latte. (Wow, did that just sum up my mom, or what?) My mom loves lattes but my hippie parents couldn’t quite accept Starbucks, so we ended up with a cappiccino machine worthy […]

The other day I was crossing the street and I said “You people invented gunpowder and silk! Surely mastering a turn signal is nothing to that!”
Usually shouting witticisms at my non-English speaking surroundings makes me feel better, but today I was sad because I’m trying not have the “you people” attitude. It’s really hard to […]