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Monthly Archives: March 2009

losing battle?

During the last term of study for one of my classes, the students had to write 1,000 word essays on assigned topics. One of my students chose the poverty topic, and wanted to focus on Africa. We had a thirteen week long battle about Africa, revolving around the fact that it’s a continent, not a [...]

Merry Chris-mas!

feel-good moment from the doctors

I had a good class with the doctors last week. We did a unit on crime, and I made them solve a murder mystery that I wrote myself. I was sort of proud of it - mysteries aren’t easy to write, even when you’re not feeling even the slightest bit hindered by plausibility. I told [...]

tastes of chicken

Ok, so Benji left me a comment, which brought back memories of a happier, more productive bloggy existence, and in answering it, I had to look up the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach). It’s a great book if you’re interested in such things, and I’ve been happily passing along [...]

the chinese visa medical exam

Last Friday, I finally had to go in for my health check - it’s technically a visa requirement, even though I dodged it the first time around. I’m relatively sure that the whole health check is mostly just an excuse for an AIDS test, but it also involves x-rays, an ultrasound, dental and vision checks, [...]

chaotian palace

Today was one of the first nice days of Real Spring (we had Fake Spring last month), and so we decided to get out on the scooter and go see something new after recovering from Saturday night, which was largely spent drowning in a bottle of whiskey. We were planning to head down to Mochou [...]