As much as I love working with kids and earning a living, I miss academia. I used to pour a lot of research and writing hours into my essays, and enjoyed publishing one or two as well (but of course none of my favorites were ever read by anyone outside the university - so it goes). I found a couple online for your reading pleasure if you came here, as you usually do, to learn about some serious business.

The Crisis in the Niger Delta
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20849562/Volume-II-Issue-I-Spring-2009
(page 3)

Communism Nostalgia and Communist Chic in Poland
http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/62-lost-and-found-communism-nostalgia-and-communist-chic-among-polands-old-and-young-generations
(This is a co-written work by myself and two European students serving as a culminating paper for a month-long study abroad program in Warsaw, Poland).

4-year-old knock knock jokes

Boy: Knock knock.
Girl: Who's there?
Boy: Vampire Smelly Pants.
Girl: Vampire Smelly Pants who?
Boy: Soulja Boy!

A Tasty Friend

Teacher: What did you do this weekend?
4-year-old: I went to a birthday party.
Teacher: A friend's birthday party?
4-year-old: Yeah.
Teacher: What is your friend's name?
4-year-old: A birthday cake!

"Jesus, Lady"

7-year-old-girl: How old are you?
Me: I'm 25.
7-year-old-girl: Jesus, lady, you better get married!

I want to be a Princess

4-year-old-girl: I want to grow up to be a princess!
Me: I don't know if we have princesses here in America. You could be the president.
Girl: No, we have princesses.
Me: We do?
Girl: Yeah.
Me: Do we have a princess who rules our country?
Girl: No, princesses don't rule.
Me: What do they do then?
Girl: They yell at their mom.
Me: Is that all they do? Yell at their moms?
Girl: You're wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday.
Me: **shame**

Double dare

Teacher: Can anyone think of some good school rules?
Girl: Don't hit.
Teacher: Right. Anyone else?
Boy: You shouldn't dare people to do things like dare them to jump over a big fence and into a prison yard, and to get passed all the guards just to see what's in there.
Teacher: Okay. Anyone else?

"I'm from Germany!"

Girl: I'm going to beat you all!
Boy: No you ain't!
Girl: Yes, I am! And I'm going to beat you all up!
Boy: Nu-uh!
Girl: Yes I am! I took karate for one year, and I'm from Germany! I know karate and I'm from Germany! And Germans are stronger than all other people!

"I just like to play with the blocks..."

8-year-old boy: No one here knows my birthday. We're very mysterious. It's a secret, and no one knows.

me: The office has everyone's birthday. I bet I could find it.

boy: No, you couldn't. We're always changing schools, staying secret. You don't even know how many schools! You don't even know where we live. I don't even live in my house. I sleep at the school, and no one knows.

me: You just climb into the attic and hide there all night? With the rats?

boy: No, I sleep right there, on that shelf, on top of the hand wipes.

me: So that's why your head always looks so clean and smells like Purell! Do just rub the hand wipes all over your body instead of take showers?

boy: Yup.

me: Do you clean your teeth with them too?

boy: No, I brush my teeth with the rats.

me: What do you do for dinner?

boy: I eat the rats too.

me: Mmm, rat kabobs.

boy: And I eat paper too.

me: Maybe you could wrap a rat up in paper and make a burrito.

boy: They think I get on the bus after school, but that's just my fake clone.

me: A decoy?

boy: He's a paper cut-out of me, and he goes to my home. He just goes into my room and doesn't come out.

me: Your parents don't realize it's just a paper cut-out? What happens at dinner time? Does he eat?

boy: Eat? What's a robot doing eating? A robot doesn't eat.

me: Oh, so now you have a robot clone?

boy: Yeah, I've always had one.

me: This all sounds very complicated. Why do you not want to go home? Why stay at the school? Do you just love school so much that you never want to leave?

boy: Nope.

me: Then why go through all this trouble?

boy: I just like to stay here and play with the blocks.

Did you know....?

4-year-old girl: "Did you know, that there was a season finale of Lego Star Wars, and I watched it with my brother, and then I passed out and peed ALL OVER my big pig?"

4-year-olds

Teacher: Today is a special day, class. It's somebody's birthday today. Can you guess whose birthday it is?

Girl: Yellow!

Guess what...?

4-year-old girl: Guess what?
me: What?
4-year-old girl: Did you know, that my mom gives me food, every day?
me: Wow. You're mom sounds awesome.

"They call me..."

Child: My brother's name is Tracey, my other brother is named Stacey. My name is Casey, but that's not what I'm called at home.
Me: What do they call you at home?
Child: Punchy!

Oh, children.

Me: How many branches of government do we have?
Student: Like, maybe 3 or something?
Me: Right, 3! The executive, legislative, and judical branches.
Student: Jesus, how do you know all this stuff!
Me: I learned it in school.
Student: (blank stare)................WHAT?!!?

more fun quotes from work

Boy: Did you ever fight over a boy?
Teacher: Heavens, no! Never fight over someone you like. It's not worth it. There are lots of different boys and girls out there for you, so fighting over just one is stupid. There are lots of fish in the sea.
Boy: You mean like Stephen King?
Teacher: Wha - ???

Tom Robbins - the great word artist

Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape. That was its nature. It was absolute, true enough: absolutely mobile. Absolutely transcendent. Absolutely flexible. Absolutely impersonal. It had god and goddess aspects, but it was ultimately no more male or female that it was star or screwdriver...The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face of the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions (anger, jealousy, etc.) to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago. The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive...With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world. Thus, since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known.

From Skinny Legs and All

A Star Is Born

Well. Not really. But I was on province-wide television here in Shandong, China. The headmaster of our school knows the director of this show that is similar to the US “Gong Show.” It is a ridiculous show that’s more, in my opinion, about the judges and making people look silly than finding real talent. I mentioned how it would be awesome if I got on the show one night while watching it, and sure enough, strings were pulled and I had 2 days to prepare something.

But they told the director I could dance. That was the first thing.

I performed some pieces for my American friends who’ve lived in China for a while, and they said Chinese people would love my opera, any song I could sing in Chinese, and My Heart Will Go On. I didn’t have time to learn a Chinese song, so I tirelessly prepared some opera, My Heart Will Go On, Walking After Midnight, and Can’t Hurry Love. Found the karaoke, edited the tracks to be around 2 minutes, learned all the lyrics, and even made some mixes of both opera and pop music that I thought would be pretty entertaining!

The instant I got into the studio, the director pulled me to the stage, got about 4 people to watch me who also worked for the show, and said, “What are you singing? You can dance, right?” I said I had a couple options for songs, and of course (being Chinese), they rushed me. “Which one? Which one!?’ So I went through them, showing them first Ojos Asi by Shakira, a belly-dancing sounding fast pop song in Spanish.

I started to sing it to them when they said, “Show us your dancing!” So right there on the floor in front of 5 suspicious eyes I did some hip rotations and belly waves that I learned in my 30 minutes of belly dancing classes I had in 2005.

“Good. Good.” They said with serious, nodding heads.

“But!” I interjected. “I have other songs!” I put on the opera and started singing. I didn’t last 20 seconds.

“We like the first song. Show us your clothes.”

I take out the best clothes I had. A blue clubbing top and long black pirate pants. They were not pleased.

“Show us your shoes.”

My really old black high heels. I never noticed how scuffed and worn out they were before that moment. I shamefully felt my femininity in question.

“This is ALL you have? What size shoe are you?”

I told them my shoe size, they had a 2-minute freak out, and then I never heard about the shoe issue again.



But they did have some clothes for me.

A sparkly, shinny, puffy bottom, short, sleeveless dress. I looked like a bridesmaid from the 50s, or a 15 year old Mexican girl going to her qincinera party. It was not sexy.

But sexy is what they wanted. She took me to the stage and gave me some moves and poses. She turned on the music. “Now,” she said. “Dance.”

I tried to walk sexy, I tried to sing well, she kept shouting, “Sexy!” So I do more hips, more butt, more whatever, and lose my breath after only 30 seconds.

“Don’t worry so much about the song. Just have fun, be sexy. Dance!” I tried to explain that I was not a good dancer, and that if I tried to be super sexy I’d made a fool of myself. “No,” she said, “You are very sexy. This dress is sexy. Your hair will be up and long and sexy.”

The dress. It was impossible to be sexy in that dress. It puffed out after the waist so you couldn’t see my hips or butt move. I felt like I should sing a 50s Diana Ross mix, not Shakira. Finally I told her that the dress was nice, but I couldn’t be sexy in it. I either need a new outfit, or a new song. After about 15 minutes of arguing and a couple young Chinese guys on my side (“Dude, that is NOT sexy”), she agreed to let me wear a plain red dress I had stored in the bottom of my backpack. She didn’t like how it wasn’t shiny, but she relented.

She told me to practice my dance moves in the hallway. Meanwhile, she talked to Ryan in secret, telling him he should propose to me on TV. He said no way. She kept pushing it but finally said ok, he doesn’t have to, but was not pleased and swore him to secrecy about the conversation. He immediately came to me to tell me all about it.

That was a good decision.

After stressing out about the dancing and trying to figure out how to be sexy while not looking stupid and how to sing a fast song for 2 minutes while dancing fast, I decided to do whatever she wanted during the rehearsals, but that once the cameras were on I’d just dance a little and not worry about sexiness. I did the poses, I did some moves, I moved around, but I did not dance too much.

Then it was time for make-up and hair! That was fun. The other contestants stared at me the entire time. The artists wouldn’t use the hair clips I bought specially for the event. The director told me to say some things on the show. “When the host talks to you, tell him you like Jackie Chan, and that the host is not so handsome, but that he is lovely.” She practiced with me so my Chinese was ok, but I really had no idea when to say it or why I was going to call the host ugly. But she was letting me say I liked Jackie so I accepted it.

Time for the show! I finished the entire song, and didn’t do too badly, but it wasn’t the greatest performance ever. And I won $80 (I think – still haven’t gotten it). Then the host said some stuff to me, I said my bit to him, and then he told me to sing some opera. I chose Memory from Cats, and that went over really well. Much better than the Shakira song.

Then Ryan, who just wanted to watch from the audience, got pulled on stage. Before he got on the director said, “Just say you love her!” “Fine,” he thought. Of course, everything in China escalates beyond control in the matter of seconds, and his short “I love you” ended up being a mock kung fu fight with the host and a pressure to propose to me.

“Christine, I hear your boyfriend wants to propose to you!”

See why it was a good idea for Ryan to have told me about this before?

“You can propose now, Ryan.”

“Ummm…..”

I panic and say in Chinese, “Oh, I don’t know. Later! Later!”

For reasons I don’t understand the audience clapped and we got to leave. We immediately left the studio and didn’t look back. Ryan was not too happy with the proposal bit after he clearly told them not to do it beforehand, and I was sick of the place and the people there.

I was glad to get on the show, I actually enjoyed being on the stage, but it was obvious the show was completely controlled by the director and not at all by the performers. Maybe that’s show biz in China. Maybe that’s show biz everywhere. It was an interesting experience in the best state of mind, and an excruciatingly frustrating experience in the worst. We both had a little bit of both states of mind throughout our 8 hours in the studio.

That was last week. As of now 2 people have recognized me on the street and a Chinese friend I had in high school saw it and called my school up asking for me. Not too shabby!

Well, now that you know the back-story, here’s the clip:

http://v.iqilu.com/content/index/306552

Mindful Eating - By Christine

My love asked me why
I was staring at the cheese,
Why I smiled at the lettuce,
Why I relished breaking eggs.
My boyfriend asked me why
I took so long to make dinner,
And why I ate so slowly.
“Are you trying to get thinner?”

I explained it was no diet,
Nothing Oprah tried to sell me.
It was simply what was proper
When carving up a turkey.
It’s right to take some time, slow down,
And contemplate his life and death.
His meat I eat gives energy to these lungs,
So I offer him a thankful breath.
By cooking and eating slowly
And silently
It’s not to be weird or to be a bore.
It’s to take time to make my mind
Not see a just a leg of meat,
But so much more.

I continued:
On my cutting board I see the Sun.
That which holds us in orbit
At just the right distance
And fed these cucumbers I chop into pieces.
These greens to prepare require the Sun,
And I see that condition and existence are one.

Gently placing mushrooms in hot olive oil
I’m sautéing the world in a non-stick skillet
With a spoon made of stars,
Steam rises to my face,
Soaking it with volcanic vapors
From prehistoric Hawaiian islands.
The whole universe is working, right now,
To give me life.
I must remember the cosmos
That imbue this body and this brain with vitality;
They are staring right at me in this bowl of spaghetti.

I stare right back for a minute, drop all other things.
Even a cupcake is the remains of ancient kings;
I scatter the sprinkles on top
As delicately as I would their ashes on a tree.
That their works did not contribute to this snack,
There is no guarantee.

Before my first bite from a bowl of rice
I marvel for a moment.
I owe gratitude to countless beings
For each spoonful.
Trillions of organisms decayed
To bring forth fertile soil—
I eat their rotted corpses.
Millions of farmers toiled to master
The technique of growing rice—
I eat their sweat.
Businessmen manage the packaging and shipping
That brings rice to my grocery store—
I eat their college tuition.
With every grain I swallow,
I eat the precious universe.
I eat the sum of all that ever was.
So I take a spoonful and hold it on my tongue,
Breathing deep;
For there’s no greater crop
Than what the knowing stillness reaps.

He asked me then:
So if this rice you eat so tenderly
Is all the world to you,
Then what does that make me?

I answered:
In your eyes I see the Sun.
That which made the food grow
That you needed in your belly
To grow those long arms
With which you first held me.
This life of ours requires the Sun,
And I see that condition and existence are one.

What do you get when you combine a massage, Jackie Chan, and a boat? Last weekend.

Don't get too excited. None of these things took place at the same time.

After having lunch with our host family Friday afternoon, I expressed my desire to get a Chinese massage. Immediately afterward, they took me to a massage parlor downtown. $10 for a 70 minute full body massage? Don't mind if I do!

They left me with a guy who took me back to my little room, he pinched his shirt and shook it up and down a little bit, supposedly motioning me to undress. He closed the door to give me privacy and I did just that. Only thing was, there were no sheets on the bed, and no towel. But there was this big brown blanket. So I thought, "Maybe they just don't use sheets here. Unsanitary, but whatever. And I guess I'll lie down and put this big brown blanket over my butt and wait for the masseuse."

And so I did. But when the lady came in, she looked surprised. She started talking to me in Chinese, and of course I had no idea what she was saying. God, what did I do wrong now? So I sat up, naked and covering my shame with this blanket, and she's trying to tell me what I did wrong. She points to her clothes and stares at me.

I try to say "I don't have," but of course I screw up and say, "I don't want."

She leaves the room.

Realizing my language mix-up I shout out the door, "I don't HAVE!"

In China, most massage parlors also act as minor prostitution rings. You've heard of the Chinese massage "happy ending," right? Well, seeing as how I specifically asked for a woman masseuse despite their parlor's normal policy, got completely nude when I wasn't supposed to, and then told her I didn't want any clothes, I don't want to think about what she thought I wanted.

She came back with some silk pajamas and bed sheets and then we started the massage.

Good thing too. Full body really does mean full body! Head, arms, legs, thighs, butt, stomach, back, neck, and hands. And they go HARD! I hurt really badly after but then the next day I felt pretty good.

I had a boat party to go to the next day. My friend who speaks fluent Chinese arranged a small 15 person boat to drink, eat, and go fishing on. On our way there in a taxi, a Jackie Chan song came on the radio. "Turn it up!" we demanded, and up she did turn it. Cruising down the highway, seeing the sights go by, Jackie Chan music blasting, felt pretty cool.

The good times were over quickly though. We ended up waiting 2 hours for the rest of the group on a street corner, and once everyone did show up, everyone started freaking out about money because some people decided to buy $80 worth of liquor for the group and wanted reimbursement.

Of course we didn't get picked up and had to walk with all our beer, water jugs, watermelons, and duffel bags across a bunch of construction for about 30 minutes.



The boat was the most ghetto thing I've ever stepped foot on. Creaky, disgusting, made of rotting wood, rusted. Everyone thought it was absolutely perfect.

The captains quickly broke into the booze. They started pouring us drinks and making us do shots: "Gan bei!" ("empty your cup") they cried about every 3 minutes.




Then they threw out the anchor in this bay area with oil rigs all over it. Really, we're going to fish here? It was no surprise that no one caught anything in that toxic water.

After a lot of drinking, the group decided it needed to go swimming. "Take us somewhere we can swim!" We demanded.

"No! You are all too sunburned," he kept saying.

It was only about an hour later that we realized the boat was broken, and that's why he wouldn't take us anywhere. However, every time we asked about what was wrong with the boat, they ignored us. Typical.

They tore up the floor boards, pulled metal chord with their hands, hammered in and out the rudder wheel. But of course nothing was wrong with the boat.



So there we sat, in the rain, for about 4 hours. I nursed some sea sickness while others drifted away into a boozy slumber below deck.

They called over a 3 man fishing boat, who eventually refused to tow us.



Then they called over a boat our size who agreed, but not before the captain handed over a couple cases of our beer to them!

Very long story short, they got us back to shore, but they refused to dock until we paid them the full amount. We woke my friend up (the master of arguing) and she drunkenly yelled at the captain, telling him there's no way we'd pay full price after he drank and gave away half our booze. He didn't agree, but he did ask for her to tutor his daughter in English and offer to dry her off with a wash cloth.

After agreeing to pay half on the boat and the other half when we docked and talked to his boss, we got back on dry land. The "Lao ban," or boss, agreed that we didn't need to pay full price and then we all ran away and pocketed the extra money for food later that night.

Then we got cake and pizza! Expensive, but yummy!

Chinese Restaurants

We had some humiliating fun this afternoon at restaurants in Qingdao, China. We can read maybe 10 or so Chinese characters that are about food. So we were thinking we'd just go to a restaurant and try to look up the food on the menu and order something that didn't seem gross. You know, for educational purposes. It felt like it should be so easy.

So we sat down, menus already on the table, and the waiter came with a pad of paper. Ryan ordered a beer and I ordered a Coke without much incident. But he didn't leave. He was waiting for us to order food right away too. We tried for about 15 minutes (and with 4 different waiters) to explain that we need some time. Finally, I said in Chinese the winning sentence to convey this: "Right now we don't know what to eat."

Then we proceeded to try to translate the menu. Not much luck. Ryan knew the word for "head" so we avoided anything with that. Otherwise, we were pretty much out of luck. Waiters kept coming and speaking to us. Finally, after about 30 minutes, I looked at the people next to us and asked, "What is that?" It didn't look so bad and I was getting too hungry to find something in my dietary plan. I reached over the people and pointed to their food: "This!" And then pointed to the menu: "Where is it?" They pointed to an item on the menu and I said, "I want!"

2 minutes later a waitress came out with a pot of hot water (no tea though, just hot water) and a bowl of pieces of meat in sauce. "Ok," I said.

"I want rice."
"No rice."
"Oh."
"We have ??????"
"Ummm. Ok."

Then the lady came out with some dough in a bag for me. I paused and examined, and after a while just said, "Ok." She took it back and I felt relieved that she was going to bake it. But of course she didn't. She put it in the microwave. Plastic bag and all.



I dug into the meat dish. Bones. And lots of em. But this wasn't the first time I had had to eat around hundreds of tiny bones in a Chinese dish so I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was when Ryan said, "I see the head."



Sure enough. Beak, eye socket, skull. Later we found the spine and feet. Ryan didn't eat any more after that, but I kept eating. I got a second order of hot dough in a bag.

To give it credit, the flavor was not bad. But it really wasn't what I saw those other people eating. I wrote it down to ask someone else later what kind of bird I ate. We suspect pigeon.

So we paid our $4.50 and went on our way to find Ryan some food. Not feeling so adventurous anymore, we went to a place called "Pizza Loves Donburi." They had pictures! And English translations! And the pictures and translations were of pastas, milkshakes, pizzas, and pies! Well, I was already full from my bowl of heads so I got a strawberry milkshake and Ryan got some beef and rice dish. In the end, the price was the same as at the other restaurant! About $5. We shall remember this place.



Before they brought the food they told us the amount on the bill. I said okay. They brought out another pot of hot water. Then a waitress came up to us and started talking. We had no idea what she was saying. I got the feeling she was asking about tea and what kind we wanted. Of course! That's why they kept bringing out pots of hot water. They expected us to order tea with every meal. I thought she was asking what type I wanted and I said, "I don't know. The best!" She said, "32 yuan" (about $5). "Oh, no thank you. Umm." After more awkward stares we said, "We don't want. We don't need." She got really confused and got some more waiters to help. "32 yuan," the next waiter said. "No, no. Too expensive." They looked more confused. In English they said, "Food, 32 yuan."

"Oh!" And we paid them.

I pulled the waitress aside before she could leave. I tried to ask, "This water. Why?" She didn't understand. "It's tea, right?" "Uhhh." She looked even more confused.

I tried again in my limited Chinese. Literally, I asked, "The water, what to do with the water?"

She replied, ".....You drink it."

"....Oh. Ok, thank you."

After laughing really hard while listening to the girl also laugh with the others in the kitchen, I recalled that Chinese people don't like to drink cold things with hot food. So maybe they drink hot water. Also, maybe it was tap water and they boiled it first then brought it right out after it was safe to drink.

Anyway. No one here speaks any English, and with my very, very limited speaking abilities (and 0 reading abilities), its hard to get what you want. But it's good for lessons in humility and for laughs after the fact.

Poems from Borges

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida. En la próxima
trataría de cometer más errores. No intentaría ser tan
perfecto, me relajaría más. Sería más tonto de lo que
he sido, de hecho tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes, contemplaría
más atardeceres, subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos.
Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido, comería más
helados y menos habas, tendría más problemas reales
y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata y
prolíficamente cada minuto de su vida: claro que
tuve momentos de alegría.
Pero si pudiera volver atrás trataría de tener
solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida
sólo de momentos; no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna
parte sin un termómetro, una bolsa de agua
caliente, un paraguas y paracaídas; si pudiera
volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano.
Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría a andar
descalzo a principios de la primavera y seguiría
así hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesita, contemplaría más
amaneceres y jugaría más con los niños, si tuviera
otra vez la vida por delante.
Pero ya ven, tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.

If I were able to live my life again,
next time I would try to make more mistakes.
I would not try to be so perfect. I would be more relaxed.
I would be much more foolish than I have been. In fact,
I would take very few things seriously.
I would be much less sanitary.
I would run more risks. I would take more trips,
I would contemplate more sunsets,
I would climb more mountains,
I would swim more rivers.
I would go to more places I have never visited.
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans.
I would have more real problems, fewer imaginary ones.
I was one of these people who lived prudently
and prolifically every moment of his life.
Certainly I had moments of great happiness:
Don’t let the present slip away.
I was one of those who never went anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle,
an umbrella, and a parachute.
If I could live over again,
I would go barefoot, beginning
in early spring
and would continue so until the end of autumn.
I would take more turns on the merry-go-round.
I would watch more dawns
And play with more children,
if I once again had a life ahead of me.
But, you see, I am eighty-five,
and I know that I am dying.