a few stories about dogs in china:
1. the first day me and kevin went into town to try to buy a dog we had to ask people where they sold them.
me: excuse me, i wanna buy a dog
random vendor: alive or dead?
me: what?
random vendor: pet or meat?
me: begins to cry
2. xujun, our cook, volunteered to adopt the puppy that kevin had received for his bday this past sunday, since he already has a full grown dog. when the puppy, a male, was introduced to the other dog, also a male, he mistook it for his mother and in trying to find his/her nipples for milk, he bit the other dog on the nuts. like fark would say, hilarity ensued.
3. a couple days ago kevin was on the MAIN STREET in town when he looked in the middle of the road and saw two dogs stuck to each other. unfortunately he was buying cookies from a bakery on the MAIN STREET in town at the time, so he couldn't go in for a closer look, but they were somehow joined at the hip at an approximately 90 degree angle and frantically trying to pull away. while he was watching, a third dog approached the stuck dogs and began to violate one of them, periodically pausing and resuming. while this was happening, a fourth dog approached the three dogs and sat down to watch, occasionally shouting encouragement. kevin appeared to be the only human who paid any special attention to this incident. what a weirdo.
about a month and a half ago, nicky's mom mailed her an american football. one day one of the high school gym teachers saw us throwing it around and asked us if we could teach the students how to play and coach some teams. we agreed, and today we had our first practice. about 20 kids showed up, some of them surprisingly large for this town, and me and kevin ran them through some throwing and catching drills.
i don't know anything about football! the most experience i have is playing street football with the neighborhood kids in junior high. after i bought madden 01 on sale for $10 i never even tried playing it cause it looked so confusing. also, who is our team gonna play? i'm pretty sure we're the first high school (american) football team in xiangxi prefecture. at least there definitely won't be any parents suing about injuries and stuff (since we are playing without pads - i pushed for two hand-touch or flag football, but the gym teacher wanted full contact, so we're working out a compromise at the moment).
as you can probably tell, i alternate between feeling excited and feeling in over my head about the team. i suppose everything'll sort itself out eventually, like most things do here.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Sunday, October 26, 2003
we just had our third sunday school. last week we did the fall of man and today we covered the prodigal son. the format is pretty simple, we usually start off with a game and then we ask them some questions and then we tell them the story using a small chalkboard and discuss it at the end.
it's challenging because my religious chinese vocabulary is pretty crappy and because i'm not sure how to change the feel of the lesson from impersonal and academic to life-applicable. today we again talked about the similarities and differences between buddhism and chrstianity. if you have any ideas i'm quite open to hearing them.
today we explained the idea of parables to them (kinda) and asked them who they thought the younger son in the story represented; their answers were adam, eve, and satan. that last one kinda threw me off, i asked them why they would think it's satan and they said because he messed up but Gd forgives people who mess up. i didn't really know how to answer that so i kinda glossed over it and told them that the son represents all men. it's interesting though, how come we get a second chance and satan doesn't? i guess the answer has something to do with election.
the nba season finally starts again this week. supposedly they show some games on the sports channel here, though i dunno how they'll find room among all the soccer, tennis, ping pong, and go (the board game...ahem...not the board sport). i'm so desperate for football or basketball footage i've been watching the same basketball preseason highlights on espn motion over and over. lebron definitely sucks at shooting.
it's challenging because my religious chinese vocabulary is pretty crappy and because i'm not sure how to change the feel of the lesson from impersonal and academic to life-applicable. today we again talked about the similarities and differences between buddhism and chrstianity. if you have any ideas i'm quite open to hearing them.
today we explained the idea of parables to them (kinda) and asked them who they thought the younger son in the story represented; their answers were adam, eve, and satan. that last one kinda threw me off, i asked them why they would think it's satan and they said because he messed up but Gd forgives people who mess up. i didn't really know how to answer that so i kinda glossed over it and told them that the son represents all men. it's interesting though, how come we get a second chance and satan doesn't? i guess the answer has something to do with election.
the nba season finally starts again this week. supposedly they show some games on the sports channel here, though i dunno how they'll find room among all the soccer, tennis, ping pong, and go (the board game...ahem...not the board sport). i'm so desperate for football or basketball footage i've been watching the same basketball preseason highlights on espn motion over and over. lebron definitely sucks at shooting.
two entries in a row from my daily xanga update, from two people who both kinda grew up in taiwan:
matcheaven:
this entry is dedicated to madame Chiang Kai-shek, who pased away yesterday at age 106.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, you were always a example of what a chinese woman is like. Strong but gentle.
joytofu:
Chiang Soong Mei-Ling dies in NYC.
my dad's been talking about that all day. he does not like her. her husband, chiang-kai-shek, was a notorious dictator. my dad still has bad memories from that time when the Chaings ruled taiwan.
no brainwashing going on in taiwan it seems. i'm not sure what to make of madam chiang; the soong family seemed to be one of the most influential chinese families of this century, early examples of global beneficient chinese making their mark on the world. from what i remember, charlie soong, the father, was a rich plantation owner who lived in hawaii, and his kids all went to yale. one of his daughters married sun yat-sen, one (obviously) married chiang kai-shek, and one of his sons became in charge of the chinese economy under the guomingtang government and made some good things happen. the family was said to be all chrstian too; supposedly charlie soong wouldn't let his chiang kai-shek marry his daughter meiling unless he became a professing chrstian (which happened, again supposedly).
anyways, i don't know enough details to form an opinion. from talking to people in taiwan last year, they seem to have a love-hate relationship with chiang kai-shek, which seems fitting.
today is both kevin and karen's birthday and yesterday we threw a party for both of them. one of the teachers at my school brought a 1 month old puppy as a present to kevin, who was stunned into shocked silence pretty much the whole night. he decided that we shouldn't keep the dog, since there might be lingering clouds of distemper in our apartment from jiujiu and it wouldn't be healthy for the puppy, as well as simply not feeling up for keeping it.
overall, the routine of things here have started to move from comfortable to uh, routine i guess. just that kind of slugging it out feeling...hopefully i'm just pmsing and the feeling'll go away soon.
matcheaven:
this entry is dedicated to madame Chiang Kai-shek, who pased away yesterday at age 106.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, you were always a example of what a chinese woman is like. Strong but gentle.
joytofu:
Chiang Soong Mei-Ling dies in NYC.
my dad's been talking about that all day. he does not like her. her husband, chiang-kai-shek, was a notorious dictator. my dad still has bad memories from that time when the Chaings ruled taiwan.
no brainwashing going on in taiwan it seems. i'm not sure what to make of madam chiang; the soong family seemed to be one of the most influential chinese families of this century, early examples of global beneficient chinese making their mark on the world. from what i remember, charlie soong, the father, was a rich plantation owner who lived in hawaii, and his kids all went to yale. one of his daughters married sun yat-sen, one (obviously) married chiang kai-shek, and one of his sons became in charge of the chinese economy under the guomingtang government and made some good things happen. the family was said to be all chrstian too; supposedly charlie soong wouldn't let his chiang kai-shek marry his daughter meiling unless he became a professing chrstian (which happened, again supposedly).
anyways, i don't know enough details to form an opinion. from talking to people in taiwan last year, they seem to have a love-hate relationship with chiang kai-shek, which seems fitting.
today is both kevin and karen's birthday and yesterday we threw a party for both of them. one of the teachers at my school brought a 1 month old puppy as a present to kevin, who was stunned into shocked silence pretty much the whole night. he decided that we shouldn't keep the dog, since there might be lingering clouds of distemper in our apartment from jiujiu and it wouldn't be healthy for the puppy, as well as simply not feeling up for keeping it.
overall, the routine of things here have started to move from comfortable to uh, routine i guess. just that kind of slugging it out feeling...hopefully i'm just pmsing and the feeling'll go away soon.
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