For Lizzie Loomis and West Virginia

I have lots of stories to tell, starting from Christmas. So I'll be posting again soon, but first, I wanted to put up a song for West Virginia. Most of the readers here are American, and I was thinking this morning about the Sago mine tragedy and the 12 miners and this is the song that came to me. It's "The Hills of West Virginia", by Phil Ochs.

Also relevant, Lizzie Loomis requested a long time ago that I play the hymn "Lead Kindly Light". It took me a long time to learn it, but here it is, too. For Lizzie and for Tallmansville, #2, "Lead, Kindly Light".


The pictures are mine. The seagull is from Lake Chapala in Mexico, and the tombstone from Quebec city. It's the oldest graveyard in the province, full of sailors and soldiers' wives who were often just in the New World for a season or two. It's downtown though, so people use it as a hangout, picnicking on the tombs and peeing on the trees. Lame

A Christmas Twofer! (Beats a lump of coal)

It's Christmas time and I'm feeling it even this far away from the place I consider the center of all Christmas: Saint Lambert, Quebec. On Monday I taught my grade 7 all-girl class. They're a blast, some of the best-behaved and brightest students I have. And their headmistress is Ms. Zhang, a jolly little lady who always tells me how much her girls love me. But that's not all (now there's new glow-in-the-dark Yo-Yo Ball!) On Monday their class threw a Christmas party! So I didn't have to teach, and instead spent the 45 minutes watching them act out skits and sing songs in Chinese (I feigned total comprehension, of course). Then they surprised me with Christmas presents! Woah. They're the only presents I got this year, so I took them home and made a little Christmas display in our living room. Everything pictured, including the painting on the wall (but not the T.V.) was given to me by those girls. The painting is amazing, the cards are these intense pop-up display cards, and the presents are still a mystery cause I'm waiting till Christmas to open them.

Now for Christmas songs!
The first is "Old Toy Trains", the third Raffi song to make in onto my blog. It's one of my favourite Christmas songs ever. The second (careful, folks) is religious. It's "Christmas Morn" by Mary Baker Eddy, and it's lyrically happy but tunefully mournful, so I tried to lighten it up mildly. Tell me what you think.

My Christmas eve will probably be quiet and home-aloney. Then, on Christmas morning I'm volunteering to help with the school's Christmas party for private students. Carols and English games, sweet! The last picture is me trying unsuccessfully to get in place for the presents shot. A very Michael Jackson pose, no?

(Hey, if the songs don't load, click here)

I'm not dead! Week 7 in the Chengdizzle.

I'm back! Not back from travels, I'm still living and loving in Chengdu, but I'm back to the internet. I know I've been neglecting you readers. Allow me to shift some of the blame to China's invasive internet policies, which made it temporarily impossible to get to my blog (I figured out a way to skirt the problem, though.) There are 35 new photos on my flickr! And I've thrown a lot of information from the past 3 weeks into the captions for those photos, instead of clogging my blogging, so if you really want to be caught up, go read them.
I've recorded 3 songs for you and that means the next post will be a twofer. For now, this song is "Dead" by They Might Be Giants, one of my favorite muzzikul groups. Soon to be one of your favorites:

The school session is almost over. And so, before winter break, I've taken some photos of my students to show you all. The top one is from the basketball courts at #17, where I teach grade 9. As for "news"... I'm just doing wonderfully and I'm really happy to be here. I love my students and my coworkers, I'm still making friends, and I have probably like a 95% well-being index. I love Chengdu and I couldn't be happier with the city, unless, of course, the smog should lift enough to see the sun once in a while. And wait! It did! Last week, on Sunday. It was a bona fide sunny day (for about 3 hours, anyway). So I took as many pictures as I could, Including this one, taken near the big Mao statue that appeared 2 or 3 posts back. The Chengdizzle is a bizziful city. I'm posting Christmas songs tomorrow, so check back!

Wenshu Temple at the close of week 3

Wenshu temple is a large Zen Buddhist temple inside Chengdu. It's had a rough history, as have many rel*****s institutions in the country but it's open now, still functioning, populated (with monks) and beautiful. My american roommate Zach and I visited it this Friday after work. Zach is the only English speaker I see every day. I have co-workers who are anglo, but we all teach at different schools. As far as making Chinese friends goes, it's coming along. There are the muslim guys (previous post) and Zach and I went to English corner Friday night, which is an informal outdoor gathering of anyone who wants to practice their english, and any English-speaking laowai (foreigners) who want to indulge them. We got asked "where are you from" and "what do you do" by about 50 different people, but we also each met a few cool people and tonight we went out to a Tibetan tea house with 2 of them. so, that's good news. I'm traditionally bad at making friends on purpose.

I've started incorporating guitar into all my classes now. I've taught my seniors about the wild west using "Take a message to Mary" (Bob Dylan) and about the American civil war using "The Night they Drove old Dixie Down" (The Band). Most fun of all, I've taught my primary kids to sing "Thanks a Lot" by Raffi. So to recognize American Thanksgiving, here it is (listen closely for the yells of the neighborhood children):

Finally, if you've been wondering why I haven't been appearing in any pictures recently, it's because I didn't have any of me. But here's a sequence from this weekend: one, two and three.

Muslim Chengdu

I visited Chengdu's mosque yesterday. It wasn't during prayer time, and so the one guy who was there just took care of my guitar for me while I got to roam around the whole place alone. It's the most beautiful building I've seen since I moved here. When I came down, he invited me into his office and we watched T.V. for a while, but I wasn't able to communicate to him that I needed a schedule of prayer times. Afterwards I ate at a Muslim restaurant and got to chat for a long time with the owner about the Muslim community in China. He taught me some Arabic greetings and introduced me to some of his Muslim brothers. One of them, from Xinjiang, played guitar. Xinjiang is the huge province that constitutes the entire West of China, contains 47 minority groups and is mostly Muslim. So we traded off my guitar for a while, just sitting on chairs in front of the restaurant.

In contrast to that awesome night, I was out at one of the foreigner(laowai) bars in Chengdu this week, not having a great time. Going out to bars/clubs occasionally feels kind of like this song (by Valdy):

(I admit it sounds dated, since by now I think folk and rock's differences are water under the bridge, but the feeling is still the joy of "rockin" vs. the real joy of fr****m and love, whatever the music.) Anyway, I left that bar but on my way home stopped by a campfire that some locals were having on the terasse of a bar that had closed up already. We drummed and played guitar around the fire and if you looked straight up, you could see the moon through the Chengdu pollution. So in the end, another wonderful night.

Fashion Trend ni Autumn

Hospitable midsummmer pass by, fresh and co. With what kind of posture will city young women make autumn colurful? Graceful, handsome and dashing ANMANI will beco gic weapons of women in this autumn.

So I know that "haha, China has signs in bad English" isn't really insightful commentary.... but, well, 2 things:
#1. Insightful commentary isn't what I'm here for, is it? It's not an insight blog. It's just news.
#2. I like the picture.

News:
-The classes I'm teaching are going well. I teach mostly grade 7 and 8, but I have other classes that run from grade 2 to grade 9, so that means I spend a lot of time making lesson plans (in my head, if not on paper).
-This week I'm bringing my guitar in to classes and we're going to sing. I'm not sure what, but I'm thinking of just making some songs up. For the youngsters, anyway. The high-schoolers are too cool for things like happy music. Lame.
-One of the schools' regulations is that in class I "Respect the sovereignty on the People's Republic of China and not interfere in the internal affairs of the P.R.C." No comment.
-I'm eating great. Lots of eggplant and spicy tofu.
-I bought 2 persimmons, thinking they were tomatoes. Persimmons??
-Learning Chinese is proceeding apace. It's still going to take a long time. It's hard. But fun.

Now for Andrew Heining's request:

The chorus to Tiny Flashlight was originally written by our friend Ben Doerr, about the flashlight of our camper, Noah, that ran on one AA battery. The verses were later freestyled by Ben, Andrew Heining, me, and my brother Benjamin, all co-counselors together in the incomparable summer of 2001.

Safe and sound in Chengdu

Did I say I'd post again in 12 hours? I must have forgotten that being in China for the first time just might entail some other demands on my time. Like, uh, learning Chinese. Yeah. I'm working on that, though. I know enough phrases now so I can at least get the waiters to bring me something without meat in it. Learning Chinese is the reason I came over here, so I'm making it a priority. To support myself though, I also have a job, teaching high school English. Although it's a foreign language, obviously, so it's not "high school English" as in reading 'Brave New World'. It's as in "What do you like to do? I like to play basketball/I like to play computer games/I like to go shopping..."

For those just joining us, I'm in Chengdu. It's a city of 10-12 million officialy, but the unregistered occupants might make it around 15 million. That's almost half Canada's population just in this city. There's everything here, bright lights, big buildings, lots of people, lots of shopping, eating, clubbing, playing, working, living, dying. You know, the city life. The clubbing and shopping aren't really my thing, though I have been buying a lot of stuff (mostly food) because it's one of the easiest ways for me to practice my fledgling Chinese. Speaking of which, that's another good high school English book: The Fledgling. I did a book report on it (FYI). So there's everything here but English. And caucasians. I'm still adjusting to being stared at everywhere I go. And they don't stare discreetly, either. It's very much like being a monkey in a zoo. And that's actually how I decided that this post's song would be "Like a Monkey in a Zoo" by Daniel Johnston. Enjoy:

(Just click for music)

China!

I'm in ch-ch-ch-China and I've already got an internet hookup!
I just posted the post I wanted to put up right before I left (see below, there's a video!)
A new China post within the next 12 hours, people!

Lake Champlain to Quebec city

I spent my last weekend before moving to China with Jess, a friend from high school, closing up her boat for the winter. We drove down to the marina in Plattsburg, NY and spent the night on her boat, which she bought second hand and fixed up herself (yeah, I'm impressed too). The bottom picture is me on the swings (more pictures). It was freezing but fun, except the squeaking of some mast bit all night long. The next morning dawned cold and sunny and we left Lake Champlain and made the drive up to Quebec city to see a few sights (but mostly to pack up my apartment).

This video was taken by Jess once we got to my apartment in Quebec and realized we were too tired to sightsee, and so lazed around for a while. I'm playing Crazy Love, by Van Morrison. A friend from camp loves it when I play this song and laughs when I sing "kiss and hug her", so though he didn't request it, this song goes out to Mark Clark in Fort Lauderdale, FLA.

It's 2am and in 4 hours I'll be boarding a 23-hour flight to Chengdu, China. Love to all of you and I'll write again once I can get settled in Asia.