epiphany

Ocean View

I suspect that I shall always be alone. I say this not because I wish to be alone or because I think that no one ever wants to be with me. I say it because it is what I think. If I end up being wrong, it will come as a pleasant surprise.

When I say that I will always be alone, I mean that I do not expect ever to marry. My reason is that no matter what my outward circumstances may be, inwardly, I am isolated. My isolation is partly willed but mostly not. It often seems to have a self-cultivating life of its own.

I am isolated because I do not understand other people, and therefore, I do not think that others can truly understand me. Rarely do I connect with people on anything more than a greeting or acquaintance level. My few attempted relationships with girls on a level greater than "friends" failed partly because of this. I communicate by sharing what I am thinking. But what I say is more than just what I think: it is who I am. I cannot divide myself into separate compartments of thoughts, words and actions. For me, words do not happen without thoughts. Thoughts without actions are empty. Words without actions are lies (or frustration). Unless it is a situation involving advice, when I tell someone what I think, I am usually not giving a simple opinion. I am trying to share who I am and give part of myself to that person.

That, unfortunately, leads to a great danger. Under the way my mind works, rejecting the thought is nearly equivalent to rejecting of some aspect of the person. My response to this seeming rejection from others is, in the case of mild rejection, to try to explain the ideas until the other person at least understands the concepts or, in the case of flat out rejection, to minimize the relationship. Of course, the closer the relationship, the more personal the thought-rejection feels. Working the opposite direction, if I disagree strongly with what someone else thinks, I assume that the other person and I are basically incompatible. (That, however, is less likely to actually result in a significant change of relationship.)

Just as people change, thoughts change. But rarely do people (or thoughts) mature unrecognizably. Looking at a photo of our friends as children, we often comment on how much the person has changed. But in reality, the change is less significant than the similarity. We see how the eyes and mouth are the same, how the nose retained its basic shape. Though different, your friend is still your friend. The same is true for our thoughts. They age, mature and grow. Taken individually, some thoughts will appear vastly different, just as one's voice may lower during puberty or some features change drastically. But taken as a whole, the person's thoughts are likely still recognizable, a logical maturing of the mind.

The exception would be the results of an accident, some kind of breakage or scarring. A physical accident may significantly change a person's appearance, even after reconstructive surgery has attempted to restore the person's original image. Mental scarring may also leave a person unrecognizable, completely changing the "face thoughts" you knew (though once you are able to move beyond the surface thoughts, the person may have changed little as far as their inner self is concerned). I know of no surgery to heal a broken mind, and time has little power to heal mental scarring.

This has added to my sense of isolation and my inability to communicate. I feel like somewhere along the line, and I don't know where, why or when, something in me broke. Sometimes I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself, especially when I look into my own eyes. But nearly every time I look inside my head, I am at a loss as to who I am. I do not recognize my own self. I watch my life in third person, knowing what to do and how I ought to feel or react but truly feeling little or none of it. How can I relate well to others when I do not know myself?

I believe that a significant amount of this emotional difficulty comes from my younger television-induced concept of the ideal man, which amounted to the absence of emotion. Through years of effort I found that it was indeed possible to subdue some emotions—basically, those we would think of as positive. However, it is nearly impossible to subdue the negative emotions, for they fill the space left by weeding out of happiness, excitement and love. I did not notice this phenomenon for many years, at which point the positive emotions seemed to have nearly died out in my heart. Now that I realize the benefits (and necessity), the gift of emotions, I have difficulty controlling them. Most of the time what I feel is sadness, an aching sadness deep and broad as the ocean across which, someday, I shall find and know rest, quietness and joy. (This is why, sentimental though it is, Howard Shore's "Into the West" makes me physically quake with rage, longing and grief. It is the song of my deepest and most painful desire.)

That is why I believe I will always be alone, for I know of no path to where I am inside, and people do not tread the wilderness without business or purpose. No matter where I may be or what I may be doing, my heart sits alone on a misty shore, waiting for the tide to swallow me and bear me away from my isolation and grief.

Satisfaction

Here's a pretty good article from Grace Harbor. Rick was a big help to me my last year in Greenville.

Earthquake?

I think we had an earthquake here last night.

Now, I've never consciously experienced an earthquake, so I don't really know what they're like (I was told that I drove through one in Alaska, but we didn't notice it in the car). However, I awoke at 1:14am to a shaking bed. I could hear various things around the house rattling, and the pit of my stomach was vibrating like someone was playing snare rhythms on a bass drum. It lasted around eight seconds but kept me awake much longer. Although I've heard that it's a theoretical possibility, the upper Midwest simply doesn't get earthquakes.

So I'm trying to figure out what the possibilities are. It wasn't a truck, unless the truck was magnificently overloaded, because semis have been going by most of the night, and none of them shook the house. It could have been a train speeding through town. Trains often make the house tremble, but this would have been one very short train moving at an illegal rate of speed to shake my bed that badly. Maybe it was a sonic boom? I don't recall hearing the "boom" part, and I doubt that a sonic boom would last quite as long as this did. My two best conclusions are that it was either an earthquake or a dream.

When I was in China, I would sometimes wake up in the night with the "knowledge" that someone was in my apartment or room, and I'd have to shine my flashlight around the place to prove that no one had come in. That dream and sensory variations on it were fairly common for me. Perhaps this was simply an adjustment of that dream? Also adding to the likelihood of it being a dream is that nothing seems to have fallen down or even moved. I would think that something strong enough to shake my bed for close to ten seconds would have also made at least a few knick knacks (of which the house has plenty) fall down or at least look disorderly.

Still, I don't think I would have dreamed the stomach part. It wasn't until I got up this morning that I realized that the stomach feeling would match the effects of a very low tone, one just under the edge of audibility. Sometimes my dreams come up with crazy things, but that mixed with the other feelings and the sounds seem a little too complex for my head, especially without a previous experience to base them on.

I haven't read the online news yet, but if it was an earthquake, I wouldn't expect to see it written up until later in the day. After all, last week our capital and a small town got hit with tornados on Wednesday evening, and I didn't see it on CNN until the following afternoon (I never found it on Fox). Then again, seeing the level of coverage our area gets on the national news, maybe it would never be reported!

Small Town Wisconsin Benefits

1. You can walk pretty much everywhere you need to go.
2. The countryside is nearby and beautiful.
3. No bad smells (well, not often)
4. Lots of parks and trees
5. It's quiet.
6. Polite drivers
7. Plenty of ice cream shops
8. The post office is only three blocks from the bank.
9. Weekend bratwurst fundraisers
10. Friday night fish fry (mmm . . .)

Storms and All

I took my car to Kalscheur's in Cross Plains yesterday for a check-up. They're supposed to check it out for me today and call with any repair recommendations. It has a lot of miles and was displaying some nasty symptoms before I headed to China. However, the Black Earth area is gorgeous, with steep, tree-laden hills erupting in every direction. It's always a treat to drive out there, even to get your car fixed.

After dropping off my car, Mom and I did some shopping, mostly around the west side of Madison. I was planning on buying a few things, but none of the stores we went to had what I was after. Mom bought quite a few things though. I think she enjoys having someone to go out with.

We got home late with a nasty storm brewing behind us. Upon our arrival, we discovered a phone message from Drew, my old roommate in Seattle, asking me to call him back. As I was writing down his number, I thought, "He has a job lined up for me." I called him back, and after chatting for a bit, he revealed that he had a phone interview lined up for me! I called the place this morning, but the guy I need to talk to isn't in on Thursdays.

Intriguing life development.

While we were talking, I commented that we were having a thunderstorm. I've never been a fan of storms, seeing that they always seem to produce tornados around here. But I hadn't seen a storm for well over a year, so I was a little intrigued. We finished talking, and fifteen or twenty minutes later, the tornado sirens went off. Mom and I grabbed some books and flashlights and headed to the basement (for a very short time--neither of us like the basement too much).

When we came upstairs, everything looked fine, but when we turned on the news, we found out that Madison had been hit. One of the stations there showed a tornado forming in my childhood neighborhood, the area where we had been an hour or two earlier.

I didn't think the damage there looked too bad, from what they showed on the news. Another small city, Waupun (pronounced wuh-PAWN), had lots of damage. No one but emergency crews and local residents were allowed in because of the road blockage and downed power lines.

Cross Plains isn't near Waupun, but it is close the the west side of Madison. I'm hoping that my car made it through without harm.

Coming Out

Last year before heading to Seattle, I did what I thought was a bang-up cleaning job on my room. I figured that I should at least make it useable for any potential house guests my mom might have. For the time, it was a vast improvement. But my room has returned to its former state of chaos. It's cleaning time again, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a little more brutal about what I keep and what I throw out this time around.

I had managed to organize my closet fairly well, removing all the old pre-high school clutter. But I replaced it with mildly more sophisticated clutter, some of it still from high school, some of it from college and some from grad school. Well, it needs additional de-cluttering. And last year's cleaning needs to be taken from its newer attic home to Bethesda (like Good Will) or the junkyard.

It's amazing how many identical clothing items you can accumlate. I found three pairs of fairly nice blue pants on hangers in the closet, all of them in my current size, I think. I wear blue pants how often? Maybe once every two or three weeks when I'm working--once a week to be generous. I found an old pair of jeans that I "replaced" back in January and several pairs of khaki pants, some of which were worn out, others of which are completely fine. Good thing I didn't buy a new pair last weekend.

The problem is that it's difficult to throw things out (or give them to a local charity), even if you know you won't be using them. I mean, what if I end up needing more than one of those pairs of blue pants? Or if I get fat again and need the old size 38's instead of my present 34's? And all those toys I took to the attic last Spring, you know, maybe if I have kids someday they'll want to play with them, right? And the old VHS tapes that I haven't watched in years, those are part of my personal history, my development as an individual and an artist. Sure, I'm planning on replacing the ones that I actually still like with DVDs once I get a regular income, but what about right now? What if I really need to watch the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie but I don't have it handy? And lets not even get started on the old Nintendo and Super NES with all their sacred gaming titles.

So rather than cleaning out these things, acting on what I know needs to be done, I sit in front of my mom's computer, publically insulting myself, jeering at my own foolishness until I either become tired of it and find a different way to waste my time or until I actually do something about it.

. . .

I guess it's time to do something about it.

Forty-Year Punishment

I was reading Numbers recently and noticed something interesting. When the Israelites told God they wouldn't enter Canaan because of what their spies told them, as punishment God said that they would wander in the desert for forty years until everyone twenty years old and older had died, except for Caleb and Joshua (Numbers 14:30).

At this point, Moses and Aaron hadn't yet hit the stone to get the people water, the act that prevented them from entering the Promised Land (Numbers 20, which apparently took place many years after Numbers 14). I find it interesting that back at the pronouncement of the forty-year punishment, God didn't include Aaron and Moses in the exception clause. He never had to take back his promise that they'd make it there.

I wonder if Moses ever thought about that and went over the promises in his mind to see if he'd been missing something all along. I wonder how disappointed he was and if it was one of those breath-stealing moments when all the clues came together for him.

Because You Care

If you take a bite out of a completely ripe strawberry and then hold the uneaten part in the evening sunshine, you should get a pretty good idea of the glowing, translucent red of my guitar.

On which, by the way, I can now play a few songs at nearly full speed. :-)

grup, gru-u-up, VROOM!

Ron Rady, a man from my church here in Watertown, stopped by last night and helped me get my car started. Basically, after 10 months of sitting idle through a snowy winter and rainy spring, it just needed a jump start. Since I'm auto-ignorant, he showed me several things to look at and check but said that the engine looked/sounded fine overall. I'll still take the car in for a check-up with our family's favorite car dealership and repair shop. Kalscheur's is worth the hour and twenty minute drive from Watertown--honest people who know what they're doing.

Weapons article?

I found an interesting article about recent Iraqi WMD information/revelations on another blog. I haven't had a chance to check the claims of the writer, but it's certainly intriguing.

One Man's Wilderness

I found this book among the stacks in our basement several years ago. Since I spent a summer in Alaska back in '96, I thought I read it. While it's taken me quite a long time to get through it (more than two years of on-and-off reading), I found it thoroughly enjoyable. One Man's Wilderness (I have a sixth printing, 1977 edition, which is wider than it is tall) is a great way to get insight into the life of a 20th Century pioneer. The photos are well done and express the beauty of the Alaskan landscape quite well. If you do get to read a copy, I can tell you that, yes, the water really is that blue, even if you were to scoop it up in a glass.

HP3

I watched the new Harry Potter movie yesterday. Like pretty much every other review I've read, I'd agree that it's a better film than either of the first two. The actors have improved a lot. The cinematography was more interesting with a lot more movement. We head into the story much more quickly and with less of a feeling of introductory back-story (in my opinion, time with the Dursleys tends to be the slowest part of the books, Order of the Phoenix excepted). And John Williams appears to be back in excellent form after what was, in my opinion, quite a long take between good soundtracks.

The film was a lot darker and grittier than the two previous Potter movies. While that was fitting with the darker storyline, sometimes it seemed too great a change and would almost certainly be too frightening for small children: the first two movies were fairytale romps compared to this one. I don't recall seeing as many ruins at Hogwarts as we explored in this film. The dementors were far creepier in the movie than I had imagined them, especially their decaying mouths as they prepared to kiss their victims. The special effects were generally much better integrated in this film as well, though sometimes the magic appeared to be more flippant and more like X-Men style telekinesis than in the previous movies. I enjoyed the updated looks for the kids. Fred and George in particular seemed to be a good mix of modern style with the quirkiness of adult wizarding wardrobes.

Although I'm a Potter fan, I'll admit that the first hour and a half of the movie felt slow. Of course, that could have been because I was at a late matinee and needed to make it home for supper. Still, if a movie keeps your attention well enough, you forget to be concerned about time. However, the last thirty minutes or so flew by in a blur, easily making up for the earlier slowing.

I stayed to the end of the credits, appreciating the music (especially the first section blending of the new "Toil and Trouble" theme with the now familiar Harry themes) hoping for one of the "thanks for staying" surprises many movies seem to put at the end nowadays. There's a small one, but it's hardly worth the ten-minute wait. Still, the credits themselves are quite inventive and are based on the Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail map (which was another brilliantly non-intrusive and believable special effect in the film).

If you're a Potter fan, you've probably already seen the movie, unless you've been Providentially hindered. If not, I would recommend the books over the movies, although the movies are fun and worth seeing. And this is the best of the movies thus far. Again, compared with the others, this Harry Potter film in particular may be too frightening for young children (I'm afraid to think what the end of the Goblet of Fire will be like when adapted to the screen).

Forbidden City Photos

Welcome to my online photo tour of Beijing's Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum or Gugong. You can undoubtedly find photos of the "big sights" elsewhere, so I've tended to focus on the details of the palace. We'll be moving south to north, the direction of the main tour beginning at Tian'anmen Square and ending at Jingshan Park. I hope you enjoy the tour!

Marble bridge inside the main gate

West side of the first courtyard

Male lion guarding the first gate

Second courtyard looking north

Second courtyard, side alley

Dragon waterspouts, looking south

From a door

One of the many large pots used to store water in case of a fire

Dragon details from another door

Marble dragons (and detail) from the largest single piece of carved marble on earth

The Hall of Economic and Cultural Imperialism

Roof tiles

Thanks for visiting. Tune in later for continuing tours around the Beijing area!

(All photos in this tour were shot on April 30, 2004.)

Watch This!

Chinese food. Brain food. Eye candy.

Panpan Foods.

(Tastes like cheetos dipped in chicken bouillon instead of cheese. There was also a beef version, but I didn't try it.)

Car Question

Anybody know how to start a car that's been sitting idle for 10 months? When I put the key in, all the dashboard lights come on like normal, but when I turn it, the engine gives one or two quiet grumphs and won't turn on.

Yahoo!

I was pleasantly surprised to wake up this morning to an extra 96 Megs of storage in my free Yahoo Mail account. I hear Google's planning on offering a Gig, but that's a little too large for me. The one downside I can see to this is that it could allow me to let my inbox get pretty messy. Currently, I clean it up every month or two. Now I won't need to clean it up until maybe 2010!

East to West

My flights went uneventfully yesterday. I left Beijing at 9:20am and arrived in Wisconsin at 5:30pm after changing planes in Tokyo and Detroit.

I had planned to change the last of my RMB at the airport bank, but the one in the lobby wasn't open when I arrived. I decided I needed to check in more than I needed to change my money, so I paid for my airport tax and went to the Northwest gate. Checking in went smoothly. There were no problems with the guitar, though I did have to pay $120 for it as an extra bag (I didn't have a ten, so they didn't make me pay $130), but that was much better than the possible $390 one of the phone representatives had mentioned as a possibility only three days earlier.

But once I had checked in, I couldn't figure out how to go back to the lobby and to the airport bank. I thought that they might have another bank in the terminal, so I went through security and wandered around for a while. Unfortunately, the bank in the terminal wasn't scheduled to open until twenty minutes after my plane left. Since I couldn't change my remaining money (about $100 US), I decided to spend as much as I could on gifts. I have a little left over, but since airport merchandise is desperately expensive, I was able to use most of it.

The flights went smoothly, although the one to Wisconsin left Detroit 30 minutes late (and arrived in Madison 30 minutes late as well). I never really spoke with my seat mates. The in-flight movies were entertaining. Upon arriving in Madison, Mom and I went to Red Lobster for my first meal back in America. Chinese fish dishes normally have all of the bones left in it, and they're hard to eat with chopsticks.

I slept well last night and haven't had much trouble with jet-lag today. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of days.

End of Days

It's my last day in Dalian. Tomorrow morning I fly to Beijing. Two days from right now I think I'll be leaving Tokyo on my flight to America.

I wish I had some kind of grand and emotionally sweeping way to sum up my time here. Or even a pithy way to do it. But I don't. My life in China seems to be whispering to an end. God has kept me. He has provided for me over and over again. I know that he'll continue to do so in the future.

When once I stand in Ebenezer,
Sing my song at end of days,
I will hold the hand who holds me;
I will hear his voice who prays--

Hear the voice that spoke the planets,
Know the word who keeps their ways;
He whose word is Ebenezer
Holds me close 'til close of days.

Money Changers

There's something disappointing about taking a huge wad of Chinese money to the bank and exchanging it for a much smaller wad of American money. Changing your year's earnings back to American certainly doesn't hold the thrill of changing even $100 into RMB. You give people one green piece of paper; they give you eight red ones, plus additional change. Going the other way is anticlimactic at best.

Changing my money into dollars makes me feel like I have to be more responsible and grown-up with it. It's like finally facing and understanding what I've been telling my students all year: things cost more in America.

One more day left in Dalian.

Party, Party, Party (Party and, uh, Party Again)

I'm wrapping up my life in China. I've had parties for the last four nights. I wanted to go to sanda for the last time tonight after missing last week due to spicy stomach and just plain tired out-ness after finals. However, I've been invited to another party, this one hosted by the Japanese teachers. I told them that I'd like to come, but I'll be late. I figure I'll go down to sanda, say my goodbyes and take some photos, and then return to the sushi party.

Spending some time with friends at the end of a journey is more important than just about anything else.

If you love me . . .

Different things have set me thinking about the Church lately. I've had a chance to watch last fall's Luther a few times. I'm reading a book with which I have some hefty disagreements (at least in the earliest chapters). And there's some deep division among some friends here. Since classes are over and packing doesn't take much brain power, these thoughts and troubles consume my mind.

I really do think that we (the Church in general, Fundamentalism in particular since that's what I know best) have largely forgotten Jesus. In watching the movie about Luther, I couldn't help recognizing similarities between the modern Church and the Roman Catholics of the sixteenth century. The outward forms are different, but the errors are the same. The Bible is taken from the common people, not literally but rather through an overemphasis on scholarship that causes us to believe that we cannot understand or trust our English Bibles because we do not know Greek or Hebrew like the "authorities." Just as the Church at the time of the Reformation said that only the Church could correctly interpret the Scripture, the modern Church uses layers of interpretation to keep people within certain preconditioned mental states when reading their Bibles, causing them to often miss the plain meaning of the passage. Worst of all in this are those who promote ancient translations as the best (whether out of good motives or bad), which truly prevents the people from a plain understanding of what God has to say to them. We have trapped Jesus in a maze of hidden word meanings and philosophical constructs, keeping ourselves from knowing him and preventing others from coming to him as well.

My beef with the book, which shall remain nameless at the moment since I haven't finished it and may have a misunderstanding of where it's going, is that it seems to promote a loose interpretation of Scripture. What I mean by that is that it takes its own ideas and appears to lay a veneer of remotely applicable verses--taken out of context--atop them to "Christianize" the proposals. While the ideas in and of themselves may be noble, I take a strong offense to anyone who speaks in the name of God (or appropriates his name) saying what God has not said to us. This includes political speeches from the pulpits of churches or religious schools. It includes those books that tell us we need something more than Jesus to be either truly happy or to attain further blessings from God (or achieve further merit with God in order increase his happiness with us or to attain additional happiness he has for us). If you have a good idea and it is based on the Bible, that's fine. But to take an idea--good or not--and appropriate the Bible to it in order to give it "moral" strength (or worse) is an abuse of God's name and, therefore, an abuse of those people who may be deceived into trusting that these extra duties will somehow improve their lives, whether focused on this world or the next. Our salvation and happiness are secure in Christ, and there is no magical formula or action that will improve our standing with him.

The third problem is division in the body, which is division among Christ himself. Christ's one great command for his people is to love one another. If we do not walk in love, we do not walk in Christ. Will we always agree? No, because we are human and as such are inherently sinful. But though one part of the body gives pain to the rest, it no longer ceases to be part of the body. It is best to deal with the problems, trying to bring health, rather than for one part of the body to deny the existence of the rest (or not speak to them, in the more present case on my mind). A house divided against itself cannot stand. And how can Christ fight Christ? James tells us that our division comes from our own selfishness and pride. If we would walk like Jesus, we must humble ourselves and seek reconciliation. But instead we seek the happiness promised through our sin and leave Christ wounded and bleeding again in the sight of all the world, believers and non.

***************
"Beloved"

Beloved these are dangerous times
Because you are weightless like a leaf from the vine
and the wind has blown you all over town
Because there is nothing holding you to the ground

So now you would rather be
A slave again than free from the law

Beloved listen to me
Don't believe all that you see
and don't you ever let anyone tell you
That there's anything that you need
But me

Beloved these are perilous days
When your culture is so set in it's ways
That you will listen to salesmen and thieves
Preaching other than the truth you've received

Because they are telling lies
For they cannot circumcise your hearts

Beloved listen to me
Don't believe all that you see
and don't you ever let anyone tell you
That there's anything that you need
But me

Beloved there is nothing more
No more blessings and no more rewards
Than the treasure of my body and blood
Given freely to all daughters and sons

--Derek Webb

For Sunday

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Hebrews 13:20-21

Xia Ke!

"Class is over!"

I finished up my last final exam this afternoon and have all the grades completely entered in my computer. I'll probably double-check them tomorrow, but I'm basically done with my Chinese teaching career.

Now I just have to pack. Chances are once I start on that, I'll be wishing that I was back giving exams!

The Bride Returns

Monday afternoon I went down to Xinghai Square with one of my students. Don and I normally go out for supper on Monday evenings because he really likes to practice his English. This was probably our last chance to get together because he has a lot of finals coming up and I'm leaving the country. Since I didn't have faculty meeting this week, we decided to make a longer afternoon of it.

For supper we went to a mall and sampled a few different kinds of Chinese regional foods. As we were leaving, we saw a huge line of people waiting for something and decided to go over and see what was up. We couldn't figure out what was happening. As we turned to leave, I noticed a sharp-faced, tight-lipped woman standing three feet away, snapping pictures of me with her cell phone's camera.

"Do you remember me?"

"Yes," I said dryly, emotionally gritting my teeth. The Stalker had once again uncovered her quarry. "Hello, Yuan Lin."

"Is this your student?" she asked, looking at Don.

I said yes, and she and Don proceeded to talk for a little while in Chinese. Apparently Lin had been part of the big line. He later explained that the people were waiting to redeem points from a store card for a variety of different products, sort of a frequent shopper's bonus sale.

Lin turned back to me and said, "You can call me when you have time."

"I will not have any time," I said firmly.

On the way home, I told Don about the Lin saga. As with anything a little out of the ordinary, Don said, "This makes me feel very embarrassed for my country." I told him not to worry about it: it isn't just a Chinese problem. When I related the story of the girl who was chasing me my senior year of college, he seemed to feel better.

Thankfully, Lin has not called me (at least not while I've been home) since the phone call a couple of weeks ago when I made it plain that I would not be spending any more time with her. I hope our chance meeting doesn't rekindle her interest.

But it does make me wonder, why do some girls chase guys like that? Maybe if I had a different personality, I would enjoy it. As it is, it creeps me out and turns me off. Maybe that's why I'm not married.

When I was in the hospital last fall, a Chinese friend told me about an old proverb. "If you want a mistress, find someone you love, but if you want a wife, find someone who loves you."

Half Done (or Half Baked)

Day two of exams is behind me, leaving fewer than half of my classes to go. With three classes, Tuesday is my long day. I started at 7:00, had about a fifteen minute break between my first and second class and about twenty (in which I had my lunch) between classes two and three. My last student finished his exam at 3:15. I was thinking of going to sanda tonight but opted to work on my grades (what I have of them) and enter them into the computer in case something happens to my score sheets.

I had some interesting speeches today. The only major mispronunciation was one boy who talked about preventing chrome. That's actually an improvement over the normal mispronunciation for that topic, which ends up being "cream prevention." In pinyin (the Roman alphabet version of Chinese), "i" always makes a long "e" sound, so I took special care and gave multiple reminders at the end of the semester to make sure that "crime" was pronounced correctly.

In the realm of idioms (each student must correctly define and give an example sentence for two class idioms without any help whatsoever), one boy mistakenly defined "to pass away" as "to pass the time." I almost laughed out loud at his example sentence, which ended up as death by video games.

Today's fashion highlight was in my first class. The last boy to do the exam had on a black polo shirt that said, "Develop a sense of purpose. Today is all that matters."

Indeed.