Just like Asian cuisine, life will contain a balance of everything. Sweet, salty, bitter, and uh, habanero?
Bitter, sweet, Habanero
Goodbye Zàijiàn
I’ve never got kicked out of a country before, but let me tell you, it’s a bit more dramatic than getting kicked out of high school chemistry, which happened on a weekly basis.
Catch up 追上 zhuīshàng
This year, I ventured to Chicago 芝加哥, where I got to catch up on all kinds of things. Drug deals, non-binary teen groping on CTA platforms, drunken cub fans on trains, and a crash course of what colors not to wear in various gang-infested neighborhoods. Fashion tip: Red and black not is not to be worn in Uptown.
Year of the Octopus
Do students spend more time researching an animal for a report than they do a prospective school?
二三 èr sān (Twenty-three)
Jing Cheng, like many Chinese boys, is dressed head to toe in Michael Jordan apparel, the real deal, not the bootlegs. He has Nikes on his feet, an 二三 sweatband on his wrist, and a red BULLS jersey that he wears every day, even though it is pushing twenty-five years since MJ put on his for the last time in Salt Lake City.
Post mortem
Should we really decapitate the guest of honor?
Lunch at an International School
only see in the lunchroom of an international school in China.
Scarlet Tears
I pause for a moment, thinking about the oil and water concoction of abortion and religion.
Masks of 2026
So many things I learned about my students, thanks to a twenty-five cent mask.
I didn’t event this language. I just teach it.
I don’t remember learning grammar. I remember Kathy Lawton throwing up in the fifth grade, Richard Elliot drinking the water in the fish tank, but the rules deciding when to use raise or rise?