Wow! It's amazing to see that I didn't blog at all during June. Since the last time I posted,
-I've started grad school.
-I finished my third year of teaching.
-I celebrated by second anniversary.
-I've watched High School Musical
-I've bough Austin two soccer balls, one of which was eaten by a dog and the other of which was punctured by a nail within the first 2 hours of him owning it.
I'm loving grad school, and teaching was really good too. We're excited, however to move across town to teach at a local college next month. I'll be teaching 3 sections of spoken English and 4 sections of American literature (ah, what to do with the assumption that because I'm American, I should know anything at all about American literature!). No, really, I remember loving it in high school, so I'll spend the summer brushing up and I'll be good to go.
We're coming to the close of our second year living in China. I'm learning a lot and have been challenged in lots of ways lately. I've seen my fear of engaging with people, my fear of awkward moments, my extreme selfishness & hesitancy to love anyone but myself, a certain ethnocentricity and pride that I've come to hate, and I've seen a need for change. And so slowly, I'm learning to engage more and more, to stop what I'm doing to spend time with somebody, to truly come to love the people around me, to see things through the eyes of love and be broken.
Someone asked me the other day what I missed about America. Just for fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Cereal
2. Dishwasher
3. The appreciation of funny, sarcastic comments
4. Events to get really dressed up for
5. Community
6. Canned vegetables
I think that's mostly it. And yet, none of those things are enough to send me packing right now. I love living here, and there are actually a whole lot of things about China that I'm sure I will grieve the loss of whenever it's time to head for the hills... But that's a post for another day.
-I've started grad school.
-I finished my third year of teaching.
-I celebrated by second anniversary.
-I've watched High School Musical
-I've bough Austin two soccer balls, one of which was eaten by a dog and the other of which was punctured by a nail within the first 2 hours of him owning it.
I'm loving grad school, and teaching was really good too. We're excited, however to move across town to teach at a local college next month. I'll be teaching 3 sections of spoken English and 4 sections of American literature (ah, what to do with the assumption that because I'm American, I should know anything at all about American literature!). No, really, I remember loving it in high school, so I'll spend the summer brushing up and I'll be good to go.
We're coming to the close of our second year living in China. I'm learning a lot and have been challenged in lots of ways lately. I've seen my fear of engaging with people, my fear of awkward moments, my extreme selfishness & hesitancy to love anyone but myself, a certain ethnocentricity and pride that I've come to hate, and I've seen a need for change. And so slowly, I'm learning to engage more and more, to stop what I'm doing to spend time with somebody, to truly come to love the people around me, to see things through the eyes of love and be broken.
Someone asked me the other day what I missed about America. Just for fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Cereal
2. Dishwasher
3. The appreciation of funny, sarcastic comments
4. Events to get really dressed up for
5. Community
6. Canned vegetables
I think that's mostly it. And yet, none of those things are enough to send me packing right now. I love living here, and there are actually a whole lot of things about China that I'm sure I will grieve the loss of whenever it's time to head for the hills... But that's a post for another day.