My Current Highlights:

– The TV series, Heroes.  I know I’m a sucker for comic book-related entertainment, but I’m surprised how much I’ve been enjoying this first season.  Hiro is awesome.  He ties the storyline together and keeps things interesting.

–
The confused look on my students’ faces as I attempt to teach them English.  I’ve taught class twice now.  The first time felt a bit like a train wreck, but the varied makeup of the class made it difficult.  I had about 3 middle school students and two adult students.  Their English level varied greatly even though it is supposed to be an Intermediate level class.  This past class session I did an exercise where I showed them a picture of some Sumo wrestlers from Japan.  We were using "IF/Then" conditional statements to show a chain of events.  For example, "IF these men eat all this food THEN they will get fatter.  IF these men get fatter, THEN they will weigh more.  IF they weigh more, THEN they will be better Sumo wrestlers…"  You get the idea.  I thought the exercise was fairly successful even for the few students whose English level is quite low.  At the end of exercise I asked one of the more advanced students if he was familiar with the sport of Sumo wrestling.  "Yes," he said, "but we don’t like Japan."  Classical Chinese textbook response.  So even showing arguably embarrassing photos of obese Japanese men wearing g-strings isn’t good enough for the Chinese.   Better just to leave their island neighbors to the East out of the discussion I guess.  (I’m aware there are historical reasons for this, but still.)

– Autumn in Jianzha with Christa.  (Does this picture make me look fat?  An optical illusion from not shaving, surely.)

-The new Radiohead album In Rainbows.  You go to this website link.  You tell them how much you’re willing to pay for their new album and then you download it for that price.  Seriously.  I’m cheap; I paid like a dollar or something.  And it’s great–it’s easily worth more and I likely would have paid more if I had a conscience regarding such things.  Definitely up to par with their earlier music (if you are into their sound that is.)

– The beauty of God embedded in every culture…

– Our "guardian" cat, Calico.  The other night we found an intruder in the girls room.  It was not a rat, but a small mouse.  I think he was chased "into" our home by a cat that I saw on the roof earlier in the day.  This cat has been hanging around in high places where "our" dog, Sandy, can’t reach him/her.  At night I think this cat has been on the prowl.  The bad news is that this means our estate is still being secretly occupied by the warrior rats of NIMH.  The good news is that our guardian cat is on the case…

– Building excitement because my good friends, Josh and Jer are on their way out here to visit us next week.