Category: Life in Xining
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Living in community with other ex-pats overseas provides for a lot of diversity in life. One of the ways it is diverse is that there is a lot of contact between families (like mine) and single folks. This is nice because many single people enjoy spending times with kids and many parents enjoy the break…
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The sun was shining in Xining today. It felt hot. I know this because I was sweating in it… "Where?" you might ask. On the basketball court–of all places. Yes, the rumors are true! This 32 year old language student was sighted on the campus of Min Yuen (minorities college) exercising his limbs and lungs…
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Walking with Anna today she said to me: "Daddy, let me know if you see any monks, OK?" I’m thinking this is not a typical thing for a four-year-old American child to ask…but then again what about Anna’s life thusfar is "typical"? After this we had a very interesting conversation about Tibetan monks.
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(Note: This is a continuation of a few posts I did previously talking about what it’s like here in Xining. Here are posts number 1 and number 2 in the series…) The students pour from the classrooms like fire ants erupting from a collapsed anthill. They scramble out of the concrete and glass jiaoshilou’s (classroom…
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There are a lot of sounds here in Xining. Car horns, cell phones, musical tunes that emanate from garbage trucks or signify the start of classes at schools, firecrackers, and voices–to name just a sampling. Today as I walked home from school I heard a "new" version of the song that goes, "Knock, knock, knockin’…
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Do you ever think about how certain events lead to other events which lead to still other events and how if you hadn’t set the first event in motion the other events would not have happened. I think about this all the time. I guess I posted a few days ago about decisions and this…
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Mandarin Chinese is a very interesting language, I think. The more I know about it the more intriguing it becomes. (Although I must admit that this past week was probably the lowest I’ve had on the motivation scale…) Here is an interesting example of one of the reasons I think the language is interesting: he…
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Woke up this morning to a heavy rain. It’s such a strange phenomenon here it often comes as a surprise. Small muddy streams quickly form on the streets and the sidewalks seem to groan and crackle like dry throats finally getting a drink. When the sun retreats behind the clouds, the warmth seems to hide…
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As promised, I am posting a photo album documenting Christa’s time at a Chinese wedding last week. Christa met a gal (Li Juan) at the Qinghai Library (after my speech) who exchanged phone numbers with Christa and wanted to develop a friendship. The first time Li Juan called Christa she invited her to a friend’s…
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We had some fun today at the Renmin Gongyuanr (People’s Park). It was a-buzz with activity so we did a little KFC picnic and enjoyed some of the sights and sounds of Xining. Take a look at more photos from our day in the Photo Album that I published in the Sidebar (to your right…)
yeti speak... 