Writer. Traveler. Tea Drinker.

To get an idea of how big Chinese New Years you need to roll Christmas and Thanksgiving together. Add a pinch of Valentine’s Day (as they are on the same day this year) and multiply by 1.5 billion people. Then, replace each and every pine needle from the average numbers of Christmas trees all over [...]

Because there is no heat in the building here, despite the near freezing temperatures at times, students have to come up with crafty ways to keep from freezing. One tried and true way is the water bottle. They are popular here (as boiled water is readily available at every dorm and building) and you will [...]

When American’s want to parody what Chinese sounds like we (offensively) say “Ching chong wing wong.”
When we want to parody Swedish we say “Smorgish, borgish, upsadasee.” (a la Swedish Chef.)
When we want to parody Italian we say “Now dat’s a spicy-a meatball.” (Sorry Italian people, you can blame commercials in the early 90’s for that [...]

Ryan, Lynn and I went out yesterday to do some errands. I needed my bank card pin number changed (because I forgot it…duh!), Lynn wanted her boots shined, and Ryan wanted to get some decorations for Christmas. We also wanted to buy a Christmas present for the head of our department to present at our [...]

Being an avid reader in a country that doesn’t use your native language can be a problem. To get good stuff to read I either have to download it, have it shipped to me, or go to a big city and spend a bunch of money on imported books.
None of those options work well for [...]

I have been terribly remiss in my tea review writing since I’ve gotten to China despite the fact that I have been drinking more and better tea then I ever have before.
So, I finally got one done and if you are interested you could check it out here.

Back home in every Chinese food restaurant there is a lazy susan. You know what I’m talking about; The big round glass thing on the center of the table so when there are a lot of dishes everyone can spin it around to get to each dish.
Well, here in China every restaurant has a lazy [...]

I’ve showed some photos from around the campus but I haven’t shared any from our little patch of paradise. So here it is in all it’s glory: our little apartment.
On the initial ride from Shanghai to the school our friend Zhu told us that we had the nicest apartment. Since we were a married couple [...]

I went to Hangzhou (pronounced Hahng-joe) the other afternoon with a fellow English teacher Lynn. She had a meeting that night so we had a few hours to walk around the city and I could check out the famous West Lake for the first time. I though I’d share some pics…

Even though everything looks quite [...]

The day Ryan and I fly off for our next adventure will be the 13th anniversary of us being together (and a few days after our 8th wedding anniversary). I’m not the mushy type but I like that 13 years later we are still doing crazy things and having fun doing them.