Articles by Cory

Here’s a pretty neat article on the rise of Christianity in China.

Check it out.

Today I will be taking some of my nephews to see the new Transformers movie.  Yay!  Anyway, in my daily meanderings on the internets I happened across some great Transformers related craziness (by which I mean awesomeness!). 

Let’s start with pictures of the National Guard soldier/fire fighter who legally changed his name to Optimus Prime.  Not only is it amazing that someone actually changed their name to a cartoon character’s, but the soldier/fire fighter combination seems a great fit for a man who identifies with the leader of the autobots.  More Optimus Prime goodies can be found here.

The next segment I dedicate to Brian with the question: why haven’t you done anything like this!?  ComicCon ‘07?  Eh?  Watch the video here.

And, if this isn’t enough.  There are tons more videos from Gizmodo here.

I found out something new at work today. Today is the official Tribal Native American Day. Why Tribal you ask? Well, there are 2 “Native American Days“. The first is on October 12th. The perceptive among you will note that in most parts of the country October 12th means Columbus Day. While he was a great explorer and navigator, his governing of new world colonies led to the enslavement and slaughter of natives. The state of South Dakota officially recognizes October 12th as Columbus Day. The second is the official tribal Native American Day. It is celebrated on June 25th.

The most interesting point of this day is the historical event that caused this day to be tribal Native American Day. What event is that? Make a guess. You’ve all heard of the incident but I’m sure you don’t know the date or any specific details.

The reason June 25th is celebrated as Native American Day is because it’s the anniversary of Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn.

[tags]Little Big Horn, Custer, Native American Day[/tags]

 Guess which gigantic internet company is building a complex in Council Bluffs.  None other than my favorite internet company of them all, Google!  Yay! 

Why are they building in Council Bluffs?  I don’t know.  Maybe they’re going to begin indexing soy beans.  Maybe they’re about to tailor a Gmail for hogs, piGmail, if you will.  Or maybe they realized that Nebraska sucks.  Either way, I’m happy. 

By the way, the website that broke this story is also from Iowa, check it out: Google Building Data Center in Land of Hogs, Corn, and CyberNet News - CyberNet News.

[tags]Iowa, Google[/tags]

I’m in a bit of a silly mood, so I thought I’d brag about my new credit card.  Everyone in Valentine knows that the cheapest gas is at the Sinclair station by the Rosebud Casino.  It’s on the highway between Valentine, where we live, and Mission, where we work.  It’s become our haven fuel during the work week.

Well, being the financial wizard that I am, I decided to take advantage of this by ordering a couple of credit cards since using them will cut 7% off the top of our gas purchases.  Now, the greatest thing about these cards is not their money saving potential, but the fact that they have a herd of brontosauruses in the picture.

As you might imagine, Lacey is not near as exctied by this as I am, but what does she know?  I’m more than happy to sport dinosaurs on  my credit card, and you should too.

(It’s the one on the left, but the green one is cool too!)

[tags]credit card, dinosaurs, brontosaurus[/tags]

Someone is obviously working at the Post Office, because they came up with a GREAT idea for a stamp collection.  Right now you can get an entire book of Star Wars themed stamps!

And, on top of that fun, you can go online and vote for your favoite.  I personally like the Han & Chewy stamp the best.  What’s your favorite?

Vote Here

[tags]star wars, stamps, usps[/tags]

All of you Lord of the Rings fans will be excited to know that a new Tolkien book will be released on the 17th of April.  It will be called the Children of Hurin. It’s set in Middle Earth, and the events happened sometime before the Lord of the Rings.

The book was taken from J.R.R. Tolkiens manuscripts and notes, and crafted together by his Son.   Read the full story here.

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Valentine’s Day.

Lacey and I began celebrating on Sunday by attending Valentine’s ‘Coronation‘. It was…interesting (that’s a nice way to say boring). It’s a Valentine’s celebration that takes place in the High School. The highlight was when they gave a community award to the Valentine Fire Dept., who esentially saved the town from a forest fire this fall. Aside from that they voted couples from the freshman through senior classes as Kings and Queens. Lame.

But, on Valentine’s Day Lacey and I celebrated by seeing the Temptations at the Rosebud Casino! That was pretty fun. It was only one of the original members, but the rest of the members have been touring as a Temptation for a long time. We got to watch them sing “Aint to Proud to Beg“, “Get Ready“, and-of course-”My Girl“.

[tags]Tempations[/tags]

The good poeple over at the Jim Henson Company are making a sequel to the Dark Crystal. This is one of those good 80’s fantasy movies that I liked as a kid, and came back to as an adult when it was released on DVD. Apparently the film will be called The Power of the Dark Crystal. Sounds cool!

I found out about this at SFX.

Technorati tags: Dark Crystal, Dark Crystal 2

I stopped by Jared’s blog the other day and noticed a post entitled “coryandlacey“. It was written a while back, but I took the time to run it through a translator. This is what Jared said:

“Cory and lacey had to return to homeland, had the trifle moved! Once together was spending together the happy time regarding these two american, I now did not know had to say any! Only can be wishes their good luck! First time meets by chance is in Yucheng in the one, had not thought after the college entrance examination the summer vacation could in the more than half month time, at that time we become the friend together! Has the friend to come from the distant place, delight! Much less is two foreign friends! Did not know because any they must return to homeland ahead of time, the summer vacation distinction became parted forever!”

It was a really nice post. It was written in Chinese, and there are simply no good translators on the internet to make it sound right, but you get the idea.

Thanks Jared, we miss you too!

Someone buy me one of these. I promise I’ll become your friend.

These things look a little strange, but they’re actually flash drives. They come in 1 - 4GB models, and the smallest one retails at $80. Ouch! But, if anyone wants to be the king of nerd-chic, you have to get one. As for me, maybe Lacey will get me an R2 flash drive for Valentine’s Day.

[tags]star wars, mimoco[/tags]

DailyLit lets you read books a little at a time by email. It’s a great way to read a book, especially if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t usually read, or doesn’t have a lot of time.

Lacey and I have each been enjoying the service for a few weeks now. Every morning a new section of Treasure Island comes to my inbox. Lacey is enjoying reading Moby Dick. (I don’t know why, but seafaring seems to be a theme with us.)

Anyhow, go check the site out. Their books are older. I think they have to be out of copyright. This is actually a good thing, as it gives you a chance to read a classic novel, a little bit at a time.

[tags]DailyLit, Moby Dick, Treasure Island[/tags]

As of today I’m an official Nebraskan. I guess that means I’ll have to start watching college football, plant trees, and learn how to husk corn (I can only eat it).

Let the ridicule begin…

One time I got attacked by a kid with fetal alcohol syndrome.  He punched me in the face, and beamed several apples, pears, and other assorted fruits at my head.  He didn’t hit me hard, and I managed to dodge the fruit, but my co-worker’s forehead took a beating.

What does this have to do with anything?  Well, Lacey has a job now.  She’s working as a teacher’s aide for the Rosebud Middle School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

She had her first day today, and she seems to think she’s going to like it.  Her duties include:

• assisting teachers in their language, math and history classes.
• helping in the special ed classes
• giving one-on-one help to a girl with fetal alcohol) syndrome
• and, watching the boy’s restroom

We’re both really excited for Lacey’s job.  It means we don’t have to be sponges to our parents anymore.  But, more importantly, it means a new adventure for us.

In many ways moving out here is a natural sequel to our time in China.  Perhaps China was a preparation for us to work on the indian reservation.  It will be interesting to see how we fair with the Native Americans.  We loved our time with the Chinese, I can’t wait to see how our new adventure goes.

Today was my first day at work.

And I enjoyed it!

It will be interesting to see how this job pans out. DSS is located on the “Rez” (short for [indian] reservation). I’ll be doing casework for families who have had abuse/neglect allegations raised against them.

It seems like a challenging job, but I think I’ll enjoy it. I don’t start casework for another month or two. I’ll be having extensive training, in fact I’ll be gone training for 3 weeks in February.

It looks like I’ll be spending much of my time driving throughout the state. I also get my own office, mobile phone, and laptop. Pretty neat, eh?

Who remembers these songs:

“Lightning Crashes” by Live

“Jumper” by Third Eye Blind

“The Freshman” by The Verve Pipe

and these others.

I grew up with these songs and am a little disturbed to see them placed on a nostalgic 2-CD set. I’m not against listening to music for the sake of nostalgia, I’m just against my music being nostalgic.

Apparently these songs aren’t new anymore. In fact, they now have their own niche in the history of music. Unforunately, someone is calling that niche the Buzz Ballad. It sounds like a collection of really crappy songs that are sung fast so no one hears how bad they are. Then again, maybe that’s what these songs are?

What really bugs me about this, is that I suspect it means I’m getting old. The things I associated with my youth can now be used to remind me of my age. Isn’t that a scary thought?

Has anyone else seen these CD’s advertised on TV? Does it feel a bit ominous, or is it just me?

Apparently McDonalds thinks so. Ads in China can be pretty crazy, and it’s always great to see something that makes sense to a Chinese person come out completely crazy when viewed by a westerner.

In this ad Yao Ming is either making bull horns while encouraging people to eat beef, or he’s worshipping Satan. You be the judge.

From: One Billion Users and Shanghaiist

[tags]Yao Ming, Satan, McDonalds[/tags]

Henry Dean “Bean” Charlton was born on January 4th, at 5:26 in the evening. A special congratulations to R.J. and Abby, the proud parents.

Lacey and I’s prediction: “Hank” Dean will soon be a famous country western singer. Continuing in the tradition of Johnny Cash by singing about the downtrodden in prisons, jails, and legal institutions. When interviewed about this, he will mention his young years in the hospital, squirming, crying, and already dressing like a prisoner.

If I’ve ever had a conversation with someone about email, it involves me raving like a lunatic about how much I love my Gmail account. I’m sure some of my friends get tired of me labeling them heretics for not using it. Of course, once you use it any other webmail service becomes heresy.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one that thinks Gmail is great. In fact, Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post agrees with me that Gmail is the best. He does this while comparing it directly to Yahoo! mail and Hotmail.

These are some of the things he says:

“Google’s Web-mail has the cleanest interface…”

“Gmail is smarter about organizing messages…”

“Gmail is also the most compatible service around…”

This is all true, but I have my own reasons for loving Gmail. Here are the 4 best ones:

The great things about Gmail in my opinion are:

1. Conversation view: It’s hard to explain without seeing it in action, but I’ll try. In Hotmail, if I write an email with the subject “Movie on Friday”, and send it to three friends, I’ll get 3 emails with subjects “Re: Movie on Friday”. If this conversation goes on a few days, I could have 10 emails sitting in my inbox labeled “Re: Re: Re: Movie on Friday”. That’s 10 separate emails I have to trudge through, and I never know if the friend who wrote email #8 is responding to email #1 or email #7. It’s really difficult to decipher. Fortunately, in Gmail those 10 emails with the subject “Movie on Friday” will only take up one line in my inbox. And when I click on it I can see every email at once. It makes reading emails much less confusing, and I have a better idea of what’s going on in the conversation.
2. Google Search: It’s too easy to lose an email. With Gmail you can perform a google search on your mail account. And you can use cool search phrases like from:, subject:, date:, etc. So, if I’m looking for the email I wrote Joe about the Nintendo Wii my search looks like: to:Joe Nintendo Wii. When I hit Search it’s the first email on the list. Nifty, huh?
3. Google Chat: On the left side of the screen is a little box that lists the contacts I talk to the most. If a contact is checking their mail at the same time I am, a little green dot lights up beside their name. I can now chat with that person like I’m using an instant messenger. Many times I haven’t had to write an email because the person I needed to write was online anyway. Instead of wasting time writing email I was able to chat instead.
4. No Annoying Advertising: One thing that I absolutely despise while checking my email is being distracted by ads. I was constantly being served Singles websites, weight loss programs, real estate bargains, and those annoying seizure-inducing ads that flash red and white text until you’re eyes cross and you pass out. Gmail does display ads, but they’re only little boxes of text that stay out of the way. They aren’t annoying.

Those are my favorite things about Gmail. For those of you that have it, congratulations. You’re a better person for it. For those that have it but don’t use it, make the switch. You won’t regret it. Finally, for those of you that would like to try it, leave a comment. I’ll send an invite to your email address. That’s right, Gmail is so cool you have to be invited to use it!

[tags]google, gmail, email[/tags]

I’m no longer a poor waif, wandering the streets of Valentine like a listless vagabond.

I was hired last night by the State of South Dakota. I’ll be working for the child protection agency at Rosebud Indian Reservation. My job will be to talk with children whose parents have abuse and neglect allegations, and to determine if and what kind of services they need in order to keep their children.

I’m really excited about this new job. I’ll get to continue working with children in trouble, and I think it will be a good step up from Orchard Place.

I start on the 18th of January.

Reading my feeds this morning I came across a “what superhero are you” quiz. Obviously, I couldn’t resist completing it, nor could I resist making Lacey take it also. Here are our results:

Cory:

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Green Lantern 70% Spider-Man 60% Iron Man 55% Robin 52% Hulk 50% Supergirl 47% Batman 40% The Flash 35% Wonder Woman 27% Catwoman 25%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…
Lacey:

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Robin 72% Spider-Man 70% Green Lantern 65% Wonder Woman 58% Batman 55% Catwoman 50% Hulk 50% Iron Man 50% The Flash 45% Supergirl 33%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…
So there you have it, Lacey and I are both Superman. I guess that means we’re a good match for each other, right? What I find interesting is that my #2 is the Green Lantern (awesome!), but Lacey’s #2 is Robin.

So sad.

This morning Lacey and my Christmas came to an end as we opened up our stockings from Lacey’s mother. It was a good Christmas for both of us. It was wonderful being back with the family. We also got to see Kyle and Yanan, who are in the states right now celebrating their 2nd wedding.

Things got off to a bit of a chaotic start. We had planned leaving for Iowa the day of the big storm in Denver. This is the same storm that devastated Denver a week ago. It’s carnage extended across western Nebraska, and ended a short ways East of Valentine.

We tried to dig ourselves out of the driveway the next day. Lacey and her mother spent half an hour plowing over to her mom’s jeep. Then they used it to pack down 18 inches of snow covering 30 yards of driveway. Only after this did we dare try taking our civic out to the road. It didn’t work, and we got stuck in the driveway and couldn’t get out. Fortunately, Mark (Lacey’s brother) pulled us onto the road with his truck, and we were on our way.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the last time we were hauled by a truck this trip. We headed out on Hwy 20 in roads that were completely covered with snow and ice. Things cleared after 2 and a half ours of driving, just in time for the fog to role in. Unfortunately, the fog condensed on the road and froze. We hit a bad stretch of road just before O’Neil Nebraska and had to put the car in the ditch in order to avoid a collision with a pickup. We hitched into town and were pulled out by “Butch” the next morning. In the next town we had to clean snow out of the tires, but after that we were finally on our way to Iowa.

We arrived at my house later that afternoon, met my parents in Des Moines, and forced them to go shopping with us so that we’d have some nice clothes to wear for Kyle and Yanan’s wedding the next day.

But it’s late here, and I’ll continue the tale tomorrow. Up next is: Kyle and Yanan’s wedding, and Christmas with our families.

It’s a snowy, blustery Tuesday evening, and it’s nice to write a warm post for a cold evening. Brian and Anita are engaged! Congrats, guys!

They’ve been dating since Columbus Day ‘05, approximately a year and 2 months. Brian proposed after she had just returned from a business trip to Texas. On the way to a date at Valentino’s (where they’d shared their first date) she found a souvenir Ottawa book on the seat (a clue to the city where they first met). After that they stopped by the parent’s house, under false pretenses, and lingered in the hallway where they had their first kiss (historically, not ever). Brian, ever being the one to buck tradition, invited his bride to be on his lap. As he tells the story, “instead of me getting on my knees, I thought she could”.

Here, Brian asked “Anita, will you marry me?” After a startled look she quickly answered “Yes!”

They are tentatively looking at July 28th for the wedding date, and are planning getting married in Nebraska. Andy will be providing Flamenco guitar at the service, while Jeremy will bring his N64 as part of the reception festivities.

Speaking of weddings, Lacey and I are looking forward to Kyle and Yanan’s wedding coming up this Friday! I still gotta get that suit!

I saw this plug-in and couldn’t resist.
Enjoy!

The obligatory link to the author.

I found a fun one. Viking Products (which I presume to be a British Stationery company), has begun a movie contest at stationerymovies.com. Users take various pieces of office equipment and use them recreate films. Users come and guess which movie each image comes from.
I scored a 13/20, which I think is pretty good since a lot of them are hard. Can anyone else do better? If you can, let me know what 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 14, & 19 are!
Oh, and I think the first and last are my favorites, hehe.

China holds a special place in my heart. Lacey and I lived there for 9 months, and have only recently returned. Whenever I hear interesting news about the country, and especially it’s relation to the US, I plan to blog about it.

That brings us to today’s news from Atlanta. A panda cub has recently been born, and in a ceremony was named “Mei Lan“, or “Beautiful Atlanta“.

You can check out the article here, and here’s a short video of the MeiLan taking her first steps.

Technorati Tags: China, Panda

We spent the whole day shopping in North Platte yesterday, and when we returned we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had 3 packages waiting at the post office. It being Christmas time and all, each one of us have been waiting for a variety of gifts, packages and cards. Each one of us had no less than 3 that could arrive at any time.
The packages were:

That’s right, they were all mine!
The reason I got these packages is because the laptop Lacey and I got for Christmas last year hadn’t always worked the best. The first thing I noticed about the laptop when I got it was all of the crap on the desktop. AOL, Earthlink, RealPlayer, MusicMatch, blah, blah, blah. I went on an exuberant, yet ill-advised, hack and slash campaign against all the software I didn’t want. I did manage to rid myself of the garbage…but I also assassinated some software that should have stayed. Furthermore, for reasons which may or may not have related to the previously mentioned campaign, the CD/DVD player stopped reading CDs. The whole time Lacey and I were in China we could not use CDs, had to put up with a finicky operating system, and could have had our laps blown off at any time!
Finally, after 11 months of using a crippled laptop I can get it to work properly. And this time I’ll be a little smarter.

[tags]dell, laptop, de-crapifier[/tags]

A week ago on Monday I interviewed for a position with the South Dakota Social Services office in Mission. My duties would be to:

1. Evaluate families to determine if abuse and neglect allegations are founded.
2. Intervene with families who have founded abuse/neglect allegations. And provide support for the families so that they may keep their children at home.

Contrary to popular opinion I will not be responsible for stealing crying kids from their mother’s loving arms (sorry mom, the police do that).
They called me yesterday. I got really excited when the phone rang, but it was a false alarm… My reference’s phone numbers weren’t working (which is strange since I gave them the same numbers I used to call them). I was asked to give her new numbers, and here’s the interesting part. She told me: “The sooner I get those references, the sooner I can talk to you about more interesting news.”
Hmm… what does that mean? I’m assuming at this point that the job is mine. And that the reference check is the last formality before I get hired. This is all speculation (knock on wood, take it with a grain of salt, don’t eat yellow snow, etc.), but I think my odds are good. Unfortunately, if I don’t get this job we’ll probably not stay in Nebraska any longer. That would really stink, since it means that the weeks Lacey and I have spent here were a big waste of time.
But I’m assuming I’ll get a call either sometime today, or sometime on Monday. So I’ll let you know as soon I hear.

I change the way this blog looks about as often as I post on it. Honestly, making visual changes to it is part of the fun of having it. But I’ve never stopped to mention how I’ve done the things I do.
The thing that impresses me most about the software I use is not how good it is, though it is good, but how cheap it is. It’s free!
I created the above image with two free little web programs: the Gimp, and Inkscape.

1. The Gimp isn’t exactly a photoshop killer, but it’s close. It’s a little tricky to learn, but well worth the energy if you need a high powered photo editor.
2. Inkscape is great for working with text. And, it’s a bit more intuitive than the Gimp also. Lemmertorium was written in Inkscape first, before being transfered over to the above image.
3. The font for Lemmertorium is another freebie find. It’s called Seven Swordsmen, and from Blambot. Blambot specializes in fonts for Comic Books, and I always get giddy whenever I stop by there. (Giddy in a nerdy sort of way).

Oh, and the original image that started it all, is here:

Technorati Tags: inkscape, blambot, gimp

For those who haven’t noticed, I’ve been taking a break from blogging ever since we returned from China. I’ve been going through a bit of post-partum depression with the Lemmertorium. Blogging from China was a no-brainer, as everything we posted was interesting and unique. Now that everything is normal again, I know that I’ll have to work harder to find things worth writing about.
It’s a little daunting, frankly. Blogging, in and of itself, is pretty easy. Blogging well, isn’t. It requires a lot of dedication to find something to talk about on a regular basis. And my fear is that my life isn’t all that interesting anymore. But, I like blogging, and for the time being I’m going to continue with it. I miss writing about everything, and I miss hearing from all my friends and family. And who knows, maybe someday people I don’t know will start paying attention to this blog… nah.

I changed a few things on the site tonite, let me know if anyone has any problems.

Pingdu has a very rich history, longer than that of Qingdao, Hong Kong, and many of the major cities in modern China.

Before the first Chinese emperor, in what was known as the “Warring States” period, Pingdu was a capitol of a Warlord’s Kingdom. This particular Warlord was fighting the kingdom of Modern Day Beijing. While the enemy army was camped, the Pingdu army fixed swords to the horns of several bulls, lit their tails on fire, and sent them into the enemies camp.

The bulls killed many soldiers, and sent the camp into a frenzy, allowing Pingdu to win the war.

The picture is from a large statue on the highway into Pingdu.

We have 2 new galleries up on the website. One is from Lacey, Kyle and Yanan’s trip to Lao Shan (Old Mountain). The second is from Lacey, Brett and I’s trip to Lao Long Wan (Old Dragon Bay). Check them out at the gallery page here.

Last night we had our third “English Worship” at our local church in Pingdu. We sing songs, read Bible passages in English, and assume that the church people will glean a little English knowledge from our presentation.

I was responsible for planning last night’s meeting. Part of this includes translating Bible passages into Chinese, and I found out that this is a little more difficult than you might think.

Our lesson last night was on the Beattitudes. “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the Earth.” Now, does ‘Earth’ refer to the planet Earth (Like a Revelation New Heaven and New Earth kind of thing), or does it refer to the soil (an agricultural thing). This was anintellectual debate, I opted for planet, but I could be wrong. A couple other things were a little more problematic.

Luckily, when Chinese poeple read something they don’t like or understand they grimace just a little bit. I was able to read the congregation pretty well. In translating the Beattitudes I stuck to the big words exclusively. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for Righteousness’ sake.” Verbs aren’t conjegated in Chinese as they are in English, so I had to translate Persecuted as to Persecute, making the passage look like “Blessed are those who persecute for righteousness’ sake”.

The craziest mistake I made was leaving out a character from the title of a song. I translated “I am a C” as “I am a Christian” when I presented the song to the congregation. Unfortunately, I left out the last character in “Christian”, effectively making the tilte “I am Christ”. I don’t think they would have enjoyed singing “I am Christ” very much.

Fortunately, we were able to edit “I am Christ” when it came up. And I offered to persecute Lacey in front of the congregation (I gave her a loving shove) and explained that while I was persecuting she was persecuted. I think they understood.

If nothing else, at least we didn’t have to speak over the drone of firecrackers like we did the previous week. If you remember that was the Money God Festival. Rest assured, Chinese Christians don’t celebrate the Money God Festival.

I wanted to let everyone know the bad news.  Our internet is gone.  :-(  Our 6 months came up and we were unable to renew it at the school. 

What does this mean?

• No pictures.  Most net cafes don’t allow use of flash drives or other such nifty devices, so we probably won’t be able to upload a bunch of photos anymore.
• Less frequent chatting.

What doesn’t this mean?

• We won’t drop off the face of the Earth.  Everyone will still hear from us via Email and this Blog.  If anything, emails and blogs will take a heightened priority in that we won’t be able to procrastinate writing them anymore.
• Cory will go insane without regular internet fixes.  This may happen, eventually, but for now there’s a net bar down the street and (though the first floor smells like the toilet) we can go there pretty much whenever we want.

With any luck our internet hiatus will be resolved within a month our two.  We’ll keep you all posted!

Here’s the school’s new logo. It’s two pandas, and if you look closely you can tell that they’re actually two “Care bear” pandas. They’re proudly displaying our country’s flags.

It’s been a couple weeks since we finished the summer program. As Gil says, “there’s no rest for the wicked”. And while Lacey and I attempted to spend the week at rest and relaxing, Kyle and Yanan began their plan to move the school across town and begin writing their own English books. Yikes!

Lacey and I enjoyed the summer program. It was long and gruelling at times, but it was great getting to have the kids for 3 hours a day, and getting to know many of them. I loved my middle schoolers, and lacey loved her 6th graders. We all had a good time.

The gallery I know everyone has been waiting for is now up. You can check it out here.

Hey everyone! I hope you all know that today is 财神节. China’s Money God Festival. Let’s all get together and pray for money! After that we can light off really obnoxious firecrackers. I don’t know what it is about Chinese people and firecrackers, but they love them. They’re always lighting them off to celebrate. For instance, if someone opens a new business, you light off firecrackers. If someone has a celebration, like a wedding or anniversary, you light off firecrackers. The worst is the holidays. Over Spring Festival there were 2 days where the whole city sounded like a war zone.

Today isn’t quite so bad, but it’s still really obnoxious. Of course, I think any holiday celebrating the God of getting more money is a little obnoxious to begin with. Anyway, I wouldn’t be a good Chinese ambassador without letting you know of today’s significance.

I’m going to post a pic of the Money God in all his glory in hopes that I’ll find a few more bucks in my pocket later on. I’ll let you know if anything mystical happens ;-)!!!

We rented ad space on a bus, maybe the best bus in Pingdu (it goes all over town). We shellacked a bunch of pictures on it,
and sent it off through the town.

Here are the pictures.

Those bears are pandas, Care Bear pandas, in fact. We stole them off of a website, and they’re the new school’s logo. Hehe.

Just to let eveyone know the summer program, as of yesterday afternoon, is officially over! We’ve had a gruelling three weeks, and it all comes to an end tommorrow. You may or may not hear from is in a few days, as we’ll likely take some time off to recuperate. When we come back we’ll have a gallery of summer program shots and a score of new videos.

So to the right of this page is a rather large and hard-to-miss chat box. It’s linked into Meebo, one of my favorite websites, and my sole means of chatting and instant messaging. Anyone viewing this website can now write to me whenever I’m logged in to meebo, just type in the box and hit enter.

Pretty cool, huh?

[tags]meebo[/tags]

We had a party last night. A bunch of people came over and we made dumplings and ate until we were full!

Here are some pictures.

Yanan and Jarod (a visiting student from Yanan’s hometown) are hard at work cutting cabbage.

Andrea is one of our employees. She is going into high school next year and has amazing English. This is her friend Hudson, but you can call him Handsome.

Brett and his girlfriend for the evening. We couldn’t get him to say if she was really his girlfriend. Apparently all of Brett’s women are on lease.

Here we’re hard at work making dumplings.

Yanan did all the cooking. Here she is relaxing for a spell before another onslaught of dumplingy goodness.

The Internet Movie Database is reporting that Matt Damon will play Capt. Kirk in the new Star Trek movie (scheduled for 2008). Read about it here. I’m not sure how I feel about this. My gut reaction says bad idea, but I could see him pulling off the role as sexy Capt. Kirk.

I need Ernie’s opinion on this, so be sure and leave a comment, dad!

[tags]Star Trek, Matt Damon,[/tags]

Happy Chinese Valentine’s Day to everyone. Here’s a quick pic of the bouquet of flowers I brought Lacey this morning. It includes Lillies, Gerber Daisies, and something else that Lacey told me what they were but I forgot… Oh well.

Tonight we ought to be enjoying dumplings and other goodies. I’ll let you know how the evening transpires.

…and I had to walk through this.

and this

and this

Not only did I have to walk through it all, I also had to drag Werewolf through the mud.

Fortunately I had the boots. Werewolf is hurting, though.

This Monday is Chinese Lover’s Day, and guess which two young lovebirds got their pictures in the paper!?

That’s Kyle and Yanan. The headline reads: “Foreigner” Husband Celebrates Chinese Lover’s Day.

Yanan is quoted in the paper as saying, “My husband is an American. We only celebrated the Western Valentine’s Day before. But, this year we got married. Now he will celebrate a romantic and warm Chinese Lover’s Day with me!”

We’ll see rather or not Kyle really does it!!! I know I’m skeptical.

Apparently my mother was dissatisfied with the last post. It’s so difficult to please some people (even with Transformers!). I suppose she is my mother. Anyway, here are some pictures from the middle school class I teach everyday. They’re hard at work writing dialogues which they’ll present a little later in the class. Further down is a video I shot with my camera after telling them to “be crazy”.

The video is not on the front page (since those of you with dial-up tend to complain about those sorts of things, Mother! The two main characters are Brett and Mickey, Brett being our goofy but lovable school employee, and Mickey being the rowdy middle schooler. Hope you enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »

What kind of person would I be if I didn’t devote a corner of the site to the upcoming Transformers Movie? It’s not a question I’m prepared to answer. So, here it is…

• Latest News
• Videos
• Images
• Links

Latest News

top

Read the rest of this entry »

We meet a lot of weird people in China. And weird people in China are generally attracted to us because, I think, Chinese people do their best to ignore them. One such person we’ve met goes by the name of “Everlasting Peter” (Yes, Everlasting Peter-he gets upset when you call him Peter). He speaks poor English with a voice that squeals and squelches like chalk on a chalkboard.

Lately, he’s taken to writing Kyle instant messages. Lots of them. These bizarre messages have been collected over a period of about a week and a half (and apparently he thinks Kyle is Tyler).

Mr. Tyler. After one quarrel with one sophisticated conservative stranger involved with Chinese law problem. I lost merry heart and English brain. I had supposed…

A party and strive to do something with friends. But, disappointed. I admire your abundant hands on experience. Your English club will be booming no wonder.

Congratulations. Invite you for dinner someday. I can see from your eyes that if I only know some English, I’ll be embarrassed one day. We are really in common.

A party and strive to do something with you friends. But disappointed. I admire your abundant hands on experience. You’re English club will be booming no wonder.

Mr. tyler. Welcome to my hometown mincun to enjoy watermelon festival. Free buffet. Free ticket. Travel the Chinese word mountain shape mountain landscape.

han dynasty resort spot, jiao lai large canal. taste the biggest and sweetest melon never you saw. Sincerely, Everlastingpeter

Mr. Tyler. I’ll detail you the historic mountain word mountain campaign between Communist party military and Japanese military, national party military. Exciting.

Mr. Tayler. Welcome to my hometown. Xana du mountain word mountain. No traffic mess, military and terrorist tumult. But measureless cavern and ancient valley.

Mr. C. Sunny greenery and singing river, Black bird and cicada. You can hunt scorpion under stone cave with girlfriend. No legacy of Bushshi or Saddam’s missile bomb.

Mr. Tyler. I wonder why you do love China more than America. Tamiflu was invented by America. One year later, China announce itself has created the drug authorized.

In market for sale. Skateboard is in fashion America current. Then popular with China. Maybe you mainia. Or with other indication as scout. Or refugee or illegal AM.

Mr.c If you distribute a gift case packing tamiflu drug. Maybe you’ll be tycoon but illegal in china. hope you wanna not.

Damn hilarious joke!

Mr. C as you know, Bush prefer spicy food for aspiration. Otherwise restrained to be coward.

Hot spicy food. i love you too from today. i love bush.

HOW ARE YOU UP? MR.C. Have you seen today’s isle news? China vice military chairman guo bo xiong visit America claiming for cooperative military rehearsal.

Converse the former neutral policy! Gotcha or no? What a prank! Look and go ahead! Although you resident in China, someday we all perhaps be terrored by terrorist.

Mr.c my new nickname is Gottlieb Nistelrooy. Paradice dream!

MR.TYLER. BUSH attempts to access china agriculture market. Aim to disable China farmer.

Deploy the APEC. WTO FREE trade organization to crack china quota and single rule. Gottlieb. nistelrooy. Yours ever

actually. China agriculture supply is not abundant. So in China materialism is major predominance. Agriculture is basis for others. so after WTO. America overplus.

Matter maybe average China, but China farmer is ignored eventually. As you know. America always encounter historical overplus crisis. Maybe on the house for china.

Mrtayler. Currently US dollar change rate is down. Maybe caused by America overplus productivity. As bush promised to his country. He will realize without…

…doubt. Maybe in Bush’s eye China peasant is more terrible than Iraqi. So with the implication to promote China agriculture productivity. Can you recommend any…

…high productivity species? I admire western tomato festival. If do me great favor. I’ll pay you price. gottlieb nistelrooy. yours ever

China peasant is not clever than Korea. Fraud by official WTO propaganda. Never realize this point. But Korea protest intense. So you can see Korea is occupying…

…China land potentially.

Gizmo – A free phone for your computer

Many of you have heard about Skype, and my parents and I have talked frequently using Google’s gTalk program. These services allow you to use your computer as a telephone, and can allow you to call someone’s landline phone.

The Gizmo project has just ended prices between China and the United States. So, any of you who download this program, and sign up to the service can call us here in China for free! Also, we are able to call you. I suggest poeple download this and sign up for it. And let me know if you do.

[tags]Gizmo, Gizmo Project[/tags]

We’ve just started our summer program. Three weeks of intense, grueling work, with about 75 new kids. It’s pretty crazy (especially since Sunday night we really couldn’t tell you what we’d be doing Monday morning). Lacey and I each have 4 new classes a day, while Kyle takes the brunt of it with 5.

Kyle is the workhorse of the operation. He teaches in the early morning, and leads a group of the 30-40 kids in singing in the afternoon. There was a farmer had a dog and bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O…
Lacey has 4th graders in the morning. And leads the big group in games and crafts. On Monday they made paper-bag puppets, and yesterday name tags. Today we’ll be having a raucous and rowdy game of upset the fruit basket.

I lucked out and got the 7th and 8th graders. It’s shaping up to be a pretty fun class. We’ve been discussing movies, soccer, Charlie Chaplain, and anything else that tickles are collective fancy.

We’ll have pictures up soon.