An excerpt from one of my school readings this week, on the experiences of a young American EFL teacher in China in the mid-nineties:

"It was the sixtieth anniversary of the Long March, the six-thousand-mile trek that the Red Army had made during the most critical part of the civil war...

All semester there were special events in the college to commemorate the anniversary of the march. The students took classes on the history of the Long March, they wrote essays about the Long March, and in December there was a Long March Singing Contest...Many of the songs were the same, because the musical potential of the Long March is limited, which made the judging difficult.

[...]

The English department never won any of the college’s contests. There aren’t any English songs about the Long March."

First birthday gift for the Creature, perhaps?

Yesterday we tried again for the Asian Festival, this time trusting to Marta to avoid the nightmarish (nonexistant) parking at the Botannial Garden. Aaron opted to stay home, so I escorted Ben and Bonnie and helped them detangle the transit system.

Well, Marta being what it is, it took us over an hour to get there, but we had a nice time. I got hennaed, ate purple flavored ice cream, made batik and origami creations, played the Taiwanese drums, and banged a magic gong.

Pictures here!

Take one language geek. Turn her into a Firefly fan. What do you get? Uh, that would be me.

There's something awfully amusing about Mal cursing in Mandarin while trying to learn medical terminology in English. Surely "cyanotic" and "dilated" ("She was cynical, and her pupils were dilapidated!") can't be as hard to remember as ""Ching-wah TSAO duh liou mahng."

Also much amusement at Jayne's determination to use that damn line he spent so much time memorizing. He's such a total sociopath, I find myself watching eagerly for his 30 seconds of human screen-time per episode. In "Jaynestown" I think he got a full minute, even.