Love You Long Time

First of all, let me just say that I think this is a most righteous idea. Of all the blog reading I do, it never occurred to me they could be used as a means to keep in touch and exchange stories. A mutli-authored blog among friends that have moved to different corners of the country/world? Genius. Straight up.

I already blog here, but mostly about Chinese language stuff and no one from back home reads it anyway.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you people.

While I'm at it I may as well say a little about what I've been up to lately.

I'm in Nanjing where I've been for a little over a year now. I've taught at a few different places over my time, including a small town where I taught babies, but I've been settled into teaching adults downtown at a center for about 9 months now and I love it. It hasn't alwasy been easy, but I do find myself fitting the role of teacher quite nicely and I enjoy it thoroughly. 

My Chinese is coming along very nicely but I have no intention to stopping now. Lately though, I've gotten to a point where I don't/can't improve by simply living here and for that reason I'll be getting a teacher and starting a few hours of 'formal' classes a week pretty soon. I'm looking forward to it. Level up. 

I've also been on the radio twice and in the local newspaper speaking Chinese which is pretty rad.

I'll probably move back to Shanghai sometime early next year where I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. There's more money to made there and in addition to students loans I need to pay off, I want to start saving more for travel. I'm thinking of riding a bike cross country and then going up into Tibet. (Sound a bit crazy? Yes, yes it is. It will, however, be a hell of a lot of fun.)

The only long-term ideas I have are for a possible masters in U.S.-China Relations, but I have no idea where or when I'd do that just yet. 

Anyway, that's all for now. I look forward to hearing from you guys on here!

Ty, Liz, Chris, Jay, Aaron and Kat made it out here this summer and it was a hell of a time. I've got more pictures from the trip on picasa here and Tyler does on flickr here. I can't wait to see any of you people out here again sometime. If anyone wants to make a trip to China, just say the word. I'll be waiting for you at the airport. : )