Having lived, worked and travelled abroad for the past few years, my passport has many visas, resident permits and stamps in it. Before I went to China, I took some evening classes in Mandarin Chinese, and continued (or rather restarted) studying it in China. I started to learn it when I was in graduate school.…
Learning Chinese
Wash, rinse, repeat
“Oh, there is it. The silly old universe. The more I save it, the more it needs saving. It’s a treadmill” – The Twelfth Doctor, “Twice Upon a Time”, Doctor Who. You ask my friend Alex, over at Wild Eyed and Wandering, and she will tell you how indecisive I am. For the last few…
Leaving Durham
It’s been a couple of weeks since I left, but in August and September, I was living and working in Durham. On the first weekend I arrived, the weather was, shall we say, typical British weather – quite wet. In fact, for the first few days the weather wasn’t great. But things gradually improved, as…
Small world indeed
I’ve been in Durham for the past few weeks, teaching and now the course ended. It’s been an interesting six weeks, and whilst the classes have not always gone to plan, I’ve learned a lot and hopefully the students have too. It’s difficult to see them develop a lot during six short weeks but in…
Fridays for Future
I’ve been working in Durham recently, and yesterday, my last day, coincided with the Fridays For Future climate strikes, by young people across the world. As this was our last day, we were encouraged to educate our students about it. I was posed with a problem – all the technology in my classroom was not…
Home at last
I’ve been home for a while now, and I have to say it is nice to be back. The weather in Beijing has been extremely hot recently (high 30s or even in the 40s). Leaving Beijing was a bit of a nightmare, however. My flight was due to depart in the early hours of Sunday…