Dead!!!

Hello,

This blog seems to be dyeing and not that slowly. So well here I come to save the day... or something. Say the live goes on here as everywhere else. The bad thing is that I'm in the middle of a culture shock so I don't feel it's any fun at all and basically I think very many things in China suck. On the other hand my thesis was on culture shock so I'm well prepared for this (shit). I expect to get over it rather soon.

They say that culture shock is the difference between expectations and reality. I didn't have much expectations but I kind of miss some things and I haven't yet found substitutes for them. Also the friend business is picking up but I haven't really got any close friends yet. This part was wonderful in Barcelona. From the start I had Svana and then I met Tim, Constance, from there it was Adam and from him you met everybody! Here most people are unlike me and it's sad to day that very many people here are very... well... Superficial. Nobody here really cares about politics or has a very real opinion on anything. But I guess I will find people I can talk to and I have found a few.

Many students and teachers here remember Vegard. For example I had to go to English Corner just before and there is always someone there who says "I heard that you are a friend of Vegards, I was his student".

Tomorrow is the National holiday so I get one week of and I'm going to the next province. I don't really care what is there I only want to start knowing places in China and I think especially in the beginning everything is interesting in this country so I'm not worried.

Well, I hope that everybody is well in the west.

Remember one thing I was teaching my students "culture is not better or worse. It's different". Some people even misunderstood that part in BCN.

Later,
Úlli

p.s.
I have made an agreement with the school to get of on the 14th of June so hopefully I can celebrate Icelands National day in America.

Took you long enough, Steffen

Good to hear that Steffen will soon be joining us on the blog. It'll be interesting to get a different perspective, as well as updates on the state of things in Deutschland. Things are pretty tame here. The weather's great, although hotter than usual for this time of year (36 C today). Not so for Houston, which is expecting to take a huge hit from Hurricane Rita tomorrow or Saturday. My fiancee's sister and her family live in Houston, and they were leaving at 4am this morning to head farther inland. This is another shock to the Gulf Coast area, and Americans are expecting to see the effects at the gas pump as the area expected to be hit accounts for 25% of US oil production.

Classes are drab but bearable, and life other than that has been pretty stable/boring. Now that I'm back at school, I can't wait to get back to work. While I was working it was the opposite--funny how that works. Glad to hear Ulli is able to blog. I've been on Skype several times (timothy.french), but I only have Ulli and Wieteke on my list, and Ulli and I have a conflicting time zone issue. Perhaps we'll connect eventually.

Adeu tios y tias,
Tim

Funny Thing

Hello,

It's a funny thing this censorship because even though I can't see the blog I can still blog. That is I can go to blogger.com and sign in. I just read ALL of your posts in the edit post section. Nice to hear that your doing fine.

For the first two weeks here I was getting to think that this experience would prove out to be boring as hell since I didn't have anything to do. Nothing worked, the TV didn't work and when I asked for new one they told me tomorrow... Well I got it a week later. Since then I've found one thing that my life will count on until I get to know the people here and am able to travel and that is football. For example I am awake now at 2 o'clock in the morning cause there is a possibility that they'll show Barca. I only know they are playing but I won't know if they show it until it starts in an hour.

My Chinese classes are going all right. I've got the tone right but the problem is to remember how to pronounce some letters and to listen. If I get that then vocabulary will come quickly. Chinese isn't as such a difficult language it's just unlike anything I've ever learned and the tones are difficult. It has practically no grammar and it has repeating vocabulary.

Vegards friend Tom (Tor Olav) came here and showed me a thing or two about this plays and gave me many pointers on the life here. He showed me the closest city here Nanchang so I'm a bit more familiar there than before.

In my lessons I have for the first two weeks prepared 5 articles about certain subject and for example this week it's about 5 football players. This I've done to get better through to them since I want them to talk about something they are interested in. Next week may be music and the one after NBA. But what I did the first week was that I talked about things in America, such as Bush, Clinton, NYC and last but not the least Hurricane Katrina. I found the articles on Wikipedia.com and made them shorter and simplified. It was rather funny to talk about the Hurricane. Because they were asking me why the government hadn't reacted. They asked me as if I had the answer. I just had to say "Well I don't know". On the other hand I find it difficult to understand most things that General Bush does!

I'm not going to have this longer this time but hopefully I will be willing to tell you more about this experience since there are so many strange things here.

Úlli

p.s. Steffen sent me email and he has signed up to post on the site which I think is a joy for us all. Welcome Steffen!

Long live the blog!

It appears our blog has gone a bit dead since Ulli left for China. Now that Adam is a working man and Vegard is GI Joe (GI Lars??), and some of us have returned to school for the fall, I suppose everyone's pretty busy. My problem is sheer laziness. I haven't been all that busy with school, and now that I live well off campus I find that I'm bored out of my mind at night. There is often plenty of school work to be done, but I just don't have the motivation to do schoolwork any longer. I'm sure you all know the sentiment. I'm working as a TA (teacher's assistant) this semester, which basically means I have to sit through an extra class, take copious notes, then hold office hours to teach my students whatever they don't understand from lecture. As I never took this class, it has been a bit more difficult than I had hoped.

I've been home to Chicago several weekends already to see Kathy; I stayed down at school this weekend, and I am regretting the decision. I realized that I'm old and don't have friends down here anymore, so it was a bit of a downer. Only 8 months left down here though, with winter holidays in the middle.

I'm interested to see what will come of the New Orleans rebuilding effort. I think we should take some hints from Holland and the manner in which they deal with their precarious position below sea level and with the North Sea storms. But I'm sure we won't. The entire city will likely be left ripe for flooding all over again.

Hope everyone is well,
Tim

Hitting Close to Home

I'm not sure how often Constance will check this blog, but I would like to pass along my prayers anyway for her home. Constance is from Lafayette, Lousiana, an area hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina, and both Constance and Manolo attended Loyola University in New Orleans, a city facing a very long road to recovery. I'm sure you all remember Constance's spirit...she truly lived with the energy that the city of New Orleans was known for, and that makes this tragedy especially hard for all of us who've been to that city and experienced its unique culture. New Orleans (and Louisiana) is unlike any other place in the United States. Louisiana holds some of the last vestiges of the French influence in the US, with the beautiful 300 year old St. Louis Cathedral, the always lively French quarter, French sayings, and names like Boudreau, Thibodeau, and on and on. But New Orleans is also Creole, beating like the vibrant heart of the South's large African-American community. While many of us are far away and might not be able to directly aid those in the affected Gulf states, we can keep them in our thoughts and prayers.

On a lighter note, it appears Ulli has finally found a fit bird to settle down with once back in Iceland. That is, unless he finds a nice Chinese girl to keep his days short and his nights long! Have fun in China and keep us posted (and we'll return the favor).

Tim