Mom sent me a bottle of oregano in a care package she just mailed me. I cooked up some vermicelli, salted it, and spread some oregano on it. No tomato, no sauce, just the spice. It was soooooooo nice!

Need proof that my mom loves me? She knows the little things.

Ees byootiful story. Werry good ending.

In Soviet Russia, Accent Speaks You!

So I have already discussed traveling at length, but recently I took up the actual effort of riding a bus. This is an adventure unto itself, and deserves its own entry ( Read more... )

Watch this space. I plan to write a first impressions blog on taking the bus this week. Sometime soon...

But tonight was a special adventure. I had a feeling in my gut that I really ought to take a taxi.

• It's the same gut feeling that told me something was going to go wrong on my trip home last August (dual brake failure)...
• ...and on the way to ( Read more... )

It's too late to be on time in China, but it's still the Sixth back in the US, so happy St. Nick's Day to all of my US friends! May he bring you all a coin and not a lump of coal!

Just some pictures of lunch, after the mock tournament. Those huge pots in the middle of the table are sitting on top of hot coals, so the liquid was boiling the entire time.


( Read more... )

So I gather that today was part of a monthly tradition at my new dojo. The first Sunday of each month, instead of practice, our dojo holds an informal tournament. All the bogu kenshi are assigned a random order to line up. The first person is the first champion, and all other kenshi will take a turn fighting him in the ring. When the entire order ( Read more... )

It just occurred to me: in Spokane, we practiced kendo in a gym across the street from the arena. In Harbin, we practice kendo in a dance hall underneath the arena. Am I moving up in the world, or down? ;)

Dining in China is a germophopbe's nightmare. Let's just get that out of the way right now. It's not because the food isn't cooked properly (you can usually depend that it is, and if not, stick to hot pot and let it continue cooking for a bit before you dig in). Rather, it's how it's served.

( Let's get messy! )

So I've discovered that a VPN is ok to use on a somewhat regular basis, so I've been linking to Facebook from work (I don't currently have enough bandwidth at home to both connect to my VPN and use web pages... it's a long story), and commenting mostly on my kendo dojo's pages, with occasional little updates to my own. I figure it's time I did ( Read more... )