Compare and Contrast

Compare and Contrast

I’ve been stupidly busy this week, between finishing up my year’s marking (done!), trying to find brand new, unmarked, unfolded American dollars for our trip to Myanmar on Friday (the junta is fussy about money and they don’t have ATM machines or take credit cards 

Fast, But Not Exactly McDonalds

Fast, But Not Exactly McDonalds

  Sometimes when I come home from work, I’m absurdly hungry- maybe I worked through my lunch break, maybe I covered ten kilometres  just pacing and monitoring in class.  It has been known to happen.  I carry a pedometer as a clock in the class so 

People in the Mornings

People in the Mornings

On Jiashan Lu in the morning there are streams of bicycles weaving down the road and its crowded sidewalk, pedalled by parents carrying their children to school. On our street, we have a middle school at one end and a primary school at the other. 

These are the people in my neighbourhood

These are the people in my neighbourhood

In other words, they are the people that I meet each day.     We are moving in a week or so. Our landlord is moving back into our flat because we are in a very good school district and his small daughter just reached 

(101 Things About Shanghai) Laneways and Alleys, oh my

(101 Things About Shanghai) Laneways and Alleys, oh my

Shanghai’s got a lot of alleyways. I’m a huge fan of them, perhaps as a human level antidote to the carelessly changing skyscraper skyline of this city. They like things to be new, big and shiny here.  I prefer smaller things in my line of 

(101 Things about Shanghai) Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Noodles

(101 Things about Shanghai) Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Noodles

I suppose that Lanzhou Noodles here would be a more appropriate addition to a list of 101 Nifty Details About Gansu Province but I don’t care. There are Lanzhou noodle joints everywhere in Shanghai and I am pulled to the Arabic script of their cookie-cutter