Okay, it's official. I am moving my blog off of Blogger, since my friends in China cannot view it! I have to use the somewhat uglier (but still very usable) Xanga now, which comes recommended to me from the other side of the Pacific.
You can find my new blog at http://www.xanga.com/hanru or by using http://blog.hochmann.org/
Friday, August 25, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Photos Are Ready
Finally! I have finished sifting through all my China photos. I now have pictures from the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and the Great Wall up for viewing. Check out the albums! The Forbidden City and Tiananmen pictures kinda suck, mostly because the lighting and hoardes of people were killing my creative juices. I'm very pleased with the Great Wall photos, though. I just wish I had the energy now to touch them up... Right now, they're kind of haphazardly uploaded, some a bit dark, some a bit light. Whatever!
Megabummer - classes start tomorrow. This semester should be interesting in some ways. I am starting Japanese, and I have a potentially promising class on the philosophies of India (Buddhism, Vedanta, Hinduism, and so on). My interest in Japanese has waned a bit since my initial craving brought me to sign up for it some months ago, and the $140 price tag on my Japanese books was definitely hurtful for my wallet. Still, I love languages - especially Asian ones. I won't learn much in a single semester, but it will give me a taste for a language that I may come back to later.
I must focus my real effort on improving my Mandarin Chinese, however. A major lesson brought home to me during my visit to China was just how challenging the language situation is. People are not exaggerating when they say that the dialects in China are often as different from each other as English is from Russian, or whatever. Even my novice ear could hear the often extreme incompatibilities between peoples' native dialects.
Even without the dialect issue, the other part of my lesson was to highlight how woefully inadequate my Mandarin is. If people spoke slowly (i.e. in "retarded foreigner" mode), I could generally understand simple conversation, and interact with the locals. My practice with the four tones is extremely poor, though, and there is so much grammar that I do not yet have an intuitive feel for. I can get by in taxis and McDonald's, but that is about it! A long-term return to China will definitely give my brain the motivation to better grasp the language.
Megabummer - classes start tomorrow. This semester should be interesting in some ways. I am starting Japanese, and I have a potentially promising class on the philosophies of India (Buddhism, Vedanta, Hinduism, and so on). My interest in Japanese has waned a bit since my initial craving brought me to sign up for it some months ago, and the $140 price tag on my Japanese books was definitely hurtful for my wallet. Still, I love languages - especially Asian ones. I won't learn much in a single semester, but it will give me a taste for a language that I may come back to later.
I must focus my real effort on improving my Mandarin Chinese, however. A major lesson brought home to me during my visit to China was just how challenging the language situation is. People are not exaggerating when they say that the dialects in China are often as different from each other as English is from Russian, or whatever. Even my novice ear could hear the often extreme incompatibilities between peoples' native dialects.
Even without the dialect issue, the other part of my lesson was to highlight how woefully inadequate my Mandarin is. If people spoke slowly (i.e. in "retarded foreigner" mode), I could generally understand simple conversation, and interact with the locals. My practice with the four tones is extremely poor, though, and there is so much grammar that I do not yet have an intuitive feel for. I can get by in taxis and McDonald's, but that is about it! A long-term return to China will definitely give my brain the motivation to better grasp the language.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
So many photos, so little time!
Well, I've been back for almost two weeks now. Jet lag and culture lag have come and gone, and life has returned to normal, albeit with a more frenzied feel. Money is tight thanks to UNM's sloppy handling of financial aid applications, and my schedule once classes start (Monday) is jam-packed with no real time to run errands or do other necessary things. It will be an interesting four months!
Speaking of four months, that's pretty much how long I have till I graduate. December 15th is the big day, so let's all hope nothing goes wrong in terms of tuition, grades, etc.
Anywho... I've gone through most of my photos from China, but not all of them. I took over 2,000 shots. About 20% of those are worth sharing with others... The other 80% is duplicates, blurry shots, or artistic experiments that went nowhere. I still have to sort through my pictures from the last two or three days in Beijing – Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and (my favorite part) the Great Wall. Right now, I've posted photos from the first three weeks in Changsha, and some from our first day in Beijing when we visited the Summer Palace.
Here's what I've posted to Flickr so far:
Stay tuned, there's more pictures and blogfoolery to come.
Speaking of four months, that's pretty much how long I have till I graduate. December 15th is the big day, so let's all hope nothing goes wrong in terms of tuition, grades, etc.
Anywho... I've gone through most of my photos from China, but not all of them. I took over 2,000 shots. About 20% of those are worth sharing with others... The other 80% is duplicates, blurry shots, or artistic experiments that went nowhere. I still have to sort through my pictures from the last two or three days in Beijing – Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and (my favorite part) the Great Wall. Right now, I've posted photos from the first three weeks in Changsha, and some from our first day in Beijing when we visited the Summer Palace.
Here's what I've posted to Flickr so far:
 | China 2006 This set contains all my pictures from my trip. Or at least, it will. Right now it contains pictures up through August 2nd. That leaves a few more days' worth of photos to post, which I will do soon. |
 | Zhang Jia Jie Shortly after we finished teaching in Changsha, and the day before we went to Beijing, we did a whirlwind tour of Zhang Jia Jie. This is China's first national forest, and it is insanely beautiful. I hope to go back and see more when I return to China in the near future. |
 | Summer Palace After three weeks in Changsha, we traveled to Beijing for some lame guided sightseeing. We got to see a lot of interesting places, but they were filled with a ridiculous amount of gawking American and European tourists, which pretty much ruined most of the experience. |
Stay tuned, there's more pictures and blogfoolery to come.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Back
Well, I'm back in the USA now. It's boring here!
I should get back to blogging soon, but I will probably have to move my blog to somewhere else. Blogger (my host) is blocked in China, so while I can post to it, I cannot view it from there. I may see about setting up with a Chinese host, to avoid that issue entirely.
I should get back to blogging soon, but I will probably have to move my blog to somewhere else. Blogger (my host) is blocked in China, so while I can post to it, I cannot view it from there. I may see about setting up with a Chinese host, to avoid that issue entirely.
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