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Name: Evan & Mary
Location: Qingdao, China
Birthday: 6/26/1976
Gender: Male
Interests: God.books.pizza.soccer.guitar.U2.chess.&ties
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/17/2006
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| <a href="http://booksneeze.com/reviews/blogger/24940?ref=badge"><img alt="I review for BookSneeze®" src="http://booksneeze.com/images/booksneeze_badge.png" border="0" width="200" height="150"></a> I just started doing this BookSneeze® deal. You agree to write a 200 word review on a book, post it on your blog as well as on a consumer cite (amazon.com, ChristianBook.com, Barnes&Nobles.com, etc.), and BookSneeze® sends you the book for free. I get to do the two things I love, Read and Write, and for free. What's better than free? Check it out: www.booksneeze.com Check back for my first book review (hopefully sooner than later!) | | |
| This is a quick, politically charged blog entry. As an educator, and an educator who uses Scholastic, Inc.,  this is a big deal to me, but it should be a big deal to everyone. Now you have an opportunity to help turn the page back in the continuous battle against the corrosive effects of our postmodern world and its devaluation of women by turning them into mere objects. The Bratz - a line of highly sexualized dolls for girls as young as four - are being marketed in schools by Scholastic, Inc. Scholastic promotes Bratz through its book fairs and book clubs, selling titles such as Lil' Bratz Dancin Divas, Lil' Bratz Catwalk Cuties, and Lil' Bratz Beauty Sleepover Bash to a captive audience of young students.
The Bratz - whose wardrobes include miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and bikinis - were recently singled out the by American Psychological Association for contributing to the sexualization of young girls. Please tell Scholastic that commercially-driven, sexualized stereotypes have no place in schools.
Take action now at http://www.democracyinaction.org/ccfc/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6823&t=SansSignupBox.dwt | | |
| “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” --Atticus Finch: To Kill a Mockingbird Mary went to Singapore for nine days for Model United Nations. It’s the longest period of time we’ve ever been apart. When people asked me how I got along with out my wife at home, I reply, “I ate carrot cake for dinner three times this week, twice the helper cooked, and on the weekend I ordered pizza.” I think that about says it all. I’ve found a new love in my life. One of the new teachers at school had the forward thinking to bring his Game Cube with him to China. One night, while Mary was gone, I had a guys night out. Jason Harvel, Josh Altmanshofer, and I played hours of Mario Striker. It brought back some of my fondest memories of staying up all night playing bond on the N64 with the Whipples, McCall, and Christensen. There is nothing like the testosterone filled room of gaming competition. The best part of the Game Cube is the wireless controllers. They allow maximum taunting and obnoxious celebrating as one is able to run around the room and jump up and down on the couch. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to do as much gloating as I would have liked… For the first time in two and a half years, I got to see a Broncos game last weekend (too bad the game was such an awful one to see. The Donkeys really know how to blow games in the last quarter). Mary and I have said repeatedly that one of the things we miss the most about living in China is not having the Sunday afternoon ritual of watching the Broncos while eating chips and dip. Watching the game was a China first for me and I’m really excited about it. We found this program that you can download from the internet that basically installs a TV on your computer. It streams live TV and there is no buffering or anything. I can’t figure out how it’s done, but it’s revolutionized out lives. For Olsen or Johnson or any of you others living overseas that simply miss having good ol’ fashioned American TV, here’s the website: http://tvunetworks.com/downloads/player.htm Not only can you watch NBC, CBS, and FOX, but you also get ESPN, ESPN2, FOXNEWS, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and about thirty other channels. It’s a sweet deal. One of the great things about being an English teacher is that you get to read your favorite books over and over. I’ve had gotten to read Steinbeck’s The Pearl four times in the last 9 months, and still, every time I read it, I find something new. Such a fascinating book. I also just finished To Kill a Mockingbird. If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird since high school, now is the time for a second reading. Lee does such an amazing job of analyzing the world of prejudice and racism. Her commentary is so effective because it is told from the point of view of an eight year old girl. There are only two weeks of school before Christmas break; only a week of teaching classes is left, the other week is finals. Although I’m really looking forward to the break, this last week is a butt kicker. All of the grading I’ve been putting off must be finished, and finals must be written. I think that everyone in the world should serve as a teacher for two years before moving on with the rest of there career. Like mandatory military time, but for teaching. Being a teacher gives you the exact opposite perspective on school than a student has. One of the harshest realities for this is Finals. Students abhor finals. They are the bane of the academic career; a single test taken in a brief hour and a half can send your grade plummeting or raise it by a few points. But what students don’t understand is that Finals are an anathema for teachers as well. As a teacher, I have to invest hours of time in creating a test that will attempt to accurately measure a student’s growth and knowledge over four months of schooling. Then, when the final is over, I have to spend hours grading the things. It’s like double punishment. I’m actually forced to work to create more work. It sounds like something Mao would have thought up along with his Great Leap Forward or Cultural Rev. Anyway, before I go, I’ll leave you with another video link. Two summers ago, Mary and I produced these lip-sync videos to Five Iron Frenzy’s “These Are Not My Pants Rock Opera.” I lip synched the country version and the heavy metal version. There is a longer version of the video that contains all of the genres: reggae, salsa, polka, rap. It’s really funny, but I don’t have permission from the other participants to post their possibly most embarrassing moment all over the Internet. Check them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkDM2MJVv8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU5TrsjDo5I | | |
| I know, I haven't written in a long time. I hope that will change... What happens when 1.4 billion people live in a country and they all want to see the Great Wall on the same day? The Wall was just packed. It took me forever to get to the top of the Badaling section. At the tower points, multiple lines weaving up the wall had to converge and squeeze through single person openings. I’ve never been so manhandled in my life. People were pushing and shoving and cutting in line. Chaos. After two years, Mary and I finally decided that we’d had enough of the renters-blah creamy white colored walls. After weeks of deliberation, we finally found three colors that we liked. However, our company has a rule that you can’t paint apartments dark colors. Don’t ask... Back to the drawing board. Again, after a couple of weeks looking at paint swatches, we found the three colors we wanted. But life in China is never simple. When the painters showed up, we knew we were in trouble when the lady exclaimed to her boss, “Oh great, they have carpet. What I’m supposed to do?” The real surprise came when the painter opened the five gallon bucket of paint and it was white. Baffled, Mary and I gazed at the paint can, wondering how our order for Salisbury Stone, Steel Symphony, and Treacle Tart had turned into a bucket of white paint. Before we could complain, the painting lady pulled out a huge ring of paint swatches, found a color that was similar to the Treacle Tart and began pouring in small amounts of brown dye. Mary and I watched agape as the lady continued to hold the paint swatch against the paint in the bucket as she stirred, added more dye, and stirred a little more until she deemed the color close enough. Needless to say, our walls are not the colors we had so arduously worked at choosing. Even worse, our living room is a hideous shade of what is supposed to be taupe-tan, but is actually a light shade of pink. We went back to the paint store last night and chose a new color. We’re going to paint ourselves this time.
Last week was "Bible Character Day" at school. Not many kids participated, but Mary and I had fun with it. I wore a cloth lion mask and Mary had a lamb one. We were the lamb and lion of God. So clever of us… Oh, yes. Last year Mary and a couple of the other “whities” at our school were asked to do a news program for the local TV station in which they went downtown and pointed out the incorrect English grammar on the street signs, etc. There are some good shots of Mary and her explaining how the grammar should be corrected. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTwdQ_cmdHA Finally, something to ponder... If this is the hardest decision of your day, you know it's been a good one: 
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| A bird pooped on me yesterday. Really. Mary and I were walking along the train tracks next to her parents’ house. Mary told me to look up because the sky was so thick with birds that it looked like a storm cloud passing overhead. I looked up, and a bird pooped on me.
As I sit to write this short blurb about our travels back to the great dragon of the east, I’m intrigued by the fact that we as both readers and writers enjoy pain and complications so much more than things “going good.” For truly, if our travels had gone without a hitch, I would find no reason, nothing that inspired me, to write. But, as it is, a single complication brings the muse in me alive, and I’m drawn to inscribe the experience so everyone else can also join in my indignation of the complete lack of customer service that has come to characterize our current state of consumer-ship.
Mary and I began our journey in Atlanta. Although we purchased our tickets over two months ago, when we checked in for the flight, we were not given seats but boarding tickets that required us to wait at the gate until seats were assigned to us. So we go to our gate and wait…and wait… The plane was oversold and Delta was asking for volunteers to give up their seats at the going rate of $400 and a dinner voucher. Whenever Mary and I fly, we always tell the gate agent that we are willing to give up our seats if they need volunteers. But in this case, we were meeting Alicia in LA and then all flying together to Qingdao, so missing the flight wasn’t an option. I think the gate agent realized that Mary and I were connecting to an International flight, which moved our names to the top of the priority list. We got on, but were seated 30 rows apart (in middle seats, of course). Although everyone was on the plane, we didn’t take off for almost an entire hour which made our arrival in LA late, so the gate we were supposed to be at was now occupied, so we sat on the ground for another 30 minutes waiting for a gate to become available. After de-boarding the plane, we walked the half mile from concourse C to the International Concourse and tried to check in at the Korean Airlines counter. Mary and I brought back 6 bags, so we had to pay for two extra bags. The airline agent asked to see the receipt for the extra bag payment, which we gave him, but it wasn’t the correct one. Apparently, Delta was supposed to give us three receipts, one for each of the three legs of our trip, but they had only given us one. Despite Mary’s very animated and persuasive oratory that this problem was Korean Airline’s problem because Korean and Delta are partners, etc., etc., we ended up having to walk the half mile back to concourse C to talk with Delta.
When we arrived at the Delta ticketing gates, the line snaked back and forth until it rattled out the doors. Unwilling to wait in a line for a problem that was not our fault, Mary and I headed to the self check-in Kiosks and grabbed an agent, pleasantly explaining our problem and politely asking for help. The agent looked at us, asked what time our flight left, “12:30am,” and told us to go wait in the behemoth line. Mary, in her very firm but still polite voice, explained to the agent, “This isn’t our fault. This problem is Delta’s problem since Delta didn’t do their job correctly in Atlanta. Now you are punishing us for a problem that you caused by making us go stand in another line.”
The gate agent slowly turned to another Kiosk agent standing next to him, explained our problem to her at which she also asked, “What time does their flight leave?”
“12:30am,” gate agent 1 replied.
“Tell them to go stand in line,” gate agent 2 spat back at him.
I lost it at this point. Raising my voice, I told the agent that we were not going to pay for Delta’s screw up. We had an international flight to catch in two hours, and we weren’t about to stand in Delta’s line for 45 minutes before walking for 15 minutes back to the international terminal, wait in Korean Airlines ticketing line, again, and then wait in the security checkpoint line for God knows how long. The Delta airline agent totally pulled a power play; he didn’t say a word but just starred me down with his “wee beady black eyes.” I told the gate agent to “be a good employee and go get someone who could help us.”
At this point in time, however, all respect for both sides had been completely lost. The agent simply pointed his finger at the line and told us to wait in the red line, or the first class line. Turning from the Kiosk ticketing counter, I roared, “You have great customer service! Is it any wonder you’re going out of business?”
The Korean Airlines flight was great. It made up for the disappointing Delta situation. Mary, Alicia, and I all got side rows completely to ourselves. Each seat had its own entertainment system with over 20 movie selections, 20 TV shows, and games that could be played with a remote handset. Just posh. In Seoul we picked up some Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, the last real donuts we’ll eat for two years. I savored every bite. When we landed in Qingdao, a big sign with “Bramlett” scrawled across it greeted us, but not in a good way. Five of our six checked bags didn’t make it onto the flight. But this actually turned out to be a blessing because with all of our bags, we were going to have to take two taxis back into town, but now all of us could fit into one. Korean Airlines delivered the bags later in the day, and all was well.
We leave for Beijing today. More stories later.
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