Tears in My Tea

It's been a while, but I did it again. Last October (like 14 months ago), I broke the handle off of my North Carolina mug and it was devastating.

Today, while washing the dishes, my hands were in their usual numb state (hand washing dishes with no hot water, and the temperature outside is somewhere around 25 degrees, so the water comes out just around freezing) as I made my way through the pile. 

I was rushing to finish one more mug before returning to class when I grabbed the O'Hare-Skelton Nuptials mug. And then it happened. I lost my grip.

I'm sad to see this little reminder of home go the way of the landfill. I'll try to be more careful next time.

It's Not Just Class

[We've been sick for the last week, like nasty sick, so sorry for the lack of posts]

In my last post, I indicated that our teachers, etc. left a little to be desired. Well, truth be told, they're not the only ones to blame. Pretty much all the resources available are… less than helpful. 

See for yourself:

This is an entry from the best dictionary available for the computer. I guess they couldn't decide which way to go on this one...

November in Review

Here's November in review.

Not much video this month.  Features a "holy walk" around the town, and Thanksgiving/Hanukkah.  Also, there's about 30 seconds of just a black screen.  Sorry.  This video was about to become a November and December in review, since it's already the middle of December, so I just wanted to post it.

Class Notes

Class is not my most favorite thing these days. Our teachers aren't particularly good, which means most of the burden of learning falls on us, the students. Maybe that sounds like the way it should be, but it's pretty ridiculous here.

The teachers pretty much just read through the book line by line, and if you want anything more than a recitation, you're going to have to make it happen yourself.

As a result, I spend a lot of time in my book, trying to make sense of 12th century classics and odd parables. See for yourself:

What The Anniversary Was *Really* Like

We recently celebrated our 5 year anniversary (you may have heard). As with all momentous events in our lives, here's how Stacy and I want you to think that it went down:

All smiles and bow ties and fancy-dressed-up-stuff.

But in reality, it was a lot less of that and a lot more of this:

Ice cream (in the usual absence of ice cream) will do that to a person. Even the most romantic of people.

Things Got Weird, Part 2

First of all, apologies for the low quality of this picture. I have a really nice camera, but it is generally frowned-upon here to take pictures in stores, so I was trying to be covert.

Last week, I featured a shot from Hong Kong of the drink selection at a convenience store. It was "dodgy" at best, as my Commonwealth friends say.

Well, when Stacy and I went out for our anniversary (there would normally be a link to the blog post about our anniversary, but Stacy seems to have forgotten that we have a blog and is leaving our readers woefully unaware of all the real things happening in our life…), we went for ice cream. At a place called "Dairy Fairy" - a subtle ripoff of Dairy Queen.

The menu sported a handful of fairly normal-sounding options, but the milk tea section of the menu decided to take a detour into stranger waters. See for yourself:

The top two choices are just an off-putting mix of ingredients: Mandarin ducks, grass jelly, milk tea.

As you descend the list, it gets slightly less weird (red bean? pudding?) but it's not till you get to the last item - chocolate milk tea - that you have anything remotely worth working with.

The drink selection over here is almost criminal.