Category: Nebulous Items
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Making You Jealous in Fes, Morocco
Perhaps after my last Fes post you might think I’d be skipping the jealousy series for that city. But no, that would be absurd. Fes is gorgeous. It’s just hard sometimes to see the forest for the touts. There is plenty for me to torment you with when it comes to Fes. In my previous…
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Making You Jealous in Meknès, Morocco
So, we are now in Meknès, about 3.5 hours by train from Casablanca and ever so much more likeable. This is the Meknès medina where we are staying. And after we arrived yesterday noonish, with the sun blazing down with peculiar ferocity, we retreated into the cool, sheltered laneways of Meknès to find lunch. We ended…
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Making you jealous in Casablanca
I was going to write a long, thoughtful post about arriving in Morocco and getting terribly, terribly lost in Casablanca today. I was going to make joyful noises about the realization that my French is still very much there, somewhere under the surface of the usable parts of my brain, so much so that every…
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Things You’re Not Allowed to do in Canada: A Photo Essay
A few years back, I read an article about an expat who lived in Greece until he became so fluent in Greek that he understood everything that was going on around him, everything that was being said. Then he had to leave. What he had liked about Greece (until fluency hit) was the ability to…
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On Identity and Decontextualization: Notes on Going Home (again)
I’m home again. As a travelling sage once said, if it’s Tuesday, I must be in Belgium. Or in my case, if it’s somewhere near the end of June, I must be in Canada. Vancouver Island, to be precise. I’m in a much better mood coming home this year. I feel more grounded, more…
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Notes on working in China (the bossing-teachers-around edition)
As you may have heard, I have changed jobs. By this, I mean I am no longer unemployed. Or at least, unemployed in the technical sense. I have a day job now, and it isn’t teaching. Nope, I’m back in the director’s chair again. The last time I did this gig was about…
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Saying Goodbye AGAIN: The annoying heartbreak of being a teacher that nobody warns you about*
*I was going to title this post Apostrophe to the End of Term (or, Isn’t it Byronic, don’t you think?) but decided it would be way too obscure and nerdy and not even all that clever. The cleverness factor would have been bumped up several notches, however, if only I had still been working at Shanghai Ocean…
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I May Have Just A Wee Bit Too Much on My Plate
It’s just after 7:30am on an inexplicably cool morning. Shanghai is invisible under the fog. It’s just as well as I’m still in bed, under several layers of duvet, strong, lightly milked coffee in hand. I may or may not be staring at the wall opposite . I’m freaking tired. I just spent four days…
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What Does it Take For a Girl to Get a Passport Around Here? Adventures in Being Canadian Abroad
I’m still Canadian. I say this with a certain degree of relief because, well, until yesterday my passport had been in the hands of the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai and I was getting a very strong impression that they were on the verge of revoking my citizenship because… because… well, do they even need a…
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Gardening in Shanghai and Other Indoor Sports
Doug said this morning that he really wouldn’t put it past me if I started raising chickens in the flat. I wondered if the neighbours would notice or care if I beheaded said chickens out in the shared hallway, between the lifts and the parked bicycle. That awful 3-legged yappy dork-dog from across the hall…
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Mapping the Amorphous City: I Attempt to Plot a Walking Tour of Shanghai
One thing I have learned from two years of writing here (and from approximately 30 years of writing in general) is that I can be factual, accurate and interesting- but never all three at the same time. Most of my university career was spent writing wildly ‘factual’ papers that my professors deemed interesting enough…
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Amber Roshay Moved Back to the US and Wrote About it (And Also Wrote a Book That We’re Giving Away Here)
Some of you might remember the lovely Amber Roshay from her interview last year. She was the one whose students had prepared an awesome and very emotional surprise party for her. She’s also a very good friend of mine- one who happened to leave Shanghai and move back home to the US at the beginning of this…