The travels of Justin

朋友们，祝大家中秋节快乐！
我最近搬家到了加拿大哈利法克斯，在圣玛丽大学学习商业。在加拿大换大学换得不难，但是不太容易。比如我以前在温哥华是电脑老师。圣大商业学生都学习程电脑课，内容是Access, Word, Excel,等等。我觉得太容易的课。老师说：我必须参加程电脑课，所以没办法。
我星期一，星期二晚上有上课，不可以吃中秋节的特别的菜。我真想在天津我和朋友们2004年一起包饺子，吃饭，喝白酒。这次晚上有数学课。我以后安排教哥哥的小孩儿怎么包。觉得他们太小，但是可以好玩儿。在加拿大可不可以买中国的白酒？我不知道。我从中国只拿一瓶山西的白酒。如果在哈利法克斯要真的中国食品，可以买。我已经买了饺子皮儿，花椒，等等。两次我自己做葱油饼，但是做得不好啊！我不熟练。做炒面比葱油饼更容易，所以常常做。
你中秋节在你家乡吃什么菜？
Happy Mid Autumn Festival everyone!

Saint Mary’s University (圣玛丽大学)

I arrived home from dinner yesterday to find no water in my house. The pipes are totally silent when the sink is turned on. I haven’t seen a single drop of water in about 24-hours.
It’s really normal for the water pressure to be non-existent for long periods of time. I have slowly learned that from [...]

Why can’t I stop thinking about this tonight?

A city block in China is huge compared to those in North America. Often the area within a Nanchang city block will contain a small maze of streets connecting the random collection of buildings.

A quiet hidden street
Another foreigner introduced me to a small restaurant that was in an area hidden from me until I was [...]

For a moment I thought the dog was doing a trick. A mop was hanging from the steel structure in where a small street intersects a nice shopping district around our university. The dog was holding onto the mop with his teeth. I almost expected people to start clapping at the strength and endurance for [...]

I’m sick today. 不好！I missed class and don’t feel optimistic about tomorrow. Speaking a foreign language is hard enough without having your ears plug up so you can’t even hear yourself!
In Tianjin I had purchased three sets of flash cards that each have 100 cards to help learn 汉字 (Chinese simplified characters). I don’t use [...]

I went to a market today and my bus passed by 8-1 Square (八一广场) where I met a surprising (to me) sight. Military—not carrying weapons, from what I could see—and police officers were stationed at all the entrances to the monument presumably to prevent people from gaining access to the monument — the main attraction [...]

On Tuesday we toured the new campus as planned, but was surprised only by how desolate it was. The school population, as I’ve been told, is about 80,000 students plus faculty and support staff, but many parts of the school are still under construction. Maybe the capacity is 80,000 students. Regardless, the ‘tour’ wasn’t as [...]

For months I’ve been in the dark about many critical issues, including when school starts. It always seemed like the strangest thing to be unknown by a school. Sure, I understand that the Chinese language courses for foreigners are operated much differently than degree courses, and approrpriately so, but I still couldn’t understand why no [...]

“That’s China of the 1980’s,” says the man sharing my train compartment as the train slows to enter Nanchang City (南昌市). Easily spotting the red maple leaf I met Mr. Yan, a Nanchang student who spent 3-months in TRU as an enchange student and was kind enough to be my first contact at 6 AM [...]