The travels of Justin

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 [...]

After more than a year without a computer, I finally conceeded to the fact that I’ll be in Asia for another 2-years at least and I really need a computer. For a variety of technical reasons and handy features (like the built-in camera), I chose to buy an Apple MacBook. Nanchang has a small compter [...]

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 [...]

It’s tough to write from the internet bar. There are plenty of reasons to avoid the filthy internet bars, ranging from the stale smoke-filled air to inconvenience of having to walk 30-minutes from my house (each way) to the only internet bar that is satisfactory for me. Instead of quickly checking email, deleting spam, and [...]

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 [...]