Thomas Hochmann's Blog

Well, My.Opera is blocked in China, and I've gotten fed up with having to bypass the block just to post on my own blog. My friends here in China can't see it anyway, so what's the point?

This finally moved me to get off my arse and set up my personal hochmann.org web site properly. From now on you can catch my blog and other goodness at www.hochmann.org (which is *not* blocked in China so far, and I plan to keep it that way .

My current topic at my "thomas time" blog, at the time of this writing, is how Sharpies are just as bad as terrorism and hard drugs, according to a school in Texas. Go check out the blog for the latest.

Bye bye, My.Opera ... Again.

Well, I didn't mean to wait an entire week to post again. Life sucks that way, I guess!

Anywho... Not much is new. The weather keeps bouncing between scorching hot and pleasantly cool (usually with wicked cool rain storms). Also, the tide keeps shifting back and forth with regard to our war on mosquitoes. Forget terrorists, mosquitoes are the real menace to mankind! Suzy and I have taken up the liberal use of incense coils, 5% DEET insect repellant (mixed with Chinese magical stuff, of course), and some non-DEET repellant spray we just bought. Last night was the worst -- waking up at 3am to find that you have mosquito bites on your toes really sucks. Maybe instead of a bed, I should just sleep in a big vat of mosquito repellant.

Suzy and I, again, went and plundered the local used book store for English treasure. Arrrrr! Now that I've been in China for 3 months and counting, my reading tastes have shifted considerably from what they were at home. I'm now so starved of good, non-textbook English material that I'm hungrily reading literature I never cared about in the USA. Hell, things that were forced on me back in school now seem very appealing. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (which I'd never heard of before). These are not books I would have any interest in back at home, because there I had an unlimited supply of books I did like. But here... I'm starving for English literature, so I'll read anything! It's ironic... My appreciation of English literature and language is increasing more in China than it did while studying English at my university.

On an even better note, along with those two books I came across a really nice bilingual (English and Chinese) edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. This is one of my favorite literary works of all time! I have a wonderful copy at home, but alas it was in my luggage that the airline failed to forward on to me... So I'm majorly stoked to find a good copy here. My only gripe, it doesn't have any English footnotes or line numbers. Both are pretty critical for such a complicated work! But still, I love reading it... Very happy!

And speaking of happy, my teaching session ends in a few weeks. Honestly, the end can't come soon enough. While I adore some of my students, a 20+ week semester is just too much. These poor students go to class 6 days a week, sometimes for 10 hours or more each day. We're all tired. Let summer come! Let us be free!

Well, after a long time away from the My.Opera community, I've decided to come back. My friend Zenya is still here, and I just like the feel of this place. It's not perfect, but it's a good place to be.

So for those who don't know, I live in China now. I moved here in February to be with my lovely girlfriend Suzy, who I met while teaching English in China last July. Seven months apart really sucked, I can tell you that. Now I've been back in the great city of Changsha for 3 months, and I'm having a blast. Teaching can be a drag sometimes, but I have some great students and wonderful friends. And of course, my dear Suzy makes it all worthwhile!

Tonight, I joined my seniors (I teach college English) for their "goodbye" dinner. Graduation isn't for another 7 weeks here in China, but my students will be so busy as they ramp up for exams and job hunting that they won't have much of a chance to hang out anymore. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. My senior class consists of 46 girls and 1 boy. Needless to say, I am deaf from listening to the girls screaming and giggling during dinner... Especially once the alcohol started going around and they loosened up even more. They're good kids though.

For better or worse, I'm completely filled up with a liter or two of Pepsi (I don't drink beer, much to my students' disappointment). When you're a foreign teacher in China, you're always the honored guest and the VIP -- that means your cup never runs empty, and you spend the entire night giving or joining in with rowdy toasting and rounds of "CHEERS!" and "GANBEI!" I think my right arm is tired from lifting my cup so many times.

Anywho, that's it for now. Look for more blogfoolery from me as the days go by. Buhbye!