In which I get beat up by two chinese people, eat an entire chicken and party all night

Long story short, I had a pretty eventful birthday.

Let's start at the beginning.  The week before my birthday I was waiting at the elevator in my building when I saw this man holding a suitcase.  The guy looked like an American and he looked really... familiar.  I kept trying not to stare at him but still kinda staring to see where the heck I knew him from and then it hit me.  That was Professor Beech from Bemidji State University!

Turns out that the students from BSU on the China trip came in May, not June like I was told.  16 students, most of them my classmates or friends.  It was a blast having them here and (I'll be honest) really refreshing to have someone speaking midwestern English.

Thursday three of those students and I went to a massage parlor down the street.  It was my birthday present to myself.  I'd never gotten a massage before so I opted for the hour long full body one.  And it was the worst thing I think I've ever done.  This place was clearly meant to be a spa with massaging on the side... or maybe I just happened to get someone who didn't know what they were doing.  In any case, I walked out of there with a really sore back, more knots than when I went in and bruises on my stomach (why the heck anyone would think it was a good idea to rub someone's stomach like that, I have no idea.)  So... I paid good money for someone to beat the hell out of me.

This woman who works at the place where I tutor part time (actually, she and her husband own it) took me out for dinner and another massage on Friday.  We went to this Szechuan restaurant that seems to be a pretty popular chain.  I told her that I had no idea what most of the items on the menu were so she ordered a little bit of each so that we could try everything.  Things that were delicious: chicken hearts, squid, tofu, mushrooms, silkworms.  Things that weren't: chicken skin, chicken heads, cartilage, gizzards.  But I still tried everything once or twice because the fact that we in the west think of it as gross doesn't mean it tastes bad or is bad for you.  Then I realized... I've had chicken head, chicken neck, chicken cartilage and bone, chicken feet, chicken breasts and wings and legs... hearts, gizzards... I think I've eaten an entire chicken by now.

The other item that surprised me were the silkworms.  They come in a cocoon that you bite open with your teeth and then you just kinda squeeze/suck the worm out.  They taste like boiled eggs and have about that consistency as well.  Delicious as heck, really, but my hands were shaking so badly when I tried them.  I've got this lifelong fear of bugs and now I'm willingly putting one in my mouth?  Man...

After dinner we went to get REAL massages.  It was really fantastic.  This time we got foot massages since apparently the feet hold the key to everything else in your body.  Rubbing the right spot on your feet is supposed to be able to cure almost everything.  I don't know if that's true or not but the guy really went to town in a borderline painful way and when I walked out of there my back wasn't sore anymore.  Fabulous.

Saturday night I had my REAL birthday party with my students.  We went out to Karaoke, which is called 'KTV' here.  It's not like Karaoke in the states where you get up in front of the bar and sing to everyone.  Here you rent out a private room and get to control your own songs, song order, dance lighting, all that.  There was a super comfortably couch that we all lounged on, drank beers and ate some delicious cake.  I would add pictures but for some reason the picture uploader has decided it hates me.

Only one of the American guys came and he had to duck out early, but that's alright since we had a blast singing Chinese songs.  Surprisingly enough there was a good selection of English songs on there.  Everything from Sarah Brightman to Mumford and Sons to Lady Gaga.  Disco (one of my students) and I rocked the HECK out of a Linkin Park song and I learned how uncomfortably inappropriate Lady Gaga's 'Paparazzi' music video is... didn't really bother me but students in China are far more conservative and seeing Gaga make out with Alexander Skarsgard for two straight minutes induced a lot of awkward coughing and trying to look anywhere but the giant TV.

We started Karaoke at 9 at night and stayed there until 5.30 the next morning when we got kicked out.  Since the gates to the school didn't open for another half hour and we didn't feel like jumping, the 6 of us left decided to go out for breakfast to this porridge place.  The same porridge place with the Century Eggs that I declared war on.  Luckily I was able to get some normal Baozi... Just can't handle dealing with those eggs at 5.30 in the morning.

My throat was DEAD the next day and I was tired as hell but it was so. much. fun.  I would definitely do another night of Karaoke... just not any time in the near future.  It's been over a week and I'm still recovering.

Alright, now I've got to get back to real life.  I found a cockroach last night and today I'm making the trek to the store to pick up some chemical weapons to destroy their clans.  I like my cockroaches like I like my Spider Jerusalems.  Stuck in obscure comics where I can think about how cool they are and how I wouldn't mind having one but MAN the second I see you in real life, you're getting hit with a shoe.

In which I celebrate Labor Day and go shopping!

For some reason Blogspot has been a little wonky.  Everything loads except for the text box here... kind of the important part.  Ah well, we're up and running now!

First of all, I have to say that the kids I tutor (not the ones at the university, the younger ones) are weird.  I entered the building last week and saw that all of the white boards were filled with pictures of a super buff Pikachu.

I'd be impressed if I wasn't so confused

Clearly I missed out on something important.

Two Mondays ago it was Labor Day, so no school!  That same week was Children's Day (no afternoon school for the kids) and Youth Day (no afternoon school for 15-23 year olds).  Since we had three breaks, everybody was out partying, playing music in front of the dorms, I'm pretty sure all of the Russians in the building (of which there are a lot) went out to the clubs for the ENTIRE week.

I guess you could say that it was a week... *puts on sunglasses* without class.  YEEEEAAAAAAAHH *cues CSI music*

Man, I need to get off the internet.  Anyways, one of the girls I tutor invited me on a Labor Day picnic with her family.  We went to a park and the weather was absolutely beautiful.  The park is called "The Shenyang Exhibition Garden" which is super fancy talk for "Look, man, we got flowers and not much else to justify spending 35 yuan per ticket".  Although, to their credit, the flowers were beautiful.

There was also a theme park in the middle of the garden.  Rollercoasters, haunted house, games where you pay money to shoot at something and never win a prize... the whole shebang.  It was really cool, but of course they have some little things that prove that either Chinese people don't research American culture or they just REALLY don't give a crap.

There was a 'Pirates of the Caribbean' themed ride.  Innocent enough, right?  Well, they had posters from the movies hanging up all over the ride and then they had this little gem.

Also, I'm pretty sure there were no licensing fees paid to Disney for usage here

If you don't know, after the success of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie, some people decided to make a porno that was sexy-pirate themed.  The poster with all the girls wearing not much but corsets and a smile?  That's a pornographic film.  There are posters advertising American pornography at a children's theme park.  Classy.

They also have a space ride where you can climb inside a fake spaceship and it'll pretend to launch into space... pretty cool, if you think about it.  They had one in Disneyworld that was ABSOLUTELY the bomb and I would go on it again in a heartbeat. (More like an hour and a heartbeat...the lines at Disney were pretty damn long)  However something about this Spaceship just didn't seem right.

Sorry about the Shaky-Cam, I was practicing for a career as a Hollywood Filmographer 

I know it's a little difficult to read, but they name they gave that ride is "The Challenger".  I was laughing and trying to take this picture, so the family I was with asked if I was interested in trying the ride.  I told them, "No way, I'm a teacher.  I know how this story ends."  They didn't get it.

Later that day I went out with a student to get my shopping on at the Night Market.  It was really sweet, we spent much money and came back with much loot.  I can't remember if I talked about fashion here or not, but it's this great mix of military-chic and gothic-lolita.  Friggen perfect.  Clothes are cheap, food was cheap (1 yuan for whatever you want barbecued on a stick) and it was a beautiful night for shopping.

Something that's greatly disappointed me in the school here is the plagiarism.  Apparently plagiarism is common in the University here and it's totally accepted.  Teachers know the students do it and they just do nothing. I'm appalled!  I had to grade about 400 papers on my student's favorite movies (write 5 or more sentences about absolutely anything about any movie) and over half of them are stolen right off of the internet. I gave my classes the talk about how it's unacceptable to do this in my class and if I catch anybody copying another paper again, I'll fail them out.  Of course that's a bluff, I can't take any action against them because the university doesn't have a plagiarism policy.  But I think I got them scared!

Now it's back to work, back to correcting papers and in a few hours, back to class.  I've started falling into a pretty stable routine so the past couple of weeks have totally flown by.  Can't believe it's almost my birthday ALREADY!

In which I apologize for taking so long to update!

It's been a while since I've updated this and I'm really sorry about that!  Stuff has been UBER crazy here, I haven't had much free time to myself.  I got Monday morning off so I decided to sleep in, I also went to bed early on Sunday night.  I slept from 8pm to 9am.  Seriously, that's not a good night's sleep, that's a slightly worrisome coma!

The weather around here is breathtakingly beautiful when it's not rainy.  All the cherry blossom trees are blooming, turning our dorm into some sorta anime wonderland.

Some day I'll have a sword fight under those trees... and it will be awesome.

Food has still been pretty sweet.  I'm tutoring a 9 year old girl and her parents have been trying to push food on me every time I see them (no complaints here!)  The first day they gave me some steamed buns with pork or maybe beef inside... pretty awesome.  Then the second day they gave me a bag of crawfish.  No explanation, just crawfish.  I spent a good hour or two staring at them, on the fence between being a champ and peeling them or screaming in terror and running away.  Seriously, the segmented leg part looks just like a camel spider.  And nothing that looks like a camel spider has ANY business being in my apartment.

Seriously.

I turned to the internet for advice, posting in Reddit's food section.  Instead of moral support and a good recipe, I just got a bunch of people from the American south telling me to pinch the tail and suck the head.  LOOK AT THAT HEAD.  Lips do not go there.

I opted to use two pairs of scissors and chopsticks to get all the meat out of the tail.  It was a pretty sizable bag, so it took me an hour and a half to get them all.  Then I threw the meat into a gumbo and I feasted on some tasty American food.  Mission accomplished.

Two days ago it was Easter and I didn't even know it.  Except for an email from Grandma, I would have TOTALLY forgotten.  I was tutoring the girl again and her parents called halfway through the lesson and were like, "We just found out that it's a holiday in America... want us to take you out to lunch?"  So I spent Easter with their family at a Korean barbecue restaurant.  It's a lot like the hot pot I described before except instead of a boiling pot in the middle, there's a little barbecue grill.  You cook your own meat.  It's kind of awesome.

The only thing that I didn't quite like was that it's custom in China for students to respect their teachers (that part's okay) but by respecting them they fill up their plates.  Chinese food isn't served like Western food... people don't get their own plates.  You get an empty plate and the food is in the middle of the table for you to serve yourself.  Well, the girl (and I can't really fault her, she is only nine...) would suck on her chopsticks and then use the saliva-covered utensils to serve me food.  Once she was playing with a tooth she had lost and her mother told her to give me some bread... which she did with her mouth-bloody fingers.

Like I said, she's a little kid and there are probably worse things that I could be eating than traces of spit.... but it was SO DIFFICULT to not just reach over and grab the stuff myself.  Blech.

Speaking of kids... I'm not sure I'm really up for teaching them.  I'm okay with the one-on-one tutoring time because it's easy to play games, teach songs and generally teach some English.  But when I've got a class full of 10 year olds at one of the schools, it's utter chaos.  The boys don't pay attention, spending the whole time talking in Korean or Chinese instead of listening to me and the one girl in the class is afraid to speak up because the boys tease her every time she speaks in English... which she's really good at.  Then on Sunday evening I had to break up a fistfight between the boys because one of them stole the other's crossword puzzle.  It's like... you guys didn't care enough about the puzzle to actually sit down and do it (even for the lucrative prize of American pennies) but you care enough to punch your friend over its loss???

I think I'm just not patient enough to handle multiple hyperactive kids at one time.  Seriously... how did my parents do it?  I need to give them a damn hug.

Teaching the older kids and the University kids can be just as difficult.  I can't remember if I mentioned the Chinese education system (and I'm too lazy to go back and check) but the students aren't allowed to really talk or discuss things.  The teacher says something or reads something and the students memorize it.  It's a lot like No Child Left Behind where we don't teach critical thinking and creativity, instead we teach how to pass tests.  Except it's WAY more extreme here because the culture sort of requires kids to stay quiet.  (Someone should tell the 10 year olds this...)

So I'll ask a question.  "Does anybody know what a fairy tale is?"  complete silence.  "Yes?  No?"  silence but now they're looking at their feet.  "How about Cinderella, who has heard of Cinderella?"  a few mumbles while everyone's shoes become increasingly interesting.  "How about you there" specific girl "Who is Cinderella?  Is she a normal girl or is she a princess?"  Absolutely wide eyes and a look of terror.  The way she looks at me, I'm slowly morphing into a camel spider while consuming a basket of live kittens.  More silence, but this silence is tense.  Terrified.  

That's how every class at the university goes.  Even the students who like to talk just aren't used to speaking in class.  We played a game of Telephone and I told them, "It's okay if you get it wrong.  It's funny!  That's the point of the game"  but instead they do absolutely anything they can to cheat, pass notes with the message, text the message further down the line because they are absolutely TERRIFIED of making a mistake.  I had to stop the game after there were a lot of group discussions and someone brought out a laptop to look up the phrase I had given to make sure he heard it right.  I said, "What's the point of taking an 'oral english' class if you're too afraid to talk?"  and then I felt like a mean teacher so I shut up and let them go one.  Ugh.

The high schoolers are a little cooler.  I think it's because I'm closer to them in age, so I really relate.  (They're 17 and 18, my University students are anywhere from 24-30)  They'll have discussions and now they're starting to use incredibly difficult vocabulary in ordinary conversation.  I put a bunch of hard words on the board, go over them and tell them that each time they use one correctly, they get a penny.  American pennies might as well be gold here.

Last thing.... Shenyang is damn pretty at night.  The buildings look very drab and grey during the day but at night, everything is lit up by neon and LED.  I was driven home at about 11 on Sunday night and had Daft Punk playing in my headphones... I felt like I was going through the Tron grid.  Seriously, it's SOOOOO cool.  I don't have any pictures of any of the good lights, but here's a little something to leave you with.  Zaijian!

In which I am in China and getting by fantastically

So, I'm in China!  So far I haven't angered anybody or gotten mugged, therefore I would call this trip a success.  I've started classes and met a bunch of rockin' people, too.

Classes are once every two weeks.  Which I think is definitely not enough, I would like to see the students more often.  There are a couple of them that I can already tell will not pass unless they get a little more practice and I'm not quite sure how to approach them to tell them that.  During the two week period I have 8 classes, 3 one week and 5 the next.  So far we've pretty much been working on self introductions and in one class I had the students write fairy tales.  They really loved that.

The apartment I'm in is actually pretty swanky.  It's small, but big enough for me.  If I was willing and able to buy a couch, lug it up 6 flights of stairs and get it through the door, it would actually be a nicer place than the house I rented in Bemidji.  As it is, I've got three marginally comfortable chairs so all of my movie time is spent sitting on the floor with the pillows I've got.

The kitchen is absolutely tiny.  I guess it doesn't need to be large and it's really nice that it opens up into a porch but OH MAN it's small!  I don't have a stove or an oven (nobody in China does really, they don't build them in like in the US) instead I have a burner that I use as a stove.  It'll also grill, which is nice. Haven't used that yet.  I would give almost anything for an oven, though. I reaaaally want to cook some hot dish or pizza or heck, even baked chicken would be a nice variety from noodles and stir fry!

It may be ovenless but hey, there's a bar in the basement!

The food around campus is amazing.  There's a small cafeteria right next to the Home for Foreign Friends and I really love to eat there.  The best is the chicken.. yum!  They've also got another building dedicated to keeping us well fed and boy, I am not disappointed by the cuisine.  Outside of campus I have tried Pizza Hut (which is a fancy, five course meal served by people in vests and ties), Korean Barbecue, porridge and hot pot.

Let me take a minute to talk about the Hot Pot.  They put a pot of boiling water on your table along with many different plates filled with meats and vegetables. You and your friends all get to dip the stuff into the boiling water, wait a few minutes, then pull it out and eat it.  It's the best damn thing in the world.  Seriously, why don't they have these in America?  It's really nice to share the food with other people, it encourages conversation and it's sooooo tasty.

This is the food of the gods

I've taken a smaller job on weekends, helping tutor high schoolers.  They're all from Korea or another country, preparing for the TOEFL exam- the exam that Chinese students need to take in order to study in an English speaking country.  Their English is actually better than many of my university students.  It's kind of funny, but there's a HUGE gap in the skill of people around age 24 and that of people around 18 or younger. I wonder what recently changed in language teaching methods to do that!  Anyways, the tutoring job is kind of fun, it's far more relaxed.  A lot of the kids just need to work on their oral English so we spend the time just talking and discussing things, then i just correct what they've said wrong and go into explanations about why it's wrong... all that jazz.

I do have a cell phone now, just not an international card that lasts very long.  I'll try to make a good sized round of calls once I figure out what to do.  I believe I can accept texts, however.  My number is 0086 138 4031 9035.  We'll try it!  The cell phone was originally built for someone who speaks Chinese so texting in English is a dang chore!  I'm slowly trying to figure it out.

Well, I've got to plug grades in and prepare my lesson for later this afternoon.  After the lesson I'm meeting one on one with a student to help him prepare for the TOEFL (seriously, this exam scares so many people...) More later!

I'm back, baby

Just an update to let everybody know that I'm alive, things are going great and I'll be posting more soon!

In which Captain Crunch gets me drunk and I finally get my visa

Earlier I talked about my dad's pizza, right?  Well these past two weekends I've gotten the chance to sell them at the Auburn Farmer's Market.  That was a total blast!  The only thing I don't like is how early we had to get up and get to Auburn.  The market starts at 8 but it takes about an hour and a half to get dad's oven up to temperature and you can't really drive with a fire.  So we set out before dawn.

The person taking the picture is high on Monster and not awake otherwise

The first week was fantastic.  The weather was great, we completely sold out of pizza, the market people were friendly, I got a smoothie from the local coffee shop and I got to hang out with my brother.

 

 Shameless advertisement

Tucker is a music geek and a hipster.  He tries to deny the hipster part, but then he dons these horn rimmed sunglasses, pours into skinny jeans and talks about how he already knows about all the music I like.  But he's a great kid and I definitely miss having him around.  I love all my siblings but I feel like I can geek out with Tuck a bit more.

The second weekend of pizza it was just me, dad and my stepmom, Mel.  The market wasn't as busy, but it was still cool for the three of us to hang out.  Mel and I spent a lot of time sitting behind the stand in the sun, she read a magazine and I feasted on these ABSOLUTELY AMAZING strawberries.  Like.... I can't even describe them but these were the best strawberries I have ever tasted in the history of ever.

After pizza was done, the parents decided to take my on my first wine-tasting!  They're members of a wine club at C.G. Di Arie.  The man who runs C. G. Di Arie, Chaim, is a food scientist and a pretty famous one!  Apparently he invented Cap'n Crunch, Power Bars, wine coolers and Hidden Valley ranch dressing.  The coolest part?  When we walked into the building, Chaim's wife (an energetic, wonderful woman by the name Elisheva) greeted my parents by name and

 

This is a terrible picture, but here's part of the winery

Now he makes wine, and BOY does he know how to do it!  I tried 11 wines and I loved every single one, which is odd because I'm not a wine drinker.  I was feeling a little tipsy by the time we left (not drunk by any means but let's say that I'm glad I didn't have to drive) but there was more to come!  We went to a small liquor store and had a wine tasting there with another one of their friends and that was it for me.  So now I've been drunk with all of my parents.  Awesome!

That night they put in a terrible movie (I think it was Renee Zellwiger and Paul Rudd but I can't remember what it was) and I just collapsed into bed.

Monday we went to San Fransisco to get my Visa.  The office opened at 9, so we set out incredibly early (dammit!) to get there on time.  We figured it was better to get there at nine and turn the paperwork in by 9.15, giving us five hours to kill, than to show up late and end up standing in a long line and not making it.

Well, we almost didn't make it.  Because of traffic we weren't able to get to the Consulate until 9.30.  By that time there was a line out the door and down the block.  Once we got through that line, we had to pull a number and wait for it to call.  We didn't get out of there until about 11.30.  The office closes again at noon, so it was a bit of a close call.

We wandered around, visited a book store, ate lunch at Max's Opera Cafe and bummed the city until 1.  Then we got back in line, picked up the visa and rushed back out onto open road, hoping to get there before traffic hit.

Let me tell you something about California traffic- it's a completely different animal than Minnesota traffic.  It took us an hour to get a little over 15 miles.  There's a toll before the bridge and it seems like nobody knows how to pick the right lane and stay there.  We had trucks weaving in front of us, people trying to merge into lanes when nobody's going over 5mph, some jerk honking like that's going to help anything... it's crazy. 

However we got the visa and I'm all ready to leave on Thursday.  Day after tomorrow, baby!  This'll be my last stateside transmission, stay tuned for when I turn into a real-live expat!

Woo hoo!

In which I almost hug Marvel and realize that I'm damn poor

So the weather here in California has taken a turn for the worse.  We've gotten rain, hail, wind and it's actually been COLD!  The difference between 30 below in Minnesota and 40 above in California is that absolutely nobody is prepared in California.  It drops to 40 degrees and nobody has winter clothes, the houses don't insulate against cold quite as well, the beach is a completely miserable experience and people generally freak out.  Up near the mountains they got an inch of snow and you should have SEEN the chaos and trauma it caused.  They actually shut down the roads and apparently forbid everybody from driving over the mountains except for people with chains on their car.  Chains which they sold for $40 a tire right next to the stop point.  (clever girl...)

Pictured: The weather. Ruining pool parties like always.

Since our weekend up here was completely ruined, we decided to migrate south for my sister's birthday.  She and my brother are going to college in Irvine so visiting them is like a real-live vacation!    Maybe down in LA we'd find a beach and some sun to lie in.  We packed the car and embarked on the 6 hour trip from one end of the valley to the other.

And there I learned that it's the most BORING trip in the world.  Seriously, there is nothing to look at.  The most interesting part of the trip was, "Look, there's the canal in Stockton.  They pulled, like, a hundred cars out there and they're not done yet."  Oh, there was also, "That place sells pea soup.  Don't eat it."

Granted the landscape is beautiful.  If I felt like putting on a flowy cotton dress and a sunhat, I could run around those hills all day and be pleased as punch.  But 6 hours of rolling green hills and grape crops gets damn old damn fast.

 Boooooooriiiiiiiiing

Finally we get down to the Grapevine, which is the mountain pass leading to LA.  It's the only way to get to LA from the north unless you take the famous, winding road that goes along the ocean, which I have affectionately named 'The Vomit Express'.  It makes you as dizzy and nervous as a rollercoaster, except in your heart you know that wearing the seatbelt is only going to ensure that you go down with the ship. 

So through the Grapevine we went.  And about 500 yards into it we saw someone who just couldn't handle it.  Their car had exploded.  There weren't any other cars around that they could have hit, there wasn't a guard rail to hit and somehow make your gas tank spark and yet somehow they managed to find a way.

If I wasn't so worried for their safety, I would have to applaud their ingenuity.

And then it started to snow.

I know what you're thinking.  "So close to Los Angeles?  Certainly you jest, there Can't BE snow there!"  Well I'm not jesting and I take offense that you think I am.  The blizzard that we hit coming over the mountains was SO BAD that we could hardly see the cars in front of us.  

Proof.  Because even I have a hard time believing it.

I missed seeing Disneyland right off the highway, I missed the LA skyline, I didn't see hide nor hair of the ocean... it was terrible.  My dad, the seasoned Minnesotan, got us south of LA safely and we hunkered down in the hotel.  Which was warm.  And quiet until night #2 when the 20 or 30 teenagers in the room next to us started to have a drunken techno rave.  I stepped into the hallway to tell them to STFU (at about 1 in the morning), it smelled like SOOOO MUCH POT that I just turned around and went back in my room.  Crazy kids.

The day after we arrived, the sky decided to sweep the whole rain and snow incident under the rug and pretend like it never happened.  The weather was beautiful, the birds were singing and the day was ripe for a trip to Manhattan Beach.

Ahhhhh... finally

It was such a fun day, we just walked around and hung out as a family.  We were hoping to meet my stepmom's uncle for dinner, ended up meeting a friend of theirs from college and ate dinner across the street from this beauty.

Let's just say that as long as it was in view, I didn't pay attention to conversation

I had no idea that Marvel even HAD headquarters, but the family wasn't willing to let me pop in and start hugging people so I just had to speculate from afar what wondrous deeds went on inside.  I bet they all dress up like superheroes every day and discuss how to kill Iron Man.  My dream job.

The trip ended and we headed back to the land of real life.  The weather is much better up here, but then I get a notice from my bank account that since somehow the last dvd I rented from Netflix wasn't returned, they charged me for it and one more month of service.  So my bank account is in the negatives right now and isn't that special?  Ah well... hopefully next week I'll be getting the check from BSU that I've been waiting on since October.  Until then, I've turned my phone on silent and decided to actively ignore all calls from Wells Fargo.  Look at me, dodging bill collectors like a real adult!

Say, if you've read this far then leave a comment!  I'm always curious if my blog is worth reading or not.  Comments or criticisms are always welcome.