A retrospective

This morning I woke up in Shanghai. It's a nice feeling to be home and to have a semester of work ahead of you. Here's what I was doing in the US instead of posting on this blog:

Learning Chinese: Des and I are working on Pimsleur's Conversational Mandarin (thanks in part to the persuasion of our good friend Elijah Wilcott, who's probably in classes in Chengdu right now; he is sorely missed). It's a great audio program (I impressed our administrator Mr. Wang last night with a few phrases in Mandarin), but I feel like a total dope trying to make it come out right. When nearly all of your skillsets rely on your mastery of language, starting over again can be disheartening.

Reading: For this, I'll probably post something in greater detail next week. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed a great deal of reading during the vacation.

Playing: If you know me, you know that I like to play games. I gave Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword a thorough playing and loved every minute of conquering the Germans (and the Incans, and the Romans, and everyone else) right off of the planet. Benson Quattlebaum (my very oldest friend; we've been hanging out for like 22 years) and I made the world safe for democracy in Battlefield 2, and Adam Dierking (my great college buddy) and I defeated the alien menace in Unreal Tournament 2004. Carrie Sapp, Des, my sister Laura, and a bunch of Carrie's friends (including her mother) tested our kung-fu moves on one another and quested for treasure long into the night. The Snyder brothers and I combated terrorists at some arcade and tested our moves in DDR (at which venture I utterly triumphed). It was all grand. Games can definitely be fun by themselves, but games + friends = great.

Working: We had the unexpected opportunity to go up to Ohio and help my mother clear out my grandfather's house in order get his affairs in order and prepare his house for rental. Grandpa is living in Texas right now with my aunt, and he's no longer being treated for his cancer. Since my parents were in the US, he asked Mom to take care of things there in Ohio for him. The three of us (and my sister Laura later on) spent a week cleaning his house, organizing his belongings, and selling many of them in a giant garage sale. I reflected at length on the truth of Solomon's words when he says that it's better (when confronted with death) to go to a funderal than a party, since "that is the end of every man, and the living should take it to heart." I also decided that, from this point on, I am pursuing a minimum-stuff approach to life. Grandpa's house was crammed to the gills, mostly with stuff that wasn't worth saving, and I don't want anyone to have to try and organize all that on my behalf someday.

Visiting: I was particularly happy to be able to visit Mt. Calvary while we were in Greenville. There's nothing like old friends. While we were in the States, we were greatly impressed by the generosity of our friends and family in insisting on putting us up. I was reminded many times of what John recorded about love for others being the cardinal distinctive of our lives. We spent time staying with the inestimable Sapp family in Greenville, my wife's parents in the Chicago area, and our great friends the Snyders in Detroit. Since words cannot express how I feel about these people, I won't even try. These are the best of the "good things" that he fills my life with.

There's more, but this post is already too long. I'll probably write more about the vacation later. For now, I'm going to be trying to get things in order for my first semester teaching the sophomores. That's enough for me.

Dave