Anna Overseas

"Who are you? What are you? And why are you eating my door?"

There is a very high chance you don't get the quote. In fact, I can probably make a list of ten people in the whole world who would get that quote. I'll just sum it up as it's related to role playing, and it's my all-time favorite role playing quote. And I wasn't even there for that session. *smile*

Anyway, my name is Anna, occasionally known as Jo. My current location is Jiangyan, Jiangsu Province, China, where I teach ESL "Conversation Classes" to students between 13 and 17. I teach Junior I (beginners), Junior II, Senior I, and a few "special" classes. I have yet to determine what these special classes are that make them so special, although someone else defined the word as "Chinese" instead of special. All I know is my Senior Special Class runs rings around my "regular" Senior classes, and my Junior Special classes are either completely lost or running rings around the other students in thier level. So I've decided "Special" means "difficult for me to lesson plan for", and have left it at that.

You might ask yourself why I decided to leave my home in Edmonton and teach English. Obviously you've never been to Edmonton. BWG is from there, too, and you'll notice he moved to Hong Kong. {No, I'm kidding, I love Edmonton. One day I intend to settle down and buy a house there and raise cats.}

It basically comes down to the fact that this is a big world... and I'm tired of dreaming of seeing it instead of actually seeing it. A friend of mine went overseas to Japan, and I basically decided if he could do it, so could I. With lots and lots and lots of encouragement from my friends, and advice like "If you don't do it, you'll regret it", and money given and loaned, and a year and a half of time passing... I'm here. I'm seeing the world. I'm experiencing the sensation of "other", and it feels strange and wonderful and exciting and I'm homesick like crazy and wouldn't give this up for anything.

If you're curious as to why there are no archives from before November, it's because I left them on the computer back in Edmonton, and haven't bothered to get them and upload them in anyway. I'll sum it all up as "I wanna go overseas! I wanna go overseas! I wanna go overseas! And I role play!"

The people I left behind are very dear to my soul. Some of them have blogs (some of which I can actually read through the Great Firewall That Is China). I miss them. I miss my life back in Edmonton, I miss role playing, I miss being able to call up my favorite Rapscallion and say "Let's meet at Naked on Jasper". I miss my cat. I miss my apartment and my big comfy bed and my stable internet connection.

I thought about putting in a Who's Who or something, but really, there's too much and not enough to say about everyone. I will tell you about my cat, though, because I find it amusing.

His name is Euripides. We call him Rip most of the time. Or Little Demon Spawn. Or Little Cat, when he's being good. He has a theme song: the fight music from Star Trek: The Original Series. This is because he likes to eat people. (Picture five gamers sitting in a crowded living room chanting this song while the cat tries to eat one of them. Ah, Crash, I miss you.) When we first got him, we figured getting him fixed would calm him down. We were wrong. He realized that suddenly he had something to be angry about.

Kris tells me that he calmed down for a week or two after I left, as though figuring that he had done something wrong and that's why I left. But then he got over that, and is just as violent as ever.

I miss my cat....

So, yeah, me in a nutshell. I love role playing, I love being in China, I'm homesick, and I miss my cat. Sorry it took me so long to write all that out.