Parting at a Wine-shop in Nan-king

This is a poem that I've been looking for for a long time and finally found. The English translation is not mine.
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Parting at a Wine-shop in Nan-king

A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love! 

金陵酒肆留别

李白

风吹柳花满店香， 吴姬压酒唤客尝。

金陵子弟来相送， 欲行不行各尽觞。

请君试问东流水， 别意与之谁短长。

Things Poppy and Caedmon said

Poppy: "Would you like some bastard on your sandwich?"

Me: "He's a country bumpkin." Poppy: "What's a country pumpkin?"

Seeing some solidified oil from bacon in the pan, Poppy asks: "Is that called 'tard?"

"It's too dry in the house. Will you turn on the humiliator?"

"If you just put on an external show for others to see, you're a hippo."

Me at Christmas time: "Wasn't there a German named Rudolf?" Poppy: "Yeah, of course. Rudolf Hitler!"

Caedmon:

2011Nov26: I gave Caedmon a little spider plant and a cup to put it in. I said, "What do you need to give it to make sure that it grows?" He looked inquisitive and started sniffing the spider plant. Finally he looked at me and said, "不gross." ("It's not gross.")
Skype video froze on a frame of Dad laughing, so after a few minutes of looking at his funny laughing face, Caedmon said, "Grandpa, 别笑了!" ("Grandpa, stop laughing.")

"爸爸我有点儿事 I want."

"摔down"

"脱off"

Squid

This was the supper Poppy made for us tonight. She boiled a squid, and we dipped it in pepper sauce.

Tonight's Meal

I've got the greatest wife. This was the little meal she threw together for us tonight. 

(Counter clockwise)

-Cold side-dish: pickled garlic eggplant

-Cold side-dish: fried and picked HOT peppers

-Old cucumber soup (old cucumber is a really big and yellow cucumber that tastes a little sour)

-Cornbread cakes

-Green beans and potato stir fry 

-Blood sausage and sour cabbage soup with fat pork

-Banana bread!

Newest Post

Since I live in China, where Blogger is blocked, I will be updating my blog via email from now on.

Poem

This is a poem that I scrawled on a piece of paper after work back in college. Apparently, that night at RPS, a package delivery company, didn't go so well. There's no title I guess, but I bet I could think of some good ones. :-)

Last night when work was through
I sat in my bathroom for fifteen minutes
Under a humming ventilation fan
Musing on my employment. Every night
I pawn out my hours by a conveyor
sending boxes to NC, PA, NE and on and on.
Every night upon rusty grating, my boots
Shutter as belts start and shut off.
The smell of cardboard mingles with diesel,
And dust collects in my nostrils as time
Drips moment by moment, measured by boxes,
Measured by foot ache, measured by workers'
languid movements.
Intermittant talk stagnates like
superficial thought.
While a soup of cardboard flows through the system,
A constipated monster, a five-foot rug jams,
Cramps, stops the flow until something gives,
Splits and spills green packing peanuts,
Smashing contents between steel and wood,
Steel and cardboard, and cardboard and cardboard.
So many moments measured in movements and packages
Lost and sent and broken, but I am untouched.
The belt stops. And I leave.

My Son's Been Sick

Today we got home from the hospital. We were planning on staying one more day but a baby with a respiratory problem came to stay in our room, so we thought we didn't want to pick up something new. The nurses also recommended we go on home a day earlier than their previous recommendation.

I've lost track of the days, so I forget what things happened when. However, I think it was Thursday that Caedmon had no fever for the first time. We were really thankful for that. Even though his fever got better, his stomach got worse. On Thursday he began to have severe diarrhea. That very quickly caused him to have a very painful diaper rash. In order to avoid worsening his diaper rash we had him go without a diaper, with just a cloth wrapped around him. This method helped his diaper rash, but as you can imagine, we got pooped on a few times. Every time he pooped, it was a real chore to get him cleaned up--especially since we couldn't use wet wipes on his tender skin--and he pooped a lot. He still has diarrhea pretty bad, but we are giving him some medicines for that. His diaper rash is not as painful now as it was on Thursday.

On Friday night we were getting settled down to go to bed when there was a commotion out in the hallway. We heard an adult man shouting and weeping. There were lots of doctors and nurses working in the treatment room and lots of people gathered in the hallway. The noise died down. Then after an hour or more a man came into our room carrying a 14-or-so-year-old boy on his back, and he set the boy down on the bed by the window (there were three beds in the room). The boy was on drip injections the whole night while his mother watched him. It turns out that the boy had drank pesticide. He apparently wasn't happy about something. By morning he seemed to have some energy and was walking around and even smiling. As time went on he looked very bored, just looking around the room and examining restaurant delivery service menus. I really wanted to be a help to him, but it seemed impossible for me since my Chinese is not good. So to give him something to do, when I went home to get some things, I brought back one of the Narnia books in Chinese and a booklet. When I gave the book and booklet to them, I explained what they were a little bit. The family seemed really happy that somebody had given them a gift.

Last night there was another late night commotion. This time there were people shouting and crying in our room and in the hallway outside the room. The baby in our room this time had different troubles from my son, so we went out and walked up and down the hallway, wondering if we were going to go without sleep again. Then a nurse had sympathy on us and opened a room in a different area, where we could be alone and sleep in peace. I felt really guilty about this. I felt as if I had taken advantage of my status as a foreigner to get a special privilege. We felt safer though since there were no sick babies in the room.

Today for the first time my son started coughing pretty bad. I'm afraid he caught something. Also, I feel sick now.

So now we are back at home, hoping we can stay home.

My wife missed about four classes and didn't prepare any lesson plans for later because she was in the hospital with the baby. I missed one class. Now, I'm preparing my lesson plans for tomorrow so that I don't have to make up any more classes. That way I can watch the baby while my wife makes up her classes. We will not have to do it all on our own though; my mother-in-law is here now, and there are a whole host of very helpful friends living here in the same apartment building with us who will probably help us watch the boy while we make up our classes.

I'm thankful that we were given strength for all of the time in the hospital. We were happy and had energy for most of the time in the hospital, but when we got home, my wife was suddenly exhausted and I was suddenly really irritable.

Anyway, having my son get sick was not pleasant, but thank God for his truth. It was an encouragement somehow to meditate on the fact that disease is the result of the fall of man. That this trial was not the arbitrary action of a pantheistic deity or the careless work of the "first cause." Rather the trouble of sickness entered into the world through the mutiny of man. This mutiny plunged the whole world into trouble, the very trouble which God is carefully healing by working in the souls of men.