On Honolulu.

Waikiki is wild.

All sorts of people you're not sure you'd have met if not for the sun and the beaches and the materialism and the air.

Spending my days/nights in a single studio apt. a few blocks from the beach, filling my skin with vitamin D; enough to bring back and sell on the side. 

Discussions and time spent with a special triangle of older women; wise and wonderful, they're always trying to teach me something in between Bill Hicks albums or nuke threats from North Korea. There's love all around. And I'm glad I can attend with these soft, yet fiery energies and even add to the already breathtaking sense of community. 

It's so easy here.

I'll head to UofH shortly and mosey around campus.

Heading back to GZ tomorrow after a few well-needed breaths.

In/Out/

Up/Down/

Empty/Full/

Scattered/Structured/

Floating/Aware

So where are we?

Someone told me not to think so much before they sank all of the billiard balls.

Later I played chess and lost.

Kava mornings.

16 days ago I made a trip to Yunnan province to stay in a city named Dali to enjoy a music festival and, as it became by the end, the sun.
Hopped on a 25-hour train with some new roommates who were also self-proclaimed tour guides; filling in the gaps of all the red earth as we passed it. I brought along the goji berries.
Arrived. Road BBQ. Hostel. Met some friends who threw us in their van and lit us up to drop us off at a fake old town that I suppose could be a real town but for no one lives there.
After the festival and the sun and the people I got on a plane back to Guangzhou and work.
A quick ticket and 9 days later I am in Hawai'i, enjoying the sun and the kava and the conversations.
Being far from the busy city does wonders for your soul.
I'm sleeping on a volcano; complimented with jet lag.
If shit goes off, I'll be having sweet dreams.

GZ=GO!

Alright, let's see if I can't manage a new post...

Visas finally finished up. We had to wait for about one month for it to happen before we could begin working. Upon their finishing, we went to Shenzhen to do our training (again, this time with Visas) for one week before arriving back in Guangzhou (GZ, for short) to begin working. Yesterday I had my first day.
It's a pretty amazing thing to work for a company you can actually get behind. A very different set-up from the school in Japan. Many usual ESL school problems are solved, and the structure and layout of the curriculum is strides ahead of any other school I've seen thus far.
It's a weird thing, to actually enjoy not only your job but the company as well. Very strange.
It's nice to have complaints keeping distance from your mind, though.

I'm going to see 'Shining' this Friday. It turns out they're playing at a hotel here in this city.
My brain nearly erupted upon hearing this.

I really do love this place.

"Let's stop for a moment and talk about how awesome our lives are:
At which point in our lives in Canada could we have been unemployed yet still living in the most posh apartment we've ever seen, making our way successfully across an entire city to party at a hidden bar where we can listen to a live band playing this mixture of funk/reggae/jazz, and order an ENTIRE BOTTLE of GIN!"
-kaare iverson
(after half a bottle of said gin at said hidden bar)

Cheers.