I met with the ESL tutor coödinator at Lane Community College's Downtown Campus two weeks ago. She informed me of a part-time ESL Computer Lab Specialist position, teaching computer skills and basic English. I was all for it and dropped off the application last Monday. Now it's the waiting game....

In the meantime, I have also applied as a (paid) ESL tutor, possibly starting next semester at the main campus of LCC, and have been looking at assistant classroom teaching positions at Downtown English (a low-cost ESL program in Eugene), and tomorrow I will check out the University of Oregon's American English Institute.

I keep thinking about going to China. It would only be for 6 - 7 months, though. I think I would miss Yuka too much otherwise.

I've met some French people who really like jazz, so I've been going to Jo Frederigo's, a jazz club on 5th Avenue. Still patiently waiting for my bass to arrive, and when it does, I'll be on stage playing too.

This Saturday is my birthday. 26.

I have recently become very interested in teaching English. I went to the University of Oregon's coffee hour with Yuka about a week and a half ago, and had an intense two hours of conversation with people from all over the world. I met a guy from Bhutan and a cool dude from Haiti. I also met an American guy who just got back from a year of teaching English in China. That really got my itch going.

So I've done some research into teaching English in China. There are more people in China learning English than the total population of the US. Crazy, eh? Plus, to be a good global citizen of the 21st century, you should know China. So, there, that's my goal. Teach English in China. I signed up for the English Conversation Partner Program at Lane Community College and I got matched up with a Japanese student. Basically, you just have a conversation once a week or so with an international student and help their English get better.

Also, I am enquiring about a more serious position in downtown Eugene, at the ESL center. I'm hoping to get on as an assistant ESL classroom teacher so I can have some experience & know if this is something that would truly interest me. I have a feeling it will.

T'ai Chi is going great. I usually have Tuesday & Thursday afternoons off so I can go to the afternoon session in addition to the morning class (and don't have to pay extra!). It's a difficult practice, but already I'm seeing the benefits in increased flexibility, increased leg strength, better posture, and probably better circulation & balance. Also, I'm noticing how things move in nature, how people move. It reminds me of T'ai Chi Chuan.

I start T'ai Chi Ch'uan (太極拳) tomorrow. First of all, what are these crazy symbols called? Chinese characters? Hànzì? Kanji? Hanja? 汉字? 漢字? 한자? I'm not sure what to call them. I usually call them kanji since I study Japanese.

I like learning Chinese characters. Although most are not pictographs (actually the majority are based on homonyms of other characters), they still convey a certain meaning and elegance that our clunky phonetic alphabet does not. So I hopped on Google to understand these three characters.

太 (t'ai): greatest, but with a nuance of extreme or too much, so usually it's translated as "supreme."
極 (chi): extreme, utmost, furthest, so translated as "ultimate."
拳 (ch'uan): fist.

T'ai Chi Ch'uan is a martial art. But how can a series of slow movements protect you in the fury of combat? Laozi (老子/Lao Tzu) said in his Tao Te Ching, "The soft and pliable will defeat the hard and strong." In a fight, if both opponents use hardness, both will sustain injury to some degree. On the other hand, if hard is met with soft, soft is met with hard...in other words not resisting an incoming force, but meeting it, and sticking to it and neutralizing it. Of course, it takes many years to become disciplined enough to know the Way of these things.

I think T'ai Chi is about finding balance--your center of gravity, your place in the environment, and adapting to the changes in the environment.

A Taoist saying goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

It has been raining since Friday night. The change of seasons here is dramatic. I'm used to Iowa's scorching summer, followed by about 2 weeks of autumn, then bitter coldness. Here I think the seasons are more equal in duration and more temperate.