Enter the WU

As per me, I've been letting this here blog float away from me while I try to come up with things to write about that might actually interest all y'alls. For the time being, there isn't tooooooo much, but I suppose I should give an update so that the next one doesn't reach the "epic proportion" category as did my emails last year.

I still don't have instruments. this is what many would call a "mega-bummer". It turns out that my $1000 budget is not enough (something I stressed a while ago) to buy nearly enough instruments to start a band. So now Luke has to go back through the trenches and ask his boss for more money and give me an answer in a couple weeks or so. Classes are still going. I'm getting through them. We just finished a unit on the food pyramids, something that is really interesting to go over with non-american kids, especially when most of the food that is referenced on the latest pyramid is American and doesn't include regular Korean snack foods like Seaweed. Music class is about the same. I did have an interesting meeting with the head of recruiting here who wants me to start a drumline (which is a-ok by me) and even said he'll take money out of his budget to make that happen. F-ing sweet.

I'm already on my first break of the school year. This week is Golden Week, which as far as I understand it means China celebrates China. I went to Forbidden City and Tianamin Square yesterday and both were packed. But now I've done it and I won't have to do it again. I'm going on a trip with about half of the students to the Shaolin Temple where I will see the birthplace of Kung Fu. I plan to ask them their opinion of Chuck Norris and whether or not they think the fight between him and Bruce Lee at the Colosseum in Rome in Enter the Dragon was a fair representation of their Martial Art, and if they think Bruce Lee really should have won (spoiler Alert!) I was also under the impression that I was going to get to ride a hover craft, but Our trip was supposed to leave on Monday and it did not, so now we have to cut some stuff from the trip and I heard that the hover craft ride was one of those things.

Anyways, I'm not feeling in good blogging form today, and I need to go pack, and grade some tests and junk. So until next time, here's a picture of me pretending to be a tourist.



Tootles.

Hit me with the illest lyrics

School is continuing to mellow out and become more of a routine. My classroom should be all assembled and ready to use sometime next week. As for now, I'm still floating between other teachers' classrooms when they're on their pre hours. Right now I'm teaching the music kids how to count rhythms. We do a lot of rhythmic dictation and clapping during class. I've been finishing off class by showing them some of my favorite music videos and encouraging them to tell me some that they'd like to watch as a reward and a little bit of music appreciation. So far they've seen Blur's "Coffee & TV" (which is posted below somewhere) and The Pharcyde's "Drop". In health we've been learning about the food pyramid. I say "we" because I'm pretty much staying a day or two ahead of the kids on this. Who knew being healthy meant you had to know so much crap? Not this guy. I think I've convinced the principal to buy me a set of textbooks, because the Gary Eichten diet (lots of red meat and cigarettes)I had planned on teaching, while effective for high-level slow pitch softball performance, is not recommended for adolescents.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to go buy some instruments this weekend and I think that means I'll start learnin these kids some music starting next week, which I'm getting really excited about. Sure, classroom music and health are ok, but I need to teach some instruments. That's what I know and what makes me happy, and I really can't wait.

I'm starting a class tonight for the Chinese students here. If I haven't told you the run down, all the kids here have american school during the day, and then have a Chinese language class at night. This is problematic for the Chinese students who already speak their native language fluently (or so I assume). SO, I will have them for two hours a night and we're gonna listen to music. We'll go over the lyrics and learn the meanings. The whole point is to work on their english, which is not stellar. The principal proposed this idea to me because let's face it, a regular english class would be boring for them and a lot more work for me. I'm thinking I'll throw some Robert Zimmerman at them tonight, and then work in some Big Daddy Kane tomorrow. This is the part of the post that explains the title when I ask you to suggest songs with (appropriate) lyrics that I could teach these kids. Holleratme.

Lastly, I know I plugged it already, but it has been years since I've been genuinly excited about the release of a hip hop album. This is the real deal as far as I'm concerned, and it's happening in our very own backyard, and I'm not even there (shit). Not that it really matters, but check this promo, get excited, and then go get this when it comes out.

Hugs & Sloppy Kisses,
Ben

RIP

I don't usually get upset when I hear that a celebrity has died, but it really hit me when Isaac Hayes passed. Scientology aside, he was one stand up guy, funny enough to contribute his voice to south park from it's start and continued to for damn near a decade and was also (in my opinion) one of the most talented contemporary composers of the 20th century. If you've never heard both the Dionne Warwick version of "Walk On By" as well as Mr. Hayes' take on the same song do the deceased a favor and go listen to it. For the time being, here's a little video tribute paired with a remix of the theme from "truck turner" RIP Isaac Hayes.

Calling all hip hop heads....

I've been wasting plenty of time scouting a couple blogs and have come across a very promising upcoming release as well as a very promising new artist and a great mix by a seasoned veteran.



Jake One is a producer on the G-Unit label, but has done production for De La Soul, Common, and Gift of Gab among others. He's releasing his own album featuring his production and guest appearances by quite the arsenal of MC's including Brother Ali, MF Doom, Freeway, and Royce da 5'9. And oh yeah, it's being released on Minneapolis' very own Rhymesayers Entertainment record label. There are a few tracks available for download. Check em out and then don't sleep on the album.

http://www.rhymesayers.com/radio/get.php?web=The_Truth_feat._Freeway__Brother_Ali_1.mp3

http://www.zshare.net/audio/1879580455aa80d5/


Ra The MC = Dope. I don't know much about her, but I picked up on her from hypetrak.com whilst looking for free mixtapes that I could listen to at work. She's apparently relatively new and real good. Cop the mixtape here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/138395480/JUDAH_x_HYPEBEAST.COM_x_MICK_BOOGIE_Presents_RAtheMC-A_MIXTAPE_ABOUT_SOMETHING...zip




It's taken me a long time to warm up to MF Doom, but I've finally come around. There's still a lot of his stuff I can't stand, but since the great Dirt Mc'Girt is no longer with us I need to get my sloppy, stoned out hip hop fix from another source. Enter: Metal Fingers. He's got a mixtape out which features some of his own stuff (including his unreleased track off the aforementioned Jake One album), some friends and some remixes. This one gets the Mr. Ulysses nod of approval. You can get that one here:

http://illroots.com/waxx/doomed.zip

If you listened to music in the 90's, you should really check out this mixtape:

http://www.zshare.net/download/18038220d7aeb70d/

and finally, just for fun, here's a song that I listened to multiple times daily last week, and remains one of my favorite music videos of all time



Big ups to Hypetrak.com. I'm out.

USD

What it do my peoples

Hey hey! Mr. Destructo here bringin the funk straight to your eyeholes.

Things are still crazy to the max here, but I'm dealing pretty well. I'm teaching two sections of a "General" Music class, and two sections of Health. That's right, I'm a health teacher. Take a second and let your brain absorb that. I'll remind you once more, a health teacher. That sure as hell threw me for a loop. I'm still trying to figure out what my curriculum is going to be because, oh yeah, I don't have a book to teach out of. It's just me, deciding what to tell these kids about what's what on staying healthy. I couldn't think of a better person to do it, really.

For the last week I've been teaching out of the conference room instead of my own room for a number of reasons:
1) As of Friday, there were only chairs in my room. Before that, there was nothing.
2) On Wednesday (the day before classes started) at around 1pm, our partner school (who owns the building we inhabit) decided that it was not in our contract to have the 4th floor (the floor that houses my classroom). So on Wednesday and Thursday my class was homeless. The higher-ups negotiated only my room on the 4th floor back into our contract on Friday (yay), but because of the lack of teaching things, I remain in the conference room.
3) All of the other classrooms belong to other teachers, so I've been moving my class around occasionally into other classrooms with projectors in order to teach.
4) I'm a health teacher. That doesn't have anything to do with why I'm teaching in the conference room. I just thought I'd remind you.

My co-workers seem pretty cool. It's way different than Kodai last year. People are not nearly as kind and welcoming, which I've decided is because everyone is so stressed. Also, they aren't all Christians, and it's a different kind of expat who lives in China than India. I've made friends with the younger staff and they've been nice enough to take me out for a couple meals.

I finally came up with a plan for my brand-spankin-new music program today. I discovered that most kids that brought their own instruments brought guitars, with spattering of violins and flutes. Not exactly band fodder. So my plan is to teach lesson after school for the next nine weeks during their activity time. This may sound like a fairly simple "plan", but believe you me, with all of the fairly f-ed up scheduling at this school, that was a stroke of genius on my part.

I'm kind of out in the boonies as far as Beijing goes, but I don't mind it. The air quality is actually not that bad (it's apparently a LOT better for the Olympics). I went and walked around Olympic park last night with a few co-workers. The stadiums are pretty incredible up close. My camera still doesn't have batteries in it, but Klara took pictures and said she'd send them around. I think I'm gonna take a chinese class over in the international school area so I can a) learn chinese and b) hopefully make friends with some of the international crowd in Beijing (this was suggested by Luke, a co-worker). I'm planning on setting up my bike soon so I can tool around the city and not have to spend money on taxis all the time.

So far Beijing is pretty dope. I've had a few "what the hell am I doing here" moments of stress mostly due to the chaos that is dissipating around this new music program. But this weekend I got hit with that feeling since I moved here so I could conduct a band, and that seemed to be uncertain. But things are looking up. Also, no one speaks english outside of the school. This is getting to me more than I thought it would, which is another reason I want to learn chinese. I'll stop it there for now. I miss you guys more than I thought I would. Hit me with an email or something so I can read something in english. It would almost surely save my life.

Peace and Hair Grease,

Mr. D

Current residence: Beijing

I arrived here in one piece a few days ago. I'm pretty sure it's Wednesday today. No, I'm sure of it now since I just remembered that classes start tomorrow. Classes start tomorrow and I still don't know what I'm going to be teaching. Things are pretty chaotic here in the offices of Saint Paul American School since the official schedule still isn't complete and as soon as it is the students still need to be placed into classes. I've offered to help with that which will take my mind off of the fact that I have no clue what I'll be teaching tomorrow. I'm supposed to be starting a band, but as of now I don't know how many students brought their own instruments, I don't know what my budget is to buy anything, I don't have anything in my room, not even chairs, and I've been scheduled (tentatively) with the two highest level of english speakers which means I'll only have a handful of the musicians (if any). All of this, and I'm surprisingly calm right now.

According to one of the returning teachers, as chaotic as it seems, it's still unbelievably better than last semester. The principal is being very reassuring about being flexible and letting me know that I will have things to do and that it's ok that I don't know what they are yet.

I have an apartment and a roommate (which is going to save me a LOT of money). Plus, the apartment is huge and we each have our own bathrooms so it won't be crowded at all.

I'll try to take some pictures and post them soon, but I haven't had much time to relax since I've gotten here since I had to go to work my first day here. I'll also try and write a more comprehensive post soon. Later all.

Bon Voyage (isn't Chinese)

Hi.  Welcome to my Web log, or "Blog" as I will now call it to save a syllable.  As many of you know, I am moving to China tomorrow (or maybe today, or a few days ago, depending on when you are reading this).  I'm going to be starting a music program at a small (150 students) international school in Beijing.  Supposedly I will be filling out my time teaching to Phy Ed and a lil ESL.  I think it sounds like a whole lotta fun.  I'm sure I'll have way to much time on my hands, so keep an eye on this niche I've carved in the world wide web for what could actually turn out to be somewhat frequent updates.

I actually have plans to post pictures (or at least links to more pictures) here and even a possible podcast or two, since I have way too much music and I want to share it with the collective known to me as Y'all.  

So either do or don't wish me luck, it's up to you (but seriously, do it).  I return the great US of A on July 3rd, 2009.  So someone should start planning the most bitchinest "Welcome back to the US/Happy Birthday America/Let's blow some shit up"  Party.  If you start now, it may be up to standard in 10 months.  Maybe.

Aight homies.  Hold it down in the Twin Cities (or wherever you may be).  I'll see you in July.

-Ben