F1RST POST!!

Ticket: Check.  Visa: Check.  Packing: Questionable.  Blog: What?

Welcome to Sinocopia, my personal travel blog and experience-based guide to life in China (and, perhaps, everywhere else).  While there will certainly be entries that are less thrilling/amusing/awful than others, and while I cannot, at this juncture, reasonably speculate on post frequency, I hope everyone occasionally finds at least something mildly interesting about my life.  Personally, I find it enthralling =).  But, without further ado, a little background is in order:

The Man Behind the Curtain
"Man", of course, being a loose term here.

I am Jakisan, and this is my blog.  In case you don't know me (unlikely, I know, since that would mean you're here for the "content"), this seems like a good time to tell you everything about me you ever wanted to know, and probably quite a bit more.

<--- This is me. Hi!


         
(P.S. I got a haircut!)         
       I like drawing, and learning Chinese. --^

I also like riding bikes, and climbing rocks. (And taking pictures =))

And, of course, I have an impeccable sense of fashion.  You might say I'm a trendsetter.






Well, that seems satisfactory.

The Journey

On Friday, I will be traveling from Tallahassee, FL to my new home in Xuchang (许昌), China (中国).  Lots of people ask me where that is, but I'm unsure what to tell them.  Kind of... north-east-central-ish?

It's by that other city you've never heard of.

While there, I will be teaching English at Xuchang University, with a contract ending on June 30th, 2010.  My plans to return to the US after that are undetermined.  Other than that, I know very little about my position, or soon-to-be lifestyle.  Which is fun, because you'll get to discover it with me!


The Blog 

To understand what to expect from the blog itself, perhaps we should start with the title.  Sinocopia?  What?  Yeah, I made that up.  A small, elite number of you (DG) might have already gotten it, but for the rest of you:


Sinocopia is a portmanteau of the abbreviation Sino- and the word cornucopia. It is pronounced "Sign-oh-co-pee-uh." (Or ['saIno'ko:piǝ], for those in the know.) 


And if that wasn't enough, the latin sino copia loosely translates as "allowing abundance/prosperity," a potential wish for good fortune that I'm sure the Chinese would approve of.  The overall meaning of the word "Sinocopia", then, is left as an exercise for the reader.  As for the other bit, I almost went with "Life, Love, and Language with chinese characteristics", but I decided "in the Middle Kingdom" was perhaps a bit less obscure.  In retrospect, who knows, but that picture took a long time to make, so I'm not doing it again.

As far as what to expect here, your guess is as good as mine.  As well as my usual goings-on, it will probably contain plenty to do with linguistics, wacky culturisms, food, and photography, with a few unfortunately geeky references (see post title) thrown in for good measure.

So check in every so often, bear with me, and I'm sure we'll both make it through this together.  Probably.  But I'm not guaranteeing anything.