time magazine covers in different regions (comparison) in 2013

i've recently seen some comparisons of time magazines in different regions, but they all showed covers that were several years old, so i've compiled the TIME magazine covers that were different in the US just from 2013. there are a handful of covers that are different in other regions, but the majority of differences are seen by the american readers of time. the covers we don't see are usually about international affairs, politics, war, and other countries in general. is this what makes us so ethnocentric??

does american journalism cater to americans' seemingly nonexistent desire to know about foreign affairs? or do we care/know less because of american media? either way, it might be worth checking international news sites once in a while, just to see what's going on in the world. 

inspiration for this post is from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/time-magazine-covers-in-the-us-vs-the-rest-of-the-world which shows differing covers over the years. 

(all photos taken from TIME.com)

update 2013

 I’ll try to maintain a better blog for my own sanity when I’m in Spain. Drop by and check it out whenever you’d like.

Since things are changing pretty fast these days, I thought I’d update you on what’s happening on my end. Hopefully it’ll fetch some replies so I can know what’s up where y’all are, too! (Y’all?! Well, I AM back in Texas, so I thought it fitting. J)

My life and job in China were promising, but things went belly up in just about every way I can think of. The first year was pretty good work-wise. I was grouped with a bunch of English people, plus an Irishman and a Scot, and basically had to learn English all over. I was amused at their vocabulary, intonation, accents, and obscure (to me) cultural references.

                                                                                                   

I learned a lot from them and about myself that year. I developed as a teacher, a member of management, and as a citizen of the world. My roommate and I (friends in America) fell out, so home-life was stressful, but work was alright.

This is my absolute favorite class, whom I taught for all four semesters in China. I’ve given them my contact information so we can keep in touch. I’ll continue to edit, proofread, or make suggestions on anything they send me in English so we can improve their odds of standing out above the competition in China. I’d really love to see them all succeed.

Sadly and predictably, the honeymoon phase at work ended and was replaced by deceit, backstabbing, insane ‘cost-cutting’, and other brands of human indecency. During the second year, I stepped down from my leadership role in protest and distanced myself from everything about the job but my precious students. Unfortunately, I did realize that I could never be truly happy working for or with anyone like the people I was working for and that the world of teaching English is absolutely teeming with them. As it turned out, it was an excellent decision from which both my students and I benefited greatly because my focus was just on them and lessons.

For about six months I was near depression because of my love for teaching and my kaput desire to do it. I barely hung out with anyone, overate and gained weight, and stayed home as much as I could because I was sure my little dog wouldn’t break my heart the way my job had. My sister came to visit me during this time and we traveled some in China during an 8-week long break between semesters while I thought about the next step.

              

Finally, I decided to make a huge career change: quitting teaching. Though I love being in the classroom and am actually pretty good at it, my deep need for a just, honest, integrity-filled workplace is just too impossible in the teaching world and I see myself being entirely miserable if I pursued it any further. Instead, I decided to develop one of my favorite parts of teaching, which is pronunciation. I’ve researched what other jobs I can do teaching/correcting pronunciation and have found accent reduction and modification interesting and doable. This will mean helping non-native English speakers reduce their accents, including pronunciation, intonation, cadence and even gestures! (Ok, that exclamation mark might not have been necessary but that kind of stuff really does excite me.)

Most of you know, then, that I applied to and was accepted to a postgraduate program in Barcelona where I’ll earn a master’s degree in applied and theoretical linguistics. With that, I hope to burst into the world of accent modification and help people sound less foreign, ghetto, regional (like southern, New Yorker, Bostonian, Texan…) or whatever they want to change about their accents. 

I’m home in the USA for about 7 weeks right now, the longest I’ve been home since 2008. I’m hoping to actually rest and recover from China this summer before Spain does whatever it’s gonna do to me. So far, I haven’t really experienced reentry shock (a phenomenon that happens when people live abroad for a while then return to their home countries), possibly because I didn’t really fall in love with China the way I thought I would (and the way I did with Hungary). I was happy to leave China, mostly to get away from my work situation, but living in China wasn’t really my cup of tea either.

I miss a few things about Chinese life – wide, safe bike lanes on every road, recycling opportunities everywhere, cheap/counterfeit things like electronics, perfumes, bags, cheap rent, shower sprayers in addition to stationary shower heads, awesome engineering feats of people balancing a TON of stuff on a moped or bicycle, the fact that people there don’t have know-it-all attitudes, all my 750 students, and a handful of dear friends I met there.

               I’m happy to be back in the States to experience clean, potable tap water, washing machines with hot water, tumble dryers, boneless meat, good and familiar food, driving – automatic transmissions!, swimming, people NOT staring and pointing at me, good customer service, English I understand (versus British/Irish/Scottish-isms), cultural references I understand, JOKES I understand, and most comforting, people I understand. It’s been far too long since I’ve hung out with Americans. I miss my people. I love my country. It’s good to be home.

                   

Right now I’m staying at Liz and Scott’s (my sister and brother-in-law) with our three dogs. It’s a full house, but a good time. We’ve taken a trip to Illinois to visit almost everyone in our extended family, we’ve done some light recreation, and we’ve eaten nearly everything under the American sun. I’m hoping for a trip to Florida to see my immediate family, depending on whether the government drags their feet with my documents, background check, visa, etc. but I think I’ll get to go. If you’d like updates from me (very sparingly, I promise), let me know. Call me, text, or email!

Many blessings and greetings to all the people who are helping make me who I am across the world. Feel free to share this letter with anyone who knows me whom you think would like to know what I’m up to. (Sorry for the American slang, foreigners… but I’m home after all! J)

Christie

christmas (a little late, but... whatever)

i went home for christmas.

i spent some time with family and friend in florida, got to know my little sister all over again, went to a relative's house who has lived in florida for most of my life but i'd never visited before, had a little christmas party with some strangers, and went to my pregnant sister's city to pet her belly and go to dinner and a museum with most of my immediate family.

then i headed to texas to see the rest of my immediate family, my texas-dwelling sis and bro-in-law, and some friends. the weather was snowy and cold, incapacitating most of the state. i was sick for a few days with my sister so we sat on the couch watching 'lie to me' and sharing a box of tissues. i hung out with a few brave college friends and my childhood bff. we ate wings and chick-fil-a and chili's and mexican food and pei wei and olive garden. a friend invited me to her family's domino game night so i hung out with them and had a good laugh with her crazy grandma. had a slurpee and got a TON of new clothes, too.

off to illinois. after some luggage delays (which were settled 2 hours before i left illinois) i met up with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. we ate and talked, of course, 'cause that's what people do. i went to church (for the first time in a year and a half), played blitz (card game) with the grands, hung out with uncle/aunt/cousin who have lived far away my whole life but who made for a lovely weekend anyway, and i kissed the cheeks off my grandparents.

my grandfather, an ethnic hugarian, asked me to speak to him in his long lost mother tongue. i could say sentences to him and ask him questions, which he understood but couldn't reply to. then we played a translation game. i'd say some nouns in hungarian and he would promptly reply "tomato" or "dog" or "window." it was great to see him reliving his childhood and participating in my hungarian experience, too. he's so freaking sweet.

(family!!!)

back to florida. i took turns with dad reading bed time stories to morgan and we played games and sang songs.

dad, tara, morgan and i went kayaking one early afternoon. it was shorts and t-shirt weather, sandals and sunglasses weather. un-christmas, but very florida.

it was a good trip with a LOT of traveling. to and fro, here and there... overall i was on 11 planes. ELEVEN. luggage was lost twice, but always returned. i was on buses, planes, trains, in cars, trucks, and taxis. i brought some of hungary with me to the US and a LOT of the US back to hungary. i didn't get to see everyone i wanted to, nor do all i wanted to do with the people i did see, but i'm sooooo glad i went. it was a much needed reminder of home and my roots and my country.

i love america for a lot of reasons, mostly the people i know and love there.

but i love hungary just as much. that's right, JUST AS MUCH. and going between the two countries just proved that fact to me, because on both transatlantic flights i had the feeling i was "going home."

:)

halloween party

(a little late but worth it)

tara, another teacher in CETP, invited a bunch of us lektors (native english teachers) to her house for a halloween party. it was kind of international with an australian, a canadian, and a bunch of americans.

i went to a costume store and found something i had never been ever in my life.

santa! (or mee-ko-lash in hungarian)

then this happened, of course...
(me and franny, a funny teacher who was dressed as a ... geisha?)
you gotta sit on santa's lap
(snata and klara, and australian teaching in a small village nearby)santa and tara, the witchy hostess (and a little xander)

santa and a ninja, andrew, another teacher in my town
(please note i have a pillow under that suit)

we made mummies, too...toilet paper mummies. here i am with klara, my mummy

we even had caramel apples (laurel, jon, and franny)

here are klara and lisa biting into the delicious treats

we played some games like pin the bow tie on the skeleton

we took a REALLY hard test about halloween and the origins of halloween traditions - franny won! she got 11 out of 18 right! we bobbed for gummy worms in bowls full of whipped cream- fun!
she sure was a good hostess! there was snacks, goodie bags, and jello... plus we ordered pizza. Mmmm.

all in all it was a GREAT party and i'm glad i went to that little village. thanks

apple pie

this little thing, a piece of hungarian apple pie, inspired me to bake (something i don't do too often, but when i do, i really enjoy it). this hungarian treat is good, believe me, i just had to have a slice of america.

i mentioned it to lisa (another american in this town) and soon we planned to bake the pie at her workplace because it has a good kitchen.

she made the dough

then we peeled and sliced some granny smiths

and added the good stuff
(some little kid was there and kept coming over
to ask if she could have one more piece of sugar apple)

it smelled so good even before it was cooked!

we had a weird idea to also make some kind of apple turnover... for no real reason, either. we whipped up some dough, eyeballed the amounts of sugar and spices, then wished it luck

um, yum

i made that lattice top! my first one ever :)

all in all, it was a good idea and a great dessert!

the real truth is i'm american, not hungarian... in fact, as american as apple pie :)