Signed up on a whim for a study abroad trip to India (I was in college).

Sounds great in theory. In practice, we couldn’t even do that. We live abroad and registries aren’t done here. Shipping is very expensive, gift cards cannot be used here as the stores they usually come from don’t exist (and even if they do they are often locally-run and don’t accept foreign gift cards), and we…

What’s with the assumption that every couple has a registry? We didn’t.

Hey, I actually am pretty good at art but as a joke I once made a card for a friend out of textured metallic paper (green on one side, purple on the other, with some corrugated silver paper in there for fun), glittery Beefeater, Big Ben and Union Jack stickers ‘cause she’s British, and multicolored foam marijuana leaf…

What’s sad is that no you won’t, necessarily. It doesn’t matter how thin or fat I am - I always have the extra chin. even as a kid. Not eating wont’ make it go away.

STOP PLAYING WITH ME.

Yeah no.

my grandma had wing chairs reupholstered in that fabric or something like it, so I’m a “no” on these.

In Taiwan we have “mentholatum”, which is petrolatum + menthol.

It’s GREAT. You can use it on your lips, but I usually use it for sore muscles or as a cheap Vick’s Vapo-Rub alternative.

Wow, it’s almost like you sell botanicals. Do you want us to buy some of your botanicals?

I’m going to go buy a Pearl Jam album now.

Even if they didn’t go to church, that’s still crappy. “You don’t believe in the thing I believe in, so you can serve me more or less for free.”

Thank you for saying “keep your privacy settings up” rather than “don’t say stuff about work”. Work does not own the Internet. I feel for her that she clearly got a job she doesn’t really want - perhaps she really needed a job and this was the first or only offer she got? I would want to express my feelings about that…

Agree on the privacy settings, not on the not complaining about work online...work doesn’t own the Internet. Work doesn’t own one’s expressions of opinion outside work hours and purviews. Definitely keep those privacy settings up, but do not ever feel you cannot say what you think.

And again no. I identify as an expat because there is no better word. I’m not quite an immigrant as I probably won’t stay forever and I visit “home” once a year. But I live a local life, have a healthy mix of local and foreign friends, rent a local apartment in a non-expat area and make a local-ish salary (I’m…

Yeah no, I’ve lived abroad for a decade now, and I still refer to myself as an ‘expat’, because I don’t intend to get citizenship here or stay *forever* - I will leave someday. I may not go home, but I probably won’t grow old here. Or maybe I will. I don’t know. But I’m an expat for want of a better word.

Nope. That Guardian article was full of shit. An expat intends to go home someday. Doesn’t matter where they’re from or what color their skin is. An immigrant intends to stay forever.

There are socio-economic issues of privilege and inequality that make it so that more expats tend to be white (we have prosperous…

Fair enough. I don’t disagree.

Yeah, tutors and centers vary in quality, even though they’re all overseen quite strictly by Cambridge. But it has happened that tutors have gotten overzealous in insisting that this be done, like, ALL THE TIME, because they think that inexperienced teachers really don’t ‘get it’ and need to practice it again and…

Yi Guan Dao?