Enter the Professor

Leaving America to live abroad is a daunting and challenging adventure. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be leaving the United States for a life outside the country, let alone, on the other side of the planet!  Yet, here I am in China.  What am I doing here?  I'm teaching English!  I've taken a teaching position at a college in the Hebei province and I'm here to teach English to Chinese college students.  I've never taught on a college level before and it's a bit overwhelming when I think about the fact that I'm now officially a college professor.  However, if you are a "hopeless" romantic like me (emphasis more on the hopeless) then you're ideal image of a professor is the picture of a stuffy old man in a sweeter vest with leather patches on the elbows holding a smoking pipe will giving a classroom lecture.  Yes, I know that my image of a college professor looks more like an ideal fit for Professor Henry Higgins from George Bernard Shaw's immortal play Pygmalion than an actual college professor but that's how my mind works. My point, is that a young fellow such as myself who still wears jeans and t-shirts from Old Navy shouldn't be teaching in the lofty halls of higher academia!  But here I am.  Now, where's my ivory tower? I've got to get started!

"Well after all, Pickering, I'm an ordinary man,
Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance,
to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants..."

-Professor Henry Higgins played by Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady (1964)