Justin Cecil's Blog

            One of my favorite sitcoms to watch is “Frasier.” It’s one of those that I can easily see multiple times and still laugh at. It’s just good humor with great writing and characters, a show that still works since it premiered back in 1993.             If you don’t know what the show is about, “Frasier” is the story of Dr. Frasier Crane, who moves from Boston (the setting of “Cheers”) back to his hometown of Seattle after getting a gig as a radio psychiatrist. It basically tells of the many adventures and misadventures of Frasier and his friends as he navigates his way through life, dealing with people who clash with his personality.             One of the main and most memorable characters was his father Martin Crane, who moved in with him during the pilot episode and spent almost the entire run of the show doing so. This was beca...

When I teach kids English in my current home in Hohhot, China, I try to include information about different English-speaking cultures into the lessons. I’ll use videos and PowerPoints to not only improve their English, but also show them a bit of culture outside of China. For example, one of our more recent lessons was on different types of music, so the kids had to learn words such as jazz and country. Of course many if not all of my Chinese students didn’t have any clue what jazz or country music sounded like, so I had them watched music videos of Dizzy Gillespie and Garth Brooks, and then had them discuss what they saw in their steadily improving English. More recently I decided to try a little something different. I made a PowerPoint presentation, and told them whom William Shakespeare was. Then I showed them a clip of Kenneth Bragnah portraying Henry V. Granted I didn’t expect these kids, most of whom are no more than ten, to grasp anywhere close to what he was saying. But I wa...

            Currently I am living in China, teaching English to little kids. Despite all of the craziness of the world situation, I have been loving my new job, finding it both adventurous and rewarding. I’ve been trying to keep up with the news in America and the world at large, reading and watching videos on both the virus and the protests back in my home country.             With the tragic and horrifying murder of George Flloyd (I did force myself to watch the video of him being held down by the cop, and yes, I’m going to use the term murder), I decided to take some time off from writing and publishing my blog. I had a few ideas for blog articles, mostly on light topics. I’ll probably write them in the near future, but they seemed shallow in comparison to the news about ongoing police brutality (and quite frankly murder) and people trying to change things. Kind of figured that writing about my th...