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In the late summer of 2004, days before I was to move to Lianyungang, China, to teach English for a year, I spoke to an acquaintance who had spent a few years in the country. 2004年夏末，也就是在去中国连云港任教一年英语的几天前，我向一位在中国呆过几年的朋友了解情况。 "Holidays are hard," he said. "But oddly, not so much Christmas. Christmas isn't that bad. It's Thanksgiving that's hard." 他说：“那里假期很难熬，不过奇怪的是，圣诞节倒也还行，糟糕的是感恩节。” At the time, surviving the holidays was the least of my worries. I was moving to a country where I didn't speak the language, understand the culture, or know the history, in order to do a job that I had never done and didn't know how to do. And not only that, I was going to a city—Lianyungang—that I hadn't even heard of, and could find no information about online. 当时，假期并不是最令我担心的事情。我就要去中国了，可我根本不会讲汉语，也不了解中国文化或历史，而且我以前从没教过英语，压根儿不知道该怎么做；不仅如此，我要去的那个叫连云港的城市，连听都没听过，网上也查不到相关信息！ | 
