A new home, job.

As you can tell from the new description of my blog found in the Brett By Bike box at the top of the page things have changed a lot in the last few weeks. I'm no longer in China or Asia, but now a resident of Washington DC. That is in America. And no, this time my ending up here wasn't the result of winning a plane ticket like my Indian jaunt was but I came home for a job. Or at least I came back for the interview, which turned into the job.

Yo peeps I'm Cooper. I'm the Ratchford's new dog. Today I'll be interviewing Brett about his new job from our (my) backyard.

The Coop: Where will you be working?

I'll be working at a place that plans, coordinates, and runs international education fairs all around the world.

The Coop: Elaborate.

Basically, U.S. universities have intl. student recruiters who try to entice international students to come to their schools to get their undergrad or grad degrees, but a problem is some markets are hard to access or the intl. recognition of some schools isn't on many students' radar. So, we plan these tours where the recruiters and people from my firm might visit 8 Asia capitals in one trip, each place for 3 days at a time, meeting students and local high school counselors in order to recruit students to their schools back home. At least that's the impression I have of what we do, but I haven't actually started yet.

Actually, that's what my bosses do, I'll be doing stuff on computers with their website and advertising while they send me emails telling of how nice the weather is over there.

The Coop: Will you get to come along on the trips?

Not a lot, but at least one per year. I'll be working in the office in DC most of the year.

The Coop: Where will you live? Don't tell me a tent again.

A te....oh.....No, in fact I found a temporary room to rent near work and 2 blocks from American University and the Japanese Embassy. It's a little more expensive here than southwest China. I just calculated that my one month rent in this room could buy.....hold on.........5 years of noodles for lunch at the place I was frequenting in Kunming before I left. That's a whole lotta noodle.

Oh, and no pets allowed here. Sorry bud.

The Coop: I've noticed also that since you've been home, even though only a week, you seem to leave a lot of "crap," as you call it, books, clothes, bicycle parts, etc., all around the house and even on the floor. Will you keep up this habit in your new house?

Is that the phone? I'll check.

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I also decided to keep the By Bike name for the blog as I hope to do some solid exploring via 2 wheels in the DC area. There are some bike clubs around town that I may look into in a few weeks. If you're still thirsting for exciting stories of yaks gone wild I'd suggest checking Aaron's blog as he flashcardes and hokey pokes his way across Korea while teaching at a summer English camp.

Speaking of Korea, I visited Seoul on my flight from Kunming, China back to Chicago. I only had about 6 hours in the city and spent about 2 of them in Dunkin Donuts slamming coffee waiting for this park to open. It wasn't enough time to really see anything (not to mention the rain) but was better than waiting in the waiting area at the airport I suppose. If Aaron bikes the east coast as he said he might he'll surely have some tales to tell. I'm not jealous. Not at all.

The Coop: Liar.