10:28 am
I actually woke up quite early yesterday, 5 or 6 am, whereupon I read the wikipedia page for Pierre Trudeau that I had copied, and watched the youtube videos I found for him. One of the big things I learned was that I didn't actually know what "patriation" meant. It turns out to mean exactly what the context of its use would imply, the act of an independant governing body to assume legislative powers away from its mother country. Pretty much the most useless word you could mention in an English class. But now I know.
It took an hour or two to get through all the material, and I bolded the points of interest on the wiki page for easy reference later. All in all, I was very well prepared (sort of) for my English Corner today. Which is why I really should be reading the wikipedia page I have for Justin Trudeau right now instead of writing this post, but whatever, I'm in charge here.
So I went back to sleep for a few hours and THEN woke up, reasonably okay, to write my last post and breakfast it up. I dissolved a vitamin disk in my bowl and gave it slight pushes with my spoon, watching it bubble across the water. It was cool- and when it finally had all mixed together, it was delicious! And I use that word even though I hear it a ton at Web, because that's basically the only word the students know to describe food. The water in my bowl tasted like an orange soda, it was pretty awesome. Two aceta... why did I put that bottle away? Ugh. Life brand Tylenol. Two tablets of that, and a cold shower, and I was out the door, arriving at work for 1:01, 1:02 pm. Not ideal, but again, I'm not actually in the system to get penalized for a minute or two of lateness, so long as no one notices. But it's a bad habit to get into at this point, and is a good reason why I will really have to cut this post short. But not yet.
First things first (to go a little quickly here), I paid back Vicky the 100 Yuan as I picked up my lesson plans for the day. Then Alona passed me my first class list where my only student was Lydian, the big boss's wife.
I wasn't really worried about it, but I did decide to be a bit early today.
While sitting at the desk both Bradley and Steve came by. Bradley gave me a pocket dictionary that takes English words and shows you the Chinese translation, which will be a HUGE help, even though it takes away the joys of my non-verbal communication successes. But it could be important to be able to translate stuff- obviously- so I'm glad I have it. And then Steve gave me an old phone of his. I need to go buy a new charger, and I will still have to get whatever is the deal with this phone card business I keep hearing about, but whatever, this is still a huge help.
And, writing this post immediately after my last post, you may be confused about why these gifts didn't bother me as much as the charity from the day before. Well, for one thing I wasn't already angry, plus there wasn't any pity here poking at any wounded pride, and the most important thing is, I ultimately don't need these things. If they walked up to me later and asked for them back- no problem. They're nice to have, but not essential. Does this make sense at all?
I received word from a friend reading my blog that she really liked it, which is awesome, and that I made a spelling mistake on my last post, which is my bad. I feel worse about all the possessive "'s" I use incorrectly. That stuff drives me nuts. A few days ago when I was talking about the Simpson's I couldn't figure out if it was "Simpson's" or "Simpsons". I'm pretty sure it's the former. And yes, obviously I know it's Homer Simpson. Anyone who has seen part one of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" knows his name is Homer Simpson.
There's a poster or something from that guy at the Oatmeal.com or whatever it is, that is all about explaining the use of apostrophe S. It was very useful! I forget it!
The class with Lydian went well, she really knows her stuff, self corrected a bunch, and had fun with the roleplay. She mentioned studying for exams with her something-sister, and I kept missing that word, so when I asked for clarification she told me clearly she had a twin sister- no way! I've got a twin brother! Lydia is the younger, and they were born 10 minutes apart- which would impress anyone else, but not this 11 minutes apart record holder! (don't tell me anyone else with a longer time, don't take this away from me) I mentioned all the money I owe my brother, which I only bring up to leave additional records everywhere. I OWE HIM A LOT OF MONEY.
But anyway, I'm basically pretty tight with Lydian.
Next up was English Corner. I clicked open the wikipedia page and scrolled through, but it looks like, for whatever reason, my bolded parts didn't, uh, stay bolded, so that was no good. The wiki page was too big to be useful, so I just had to rely on my fantastic memory. There are worse things to rely on. The first video I showed, an 8 minute affair that I skipped about the first 30 seconds of irrelevant preamble, lasted me until after the 30 minute mark of the class. Now I had the uncharacteristic worry of not being able to get through all my material. Which I could live with, but the students weren't exactly getting a nuanced look at the elder Trudeau. I suppose they wouldn't anyways, what with the whole translation thing.
I showed a video of Trudeau's visit to China, and the audience really responded positively when the video started speaking in Chinese. I was glad for the positive reaction, but kept looking back where all the native teachers were seated to see if anyone noticed the unprecedented amount of Chinese being used in an English speaking class.
With the few minutes I had left I asked the class what they thought. The first guy responded: "Boring". Maybe I should stop worrying about Chinese people not telling me when they dislike something. But Sylar in the back said he liked history, and so liked this. I then told everyone "okay, I can live with that, one for, one against, no one else tell me what they thought" which they laughed at. Man I want Simpsons episodes to show them so bad.
Of all the words I mentioned I really think "charisma" stuck in there. Hey, if I got one word in there, I'll be happy. And that'll be a great word to use to discuss Justin T. today. We'll see whether or not "charisma" stuck in their minds.
Steve mentioned that he was going to lunch, but I didn't know whether he was inviting me along or not, so I just wished him a good lunch. I then decided I'd made a mistake, and went searching for him at Food Bazzar, but didn't see him. So I grabbed some food for myself. Let's see, I had a corn based soup with rice in it, some spicy chicken number with those little red tubes that are the heart of all things spicy here, and which I accidentally bit into, such that its juice got on my tongue and I was glad to have the corn soup to help me out, and also had this sort of scrambled egg with slices of ham/hotdog that was pretty sweet. I mean the meat in that dish was sweet. I understand they cook meat in sugar here- and with that dish you could tell, for sure. I ate most of the egg dish first, then realized maybe I should save that to help me get through the spicy chicken business. Oh, and there was broccoli in the egg thing too!
I was determined to get all my photocopying done early today, and it was only my next class that required any at all- which then had to be cut into strips of paper to be mixed and matched into sentences and whatnot. So I carefully cut them and put them into their separate piles- for once I was going to have a class that included strips of paper that didn't have me wasting a bunch of time fumbling with said strips.
I placed the first round of strips in the then empty classroom I was scheduled to use, and went back to my cutting. Returning with the next batch I was followed in by two of my students "you know you still have time right? Half an hour until the class starts." but they were happy to sit there and wait. Meanwhile, my first batch of strips were gone- janitorized.
I made a big deal of it to be funny, but it actually was easily fixed- one page copied, four cuts, easy peasy. I returned, after using the bathroom before my final three hour stretch of classes, still early, a little over five minutes until the start of class. I was asked my astrological sign, and I forget whether I said Taurus or bull, but either way they didn't follow, so I drew a bull on the board, but I was a little lazy, and the nose said "pig" more than it said "bull". I thought the horns would have saved things, but apparently not. They figured it out eventually, maybe sooner than I realized and they were just giving me a hard time. It was suggested I should get a Chinese name, and I said maybe another time- choosing a name is a big deal.
The class, after matching the strips into functional sentences, was a couple of logic puzzles where you only have parts of the information and you need to work together, while making some straightforward deductive leaps, to filling in the blanks. I voluntold Lily to write on the board for the first exercise, and she was amazing at writing on the board. Really fast! And with very nice writing! She also had this nervous energy going, and I said "relax, it's not a race" and she said "okay" and nothing changed. After she was done getting all the info on the board I made sure the class applauded her efforts. The information they needed to gleen (glean?) from the first exercise had to do with what the names and positions where from each person in this company, and how many men and women there were.
But then I made them follow through with the exercise, finding which person worked for whom. Which was just the practice needed for the last exercise which required that same amount of detail but moreso, filling in a chart of information of names, pets, books, drinks, etc. etc. for the people of a fictional "Baker Street". We went a few minutes over time, but they managed to complete the puzzle. Another round of applause, huzzah! As a quick note, the person writing on the board for this last puzzle was the same guy that thought the Trudeau business was boring. He specifically called this exercise "not boring". Which would, of course, mean more had I personally come up with the exercise, but, hey, I cut the strips.
Slightly late getting to my next class, of course, but one of the students was from my previous class. I made sure to admonish her teacher for keeping her late. The fiend! (I didn't say "fiend" at the time)
My energy levels were rapidly falling, and I didn't have enough in me to remember anything about the story of Kathy going to Paris for a wedding and visiting the Louvre and maybe hooking up with Pierre (Pierre wishes). And I CERTAINLY didn't have enough energy to remember Present Perfect tense or whatever it was. I did my best, the students were fairly forgiving. Gary was in this class, his first level B private class- go Gary!
Finally I had class with Amy and Cindy, trying to expand our food vocabulary and describing foods. By this point I really had no energy, and my voice was basically gone. The two suggested I get some medicine, and Amy offered to drive me home. I waved off the ride as unnecessary. It's a pretty easy class to go over, especially compared to the last one, but yes, I was glad when it was done.
After work Leo directed me to a pharmacy that looked closed but it was okay, whew, where he asked for some cough drops for me and some kind of Chinese medicine. All together it came to 36 Yuan, which isn't bad at all. While I paid, Leo placed the items in my backpack for me, a nice gesture, but it definitely took longer than it would have for me to take off the thing and open it up. We parted ways after the next block and I returned to my apartment.
I'm running out of time, I have to get ready for work, but man am I so close to being done with this day. All that's really left is to tell you about this chinese medicine- okay, it's 12:07 pm, I'll be back.
11:01 pm and I'm back
So I take off my backpack and examine my two new miracle cures- the cough drops, with the face of a friendly middle aged woman on the box, and then the medicine box. Ugh, fine, I'll get up, grab the box, and give you a proper description. Okay, so first of all, the cough drops are not cough drops, I'm giving you bad information- they're throat lozenges, "Golden" throat lozenges, on a green and blue striped box. But at least the smiling middle aged woman on the box is real, that was good info. The back of the box has a picture of some waterfall labelled "Quiet Clear Spring". I don't know what that has to do with anything.
The medicine box is super ornate- the bottom sixth of the box has a banner that goes around the outside in the style of a sort of black and white etching. I'm not entirely sure what it's trying to depict- the one box face has what looks like the discovery of a waterfall and from there (I'm not sure which direction it's supposed to be read) may be the refining process of the water, or the building of a community, or more likely the business that develops this medicine. The front of the box has an over head view of a green leaf over top what looks like a bunch of oranges in a bowl, all of which is sitting on top of, or else this is just the background, an orange coloured table, with a honey comb pattern all over. Or a... uh, six-agon pattern.
Man, I am too sick and too tired to be spending my evening staring at a box of medicine.
He said, after basically giving you the whole description.
Taste and effect-wise, the lozenge was a lozenge. Halls like. Does the job. As for the chinese medicine, well, I lifted it out of the box and was surprised at how cold it was. The act of carefully lifting it out of the box reminded me of Doc and Marty messing around with the plutonium at the beginning of the movie.
I kind of dreaded how this was going to taste, I couldn't really psych myself up for something when I had no idea what it would be like. I assumed it would taste, you know, like medicine. Awful. But chinese medicine- so, super awful.
Below the screw on cap was a plastic lid that sort of looked like a thin straw- I thought maybe it poured out of there, but no, the brown liquid just ran into that plastic top. So fine, I removed the top and, what else could I do, I gave it a lick. Sweet, thick, sticky. Molasses. Odd, but okay.
Somewhat emboldened, I poured some onto my spoon.
So the big question is, did I feel better after taking this? Not really. I periodically wondered if I was having an allergic reaction to it, asking myself whether or not my throat was closing or not. Remember I can be a bit of a hypochondriac, so this is probably the area where my judgement is the least reliable. I mean, sure, still pretty reliable compared to most people out there. Like, do I know what's going on with myself better than all the two year olds in the world? Sure, of course, they're dum dums.
Ah, okay, that really is everything, isn't it? Well, I'm still sick, I can tell you that, give you that much of a sneak preview of the next day. Send some good vibes, I'd like to not be sick tomorrow.
It's 11: 49 pm
Good night
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