January 22nd, 2016

8:46 am

Yesterday had its ups and downs. As you know, I got up to finish my previous post and worked on that in place of reading the wiki page on Justin Trudeau, or even completely going through all the videos I had downloaded of the guy. I really wanted to finish that post.

Since picking up the vitamin supplement and chinese medicine my breakfasts have been far more ornate than before. A spoonful of the molasses like medicine (hopefully it's helping, I've been taking smaller doses because I don't want a repeat of that first night when I felt choked off- but maybe that wasn't the medicines fault, and maybe the reason I DON'T feel like that now is because of the medicine.), bowl of oatmeal with the maybe pumpkin seeds and green raisins, a mug of water, and then I re-fill my bowl with water to dissolve my supplement in. While it's fizzing I eat a banana (actually, that was today, I didn't have any bananas yesterday), drink up the orange-licious taste, take a couple of aceteminophan (sp?), put some MORE water in my bowl to rinse it out, and finish my water. Altogether it sounds like an adult, reasonable morning preparedness ritual.

I still have a slight temperature, the upside of which is that my cold shower, while still cold, also gives some relief. As a check I attempt some notes, but my voice is still basically gone- same with today, but I have successfully coughed up some chunks of sputum and my mucus is an encouraging colour and thickness. 

At Web I take a look at my lessons for anything tough or needs photocopying- looks like smooth sailing except for a hand out to copy for my last class of the day. That could wait. I start to review the Justin Trudeau videos I have, and pull up the wiki page to review. I very quickly chose to ignore the wiki article, mostly for lack of time. I was chiefly going to talk about media perception and hammer the home the idea of "charisma". I reviewed the Brazeau video leading up to the fight, and though he was as brash as I expected him to be at the start, he got too sympathetic for my purposes. And the video of Trudeau before the boxing match had absolutely terrible audio quality, you couldn't really make out anything. So cut both of those.

I went to youtube to check out that famous eulogy he gave for his father- according to the bit I did scan of the wiki page, as well as my own memory, this eulogy was the moment people thought he could be Prime Minister. The video was 12 minutes, I had less than that before class. I watched until he completed his first anecdote, 3 minutes in, and had my hook- I was going to get the students to watch for the way he spoke, instead of having them listen to what, exactly, he was saying. I started the download, fairly confident that I knew what I was doing.

Anything of note from that first class? Nothing that I remember. So off to English Corner time! I transferred the eulogy to my USB, and proceeded to the front of the class. Sitting right at the front was, I know his name now, Adam, the "Boring" guy. I told him I was glad to see him, which was the truth, he's a funny guy, and hey, anyone who participates is helpful.

I joked that a few students took my advice to skip my English Corner today, there were a few more empty seats than the day before, but not to any really alarming extent.

I began with a quick question of a word that someone from yesterdays class could remember learning: exactly as planned, Bradley offered up "charisma" (though with a slightly mangled pronounciation). You can imagine how pleased with myself I was, and believe it or not the rest of the presentation went great as well. I opened with the eulogy video, trying to get them to watch the "how" of what was being said instead of the "what" of it all, ultimately to get them to see that initial "charisma" that everyone in Canada agreed was there at that time. But then I contrasted his brand of charisma to his fathers- Justin's "nice guy" to his father's "tough guy". I re-showed the pirouette image of Pierre behind the Queen, and showed the video of Justin meeting the Queen- disrespectful to respectful.

I mentioned the boxing match, and the idea of being "under-estimated", rhetorically asking whether they thought, after that win, he would continue to be under-estimated.

"No."

"No? Are you sure? The other guys aren't Prime Minister now."

Starting in on the attack ads, first the "He's in way over his head." series, followed by the Job Interview ad (which I thought they'd be a little more familiar with, language wise, seeing as we do a lot of business and interview related vocabulary here) that ends with "He's just not ready."

Now I told them we were going to see Justin Trudeaus response to that attack ad. Everyone could see my folder of videos on the projector, and they all zeroed in on the video I was about to play, with that slightly gleeful energy that comes with recognition:

"Ready."

And out came Justin Trudeau, confidently striding towards the camera, and the ladies of the classroom became not a little electrified. They sat a little straighter, paid a little more attention. It was like they were looking at someone completely different from that initial eulogy clip. What a difference 14 years makes.

"All right, what did everyone think of that clip?"

"Confident"

"Powerful"

"Charisma"

And I think that was my time- the presentation worked out perfectly. Boring guy said "not boring", Bradley congratulated me on a job well done, and I told everyone, well, I mostly did what I did yesterday, but talked about a better looking guy with more recent footage. 

Lesson learned: only good looking people matter!

Okay, okay, I may have had a slightly more focused plan for today AFTER seeing what worked and what didn't work talking about Pierre yesterday. Regardless, even without a voice, I had given a good presentation. AND managed to get through my entire description of it with you readers without describing the ladies reaction as "sploosh"- it was very difficult, I don't know how I resisted! :P

And, before you say anything, I'm well aware that this topic was perhaps more suitable for a high school or first year media studies type of course. Well, what can I say, I'm not in a position to teach that course in that environment, and I've gotta work with the topics I can work with.

After my English Corner Stella approached me to write my bio for the wall- 100 words by the end of the day. This was now the start of my two hour break in between classes, so I had plenty of time to gett to it. I was actually in the middle of helping this girl, the same girl from Tuesday whose name I forget, with her concerns that it was difficult to know the correct spelling for a lot of English words. My advice was ultimately to read English words. I found Stan Lee's Spider-Man newspaper strip and directed her to use that as a resource. She read through the first strip, tripping up on "throne", and "mate", though actually she figured that one out on her own. When she mentioned that she wouldn't know all the words I said "Yup, and then you check the dictionary, and you learn what it means, and you run into more words you don't know, and on and on".

Kind of seemed like she was looking for a quick fix here- but no such luck.

Going for lunch, I had another round of corn based soup, the tofu/broccoli/shrimp concoction, a collection of vegetables orange, green, and white, whatever they were, as well as some breaded, uh, I never was altogether clear what was supposed to be inside it. It looked like a fish stick- and if ever there was a place you'd expect to find a fish stick, this would be the place- but when you bit into it, there didn't really seem to be anything inside. A layer of potato maybe? It was super cold, and I regretted that purchase. 

The chair across from me had an item left behind by someone. I took it back with me to Web so I could get my new pocket dictionary thing and report it lost at the Food Bazzar main desk (after the people at Web suggested that over some more official Lost and Found)- back at Food Bazzar the desk person really didn't seem to understand what I was getting at, so I failed at using my book to point at words. Fortunately a student, Eilsa, showed up and explained, problem solved.

Eilsa then invited me to eat with her and her friend, but I told her next time, seeing as I'd already eaten.

I needed/wanted some bananas, but didn't want to risk taking the time to cross the street and navigate Carrefour for them, so I bought the more expensive, but always in good shape, ready to eat, pre-plastic wrapped bananas of the Mykal grocery area. 

Doesn't "Mykal" just SOUND expensive?

Now I really did need to write that bio- I gave a quick re-read of some of the example biographies on the wall and got to work. I finished at approximately a hundred words. I showed Stella, who told me that this was my chance to brag about myself, that I should talk about myself more.

Okay, do you want me to add that in to what I have, or take stuff out and replace it? 

Take stuff out, okay. It didn't exactly bug me, per se ("Per se, Steve."- that's for Jordan. I'm pretty sure that's how it's spelled.), but it struck me as slightly disingenuous to say I was bragging about myself. What I'm actually doing is creating an ad for what a great teacher this school has, and you should definitely sign up to learn with us at Web.

The new version came in at 99 words, and would do just fine. It occurs to me now that I probably had at least one contraction I could have gotten rid of to hit that 100 word mark exactly. Now I'll just sit back and wait for the urgent message asking me to bring in my degree so they can take a picture to go along with the bio. I brought my degree in back on my first day, and they didn't do anything with it- let them realize they're missing a piece of the puzzle.

Oh, but that said, Stella then got me to stand next to a wall and get my picture taken for this bio- and I looked awful. Ugh, man, just terrible. All tiny headed and smushed. Aye-yah, that was rough. A real hit to my self image, and I'll tell you now it won't be the last one I take today.

That was all my break time done, and... I didn't actually photocopy what I needed for my last class. Hey, I was busy, I only moderately goofed off on facebook!

I believe the next class was the one where students read the biography of a famous person they've written and I stand over their shoulders and correct their spelling and phrasing. It's a great class, easy on my voice (depending on the kind of mistakes, but it's hard to go all THAT wrong). There was a Chinese Emperor who probably has a more English sounding version of his name that I have heard of, but otherwise he was new, an Audrey Hepburn report (I think that's my third one for her..), a Shakespeare, and... uh, I'm not sure. The last one may have been Beethoven, but that may have also been from another class that did this assignment.

Then the class gave a personal biography, and that's where I found out how old that mother I had lunch with a few days ago was. 32- on the other hand, maybe I wasn't looking so young myself. Ha, more like I looked TOO young, rather half-formed. Anyways.

The next class had, from left to right around the table, Richard, Lily, Zayn*, and Sissy.

*I'm not a hundred percent on Zayn's name/spelling. The point is, I'm getting names.

We had to construct a map of the fictional "Dyn-Ed City", again, an exercise I've done a few times now, and it's a lot of fun. Credit where it's due, I drew an excellent Dyn-Ed City this time, very clean, straight lines. The students practiced giving directions to each other, and I'd hum and haw when they'd leave out an essential word or reverse left and right or leave out the compass direction. Afterwards I drew a 5X3 graph to play a game where, as each student draws something for the graph squares, the only directions allowed are those that refer to the pictures. "One square left of the sun, two squares below the star" like that. There was some confusion when I messed up the directions at the beginning, but they mostly got it, though the first person to give directions had a similar difficulty when they were giving directions, which somewhat vindicated me. ("Isaac... they don't speak English. Of course they had trouble." "SHH quiet- you're ruining my credibility here!") There was also some confusion regarding which side was the "column" and which the "row" but I made a clarifying note on the board which seemed to help.

And here's where I got my second image hit of the day- amongst the drawings in the graph Lily decided to doodle me. It was less than flattering. Everyone had a good laugh.

We just got the graph filled out before the class... maybe a minute after the class was over. So I thanked the class for their attention and told them good night, hurrying over to get my last class list. Returning from the reception desk with my class list, Lily stopped to ask if I was okay after the doodle she drew of me, she thought I might be angry. My face must have registered emotion, I should really get a tune up with my mechanic. I told her of course not, and I really didn't hold it against her- still, like I said, a hit was definitely scored.

My last class was a salon type, which means up to 10 people in case I haven't been clear on that before. Nine people, all deciding where to take a hypothetical delegation. I didn't photocopy the chart to give to separate groups, so I just drew the chart on the board and had everyone work together. We talked about what a delegate was, why they visited, and what you may want to show them, and why, despite the exercise asking for us to show positive AND negative sides to a place, maybe delegates only really see the positive sides of a place.

My first mistake was getting them to give me actual place names instead of the more elemental: theme park, zoo, grocery store, etc. etc. And it was taking me way too long to spell their place names, so I gave the marker over to, I think it was Dora I gave it to. When it came time to fill in the chart with our list of possibilities, Adam took over the writing duties. The class was having a lot of fun, with the exception of one woman who wasn't really participating, and when I quietly asked her if she had anything to add she said she wasn't native to Dalian. 

Again, the class was having a lot of fun, but my contribution was minimal, and the English spoken was ALSO minimal. As an English class I deemed it a failure.

And if you're waiting for me to tell you anything redeeming about the class, you'll be waiting a long time... except of course for that list of "Don't do's" that always gets longer. Still, I'm not too down on myself about it, I had other, more superficial worris to contend with, and, more importantly, I'm sick! Give me a break, man!

The class was over, and I wiped the board, feeling wiped myself. Almost everyone had left when Stella reminded me to turn off my computer station- no worries- and I finally got a chance to deflate and feel my tiredness.

I packed everything up, picked up my x-ray and "Certificate of Health Examination" that someone dropped off while I was teaching (right, and my passport is off getting visa-extended, I passed that off to what'shername to give to Vicky that morning, so this certificate is my de facto I.D. right now) and made my way against the wind, back to my apartment.

It's 11:02 am, and that was yesterday

Wish me luck, have a good day