January 29th, 2016

8:33 am

I woke up yesterday at 6:50 am and thought I would go back to sleep- I was supposed to meet Vicky in the lobby of my apartment where she would then help get me into the security system (well, check that off) and ask a neighbor if I could piggy-back on their wi-fi. It wasn't my idea, and I couldn't imagine doing it in Canada- but if Vicky wants to ask people about this, I've got no objections- so 6:50 was the time, but January 13th was the date... that wasn't right!

I checked my flip phone- what did I say, it was about 8:20? It was later, whatever it was.

I did some writing, had breakfast, and had just under twenty minutes left to shower- I got out thinking, sure, I've got about ten minutes left, then I look at my phone- 3 minutes. Whoops! And here I thought getting frozen to death would speed things up. It was an especially cold shower that morning, which I'm surprised is possible.

So I threw on clothes and rushed out the door- it felt good to leave without being kitted up with backpacks and jackets and whatnot. I was in the lobby right at 10 because I'm punctual like that. No Vicky though- I waited half an hour then decided, if nothing else, to get some warmer clothes on.

On go the johnnies (long-johns), on go the jackets, and I was ready to leave for the day. I hit up the lobby again before the next hour mark, no Vicky on the new hour, so I just went to work. Now I regret throwing my clothes in drawers, so much less accessible.

I arrived at work at the same time as Molly (teacher) and Dora (student), and asked Molly to send Vicky message along the lines of "did I get the time wrong? the date? what's up?" but the response was that she had forgot and went to some healing stone spa type thing. Well, it was otherwise her day off, I'm not exactly a fan of all the documentation errands I've had to run on my days off either. Boss' perogative to forget.

Oh, boss' perogative (so many spelling questions) reminds me- Wednesday my first class was with Lydian, the big boss' wife! This makes my third class with her, we have a good time in class together, I'm never so confident in my position here as when I'm having a class with Lydian. Besides the lesson we discussed the joys of running- she wants to run a marathon, and suggested I participate (it sounds like it's just a 10k) I said maybe.. but we could definitely go for a run sometime. Okay, sorry for the interruption, that was just something kind of important I forgot to mention.

Anyways, I had to work on my English Corner for the day, I had no video clips prepared, and I wasn't even sure what movie genres I'd be looking at today, but Thomas came over and really cut into my prep time. So instead of working I asked about Armour Heroes and we walked over to the Toys R Us to see the figures and giant poster on the wall I'd mentioned before. I was disappointed to find that these guys are a group working together like Power Rangers (so lame), however, the previous iteration, according to Thomas, was two guys that both had at least one additional transformation. So, that's pretty Rider-esque, I was happy about that.

Today was the day of the special at Food Bazzar- but 100 Yuan on your food card, get 120 instead. So I did that- fingers crossed I have more than a 100 Yuan in my pocket, but if that's it, I should still be good to make it to payday. I'll be pretty freaked out if some accounting error screws me over on the 5th. I mean, you know, screws me over MORE. 

I grabbed a lot of food- I had to work to finish it... and I only had about 15 minutes to get back for the 1 pm work call time. I certainly didn't think that through at all. But through a gastronomic miracle I got it all down right on time, and returned to my station to collect some clips. I grabbed "The Great Escape" which looks really cool, I should check that out, and and clip from "Saving Private Ryan" which I barely even used because the clip starts without any dialogue whatsoever and I got antsy about wasting time, so I cut it early.

I had time to grab a few more clips- I wanted to show the ending to "Titanic"- but the site wouldn't let me download anything else. Hopefully that's just because of some ad that was playing in the background that I couldn't figure out how to turn off, because if my method of getting clips no longer works then I'm in a bit of trouble. Just a bit, I can surely find other methods. Probably.

My first class was an Advanced Business Salon- Salon usually indicates a larger group, but this time there was only two- Caroline and Jack. There's an obvious skill disparity between Caroline and Jack, Caroline looked bored. At the end of the class she mentioned she wished she didn't take the business English- I was relieved, because I could tell myself that it wasn't me she found boring. 

My English Corner went far better than it had any right to, we had a few laughs (though there were definitely a few times when I was trying too hard). Before I started, Sunny (there are so many Sunnys here..) gave me a candy- I said thanks, that I'd need it to cheer up afterwards, and threw it in my pocket.

Probably the thing that got me through the hour was that, when discussing documentary I took a break to talk about the movie "Senna" which, if you haven't seen it, is awesome. I've actually got a pre-China blogpost about the movie here on the site, but, you know, good luck finding it I guess. And after the clip from "The Great Escape" I mentioned that Steve McQueen was "slick". It's like cool. Er, do you know the word "rebel"? Someone who breaks the rules... directing my attention at the ladies I asked did you ever like a rebel? I heard one person say "when I was young" and I automatically responded "what, yesterday?" That got a big laugh.

Let's see, English Corner done, I reviewed my lessons for the rest of the day, taking note of the photocopying that needed to be done, before going to get some food with Steve, Bradley, Sylar, and Leo. Sitting across from our table at a booth was Lily and a friend who isn't a student at Web. I said hello, and, returning after my meal, was introduced: She named herself "General"- awesome! She commented that she didn't think it was a beautiful name, and I told her, well, no, I can't say that it is, but it is awesome. 

Granted, it's less so if you think of it in terms of "generic" but, you know, how do the four star big boys avoid people thinking that? I don't know. I guess it could be better.

Let's see, three classes left... I'm blanking on the first one, but then I had Nicole, Haven, Daisy, and... someone. Arr I thought I had this one. It was a good class, Daisy is an older woman with a fast, sharp, aggressive way of talking that makes me think she's always on the verge of starting an argument, but in reality I think it may just be nervous fast talking. I told her I was surprised to hear that we'd only had class together the one other time, because she stands out and I'd assumed we'd had class together many times before.

I went a little over time in that class, so in my next class, also with Nicole and Haven, I did that old joke where I tell them I'm disappointed in their last teacher for keeping them so long from THIS class. One day that will even be funny.

It was a salon class on "Stereotypes" with some of my favourites- besides Nicole and Haven, there was Adam and Rain, and I met for the first time Galaxy. Yes! Galaxy! That. Is. What. I. Am. Talking. About!

I also recognized Amaris, Nigel... that might be it. There was one guy, sort of a big guy, tall I mean, who didn't have an English name, and he asked in that slow way of speaking of his that I've heard at English Corner, whether or not I could give him an English name. Oh man, dangerous waters, my friend! I told him that was something he should work on himself, but I've been mentally calling him "Goliath" ever since. At the end of class I made that suggestion, and told him to consider some other options, but "Goliath" could be cool.

So first we played a memory game where one person says a sentence following a particular pattern and then the next person has to remember the sentence, and then add another sentence also following the pattern, and on and on until everyone has participated. I told everyone how I hated these sorts of team building exercises, and I declared myself "the cool teacher" for letting them get through the game by taking notes and defeating part of the purpose. The third person, Rain, either didn't understand the premise, or understood it TOO well, and made her sentence absurdly complicated. I immediately vetoed it to the phrase "good luck" and continued, but then Galaxy, who DEFINITELY understood the premise, made her answer long and complicated as well. I let that one stand since people were starting to copy down notes at this point.

The second last person was Goliath, who, again, speaks rather slowly, so it took a while for him to get through. Finally his addition was "We are the 40 [Terrans] and we like [fighting zerglings]." It took me a while to figure out what he said, but then I said "Starcraft?" And he nodded, smiling and laughing.

The next exercise had us take a list of adjectives and apply them to some countries, trying to capture some stereotypes, either positive or negative. I gave the obligatory speech that where I'm from people don't like stereotypes, whether positive or negative, because they can't imagine people being so small as to fit into this set box of characteristics (or I said something like that). So the nationalities they could work with were Chinese, French, American, German, and then we added two Japanese and Canadian. I encouraged the Canadian one, I thought it would be funny- instead they used the chance to butter me up. I think Galaxy said Canadians were handsome- some wise guy said handsome, when that wasn't on the list of adjectives. I was obviously okay with it- and then my blue eyes got a shout out, and I was all "ok ok, thank you"

I had them working in groups of two to fill in these stereotypes, but when I got around to Galaxy and Adam (I'm realizing now that was kind of a dream team) they didn't have the same answers. Galaxy, did you go off and work on yours by yourself? Are you a lone wolf??

I explained "Lone Wolf". I think it fits, buuut apparently she was writing negative stereotypes for a place and Adam wrote positive. (Also, and I forget when this happened, but Adam thought "hospitable" was negative.) Galaxy came down really hard on the Chinese, particularly old women on the subway.

Basically, it was a lot of fun.

I left for the day walking from Web with Leo, Stella, and I think the flyer guy is also named Haven.

Definitely wish me luck with todays English Corner- soon I hope to transition to simply spending the hour telling them a story and answering whatever questions they have. Preferably from panels of Lee-Ditko Spider-Man.

Oh yeah, and when I got back to my apartment and emptied my pockets, there was that candy from Sunny. I layed down across this couch (futon?) and unwrapped it, expecting some piece of hard candy, and out came something that looked like a vaguely rounded, mashed together piece of avacado and pistachio (sp?). I laughed because I had no idea what it was, and popped it in my mouth. - 10:14 am