skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I promised all of you that I would blog more often. However, I've found this is easier said than done. I guess it's because we've been here so long. Two years isn't an exciting experience with new and exciting things to write about. It has become our regular life. How do I write about things that have become so ordinary for me? Maybe I should just describe a typical day in my life here. For your sake, I will divide this into 3 blog posts so you don’t have to read it all at once. Welcome to my morning......
I wake up in the morning to the alarm on my cell phone. We never bought an alarm clock, I'm not sure why. I wander into the kitchen and look out the window. Ninety percent of the time, it's cloudy or raining. However, for the sake of my writing, we'll say that on this particular day it happens to be sunny. <<insert good mood here>> I grab my breakfast...in the winter, it's oatmeal; in the summer it's frosted flakes. I munch on my frosted flakes without milk, because I don't like the taste of Chinese shelf milk. While I eat my breakfast, I look at my computer, hoping to see an email from home and a good weather report. I log on to an internet proxy to check Facebook and blogs, because the gov’t has blocked all of these websites on the regular internet. I usually give up in frustration after about 20 minutes, vowing to take revenge on the Great Firewall. I get dressed for class. My shoes depend on the weather...if it's sunny, I can wear my sandals, but if it's raining I have to wear sneakers or else I'll slip on the granite walkways and surely meet my doom. I’ve included a picture of the building I teach in.
When I'm done getting ready for class, I make sure I have everything I might need to survive the upcoming 4 hours of class: books, paper, ipod, sunglasses, an apple, a fan, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, a bottle of water, and my camera. I give myself a pep talk in hopes of energizing myself, even though I'm exhausted, and I head to class. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to class, and I'm not joking when I say it's all uphill. Since it's sunny, I'm in a good mood; however, that also means it's hot...by the time I've climbed all the hills and stairs to get to class, I'm panting and sweating. The students don't seem to notice since they're all happily chattering away in their desks...and why shouldn't they be? Even though it's only 8 am, most of them have already been awake for 3 hours. I muster up an appropriate level of gusto, and call out, "Good morning, class!" They enthusiastically echo, "Good morning!" After I take roll and listen to several lame excuses like, "my roommate wants to ask for leave because she has to wash her hair," class begins. To be honest I'm not a fantastic teacher in the grand scheme of things, but the students hang on my words like their lives depend on whatever comes out of my mouth. I like them that way.
After 4 hours of me laughing at them and them laughing at me, I head home for lunch. The streets and sidewalks are packed with students. Because it's a sunny day, most of them are carrying umbrellas to shield their skin from the sunshine. In their other hands, they carry their lunch; usually it's something mungbean-related. On the way home, I stop at the corner store to buy some potato chips. I get home and make my usual lunch: potato chips and a peanut butter sandwich.
So every once in a while, a teacher gets lazy and decides to show her students a movie instead of teaching. My students are well aware of this fact. When I went into class on Friday and said "Your teacher isn't feeling well, so...." I couldn't finish the sentence because the students had already begun cheering. Boy, do I feel loved. Anyway, the movie I had decided to show them was Nacho Libre. Part of their assignment was to write down some words they heard in the movie that they didn’t understand, and to guess the meanings of those words. Here are some of the words I found in their homework, in their original mistake-ridden format:
lotion = a kind of scream
nucleus = trousers
sacred = deeply frightened
bum = bottock
pro = frofessor
friar = fighter
nun = fun
pony = small house
orplan = a child without parents
celibacy = not sexing
slack = loozy
pubby = a lively dog
bum = the part of your body on which we sit
PJs = night pub
buttload = some animal
And, since I feel like I can’t blog without pictures, I’ve included pictures of my students having class outside
By the time we finished our trip throughout the tourist cities of Beijing it was mid-February. The first day of second semester was March 1st...considering the fact that we are in the twelfth week of school, I think I've been a little remiss in the blogging. So here's the question...how do I summarize 12 weeks of our life in China? I can try, but I'm sure I can't do it justice. The long and short of it is this:
We pretty much are doing the same things we're always doing. We spend five nights a week in our study groups, trying to cram in every bit of work we can before we leave in July. We've had a few let-downs, but we've also had some incredible successes and encouragements. One of our sisters is even working for us as a translator, which is helping us a lot in our work. I won't get into too many more details about our work, since I'm sure many of you have heard about it from Zack's emails.
So, let's see...aside from work, has anything else interesting happened? Maybe, but right now I can't remember any of those things. Last Thursday, our friend brought a puppy to our door and asked us if we could keep her for him for a month. We accepted, super excited. He found her on the street and picked her up, but since dogs aren't allowed in the dorms, he wants us to keep her until he moves out. So since last week, we've been taking care of a tiny, cute puppy. Her name is Bingo...which, in Chinese, means "ice dog." She's a bit of a mutt, but we love her!!!
So here's my plan: blog more often. One of our co-workers, Jessica, has made a commitment to write a blog every day from now until the end of the semester. An admirable goal, but mine is much more vague. I just don't think I can fulfill such a specific promise like Jessica. Anyway, I'll do my best to write blogs more frequently. In the meantime, I'll give you links to the blogs of our coworkers, Katie and Jessica.
Katie: http://katiemarshall.blogspot.com
Jessica: http://jesscusterinchina.blogspot.com
