i dislike what is happening right now. i think i may have just wasted the whole day. i just looked up cornell bhangra, base, and absolute zero on youtube... and did not write anything during that period of time. this is because i finally got up enough energy to start typing and realized that everything was crap crap crap. what has my "journey" been? how did i get to this point where i am trapped indoors all the time applying to grad school? well, the most honest and straightforward answer is the answer i gave when they asked more or less the same question for the statement of purpose. what came to mind and which i failed at articulating over the past 24 hours is that a) i am applying for grad school because i know what i want to do, but b) i don't know enough about it to just go out and do it without first attending grad school. c) i figured out what i want to do thanks to college ntres classes and a lot of community service + helping out at all these random npos over the years. d) that only ended up happening because i was raised to be the kind of optimistic/idealistic/community-loving person that i am. and this is where i lose the thought... because i couldn't just pinpoint for you where exactly that came from. the prompt suggests examples like, "you grew up in an area with an abundance or lack of educational opportunities" or some shit like that. and i'm like... is that really what this is supposed to be about? if you want to know about a student's socie-economic background, just... put a stupid multiple choice question in the application. why make people jump through these kinds of hoops? what about that makes a person more or less attractive as a candidate? why do i need to write a paean to the lakota public school system? maybe i'm reading this whole thing wrong (like last time) but it just makes me a little ill. i don't think i'm going to say a word about any of that because i honestly don't think the admissions committee is at all entitled to make me qualify that information. i think instead i'll write about how i got so involved in community service and how the desire to continue serving and be both environmentally conscious and effective about it has led me through all sorts of reinforcing experiences to the point where i'm on the verge of tears most days at the mercy of all these admissions deadlines. of course now the challenge is to do that while being as un-trite as possible. it's difficult. if you don't try, you write an essay like millions of others before yours. if you try too hard you sound like an affected moron. ok i think part of my brain is phasing out because i've been dropping "o's" from "too" pretty consistently for months. ok and my laptop insides just started howling. what is going on? anyways i've mostly given up my battle against cliches, because there's no way that in a pool of thousands of other essays, that mine's going to be particularly "original." no. we all got the same prompt, our goals are pretty similar (we all want to go to grad school), and we're not the first nor the last to have to deal with this crap.
ARGH. ok i think i need to turn my computer off right now. and then shower. and then turn it back on again. today SUCKED. though... i guess i did get a chance to watch before sunrise again. good movie! and also got to sear some scallops and roast fingerling potatoes (which i'm pretty sure were leftover from when i bought them in AUGUST). my mom will be upset when she gets home and sees the mess :)
Showing posts with label Irritants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irritants. Show all posts
Friday, January 02, 2009
Friday, November 14, 2008
Save me!
oh WOW this is a DISASTER! I can't write anything but the most useless drivel for this absurd essay. There's no obvious reason why this shouldn't have been done 5 hours after I started it LAST FRIDAY. And I'm now behind and running out of steam on this whole project. I may... sleep very little tonight. Anyways, I'm just going to complain a little bit about this to blow off some, um, more steam, and then I'll go back to whatever it was I was doing (sobbing inwardly in front of a defaced word processor screen). So, as I was saying earlier, I'm having a hard time talking about my good points without sounding like either a douchebag or a department store mannequin. So the irony here is that I come off looking way worse at the end of it all, which, I'm thinkin, isn't quite the point. There's something... something I'm doing wrong. I know it. I still haven't figured out what yet, well, outside of "everything," but nothing specific/helpful in the the slightest yet. All I know is that this is the incorrect approach. The research team that I've deployed to look into this matter has returned absolutely nothing of substance quite yet, but their desperate voices have suggested that I look into writing the weaknesses essay instead. At least that way I get to defame myself to my heart's content and that's easily upwards of 500 words at this point. Honestly, this whole "describe your strengths thing" was never my bag anyways. Sure, we can converse about it off the record or we can hang out for a bit and you can figure them out for yourself, but who honestly wants to offer up their insides on a silver platter just so a group of higher up hoo-has can compare it against other people's silver platters and then somehow make a value judgement based on its contents? And just how important is the platter? Does it matter whether it's like the "chills in the curio until the queen of france comes to visit" type of platter or the "i found a box of forks on the roadside and recycled them with the blowtorch in my garage" type of platter? You know which I'd prefer. Ok my left hand is wigging out again. Best I save it for the real battle.
Recidivism
Does anyone remember Amazin' Fruit gummy bears and how they were such a big deal when they first came out? I just thought of them because every time something is "amazing" a peal of "amaaaaazin'" sounds in my head.
Anyways, I've taken to doodling again, something I haven't really done so much since maybe junior high, and the margins of my notebook are getting kind of crowded and a little awkward. Also recurring: impulsive snacking and ceaseless whining. Also looking to others for comforting words when the true keeper of my salvation is someone I don't really want to have anything to do with at this point (that'd be me). Falling back into the old habits of distress. I think if I'd been a smoker at any time in my life and quit, I'd probably be lighting up right about now too.
Bleeeeeh. Bleeeeeeeh.
What obviously upsets me is the simplicity of this particular essay prompt. How injurious.
Well now I'm just angry thinking about it. I oughta go knock some teeth out of this thing. BRB.
Anyways, I've taken to doodling again, something I haven't really done so much since maybe junior high, and the margins of my notebook are getting kind of crowded and a little awkward. Also recurring: impulsive snacking and ceaseless whining. Also looking to others for comforting words when the true keeper of my salvation is someone I don't really want to have anything to do with at this point (that'd be me). Falling back into the old habits of distress. I think if I'd been a smoker at any time in my life and quit, I'd probably be lighting up right about now too.
Bleeeeeh. Bleeeeeeeh.
What obviously upsets me is the simplicity of this particular essay prompt. How injurious.
Well now I'm just angry thinking about it. I oughta go knock some teeth out of this thing. BRB.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Not one of them
Struggling here. In my quest for a satisfactory intro to this essay, I came up with this:
I have gone skiing a few times. My performance on each occasion could be fairly summarized as gleefully riding a chairlift up a big hill, skidding to the edge of the plateau, then commencing a sustained roll down the side of the hill, flinging equipment hither and yon, acting as a moving obstacle for teams of graceful 5-year-olds, and perhaps maintaining an upright position for a few fleeting moments before wiping out at last in front of the lodge. Skiing is not one of my strengths. Neither, as has been painfully evident over the years, is writing introductory paragraphs.
I have gone skiing a few times. My performance on each occasion could be fairly summarized as gleefully riding a chairlift up a big hill, skidding to the edge of the plateau, then commencing a sustained roll down the side of the hill, flinging equipment hither and yon, acting as a moving obstacle for teams of graceful 5-year-olds, and perhaps maintaining an upright position for a few fleeting moments before wiping out at last in front of the lodge. Skiing is not one of my strengths. Neither, as has been painfully evident over the years, is writing introductory paragraphs.
Monday, October 20, 2008
kind of grossed out
in the course of my stalking, i have discovered two dead mosquitoes in this room. one was... long gone and kind of white, and that one was under the cabinet. then was another fresher one by the closet. i would like to believe that that's this evening's nemesis, but... that might be wishful thinking. meanwhile i'm extremely sleepy. functioning tomorrow will likely be an issue.
trying to lure it out with my laptop. if no response soon i'm probably just going to pass out.
trying to lure it out with my laptop. if no response soon i'm probably just going to pass out.
vengeance will be mine
there are two things in the world i wish i had. ok, while we're at it, there are 3. one is my absentee ballot. come on warren county board of elections! wake up you bastards!
not long ago, i knew the joys of peaceful slumber. i fell asleep some time after 12, and again, not long after awoke having been supped on. i was PISSED. i now have turned on all the lights in my room and have been mounting an all-out offensive on the biggest ugliest flying blood-sucking piece of shit. it will not survive this night, and, granted how tired i am, neither might i. also, it's only big because it's full of my blood and i will not rest until its insides are smeared on the walls.
so, back to those things i wish i had. 1) a citronella candle. i have what is apparently a mosquito repeller, but what i want is one of those things that draws them in and then kills them. i recall the picnic table at our campout back when, and what i waaant is a killing field of mosquitoes. 2) one of those electrified badminton rackets that they've developed over here expressly for frying these little fuckers. I did used to have one of those in Beijing and I am going out tomorrow and buying another one and keeping it by my bed like a shotgun.
if you can't tell i'm really angry and itchy and sleep-deprived. i am doing the latimes crossword.
not long ago, i knew the joys of peaceful slumber. i fell asleep some time after 12, and again, not long after awoke having been supped on. i was PISSED. i now have turned on all the lights in my room and have been mounting an all-out offensive on the biggest ugliest flying blood-sucking piece of shit. it will not survive this night, and, granted how tired i am, neither might i. also, it's only big because it's full of my blood and i will not rest until its insides are smeared on the walls.
so, back to those things i wish i had. 1) a citronella candle. i have what is apparently a mosquito repeller, but what i want is one of those things that draws them in and then kills them. i recall the picnic table at our campout back when, and what i waaant is a killing field of mosquitoes. 2) one of those electrified badminton rackets that they've developed over here expressly for frying these little fuckers. I did used to have one of those in Beijing and I am going out tomorrow and buying another one and keeping it by my bed like a shotgun.
if you can't tell i'm really angry and itchy and sleep-deprived. i am doing the latimes crossword.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Mondays can be like this
Ah, today... was a good day that didn't seem at first like it was going to be very good. As I was packing my things this morning, my mom called, rather unexpectedly, to tell me that some company was denied a charge on my credit card and sent a collection notice complete with a $15 fine, also unexpected. The charge was related to the membership fee for the climbing gym, and we did have issues with that last week, but I assumed that they had been resolved. What I was really peeved over was the $15 fee, especially since I'm positive that I wasn't at fault in this situation in any way-- I'd just paid the balance on my card a few days prior, and it was nowhere near topped out to begin with. So my mom said she'd scan the letter to me, and I resolved to take care of it when I got to work.
I left at 8:30 this morning because I just needed to do something other than sleep in from now on. Last week was nice... nowhere to be until 1pm so I remained stubbornly in bed until perhaps 11 every day. But as cozy as that is, it gets old when you're already feeling pretty useless, and so today I went ahead and started volunteering my free time to do random office tasks for Transfair, an organization that I would have liked to had interned for, but whatever. My feeling is that volunteering is similar to interning, if less focused and intensive, but equally unpaid. Also, I've been dying to get to know this org a little better because fair trade is one of those interests that I'd consider pursuing academically and then professionally, out there in future-land. Anyways, the environment there was really nice-- their office space is huge and everyone on the staff was very friendly. I got a fairly menial task, though it was one I could appreciate. But also I got a nice cup of coffee, which had me buzzed etc. for most of the day. I'm headed back in tomorrow and really looking forward to it.
Then, on my way to work, I gave away an 85 cent BART ticket I've had sitting around in my pocket for months, and then made it just in time for the train. I listened to music I enjoyed. The weather was nice.
Once I got up to the library, I tackled the whole creditor issue with every ounce of self-righteousness I could muster. The thing is though, no matter how worked up I get, I can never bring myself to be rude to customer service agents over the phone. This is probably a good thing though. Anyways, I called the company, and the rep said that the charge eventually went through and they already took the fee, which is non-refundable. I was slightly indignant. I mean, if I wrote my card number down correctly and it was copied wrong by others, or if I paid my credit card bill and they denied it anyway, or if someone input the expiration date wrong or whatever, then... the fact that something went wrong has a lot less to do with me than it does with points elsewhere in the system, is that correct? That they arbitrarily charge a fee to the first person they see just seems sort of unfair.
Anyways, I followed that call with one to my card company, who directed me to call customer service at my credit union. Both parties insisted that they saw no attempted charge for the alleged day and made suggestions as to how I should approach the fee-takers. I called back and explained the way I saw the situation, and after two awkwardly long and silent transfers, I got put through to a supervisor who very straightforwardly told me that I had a right to see my money refunded THIS TIME. It was very reliant on the fact that it was the first time anything like this had happened, but I'm assuming it helped that it was probably not my fault in the first place. I'd been sitting in the stairwell at work while this all took place just to avoid making any scenes in front of lunching co-workers, but every once in a while, someone would have to use the stairs, and I just felt awkward having this petty financial dispute on my cell phone in there. But in any case, I fought the Man and won, so what up.
When I picked up the library mail this morning, I was delighted to find my arms just full of stuff. But also, among all that stuff, was a list of labels that I ordered last week, meaning that I could finally complete an odyssey of book-cataloging that I had begun and left incomplete my first day on the job (because I had to wait for the labels). Also, I had two other jobs to keep me busy. So I was fairly busy all day, wrapping and labeling books and other time-consuming things. When the day was almost out, I decided to take a look at the steps in cataloging that involved importing and whatnot with this outrageously stand-offish system that we utilize, and ended up in a battle of wills against that until after the library officially closed. I left about half an hour later tonight, so I figured I might as well stay for the remainder of the lecture going on downstairs, which was a little... random. It was funny cuz I wrote a lot of the planted questions that got asked and was feeling bashful because of it. But also, my questions were not eliciting the interesting answers I thought they would. But whatever
Then I left, had some company on my way to the BART, and after some inexplicable delays in East Bay, got home, ate, and showered. And now I'm here.
So, I actually had something worthy of being tagged "Advice" in this ridiculous blog, but I've forgotten what it was, and now I doubt that I'll even be able to benefit from whatever incredible piece of knowledge it was. Sigh.
I left at 8:30 this morning because I just needed to do something other than sleep in from now on. Last week was nice... nowhere to be until 1pm so I remained stubbornly in bed until perhaps 11 every day. But as cozy as that is, it gets old when you're already feeling pretty useless, and so today I went ahead and started volunteering my free time to do random office tasks for Transfair, an organization that I would have liked to had interned for, but whatever. My feeling is that volunteering is similar to interning, if less focused and intensive, but equally unpaid. Also, I've been dying to get to know this org a little better because fair trade is one of those interests that I'd consider pursuing academically and then professionally, out there in future-land. Anyways, the environment there was really nice-- their office space is huge and everyone on the staff was very friendly. I got a fairly menial task, though it was one I could appreciate. But also I got a nice cup of coffee, which had me buzzed etc. for most of the day. I'm headed back in tomorrow and really looking forward to it.
Then, on my way to work, I gave away an 85 cent BART ticket I've had sitting around in my pocket for months, and then made it just in time for the train. I listened to music I enjoyed. The weather was nice.
Once I got up to the library, I tackled the whole creditor issue with every ounce of self-righteousness I could muster. The thing is though, no matter how worked up I get, I can never bring myself to be rude to customer service agents over the phone. This is probably a good thing though. Anyways, I called the company, and the rep said that the charge eventually went through and they already took the fee, which is non-refundable. I was slightly indignant. I mean, if I wrote my card number down correctly and it was copied wrong by others, or if I paid my credit card bill and they denied it anyway, or if someone input the expiration date wrong or whatever, then... the fact that something went wrong has a lot less to do with me than it does with points elsewhere in the system, is that correct? That they arbitrarily charge a fee to the first person they see just seems sort of unfair.
Anyways, I followed that call with one to my card company, who directed me to call customer service at my credit union. Both parties insisted that they saw no attempted charge for the alleged day and made suggestions as to how I should approach the fee-takers. I called back and explained the way I saw the situation, and after two awkwardly long and silent transfers, I got put through to a supervisor who very straightforwardly told me that I had a right to see my money refunded THIS TIME. It was very reliant on the fact that it was the first time anything like this had happened, but I'm assuming it helped that it was probably not my fault in the first place. I'd been sitting in the stairwell at work while this all took place just to avoid making any scenes in front of lunching co-workers, but every once in a while, someone would have to use the stairs, and I just felt awkward having this petty financial dispute on my cell phone in there. But in any case, I fought the Man and won, so what up.
When I picked up the library mail this morning, I was delighted to find my arms just full of stuff. But also, among all that stuff, was a list of labels that I ordered last week, meaning that I could finally complete an odyssey of book-cataloging that I had begun and left incomplete my first day on the job (because I had to wait for the labels). Also, I had two other jobs to keep me busy. So I was fairly busy all day, wrapping and labeling books and other time-consuming things. When the day was almost out, I decided to take a look at the steps in cataloging that involved importing and whatnot with this outrageously stand-offish system that we utilize, and ended up in a battle of wills against that until after the library officially closed. I left about half an hour later tonight, so I figured I might as well stay for the remainder of the lecture going on downstairs, which was a little... random. It was funny cuz I wrote a lot of the planted questions that got asked and was feeling bashful because of it. But also, my questions were not eliciting the interesting answers I thought they would. But whatever
Then I left, had some company on my way to the BART, and after some inexplicable delays in East Bay, got home, ate, and showered. And now I'm here.
So, I actually had something worthy of being tagged "Advice" in this ridiculous blog, but I've forgotten what it was, and now I doubt that I'll even be able to benefit from whatever incredible piece of knowledge it was. Sigh.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
uh oh
last night i awoke from pleasant dreams with a fire in the nether-regions of my throat. you know what i'm talking about-- it's the kind of sore throat that makes you want to cry and ask "why me?" my throat got sore the night before, and was uncomfortable that morning, but i forgot about it for most of the day. but then i ran my mouth a whole lot, and that's why i think what was previously a scratchy tonsil transformed into a deep-throated furnace. i was torn between further entrenching myself in my warm blankets and getting up to find a remedy. i was tired. i wanted nothing more than to be asleep again. but then i checked my watch and found that it was only 1:50 (it felt like 4am). so i dragged myself out of bed and started going through the pantry for something--anything-- that might help. i thought that maybe i had bought some soup months ago that i'd forgotten about. i found mac and cheese in the freezer and noted that. but when inspiration struck, and i checked a lower cabinet for canned goods, i found the thing to do the trick. there, behind a cadre of canned peaches, sat a lone can of spaghettios, expiration summer 08. i decanted them into a tupperware container and heated them up. it's not that i'm a huge fan of spaghettios, although it's evidently a good thing that i don't mind eating them. for a sore throat, there's nothing better than something warm and viscous (bonus points for saltiness or spiciness) delivered directly to the offending area. and that's how i found myself eating spaghettios at 2am this morning.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Saturday is Murphy's Law Karmic Revenge Day
And it really is. Or at least on a small scale. Saturday is "I should have known" Day, though most of the time everything balances out in time for the afternoon. This Saturday was a pretty good example.
So really, Saturday just adheres to a strict policy of cause and effect, and therefore my story begins on Friday. Fridays are the days that I used to spend frantically trying to complete a worksheet unit for my Saturday morning students (who don't appreciate it so much, by the way) so that I could get it printed by 4pm, when I have to head back to class with Russ and Dave. Ever since I found out though that the printer opens at 7:30 in the morning, I've been putting off the work until the evening so that I can relax a bit in the afternoon and just wake up early (which I tend to do anyways) to get everything done. This worked fine for like one or two weeks, until one recent weekend where the machine kept choking or something and I wound up having to take a cab to make it to school on time (and the cab woman would not give me change for a 50, even though she had it, and insisted on looking in a gas station for change when they were either closed or didn't have it either and in this manner stalled me even further). My thing is that I like to take the bus cuz it saves money and I like to take it early because I don't like walking through a fog of recessing #1 school students to get to my classroom.
Anyways, last Friday, I was tootally not in the mood to spend my afternoon making this worksheet. I had some lunch, walked around a bit, and came home with the intention of napping for a while before getting started on it... but then I decided that maybe I wanted some lychees. I figured I could get some fruit and get in some brief conversation with the fruit guy and thereby put myself in a good mood to do work. The brief conversation became kind of an hour-long conversation, give or take, and by the time I got back I was even more tired and much closer to classtime. I ended up sort of not doing anything productive in the meantime and then left.
Putting the worksheet together at night normally isn't a problem for me either. I can stay up to do work if I have to, and really a lot of the worksheet is pretty automatic once I get the main idea set down. So this was not a big deal, nor was it out of the ordinary.
After class, I hung out with Dave and Russ as per usual. We often eat dinner together since it used to be we all had class relatively soon after, but recently it's just been a few snacks at some picnic tables near a bunch of vendors. By the time Dave and I got back (this particular class takes place in my neighborhood), Mrs. Liu and some of the parents were just standing around outside my apartment. After a brief chat, I headed in, BUT stopped short when I saw Tara's bike sitting there. I found that I could go no further. The whole idea of writing this thing with the constant distraction of her mere presence was simply too much. SO, I decided to go cool off in the little park area. I sat for a while... sent Alice some text messages describing my plight, and eventually pulled out my notebook and sketched out my worksheet idea. Eventually Alice texted me back and told me to go over to her place instead. So I walked on over, rested my head briefly, ate what amounted to a 2nd dinner, and at last the 2 of us came home. At that point I just wanted to shower and die, so I did just that. I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time sitting around staring at Word, when I knew that I could get up early and have a nice serene work atmosphere all to myself. That's just what I did.
Saturday dawned. I arose as planned, and finished everything on time. I figured that the latest I should be headed to the printer was about 8:15, to allow for any copier troubles that could come up. Everything went all right UNTIL I couldn't find my USB drive. Couldn't find it anywhere. Still can't find it, as a matter of fact, which ain't good but whatever. I did, however, know the location of my 256k drive which I hadn't used in months because it was full. I decided to just delete some of the stuff for now.
I don't know if I was just dazed or what, but when my anti-virus/spyware monitor suddenly started asking me if Windows Help should be allowed to alter system information and access the internet, I just kept clicking allow. I remember thinking "this doesn't seem right... oh well!" Then I got the BSOD for the first time in ages and my computer shut off. Cue storm of cuss words and panic attack.
I restarted my system, and it all came back ok, at which point I was prompted again about Windows Help. I'm not sure why it said Windows Help, but the actual program in question was one RECYCLER.exe, which turned out to be a trojan/smashbot or stashbot or slashbot or something. I got sooo pissed. I'm pretty sure I got this virus from a computer at the #1 school last semester. But anyway, I couldn't access the drive at all, so I burned the files to CD to drop off at the printer so that I could come home and work this out while it was all getting done. I threw on a random outfit (jeans/t-shirt affair) and ran downstairs. When I got there, we couldn't get their CD drive open. When it opened, it couldn't read the data. SO. I had to run back.
By this time, Tara had gotten up and was getting ready to leave. Alice got up too, though I guess just to visit the bathroom. I waylaid her and begged her for her usb disk. She gave me her usb hub. We spent a moment trying to clarify this and finally I got a working disk with my files to the printer. While I was there they also killed the virus on my USB (though it involved deleting everything). At this point I had enough foresight to ask whether or not I should go make some change to pay for the printing. I did have to, so I went to the convenience store and bought random crap.
I got out at 9:15 wide awake with enough adrenaline in my system to last the rest of the day. At the end of it all, I decided to just take the bus anyway just to sort of reclaim my morning. I got to class exactly at 10.
Afterwards I went for a soothing coffee/student journal reading session and the rest of the day went all right.
So anyways, I'm not complaining, since everything worked out in the end, but it's just kind of a funny story to me. By the way, I fiddled a bit with the registry and it seems like my virus problems are solved...
So really, Saturday just adheres to a strict policy of cause and effect, and therefore my story begins on Friday. Fridays are the days that I used to spend frantically trying to complete a worksheet unit for my Saturday morning students (who don't appreciate it so much, by the way) so that I could get it printed by 4pm, when I have to head back to class with Russ and Dave. Ever since I found out though that the printer opens at 7:30 in the morning, I've been putting off the work until the evening so that I can relax a bit in the afternoon and just wake up early (which I tend to do anyways) to get everything done. This worked fine for like one or two weeks, until one recent weekend where the machine kept choking or something and I wound up having to take a cab to make it to school on time (and the cab woman would not give me change for a 50, even though she had it, and insisted on looking in a gas station for change when they were either closed or didn't have it either and in this manner stalled me even further). My thing is that I like to take the bus cuz it saves money and I like to take it early because I don't like walking through a fog of recessing #1 school students to get to my classroom.
Anyways, last Friday, I was tootally not in the mood to spend my afternoon making this worksheet. I had some lunch, walked around a bit, and came home with the intention of napping for a while before getting started on it... but then I decided that maybe I wanted some lychees. I figured I could get some fruit and get in some brief conversation with the fruit guy and thereby put myself in a good mood to do work. The brief conversation became kind of an hour-long conversation, give or take, and by the time I got back I was even more tired and much closer to classtime. I ended up sort of not doing anything productive in the meantime and then left.
Putting the worksheet together at night normally isn't a problem for me either. I can stay up to do work if I have to, and really a lot of the worksheet is pretty automatic once I get the main idea set down. So this was not a big deal, nor was it out of the ordinary.
After class, I hung out with Dave and Russ as per usual. We often eat dinner together since it used to be we all had class relatively soon after, but recently it's just been a few snacks at some picnic tables near a bunch of vendors. By the time Dave and I got back (this particular class takes place in my neighborhood), Mrs. Liu and some of the parents were just standing around outside my apartment. After a brief chat, I headed in, BUT stopped short when I saw Tara's bike sitting there. I found that I could go no further. The whole idea of writing this thing with the constant distraction of her mere presence was simply too much. SO, I decided to go cool off in the little park area. I sat for a while... sent Alice some text messages describing my plight, and eventually pulled out my notebook and sketched out my worksheet idea. Eventually Alice texted me back and told me to go over to her place instead. So I walked on over, rested my head briefly, ate what amounted to a 2nd dinner, and at last the 2 of us came home. At that point I just wanted to shower and die, so I did just that. I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time sitting around staring at Word, when I knew that I could get up early and have a nice serene work atmosphere all to myself. That's just what I did.
Saturday dawned. I arose as planned, and finished everything on time. I figured that the latest I should be headed to the printer was about 8:15, to allow for any copier troubles that could come up. Everything went all right UNTIL I couldn't find my USB drive. Couldn't find it anywhere. Still can't find it, as a matter of fact, which ain't good but whatever. I did, however, know the location of my 256k drive which I hadn't used in months because it was full. I decided to just delete some of the stuff for now.
I don't know if I was just dazed or what, but when my anti-virus/spyware monitor suddenly started asking me if Windows Help should be allowed to alter system information and access the internet, I just kept clicking allow. I remember thinking "this doesn't seem right... oh well!" Then I got the BSOD for the first time in ages and my computer shut off. Cue storm of cuss words and panic attack.
I restarted my system, and it all came back ok, at which point I was prompted again about Windows Help. I'm not sure why it said Windows Help, but the actual program in question was one RECYCLER.exe, which turned out to be a trojan/smashbot or stashbot or slashbot or something. I got sooo pissed. I'm pretty sure I got this virus from a computer at the #1 school last semester. But anyway, I couldn't access the drive at all, so I burned the files to CD to drop off at the printer so that I could come home and work this out while it was all getting done. I threw on a random outfit (jeans/t-shirt affair) and ran downstairs. When I got there, we couldn't get their CD drive open. When it opened, it couldn't read the data. SO. I had to run back.
By this time, Tara had gotten up and was getting ready to leave. Alice got up too, though I guess just to visit the bathroom. I waylaid her and begged her for her usb disk. She gave me her usb hub. We spent a moment trying to clarify this and finally I got a working disk with my files to the printer. While I was there they also killed the virus on my USB (though it involved deleting everything). At this point I had enough foresight to ask whether or not I should go make some change to pay for the printing. I did have to, so I went to the convenience store and bought random crap.
I got out at 9:15 wide awake with enough adrenaline in my system to last the rest of the day. At the end of it all, I decided to just take the bus anyway just to sort of reclaim my morning. I got to class exactly at 10.
Afterwards I went for a soothing coffee/student journal reading session and the rest of the day went all right.
So anyways, I'm not complaining, since everything worked out in the end, but it's just kind of a funny story to me. By the way, I fiddled a bit with the registry and it seems like my virus problems are solved...
Friday, October 27, 2006
Laptop Troubles
So last Sunday, I developed some computering problems that were rectified yesterday. Since I have a few unrelated stories I want to share, I'll go ahead and split them into a few easy to swallow entries!
As for my laptop troubles... the problem was that my adapter was... broken? There was something wrong with it, and so my laptop battery would no longer charge. I think this was actually brewing for a couple of days. Alice and I were watching Meet Joe Black one night when our DVD player flipped out, so I put the movie in my laptop instead. I ran out of battery by the end and it took me a while to realize that even after it was plugged in, no juice was flowing. I jiggled the connection though, and then it was fine. I figured the cable wasn't fully connected somewhere
The next day though, my computer ran down again, as the thing was plugged in. I panicked slightly and swished the cable around, and it was fixed again. This hadn't ever been an issue before... the connection was always pretty stable, but I just shrugged it off.
Then last Sunday, while I was using my laptop for class, it did a couple of bizarre things. First of all, iTunes blinked out of existence briefly... it disappeared from my quick launch and then told me that it was uninstalled when I tried to open it through the start menu. Then my Now Charging icon disappeared and didn't come back no matter what I did.
So last week I had only about 1 hr of power left in my laptop that I was afraid to use in case I needed it or something. For a while it looked like I'd need to go to Hohhot again to find a repair place, buuuut...
My class was cancelled on Tuesday, but when Alice got back she told me that Mr. Ding said he knew a Sony story here that could at least look at it, but that he would use some of the school's equipment to see if the problem was my laptop or the adapter. The next day I took everything in, but the tests showed that it was my laptop. I was really upset, right?
Thursday morning, we met up to go to the Sony store, where I feel like... they didn't try very hard at first because really Sony doesn't sell my model anymore. Also they insisted that it was probably the adapter. We were ready to leave when I was like "well... did they say if we could check it with one of the adapters here? it's not like all the computers in this series don't have the same parts" and so on. So we pulled everything out again, they plugged in an adapter from one of the T series (which are gooooorgeous and I want one) and ta da. The guy couldn't sell us one from that store, but he predicted a Y380 price tag if we bought it from an electronics shop.
So we ended up in an A/V mall a la that episode of Cowboy Bebop where Jet's looking for a beta tape deck, and guess how much my new adapter cost! Like... Y130, making it officially cheaper than the generic replacement I got off eBay after the original disappeared at the library junior year (and that one broke, remember). So cool. I may get another before I leave just so I'm covered in future eventualities.
As for my laptop troubles... the problem was that my adapter was... broken? There was something wrong with it, and so my laptop battery would no longer charge. I think this was actually brewing for a couple of days. Alice and I were watching Meet Joe Black one night when our DVD player flipped out, so I put the movie in my laptop instead. I ran out of battery by the end and it took me a while to realize that even after it was plugged in, no juice was flowing. I jiggled the connection though, and then it was fine. I figured the cable wasn't fully connected somewhere
The next day though, my computer ran down again, as the thing was plugged in. I panicked slightly and swished the cable around, and it was fixed again. This hadn't ever been an issue before... the connection was always pretty stable, but I just shrugged it off.
Then last Sunday, while I was using my laptop for class, it did a couple of bizarre things. First of all, iTunes blinked out of existence briefly... it disappeared from my quick launch and then told me that it was uninstalled when I tried to open it through the start menu. Then my Now Charging icon disappeared and didn't come back no matter what I did.
So last week I had only about 1 hr of power left in my laptop that I was afraid to use in case I needed it or something. For a while it looked like I'd need to go to Hohhot again to find a repair place, buuuut...
My class was cancelled on Tuesday, but when Alice got back she told me that Mr. Ding said he knew a Sony story here that could at least look at it, but that he would use some of the school's equipment to see if the problem was my laptop or the adapter. The next day I took everything in, but the tests showed that it was my laptop. I was really upset, right?
Thursday morning, we met up to go to the Sony store, where I feel like... they didn't try very hard at first because really Sony doesn't sell my model anymore. Also they insisted that it was probably the adapter. We were ready to leave when I was like "well... did they say if we could check it with one of the adapters here? it's not like all the computers in this series don't have the same parts" and so on. So we pulled everything out again, they plugged in an adapter from one of the T series (which are gooooorgeous and I want one) and ta da. The guy couldn't sell us one from that store, but he predicted a Y380 price tag if we bought it from an electronics shop.
So we ended up in an A/V mall a la that episode of Cowboy Bebop where Jet's looking for a beta tape deck, and guess how much my new adapter cost! Like... Y130, making it officially cheaper than the generic replacement I got off eBay after the original disappeared at the library junior year (and that one broke, remember). So cool. I may get another before I leave just so I'm covered in future eventualities.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Kind of sick now
Because I found a website today where pissed off foreigners just bitch and bitch. So it really looked like kind of a support group for people having bad days in a strange land, but having gone through one of the comment pages, I feel as though many of these people could benefit from just... spiking their mi fan with midol or something.
Like there was a challenge where folks should submit their best simile for life in China, but the replies were just so bitter that everyone missed the point of what this challenge *could* have been. A lot of them compared China to self-mutilation, disappointment, unhealthy relationships, and regrettable sex. Often, Chinese people were described as children, effete, stupid, or crooked. I hadn't even read all the comments when the most obvious solution presented itself: go home. I mean... if you don't like it here, and it's so much trouble to stay here, why don't you just go home? Clearly it's sooooo much better back there, though I promise you'll still be able to find shit to complain about.
Whatever, everyone is allowed a moment to rage and be a moron, especially when unexpected things happen that aren't altogether positive (re: not at all), but classless humor is not a substitute for superiority and belittling an entire country of individuals just because you had a bad day does not pass for clever.
Cope or go home.
Like there was a challenge where folks should submit their best simile for life in China, but the replies were just so bitter that everyone missed the point of what this challenge *could* have been. A lot of them compared China to self-mutilation, disappointment, unhealthy relationships, and regrettable sex. Often, Chinese people were described as children, effete, stupid, or crooked. I hadn't even read all the comments when the most obvious solution presented itself: go home. I mean... if you don't like it here, and it's so much trouble to stay here, why don't you just go home? Clearly it's sooooo much better back there, though I promise you'll still be able to find shit to complain about.
Whatever, everyone is allowed a moment to rage and be a moron, especially when unexpected things happen that aren't altogether positive (re: not at all), but classless humor is not a substitute for superiority and belittling an entire country of individuals just because you had a bad day does not pass for clever.
Cope or go home.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Details, details, me being pissed, and when words become tasty
[In this installment: today, yesterday, food habits, appliances, teaching, going apesh*t, and a colorful restaurant review]
Today I awoke at 6:something from what amounted to a teaching nightmare to find that my abdomen was still inflated like a balloon. I'd been tossing and turning for goodness knows how long, from confrontation after confrontation with confused and irritated students and some righteous gastro-intestinal injury. Basically, I'd eaten an unusually large portion at dinner previously and it appeared that none of it had yet begun the journey to digestion and was just hanging out in my stomach. So actually this morning sucked, because I knew I still had 2ish lessons to plan for today. I sat up straight for a while, consumed an oreo, took some pepto, and tried the sleeping thing again, really uninterested in puking in any way.
After my alarm officially roused me around 9, I managed to pass out again (you know how that goes). This time, I had a really interesting dream about "King's Island" (only not really), getting pizza and candy there with Selina, some holiday, a small child, a bunch of Chinese people who are related to me, and... stuff. Whatever, it was weird, and I woke up during this really emotional part that involved lots of cheesy pizza.
You see, the restfulness of my sleep has not improved.
Anyways, classes today went all right. The training center students now have THREE textbooks! I was like... what?? When I realized a few days ago that they'd all paid for the first two and were already in possession of them, I started building some lessons around those. The first day was boooring, cuz I didn't get the corresponding tapes (yes, cassette tapes!) until 30 min into the lesson, and not everyone brought their books, and also I wasn't 100% sure of the most efficient way to use them. I've since determined that some of the activities are just plain dumb, but have also accepted the usefulness of some of the others to spur discussion. So that ended up warming things up today after the initial blaaaah of the recorded dialogues.
My ideal class would be smaller, with a more consistent level of advancement. But oh well. At least when they're doing activities, I get to move around and check on their degree of understanding. It's actually, like, my favorite part and I'm hopeful that it helps, but really they're the ones who'd know about that-- not me. Sadly. Today we did introductions (almost as done as it sounds, but with a bit of logic behind it, coming from a book) and superstitions, which was fun and COINCIDENTALLY (whoa) appropriate since yesterday was you-know-when.
When I got back, Alice and her mom were home getting dinner started. In case you wonder, I've been subsisting largely on a diet of potatoes and rice, and, uh, losing weight in spite of it. All my clothes started fitting better again almost as soon as the plane landed. It's been pretty sweet. Anyways, tonight there was rice, potatoes and... leeks? with extra soy, and some leftovers from when the Lees cooked lunch here the other day-- the green remains of some di san xian (Alice's mom insists that it's just stir-fried eggplant... i guess since the green peppers and potatoes are more common) and some stir-fried potato slices with green pepper. The leftovers were brought to us by our brand new microwave, which we picked up Thursday morning from the 5th floor of Wangfujing department store. The microwave... was Y400, but interestingly enough has a function that admits the use of metal... I believe it's the "Lightwave." I don't know anything about it, so I'm reluctant to use anything other than nuke hi until I can get details on the instructions from Alice. Also it was big and we had to drag it down all the floors by escalator and then wheel it home on the back of the bike.
I started still another class with high schoolers today, this time only 7 students. There were two English teachers present, moms of two of the boys. They came to the apartment at 8 tonight, and we talked for about an hour before they all left. They were pretty enthusiastic, but most of them have some big exams this weekend (class will be 2 hrs long, starting next week). I felt bad though, cuz one of the girls kept insisting that they had absolutely no free time to watch movies or listen to music since they spend so much time at school and on homework. I was like... damn, 1) I'm glad to be out of high school, 2) I'm glad I went to a US public school.
Viewed 10 Things I Hate About You, courtesy of iTunes, for the 3rd time in perhaps just as many days, but the idea was to show it to Alice since we watched Brokeback Mountain the other day (agreed: it should have won, and crash is a sillier movie than ever) and I wanted her to know that Heath Ledger can enunciate when the script calls for it. As you see, it's been a good week for movies.
Friday marked the end of my first week of real classes at the high school. This second lesson was mostly about getting them in the right mindset for learning English-- first present the potential, then discuss it. Also, I wanted to get an idea of the subjects they usually talk about with their friends (in case I'm more out of touch than I thought). And we listened to/analysed "It's Beginning To Get To Me" by Snow Patrol. I want to equate the first class of the week to a firstborn child. That is, they get the raw unadulterated lesson, which has had no feedback, no correction, and they have to deal with any unrealistic expectations that may exist. The kids are all really charming though. I thought that my first lesson, which involved throwing a ball and sitting around chittering while other kids had the spotlight, would make them think that it was ok to be unruly. But boy, do they listen to you when you speak! By Friday though, I was way bored with my own lesson (and I have to do the same thing for the other classes next week, ick), and changed it a little-- for the better evidently. Instead of my blind quest for a group analysis of the song (which left me explaining most of it), I was like "ok, you figure it out for yourselves." Yay for getting to walk around and talk to everyone!
Meanwhile, and this is something I HAVE to complain about, Russ spent all week screening Fellowship of the Ring. I know he's declared vehemently that he doesn't want to teach high schoolers, but I don't see what the big deal is. In a lot of ways, they're a lot easier to teach than the adults-- they're no less cooperative, and due to the miracle of a 5-7 year (still not sure which) curriculum, they understand more of what you say, sooner. Also, hey, you have slightly more power over them, weird as that sounds. Anyway, the story began on Monday, when Alice asked me and Russ if we had our lesson outlines prepared. He said yes, and I said no. By lesson outline, she meant like a handout that they could photocopy for the students. I was expecting to have until Tuesday morning. At all this extra information, Russ was like "what?" Turns out he had a lesson plan, but had no idea that anyone had ever asked for a handout (which I'm sure has been brought up before). The next morning, I got up bright and early to type everything out and finalize like my song choice and all that, and had the original sheet printed by the time Alice woke up. She left to photocopy and didn't come back for hours.
When she finally got back, I was like... did you really have to wait that long? I was curious because she only needed to make 300 copies of each outline, and having walked various print jobs to the Olin copy center, I figured that no matter what equipment it was, it couldn't have taken that long. She said, with some exasperation, "I was waiting for Russ!" I had heard her call him before she left to make sure that he had something, but he still didn't even by the time she got there. What he wound up giving her was a handwritten sheet with a few random terms from freaking LOTR written on it with colons after them. I looked at this paper and not all of my laughter could be suppressed. Seriously, anyone who had this handed to them would have a big WTF branded hard across their forehead. I was like, you are shitting me, plain and simple. But no. Alice's aunt had bought a computer for Russ to use, so Alice was like, can't you at least type it? Well no. He refused to revise the "outline" (like hell) in any way, saying that he never wanted to teach the high schoolers and that they could fire him if they wanted. What makes this situation more exasperating is that he's leaving in January anyways, when a new teacher is scheduled to arrive, and we really don't want him to leave sooner than that.
So Alice didn't copy that.
We went to the school early to sort out all the technical matters associated with him playing that damn movie, and they almost couldn't get it to play. But since my equipment was controlled by a console I'd never encountered before, I asked Alice and Teacher Ding (who's in charge of the language lab Russ was using) to figure out my stuff while I messed around with the DVD. Proud to say that my experiments bore fruit, and quickly, and I was off.
I had the training center that night, so Alice and I were dropped off within walking distance (well... in campus/city terms, I suppose). She'd sat in on Russ's class and was nice enough to describe it to me. I would probably have been really pissed if I'd been sitting in there. He'd insisted that he would only show about 15 minutes of the film, but actually spent 40 min or something on it. Only... the way he did it... he apparently played it, unsubtitled in any language, then stopped it and repeated all the lines, and wrote them on the board. Alice had told me earlier what Russ had told her that his plan was: 15 minutes of the movie and then October holidays. Fucking holidays! So the first day at the hospital and training center, we'd been surprised by the fact that we had to actually teach a lesson (this was the day after we arrived), so he turned randomly to a page in a book, saw the word "holidays" and insisted that we do holidays. So holidays, to me, says "I don't want to think of anything else to teach." But also he wanted to do just October holidays. Alice said that since we teach the same lesson to two sets of kids for 2 weeks, she was afraid he'd just teach nothing but month-specific holidays all year. Which I think was a valid fear.
So I asked if he managed to teach Halloween ok, since it was the only Oct. holiday I could think of. She said no, he didn't make it to Halloween. I was like, uh? What eclipses Halloween? Well, apparently Columbus Day does. Along with Columbus day, evidently, came a Spanish lesson. Yes. In his ENGLISH class, Russ taught SPANISH. And also a smattering of racial terms, which I saw evidence of the next day.
The next day, we walked into the classroom and I looked at the board and just had to roll my eyes. Remember now, that I'm a huge Fellowship fan, but I'm sure you agree when I assert that the usefulness of the language in those first 15 minutes is... well, these are 9th graders. They have English exams that will determine their candidacy for college. "They were all of them deceived" will probably not help them. "Nine rings were gifted to the race of men" probably won't either. Neither will the word "Mongoloid" which was scribbled in an area of the board with a lot of other "-oid" type words that no one ever uses. So additionally, the language in this movie, apart from being a little ornate and dusty, is very standard British. Russ hasn't got a British accent. As far as I know, he has no intention to teach British English. In my opinion, this makes his lesson hyper-inconsistent.
What else adds to that? Well, the second day, when I asked if there was any more Spanish, Alice reported that Russ showed the movie until there were only 5 min. left in class. That is the time that he decided to say "let's have a 5 minute break!" In my experience all week, the kids are already a little confused when we end at 5:40 as we're told to, because the bell doesn't ring until 5:50 (the time class would be over if we observed the 10 minute break that occurs 40 min into class). So that's like... what?
The next day, Alice spent the period in the hall talking with Mr. Yuan (the man we had dinner with that one night and who's sort of in charge of the fact that we're there) and Mr. Ding. So I end up finding out from Russ himself that the audio didn't work that day. So I was like "maaan, what did you do?" Because Tuesday he'd insisted that he had a back up plan "in his head" when I sorta criticised him for having such a tech-dependent lesson (I was considering the fact that he's technologically inept, to be totally totally frank in my words). I was interested in knowing how he'd pulled it together. Still optimistic, I promise you. Until he said that he'd just showed the movie anyway and did the voices himself. Eh!
Whew. That was long-winded, but you know how I like to get things off my chest. So I know that I have my own short-comings, but here's what I have to say. I don't care if there's something you don't want to do if it needs to be done. It's of absolutely no inconvenience to him to teach these classes and take the effort to do it well. Of the two of us, he's the one who's TEFL certified, so what the fuck is going on? These students are not released from that school until 7:20 or some such, and I think they actually have to go back until like 10, and their only chance to eat before 7:20 is the time they get after our class before their next one starts. So really, can't he just reflect for a moment and then give them something worth learning? They're in our classes voluntarily and are really excited to have us there. I just wish he'd show them some real respect.
And I know that he thinks he's doing well, but I'd have freaking murdered my language teachers by now if that's all we did in class. And who knows-- maybe the students enjoy it? But anyways, as of now, my opinion on this matter is that this sucks and I just wanted to say so.
End rant. Ah. Maybe I've been nastier than usual. Whatever, we took the bus back that night and Alice and I booked to Xiang La Xia ("fragrant spicy shrimp" it means, and they ain't lying) to meet her mom for dinner. It's the 3rd time I've been there-- we had our first Baotou dinner there, and ate with Mr. Yuan there to discuss the high school-- and it really doesn't get old. Tell me if there's any way this can get old: The first plane of eating manifests in a large stainless steel pot/wok. It's brought to your table containing a jumble of shrimp, wings, potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and bundles of starch noodles dripping in bright spicy oils. You eat and eat and eat, while sipping a really lovely tea that's sometimes lightly sweetened, with dried dates and a guiyuan (described as a cheap lychee/longan type fruit) floating in it. But no matter how much you eat, the meal does not end. There is a second plane of eating. There is another level, another step. There is eating 2.0. Once you've deemed that you're done with phase one, they bring out a second menu. Then they dump a bowl of chilis and spices into the pot, add some broth, and light a gas burner underneath. Then come plates of other delectables: raw lamb, beef, or pork, leafy greens, vermicelli, mushrooms of all varieties, tofus of different makes-- all these can be yours! On this occasion, we ordered some frozen tofu, golden needle mushrooms, and vermicelli. I actually doubt that what we had last night was frozen tofu but really some potato-derived bread-like substance that we'd eated on a previous night. Alice may have misunderstood what I'd asked for. But it was essentially what I was after. Both frozen tofu and this mysterious substance have a sponge-like consistency that is really bizarre at first bite. What I'm saying is that it's like eating a sponge. But it's like eating a DELICIOUS sponge. What happens is that all the little pores lock in the super-spicy soup and it's like an endorphin-explosion in your face. Then we got some noodles on the house-- someone comes by with a plate of dough pieces about 3-4 inches in length, then wh-ptsch! they grab both ends of one, whip it up and down a few times, and you've got a noodle a yard long. If they're the right thickness when they go in the soup, the noodles come out nice and chewy.
Because of the operation on her throat, Alice's mom wasn't in a position to eat spicy food. So all that stuff that I just described... I ate about half of it, and Alice ate the other half. I mean, it's an exaggeration: Mrs. Lee ate many of the chicken wings and we had a lot leftover in the end, but... anyways, that brings me back to the beginning of this entry and the stomach that was full for nearly 12 hours.
Today I awoke at 6:something from what amounted to a teaching nightmare to find that my abdomen was still inflated like a balloon. I'd been tossing and turning for goodness knows how long, from confrontation after confrontation with confused and irritated students and some righteous gastro-intestinal injury. Basically, I'd eaten an unusually large portion at dinner previously and it appeared that none of it had yet begun the journey to digestion and was just hanging out in my stomach. So actually this morning sucked, because I knew I still had 2ish lessons to plan for today. I sat up straight for a while, consumed an oreo, took some pepto, and tried the sleeping thing again, really uninterested in puking in any way.
After my alarm officially roused me around 9, I managed to pass out again (you know how that goes). This time, I had a really interesting dream about "King's Island" (only not really), getting pizza and candy there with Selina, some holiday, a small child, a bunch of Chinese people who are related to me, and... stuff. Whatever, it was weird, and I woke up during this really emotional part that involved lots of cheesy pizza.
You see, the restfulness of my sleep has not improved.
Anyways, classes today went all right. The training center students now have THREE textbooks! I was like... what?? When I realized a few days ago that they'd all paid for the first two and were already in possession of them, I started building some lessons around those. The first day was boooring, cuz I didn't get the corresponding tapes (yes, cassette tapes!) until 30 min into the lesson, and not everyone brought their books, and also I wasn't 100% sure of the most efficient way to use them. I've since determined that some of the activities are just plain dumb, but have also accepted the usefulness of some of the others to spur discussion. So that ended up warming things up today after the initial blaaaah of the recorded dialogues.
My ideal class would be smaller, with a more consistent level of advancement. But oh well. At least when they're doing activities, I get to move around and check on their degree of understanding. It's actually, like, my favorite part and I'm hopeful that it helps, but really they're the ones who'd know about that-- not me. Sadly. Today we did introductions (almost as done as it sounds, but with a bit of logic behind it, coming from a book) and superstitions, which was fun and COINCIDENTALLY (whoa) appropriate since yesterday was you-know-when.
When I got back, Alice and her mom were home getting dinner started. In case you wonder, I've been subsisting largely on a diet of potatoes and rice, and, uh, losing weight in spite of it. All my clothes started fitting better again almost as soon as the plane landed. It's been pretty sweet. Anyways, tonight there was rice, potatoes and... leeks? with extra soy, and some leftovers from when the Lees cooked lunch here the other day-- the green remains of some di san xian (Alice's mom insists that it's just stir-fried eggplant... i guess since the green peppers and potatoes are more common) and some stir-fried potato slices with green pepper. The leftovers were brought to us by our brand new microwave, which we picked up Thursday morning from the 5th floor of Wangfujing department store. The microwave... was Y400, but interestingly enough has a function that admits the use of metal... I believe it's the "Lightwave." I don't know anything about it, so I'm reluctant to use anything other than nuke hi until I can get details on the instructions from Alice. Also it was big and we had to drag it down all the floors by escalator and then wheel it home on the back of the bike.
I started still another class with high schoolers today, this time only 7 students. There were two English teachers present, moms of two of the boys. They came to the apartment at 8 tonight, and we talked for about an hour before they all left. They were pretty enthusiastic, but most of them have some big exams this weekend (class will be 2 hrs long, starting next week). I felt bad though, cuz one of the girls kept insisting that they had absolutely no free time to watch movies or listen to music since they spend so much time at school and on homework. I was like... damn, 1) I'm glad to be out of high school, 2) I'm glad I went to a US public school.
Viewed 10 Things I Hate About You, courtesy of iTunes, for the 3rd time in perhaps just as many days, but the idea was to show it to Alice since we watched Brokeback Mountain the other day (agreed: it should have won, and crash is a sillier movie than ever) and I wanted her to know that Heath Ledger can enunciate when the script calls for it. As you see, it's been a good week for movies.
Friday marked the end of my first week of real classes at the high school. This second lesson was mostly about getting them in the right mindset for learning English-- first present the potential, then discuss it. Also, I wanted to get an idea of the subjects they usually talk about with their friends (in case I'm more out of touch than I thought). And we listened to/analysed "It's Beginning To Get To Me" by Snow Patrol. I want to equate the first class of the week to a firstborn child. That is, they get the raw unadulterated lesson, which has had no feedback, no correction, and they have to deal with any unrealistic expectations that may exist. The kids are all really charming though. I thought that my first lesson, which involved throwing a ball and sitting around chittering while other kids had the spotlight, would make them think that it was ok to be unruly. But boy, do they listen to you when you speak! By Friday though, I was way bored with my own lesson (and I have to do the same thing for the other classes next week, ick), and changed it a little-- for the better evidently. Instead of my blind quest for a group analysis of the song (which left me explaining most of it), I was like "ok, you figure it out for yourselves." Yay for getting to walk around and talk to everyone!
Meanwhile, and this is something I HAVE to complain about, Russ spent all week screening Fellowship of the Ring. I know he's declared vehemently that he doesn't want to teach high schoolers, but I don't see what the big deal is. In a lot of ways, they're a lot easier to teach than the adults-- they're no less cooperative, and due to the miracle of a 5-7 year (still not sure which) curriculum, they understand more of what you say, sooner. Also, hey, you have slightly more power over them, weird as that sounds. Anyway, the story began on Monday, when Alice asked me and Russ if we had our lesson outlines prepared. He said yes, and I said no. By lesson outline, she meant like a handout that they could photocopy for the students. I was expecting to have until Tuesday morning. At all this extra information, Russ was like "what?" Turns out he had a lesson plan, but had no idea that anyone had ever asked for a handout (which I'm sure has been brought up before). The next morning, I got up bright and early to type everything out and finalize like my song choice and all that, and had the original sheet printed by the time Alice woke up. She left to photocopy and didn't come back for hours.
When she finally got back, I was like... did you really have to wait that long? I was curious because she only needed to make 300 copies of each outline, and having walked various print jobs to the Olin copy center, I figured that no matter what equipment it was, it couldn't have taken that long. She said, with some exasperation, "I was waiting for Russ!" I had heard her call him before she left to make sure that he had something, but he still didn't even by the time she got there. What he wound up giving her was a handwritten sheet with a few random terms from freaking LOTR written on it with colons after them. I looked at this paper and not all of my laughter could be suppressed. Seriously, anyone who had this handed to them would have a big WTF branded hard across their forehead. I was like, you are shitting me, plain and simple. But no. Alice's aunt had bought a computer for Russ to use, so Alice was like, can't you at least type it? Well no. He refused to revise the "outline" (like hell) in any way, saying that he never wanted to teach the high schoolers and that they could fire him if they wanted. What makes this situation more exasperating is that he's leaving in January anyways, when a new teacher is scheduled to arrive, and we really don't want him to leave sooner than that.
So Alice didn't copy that.
We went to the school early to sort out all the technical matters associated with him playing that damn movie, and they almost couldn't get it to play. But since my equipment was controlled by a console I'd never encountered before, I asked Alice and Teacher Ding (who's in charge of the language lab Russ was using) to figure out my stuff while I messed around with the DVD. Proud to say that my experiments bore fruit, and quickly, and I was off.
I had the training center that night, so Alice and I were dropped off within walking distance (well... in campus/city terms, I suppose). She'd sat in on Russ's class and was nice enough to describe it to me. I would probably have been really pissed if I'd been sitting in there. He'd insisted that he would only show about 15 minutes of the film, but actually spent 40 min or something on it. Only... the way he did it... he apparently played it, unsubtitled in any language, then stopped it and repeated all the lines, and wrote them on the board. Alice had told me earlier what Russ had told her that his plan was: 15 minutes of the movie and then October holidays. Fucking holidays! So the first day at the hospital and training center, we'd been surprised by the fact that we had to actually teach a lesson (this was the day after we arrived), so he turned randomly to a page in a book, saw the word "holidays" and insisted that we do holidays. So holidays, to me, says "I don't want to think of anything else to teach." But also he wanted to do just October holidays. Alice said that since we teach the same lesson to two sets of kids for 2 weeks, she was afraid he'd just teach nothing but month-specific holidays all year. Which I think was a valid fear.
So I asked if he managed to teach Halloween ok, since it was the only Oct. holiday I could think of. She said no, he didn't make it to Halloween. I was like, uh? What eclipses Halloween? Well, apparently Columbus Day does. Along with Columbus day, evidently, came a Spanish lesson. Yes. In his ENGLISH class, Russ taught SPANISH. And also a smattering of racial terms, which I saw evidence of the next day.
The next day, we walked into the classroom and I looked at the board and just had to roll my eyes. Remember now, that I'm a huge Fellowship fan, but I'm sure you agree when I assert that the usefulness of the language in those first 15 minutes is... well, these are 9th graders. They have English exams that will determine their candidacy for college. "They were all of them deceived" will probably not help them. "Nine rings were gifted to the race of men" probably won't either. Neither will the word "Mongoloid" which was scribbled in an area of the board with a lot of other "-oid" type words that no one ever uses. So additionally, the language in this movie, apart from being a little ornate and dusty, is very standard British. Russ hasn't got a British accent. As far as I know, he has no intention to teach British English. In my opinion, this makes his lesson hyper-inconsistent.
What else adds to that? Well, the second day, when I asked if there was any more Spanish, Alice reported that Russ showed the movie until there were only 5 min. left in class. That is the time that he decided to say "let's have a 5 minute break!" In my experience all week, the kids are already a little confused when we end at 5:40 as we're told to, because the bell doesn't ring until 5:50 (the time class would be over if we observed the 10 minute break that occurs 40 min into class). So that's like... what?
The next day, Alice spent the period in the hall talking with Mr. Yuan (the man we had dinner with that one night and who's sort of in charge of the fact that we're there) and Mr. Ding. So I end up finding out from Russ himself that the audio didn't work that day. So I was like "maaan, what did you do?" Because Tuesday he'd insisted that he had a back up plan "in his head" when I sorta criticised him for having such a tech-dependent lesson (I was considering the fact that he's technologically inept, to be totally totally frank in my words). I was interested in knowing how he'd pulled it together. Still optimistic, I promise you. Until he said that he'd just showed the movie anyway and did the voices himself. Eh!
Whew. That was long-winded, but you know how I like to get things off my chest. So I know that I have my own short-comings, but here's what I have to say. I don't care if there's something you don't want to do if it needs to be done. It's of absolutely no inconvenience to him to teach these classes and take the effort to do it well. Of the two of us, he's the one who's TEFL certified, so what the fuck is going on? These students are not released from that school until 7:20 or some such, and I think they actually have to go back until like 10, and their only chance to eat before 7:20 is the time they get after our class before their next one starts. So really, can't he just reflect for a moment and then give them something worth learning? They're in our classes voluntarily and are really excited to have us there. I just wish he'd show them some real respect.
And I know that he thinks he's doing well, but I'd have freaking murdered my language teachers by now if that's all we did in class. And who knows-- maybe the students enjoy it? But anyways, as of now, my opinion on this matter is that this sucks and I just wanted to say so.
End rant. Ah. Maybe I've been nastier than usual. Whatever, we took the bus back that night and Alice and I booked to Xiang La Xia ("fragrant spicy shrimp" it means, and they ain't lying) to meet her mom for dinner. It's the 3rd time I've been there-- we had our first Baotou dinner there, and ate with Mr. Yuan there to discuss the high school-- and it really doesn't get old. Tell me if there's any way this can get old: The first plane of eating manifests in a large stainless steel pot/wok. It's brought to your table containing a jumble of shrimp, wings, potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and bundles of starch noodles dripping in bright spicy oils. You eat and eat and eat, while sipping a really lovely tea that's sometimes lightly sweetened, with dried dates and a guiyuan (described as a cheap lychee/longan type fruit) floating in it. But no matter how much you eat, the meal does not end. There is a second plane of eating. There is another level, another step. There is eating 2.0. Once you've deemed that you're done with phase one, they bring out a second menu. Then they dump a bowl of chilis and spices into the pot, add some broth, and light a gas burner underneath. Then come plates of other delectables: raw lamb, beef, or pork, leafy greens, vermicelli, mushrooms of all varieties, tofus of different makes-- all these can be yours! On this occasion, we ordered some frozen tofu, golden needle mushrooms, and vermicelli. I actually doubt that what we had last night was frozen tofu but really some potato-derived bread-like substance that we'd eated on a previous night. Alice may have misunderstood what I'd asked for. But it was essentially what I was after. Both frozen tofu and this mysterious substance have a sponge-like consistency that is really bizarre at first bite. What I'm saying is that it's like eating a sponge. But it's like eating a DELICIOUS sponge. What happens is that all the little pores lock in the super-spicy soup and it's like an endorphin-explosion in your face. Then we got some noodles on the house-- someone comes by with a plate of dough pieces about 3-4 inches in length, then wh-ptsch! they grab both ends of one, whip it up and down a few times, and you've got a noodle a yard long. If they're the right thickness when they go in the soup, the noodles come out nice and chewy.
Because of the operation on her throat, Alice's mom wasn't in a position to eat spicy food. So all that stuff that I just described... I ate about half of it, and Alice ate the other half. I mean, it's an exaggeration: Mrs. Lee ate many of the chicken wings and we had a lot leftover in the end, but... anyways, that brings me back to the beginning of this entry and the stomach that was full for nearly 12 hours.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
It's some kind of animal
Our apartment, thankfully, doesn't have the type of infestation you would expect. We have no ants, spiders, flies, fruit flies, mosquitoes, or even cockroaches.
HOWEVER, what we do have are silverfish-esque multi-legged creepy crawlers of a particularly juicy denomination, and I've had the distinct pleasure of killing two of them recently.
[oct. 14 addendum: i wrote this entry ages ago, but apparently it never published... until now! probably not worth the wait]
HOWEVER, what we do have are silverfish-esque multi-legged creepy crawlers of a particularly juicy denomination, and I've had the distinct pleasure of killing two of them recently.
[oct. 14 addendum: i wrote this entry ages ago, but apparently it never published... until now! probably not worth the wait]
Friday, October 06, 2006
Uptown Girl + Lesson angst
Waiting for my hair to dry so I can pass out for many many hours.
I got back a little while ago from a little KTV excursion with Alice & her friends. KTV? That means karaoke actually. Something I discovered about myself: I can't sing Uptown Girl without a serious serious twang. I was like, whoa, all of a sudden from Kentucky. The place didn't have a wide selection of English songs (and no one else really knew any anyways), though I was able to jump in for part of a Jay Chou song I've heard before. I bet some of you have encountered it at bubble tea at one time or another. Alice put on "When I Fall in Love" for me, but another thing I discovere was that I know about 9 words of that song. Had some "black beer" that had a really nice toffeeish accent to it. Funny cuz I was just thinking earlier how much I missed darker beers.
It may be hard to imagine, but just try for a moment... I am soooo tired here. With more sleep and less work, I'm more exhausted on a daily basis in this country than I ever was at Cornell. I've been trying to figure out why. I mean... yes there was the Hohhot extravaganza, but that's not wholly unusual in essentials. Yesterday I had 5 hours worth of class, more or less back to back, and today I had 3 hrs... that doesn't seem to equate to any large amount of duress. So I dunno. Diet change? Also, my pseudo-ADD isn't really being fed, so maybe I'm just boring easily. Easily bored. Easy to be bored. Uh.
------
Anyways, about that 3 hr class this morning. Yesterday I taught 3-6 at the hospital, then 7-9 at the training center. My lesson really depended on the students interacting and taking off on vibrant flights of fancy and just making shit up. For a game. I like activities since they give me a chance to move around the room and not just lecture which is stupid. Well, activities/discussions have been working fine at the training center, but yesterday was my first day back in the hospital in ages. And there were 7 people in attendance. And perhaps the game was too complicated.
You see, these people are adults. We can do simple activities, if I want my classes to be inane. But, and I feel failure in this, I could NOT, no matter how many different words I used how many times, get them to understand the point of the activity. The idea was to make a prediction, trade it with someone else, assume that a period time has passed and the prediction has come true, and answer questions based on that. So like "you will be a successful mother," for a question like "what do you do in your free time," begets an answer like "oh, I read to my children and help them with their homework." Even if you are childless. Like myself (some of the students made me answer several questions according to this one).
The training center made it through the interview because I physically enacted the process a few times. The hospital did not make it through the trade. So I moved on and ended up with a ton of extra time. And an ice cream bar. Which makes teaching at a white board difficult.
So not the most successful lesson, I'll be making that note. Then I learned that my next class would be 9-12 today. So I got a bit nervous that I would be unable to plan a good lesson in time, and be stuck with two strike-outs in a row. And last night I was nigh incoherent. My last act before bed was to make a skeleton of a few of the related concepts I've been wanting to address but for which I've been unable to gather the right resources. I basically decided that since I have the ability to motor in the morning (waking up is the tough part, but I've done some good work at 5am), I'd just get all the lyrics, reviews, poems, videos, and so on in the morning.
This morning I got up at 6 and managed it all by 8:30. I had printouts and everything. A series of websites open on my laptop full of news and pictures and so on. Cuz this was a fucking 3 hour class. Who even does that?
I opened with the poems. First one by Robert Frost. The idea is that poetry from that era, with ample examples from Frost, have a definite rhyme scheme, so you can always be sure that certain words are always going to sound alike. This was a good check for my kids last year (not to be underestimated for being 8th graders) for pronunciation for some words that looked different. More importantly, poems like Stopping By Woods have lines with very specific syllable allowances and predictable, consistent stress patterns. This is not a luxury that speakers often get, right? And Chinese speakers especially add random syllables here and there and get confused about multisyllable stress. So I just wanted to show them a way to practice.
That was sort of to harken back to the last class. Then I followed up with a modern poem that I found. Full of nice descriptors, idioms, and metaphor. Also an easy concept to grasp. Here I wanted to show what poetry has become-- you know, a vehicle for expression and so on. And you know, a ton of our language, things we say all the time, take cues from devices that you find everywhere in poetry. No one learns figurative language straight off in an esl class, and I noticed when we did song lyrics that the whole metaphor/symbol/allusion thing wasn't getting across. I suspected that they were taking things too literally, so I just wanted to give them an introduction to that.
Then a Guster song. One, trying to pinpoint what type of music they're willing to listen to. Would have discussed the lyrics if we had time (when we actually did, I'd forgotten that I hadn't done that, so that was my flub). But mainly I wanted them to talk to me about the song. As an example I added a clip of a music snob review of the album it came from. No expectations of them understanding this piece, because music reviews can be pretty dizzying (this one was a bit kinder though). But I wanted to show them what loaded words are like, and why we use them, and that we use them all the time. Adjectives that we commonly use, and adjectives that the dude made up on the spot. Different ways that we use words that have certain technical meanings ("bipolar" for example). I was hoping for some discussion of the song. But, silence.
By that time, I wanted to change the pace a bit, so I broke out some movie trailers for The Lake House, The Guardian, and Stranger than Fiction. Little discussion arose, so I finished with a short National Geographic video of salt mines and desert crossings. I will admit now that iTunes has been a nice resource for free stuff. This was the point that Connie came back in.
I may have mentioned her before, but she is in charge of this class, and when she's in the room, she dominates it. You know... I like her. I like most people. But ooh. I'll get to that later. Anyway, she was called out at the very beginning of class to identify some dead birds, so she basically missed everything before the salt mine video.
Then, because yesterday she'd said something about American food being simple (to the effect of hamburgers and hot dogs), I had some menu examples and photos of restaurant food. Unfortunately, she and her son were the only ones from yesterday's class to realize that this was a response to something.
After that, she was called out again. So I decided that for the last 30 min we could go back to the review and define some words so they could read it later. No one asked me any questions! So I just went through and defined a lot of things I thought they might not be able to interpret on their own (right every time). Connie came back in and looked at the review. With 10 minutes left she gave me a criticism of my lesson. She said that I jumped from topic to topic so much in one lesson that it wasn't good.
So criticism. Whatever. I need that. But actually she wasn't in class. Additionally, she did this during class time in both Chinese and English. She said it nicely, but I was still like... thanks? For nothing! I don't know, but I just feel inherently that I would have done it differently. The thing was, she asked the other students if they agreed, and none of them said anything! It would have been more helpful if someone had agreed. Or if someone had said that the lesson was helpful. Any response. As it is, I have yet another opinion from Connie about how class should be.
Now, I have my own criticisms about the class. Having gone through it point by point, I see where maybe I could have expanded on something. It's just something I didn't see until now. But also, it's clear that for the hospital class, I'm having a lot of trouble facilitating discussion. The training center has great discussions-- it's a blast. I can ask them all the questions I want and lead them whatever direction, and they're responsive (except for yesterday, when they thought I was crazy). This troubles me because I can't yet figure out why this is happening. I'm going to e-mail their last teacher, Tevie, who's been great about answering my Baotou questions thus far. Apparently Connie loved her class. I've checked out Tevie's formula though, and it's like... nothing out of the ordinary. So she was a theatre major. And like 50. But still. I'm youthful and exuberant. Talk to me, dammit!
I mean, please don't get me wrong. The students are really awesome people. But they're not the best students. And by students, I mean, the role of the student. Like, you can be a good student by working hard, and they do. But I mean, when I am a student, no matter what my other classes have been like, when I place myself in a class, I understand that I am placing myself at the mercy of my teacher. If they want me to speak, I will speak. If they say that this is the way to learn something, I will try it. You know? They take the initiative to take this class. It's voluntary and it cost money. Why wouldn't they take the initiative to ask me questions when they don't understand something? Or to simply follow me when I try to lead them somewhere? I have never been in a class where the teacher was unable to get this same reaction. So I'm troubled. I can keep trying new techniques, but I really can't do anything particulary exciting or fun unless I know that they're with me. Or until they give me some response to tell me what they think is exciting or fun. I expected to have figured this out by now. I mean, whatever the problem is, it's mine-- not theirs. So I'm not blaming them. I'm just referencing their behavior to indicate that there is some failing in the way I approach them.
But I was still really steamed about the way Connie made her comment. I described the whole thing to Alice later, and she told me not to pay attention to it. You know, after our first full lesson there, she complained about the structure while another student told us how much she enjoyed it. Since then it's been really crappy trying to find a balance for them. Of course I'm going to consider it though. But it's like... I may have been jumping topic to topic, but those were just tools for me to teach a theme. I wanted to demonstrate the flexibility English has in describing things as subjective as music or feelings, and I wanted to show them common resources like poems and reviews-- places where we've picked up words and speaking skills. But I should have explained that more clearly at the beginning.
Also, and this shocked me back to reality, it turns out that Connie was partially basing this on the fact that the review didn't make any sense. As in, she thought that the review of the music was a review of the lesson. I forgot that a noun like that could be misinterpreted. Again, my fault. It's just not the easiest thing to assess just what words they know and what words they don't. I mean, they're doctors. They know "tuberculosis." Then again, she also missed that part of the lesson.
The worst is just the silence. I try to give them opportunities to emote and practice speaking, but they either just stare straight at me or anywhere else. During the poetry thing, I did get a lot of head nodding though. I didn't move on until I saw heads nodding-- since they were giving me that, I latched onto it.
It's not that I think they're being withholding for one reason or another. But in any case, I haven't been able to get what I want out of them yet, so it's back to the drawing board for Saturday.
I got back a little while ago from a little KTV excursion with Alice & her friends. KTV? That means karaoke actually. Something I discovered about myself: I can't sing Uptown Girl without a serious serious twang. I was like, whoa, all of a sudden from Kentucky. The place didn't have a wide selection of English songs (and no one else really knew any anyways), though I was able to jump in for part of a Jay Chou song I've heard before. I bet some of you have encountered it at bubble tea at one time or another. Alice put on "When I Fall in Love" for me, but another thing I discovere was that I know about 9 words of that song. Had some "black beer" that had a really nice toffeeish accent to it. Funny cuz I was just thinking earlier how much I missed darker beers.
It may be hard to imagine, but just try for a moment... I am soooo tired here. With more sleep and less work, I'm more exhausted on a daily basis in this country than I ever was at Cornell. I've been trying to figure out why. I mean... yes there was the Hohhot extravaganza, but that's not wholly unusual in essentials. Yesterday I had 5 hours worth of class, more or less back to back, and today I had 3 hrs... that doesn't seem to equate to any large amount of duress. So I dunno. Diet change? Also, my pseudo-ADD isn't really being fed, so maybe I'm just boring easily. Easily bored. Easy to be bored. Uh.
------
Anyways, about that 3 hr class this morning. Yesterday I taught 3-6 at the hospital, then 7-9 at the training center. My lesson really depended on the students interacting and taking off on vibrant flights of fancy and just making shit up. For a game. I like activities since they give me a chance to move around the room and not just lecture which is stupid. Well, activities/discussions have been working fine at the training center, but yesterday was my first day back in the hospital in ages. And there were 7 people in attendance. And perhaps the game was too complicated.
You see, these people are adults. We can do simple activities, if I want my classes to be inane. But, and I feel failure in this, I could NOT, no matter how many different words I used how many times, get them to understand the point of the activity. The idea was to make a prediction, trade it with someone else, assume that a period time has passed and the prediction has come true, and answer questions based on that. So like "you will be a successful mother," for a question like "what do you do in your free time," begets an answer like "oh, I read to my children and help them with their homework." Even if you are childless. Like myself (some of the students made me answer several questions according to this one).
The training center made it through the interview because I physically enacted the process a few times. The hospital did not make it through the trade. So I moved on and ended up with a ton of extra time. And an ice cream bar. Which makes teaching at a white board difficult.
So not the most successful lesson, I'll be making that note. Then I learned that my next class would be 9-12 today. So I got a bit nervous that I would be unable to plan a good lesson in time, and be stuck with two strike-outs in a row. And last night I was nigh incoherent. My last act before bed was to make a skeleton of a few of the related concepts I've been wanting to address but for which I've been unable to gather the right resources. I basically decided that since I have the ability to motor in the morning (waking up is the tough part, but I've done some good work at 5am), I'd just get all the lyrics, reviews, poems, videos, and so on in the morning.
This morning I got up at 6 and managed it all by 8:30. I had printouts and everything. A series of websites open on my laptop full of news and pictures and so on. Cuz this was a fucking 3 hour class. Who even does that?
I opened with the poems. First one by Robert Frost. The idea is that poetry from that era, with ample examples from Frost, have a definite rhyme scheme, so you can always be sure that certain words are always going to sound alike. This was a good check for my kids last year (not to be underestimated for being 8th graders) for pronunciation for some words that looked different. More importantly, poems like Stopping By Woods have lines with very specific syllable allowances and predictable, consistent stress patterns. This is not a luxury that speakers often get, right? And Chinese speakers especially add random syllables here and there and get confused about multisyllable stress. So I just wanted to show them a way to practice.
That was sort of to harken back to the last class. Then I followed up with a modern poem that I found. Full of nice descriptors, idioms, and metaphor. Also an easy concept to grasp. Here I wanted to show what poetry has become-- you know, a vehicle for expression and so on. And you know, a ton of our language, things we say all the time, take cues from devices that you find everywhere in poetry. No one learns figurative language straight off in an esl class, and I noticed when we did song lyrics that the whole metaphor/symbol/allusion thing wasn't getting across. I suspected that they were taking things too literally, so I just wanted to give them an introduction to that.
Then a Guster song. One, trying to pinpoint what type of music they're willing to listen to. Would have discussed the lyrics if we had time (when we actually did, I'd forgotten that I hadn't done that, so that was my flub). But mainly I wanted them to talk to me about the song. As an example I added a clip of a music snob review of the album it came from. No expectations of them understanding this piece, because music reviews can be pretty dizzying (this one was a bit kinder though). But I wanted to show them what loaded words are like, and why we use them, and that we use them all the time. Adjectives that we commonly use, and adjectives that the dude made up on the spot. Different ways that we use words that have certain technical meanings ("bipolar" for example). I was hoping for some discussion of the song. But, silence.
By that time, I wanted to change the pace a bit, so I broke out some movie trailers for The Lake House, The Guardian, and Stranger than Fiction. Little discussion arose, so I finished with a short National Geographic video of salt mines and desert crossings. I will admit now that iTunes has been a nice resource for free stuff. This was the point that Connie came back in.
I may have mentioned her before, but she is in charge of this class, and when she's in the room, she dominates it. You know... I like her. I like most people. But ooh. I'll get to that later. Anyway, she was called out at the very beginning of class to identify some dead birds, so she basically missed everything before the salt mine video.
Then, because yesterday she'd said something about American food being simple (to the effect of hamburgers and hot dogs), I had some menu examples and photos of restaurant food. Unfortunately, she and her son were the only ones from yesterday's class to realize that this was a response to something.
After that, she was called out again. So I decided that for the last 30 min we could go back to the review and define some words so they could read it later. No one asked me any questions! So I just went through and defined a lot of things I thought they might not be able to interpret on their own (right every time). Connie came back in and looked at the review. With 10 minutes left she gave me a criticism of my lesson. She said that I jumped from topic to topic so much in one lesson that it wasn't good.
So criticism. Whatever. I need that. But actually she wasn't in class. Additionally, she did this during class time in both Chinese and English. She said it nicely, but I was still like... thanks? For nothing! I don't know, but I just feel inherently that I would have done it differently. The thing was, she asked the other students if they agreed, and none of them said anything! It would have been more helpful if someone had agreed. Or if someone had said that the lesson was helpful. Any response. As it is, I have yet another opinion from Connie about how class should be.
Now, I have my own criticisms about the class. Having gone through it point by point, I see where maybe I could have expanded on something. It's just something I didn't see until now. But also, it's clear that for the hospital class, I'm having a lot of trouble facilitating discussion. The training center has great discussions-- it's a blast. I can ask them all the questions I want and lead them whatever direction, and they're responsive (except for yesterday, when they thought I was crazy). This troubles me because I can't yet figure out why this is happening. I'm going to e-mail their last teacher, Tevie, who's been great about answering my Baotou questions thus far. Apparently Connie loved her class. I've checked out Tevie's formula though, and it's like... nothing out of the ordinary. So she was a theatre major. And like 50. But still. I'm youthful and exuberant. Talk to me, dammit!
I mean, please don't get me wrong. The students are really awesome people. But they're not the best students. And by students, I mean, the role of the student. Like, you can be a good student by working hard, and they do. But I mean, when I am a student, no matter what my other classes have been like, when I place myself in a class, I understand that I am placing myself at the mercy of my teacher. If they want me to speak, I will speak. If they say that this is the way to learn something, I will try it. You know? They take the initiative to take this class. It's voluntary and it cost money. Why wouldn't they take the initiative to ask me questions when they don't understand something? Or to simply follow me when I try to lead them somewhere? I have never been in a class where the teacher was unable to get this same reaction. So I'm troubled. I can keep trying new techniques, but I really can't do anything particulary exciting or fun unless I know that they're with me. Or until they give me some response to tell me what they think is exciting or fun. I expected to have figured this out by now. I mean, whatever the problem is, it's mine-- not theirs. So I'm not blaming them. I'm just referencing their behavior to indicate that there is some failing in the way I approach them.
But I was still really steamed about the way Connie made her comment. I described the whole thing to Alice later, and she told me not to pay attention to it. You know, after our first full lesson there, she complained about the structure while another student told us how much she enjoyed it. Since then it's been really crappy trying to find a balance for them. Of course I'm going to consider it though. But it's like... I may have been jumping topic to topic, but those were just tools for me to teach a theme. I wanted to demonstrate the flexibility English has in describing things as subjective as music or feelings, and I wanted to show them common resources like poems and reviews-- places where we've picked up words and speaking skills. But I should have explained that more clearly at the beginning.
Also, and this shocked me back to reality, it turns out that Connie was partially basing this on the fact that the review didn't make any sense. As in, she thought that the review of the music was a review of the lesson. I forgot that a noun like that could be misinterpreted. Again, my fault. It's just not the easiest thing to assess just what words they know and what words they don't. I mean, they're doctors. They know "tuberculosis." Then again, she also missed that part of the lesson.
The worst is just the silence. I try to give them opportunities to emote and practice speaking, but they either just stare straight at me or anywhere else. During the poetry thing, I did get a lot of head nodding though. I didn't move on until I saw heads nodding-- since they were giving me that, I latched onto it.
It's not that I think they're being withholding for one reason or another. But in any case, I haven't been able to get what I want out of them yet, so it's back to the drawing board for Saturday.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Some bitterness of mine
So, it turns out that one of my USB drives is veritably infested with viruses! Specifically, Win32.Mima.C, the bastards. And this is something I didn't know until after I plugged it into my laptop. My antivirus software has no idea how to deal with it, and symantec.com won't load, and mcafee has never heard of it. I figure that means that I can get as paranoid and worked up as I want. Having googled, I found only one website that has a description of it, and it ain't pretty (well it's enough to freak me out anyway). Apparently it destroys word documents and assumes their identities. I am concerned for certain of my essays and so on that are located on this drive and on this drive only. And then of course it steals information.
I'm not sure how the virus got on there, but I suspect that it took up residence either at the training center last night when I used their computer, or sometime earlier that day before my laptop flipped out. Too many variables for me to sleep very soundly.
Doing a system scan of my laptop now with my fingers crossed.
Just thought I'd share.
But yeah, I'm really pissed at people who make this shit up. I mean come on. This facet of our society is just one of many that will keep our civilization from colonizing space.
I'm not sure how the virus got on there, but I suspect that it took up residence either at the training center last night when I used their computer, or sometime earlier that day before my laptop flipped out. Too many variables for me to sleep very soundly.
Doing a system scan of my laptop now with my fingers crossed.
Just thought I'd share.
But yeah, I'm really pissed at people who make this shit up. I mean come on. This facet of our society is just one of many that will keep our civilization from colonizing space.
That thing about going to Hohhot
Today's not one of those days where the information gets better.
So I talked to Alice again. I knew I had to go to Hohhot. And I knew I needed to go somewhere tomorrow. But what I didn't quite get was that I need to go to Hohhot tomorrow.
Reasons that this is an issue: Russ has to take over class for me again. I have neither funds for the train nor for the exam itself. Russ has class soon and the train leaves early tomorrow, so he can't change money for me. Alice is really busy right now and it's inconvenient for her to accompany me, but I'll have a lot of trouble talking/arguing to/with the officials myself.
So now she's got to call all of her friends in Hohhot to see if they can meet me and be my guide, otherwise she'll have to come along, which is equally problematic.
I'm not sure what I've accomplished here other than taking a lot of extra time and money to deal with things like this. Gracious!
So I talked to Alice again. I knew I had to go to Hohhot. And I knew I needed to go somewhere tomorrow. But what I didn't quite get was that I need to go to Hohhot tomorrow.
Reasons that this is an issue: Russ has to take over class for me again. I have neither funds for the train nor for the exam itself. Russ has class soon and the train leaves early tomorrow, so he can't change money for me. Alice is really busy right now and it's inconvenient for her to accompany me, but I'll have a lot of trouble talking/arguing to/with the officials myself.
So now she's got to call all of her friends in Hohhot to see if they can meet me and be my guide, otherwise she'll have to come along, which is equally problematic.
I'm not sure what I've accomplished here other than taking a lot of extra time and money to deal with things like this. Gracious!
Yay more hoops!
Aaaargh, guess what wonderful new trial has sprung up on me? This one was most unexpected.
Alice called me earlier today to ask if I had my medical exam form with me, to which I said yes, because I brought copies of every damn thing with me, thank goodness.
Hours went by.
I got a call from her just now saying that her uncle told her that my med for was outdated. And I'm like... but I just got it done in July. Everyone knows it was done in July, because we had to wait until July to get it all in. I was perplexed, because all the sheets from the various tests I took read July 24 and July 26. Then I was like "shit" because she was right. Next to his signature, for whatever mysterious reasons, he'd written 1/28/06. I very nearly fell over.
So I had to call Liu himself. He said that because the government is very touchy on the truth of documents like this, I will have to go to HOHHOT and have yet another examination!
This upset me for several reasons. The first of which being the chase that resulted in my exam form getting filled out the first time. The second of which being the massive charges these cost my uninsured body this summer. The third being the desire to not have my routine interrupted again. The fourth being the face that I might not be able to explain my way out of it. Aaaah, I'm making noises but I don't know how to type them!
So I started doing my laundry.
But ok, here's another thing. Who knew that this med form would be so important? I mean, Russ didn't even bring a copy with him. No one explained to me that this would become a legal document as important as my passport. No, I was under the impression that it was just a random string of red tape that I'd have to deal with in order to get my visa. Blah. That's it. I mean, my doc wasn't aware of the importance either. It's just like... never was it brought to my attention during this entire process, until TODAY, that anyone actually cared about the information of this form.
And one slip of the hand, and it's several months out of date. My only theories... maybe it was too early? I mean, the doc was running the office himsellf that day and I showed up first thing and wasn't the only person trying to get his attention. But I was looking at the paper, and I think that what actually happened was this. He wrote 7, but with a hook on the end. And the middle bar connecting the hook with the stem didn't copy. But having a stem that looked like a / just led him to continue writing the date without a /. Why do I think this? Because, just with the hook and the / it looks sorta like a 7. And also, when writing dates, his 1's tended to be longer. Unfortunately, he didn't have a reason to write any 7's on the rest of the form, so there's no confirmation to be had.
I'm giving my mom a call in a few hours, maybe she can chew him out a bit and get a few future exams for free for m'self.
I mean, really.
Alice called me earlier today to ask if I had my medical exam form with me, to which I said yes, because I brought copies of every damn thing with me, thank goodness.
Hours went by.
I got a call from her just now saying that her uncle told her that my med for was outdated. And I'm like... but I just got it done in July. Everyone knows it was done in July, because we had to wait until July to get it all in. I was perplexed, because all the sheets from the various tests I took read July 24 and July 26. Then I was like "shit" because she was right. Next to his signature, for whatever mysterious reasons, he'd written 1/28/06. I very nearly fell over.
So I had to call Liu himself. He said that because the government is very touchy on the truth of documents like this, I will have to go to HOHHOT and have yet another examination!
This upset me for several reasons. The first of which being the chase that resulted in my exam form getting filled out the first time. The second of which being the massive charges these cost my uninsured body this summer. The third being the desire to not have my routine interrupted again. The fourth being the face that I might not be able to explain my way out of it. Aaaah, I'm making noises but I don't know how to type them!
So I started doing my laundry.
But ok, here's another thing. Who knew that this med form would be so important? I mean, Russ didn't even bring a copy with him. No one explained to me that this would become a legal document as important as my passport. No, I was under the impression that it was just a random string of red tape that I'd have to deal with in order to get my visa. Blah. That's it. I mean, my doc wasn't aware of the importance either. It's just like... never was it brought to my attention during this entire process, until TODAY, that anyone actually cared about the information of this form.
And one slip of the hand, and it's several months out of date. My only theories... maybe it was too early? I mean, the doc was running the office himsellf that day and I showed up first thing and wasn't the only person trying to get his attention. But I was looking at the paper, and I think that what actually happened was this. He wrote 7, but with a hook on the end. And the middle bar connecting the hook with the stem didn't copy. But having a stem that looked like a / just led him to continue writing the date without a /. Why do I think this? Because, just with the hook and the / it looks sorta like a 7. And also, when writing dates, his 1's tended to be longer. Unfortunately, he didn't have a reason to write any 7's on the rest of the form, so there's no confirmation to be had.
I'm giving my mom a call in a few hours, maybe she can chew him out a bit and get a few future exams for free for m'self.
I mean, really.
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