Yesterday the freshman started their military training. I woke up to yelling outside my window, which was unpleasant. They all look so adorable in their little camo outfits. They would make awful soldiers, they are constantly wiggling, can't follow direction, and would rather giggle about the people walking past them.
Later that day Jennifer, David and I went rug shopping out in the boonies. David bargained for me and I now have a great pink rug in my living room and a nice purple one in my bathroom. Definitely makes these more cozy.
David dropped Jennifer and I off, so we went to Bonny Coffee to get some dinner. I wanted to get a drink so I pointed to the menu (which was in Chinese) and ended up with purple koolaid+sprite. It wasn't a bad combination. My pasta was absolutely disgusting though, so I picked up some kung pao chicken and rice from the restaurant in the hotel. After eating Jennifer and I hung out and talked for a few hours.
Pretty straightforward day. Tonight we're going to the Phoenix Club and perhaps meeting some of the other foreigners in Jiujiang.
My lessons planning for next week is done. We're just doing introductions so I can learn my hundreds of students names. Oy.
Oh. I got my roll sheet from Max (head of the foreign teachers) and it's in Chinese. I can read 小 (Xiao), 王 (Wang), 李 (Li), 张 (Zhang). The rest of them I guess I have to guess on, or just call them by their student number. Bah.
Also, I miss Taco Bell.
Friday, September 5, 2008
New, New, New
Posted by
Jiexi
at
10:04 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Ah, Taco Bell, such memories of yelling at a dumb machine in British English trying to convince a redneck with a metallic distorted Texan voice that I wanted BEAN burritos and not BEEF! Sigh, I miss it too...
No disrepect but how will you know which student is which when they all look the same? Large numbers stuck on their foreheads might do it for me. "OK number 473605 give me the past participle of the verb to run," that would be something wouldn't it? Of course if they are as rebellious as most of my fellow college students were they would swap numbers anyway and then look blank when asked a question. Maybe your students actually want to learn though.......
Forgive me for saying so but your choice of food is getting a bit suspect. First it was Blueberry Lays and now purple Koolade + Sprite. Are you going for fashionable colours rather than nutrition? Or perhaps it is colour co-ordination so that when you spill a purple drink on your purple rug it won't show. In which case you might want some Pink Lemonade for the living room.
OK that's it for today, we have high winds and rain (normal September) Grandma has laid the fire in case we need it tonight. The Dartmoor ponies are all huddled under the trees out of the rain and with the wind direction we will probably be harvesting golf balls from the garden or watching them float past in the leat - yes it has several inches of water today. Our runner beans in the vegetable patch are almost horizontal and we trying to decide whether or not we actually have to go into Tavistock to collect our fortnightly pocke money.
Take care, lots of love.
Grandma and Grandpa
xxxx
You should give them all English names! Or better yet, let them choose English names! My mom, my cousin, and I all taught English in China, and all have stories about our favorite English names students came up with. My mom had a student called 'Happy', my cousin had a student called 'Apple', and I had a student called 'Siloveil'. I finally asked her why that was her name, and she said it was because she was looking through an English dictionary and saw the words 'silo' and 'veil' and thought they were both really pretty, and when you combine them, you see the word 'love' spelled in the middle! (She was pretty cool.)
But yeah, if you give them English names, it might be easier to remember their names...I think that's why my Chinese teacher at Hampshire gave us all Chinese names.
葉 (Yip)
/\ It might actually be pronounced more like "Yeh" in Mandarin, I'm not certain.
-my
Post a Comment