Sunday at school
I just finished my first Sunday of teaching. Hopefully there won't be too many more following this one. I mean, how do you cope with your workweek when you finish your first day and realize that Monday is TOMORROW?!?
I've still got at least two or three or four entries I would like to write about last week and my adventures around Wuhan. Tonight, though, I've got much prep work to do. I have to go to the store, purchase much needed household items and lots and lots of white paper. I've got to make little picture cards of all of the words we've learned in Grade 1 so far. I've got to make some cards to go along with a board game for Grade 2 and I've got to figure out how to explain countable nouns versus non-countable nouns to Chinese 8 yr olds. All in a day's work, eh?
One of my favorite 2nd graders, Andrew, came up to me after class today and asked, "Lillis? How old are you?" I replied, "I'm 26." He stared hard at me and then said with perfect understanding, "Are you sure?" This little boy is very enthusiastic. He showed me his pencil case last week right after we learned the word "formula" and inside the case, he'd taped a piece of paper with lots of English letters and numbers and at the top of the paper he'd written, "Andrew's formula". He's a sweetheart with an always-furrowed brow. I tried patting the furrow away the other day and he said to Julia, in Chinese, "That's just the way it is. I worried it wrinkly". I could have hugged him for a week. Last Saturday, he came running into the office right before the end of the school day and shouted at me that he had amassed 20 stamps. 20 stamps gets you a prize from either Julia or myself. I didn't have any prizes at the time of his arrival so we waited for Julia to administer the prize. I was talking to him in English while we waited and he was too excited to focus. He kept shifting his weight back and forth and saying, "yeah" to everything I said. This might be inappropriate, but he was my little Chinese Rain Man.
On the way home from school this afternoon, I was riding shotgun in the van and happened to catch a woman in a tracksuit sporting the pointiest, highest high-heels I've yet seen in China. Adding insult to eyesore, the tracksuit was navy-velour with red stripes and the hells were a patent leather black. A warm black at that. It was all kinds of wrong. I just don't get it. Why ruin the comfort of the tracksuit with the discomfort of the shoes? Is it a yin-yang thing?
And my last tidbit for the day: Don's been playing the same Chinese soundtrack in the van recently. His love affair with disco music has passed from the days of trying hard to please to sheer laziness. Today, for the umpteenth time, we listened to the Chinese version of theat great song from Mannequin (which happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies; you just can't go wrong with Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall): Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, originally performed by Starship and now, by who knows? I tell you, it is a great rendition, but umpteen times? Come on! Lisa's decided to make Don a CD and has encouraged us to follow her lead. I'm happy as can be as long as my iPod continues to work...
