It's so hot these days. It's no wonder the poor students are so exhasted all of the time. There's 60 bodies crammed into a small room with large windows for the sun to dehydrate for 10 hours a day. Yikes, it got hot fast. And they say this is nothin'. Kinda like in Minnesota when we say, "cold 'nuf for ya? You ain't seen nothin' yet." But I still prefer the warm weather to the cold.
I finally got so sick of my refriderator today. It's been randomly shutting off when it feels like it, and I've lost a lot of good food already. The only way to get it back running was to kick it. So I got fed up, so Brenda and I went into her old apartment today (one floor just below mine) to fetch her old fridge. (We all have mini fridges, so we can handle the move). But holy growing green stuff, Batman. It was so sick. As soon as we opened the door we got a thick shower of mold spores. It was everywhere. The walls were black, and the green plastic chair was yeah... greeeeener and fuzzier. The fridge had been shut, and we opened it to find lots of lovely blackness. Wow. No wonder I get so lethargic and stuffy in my apartment right above this giant petry dish. If I didn't have the AC going all the time, my place wouldn't look or smell much different. We still made the switch, though. I cleaned out all the crap and now I'm happy to have a consistently running fridge.
This weeks lesson isn't all that exciting. They don't seem to appreciate my efforts to try to make lessons interesting, exciting, and yes entertaining. So I'm kind of giving them some grammar, reading, and comprehension excersizes out of spite. I'm so bad!! But I figure it's good for them. They read a short story about the real life of Hetty Green, the richest woman in the world in 1900, but who lived as if she were impovershed simply because she couldn't bare to spend her money. At the end of class we are playing a game, though. And it works so well. Boys vs. Girls. I go around asking questions, but they are not allowed to say Yes, No, or I don't know. If a girl says one of those, the boys get a point... and visa versa. It's really funny when I trick them like "Do you have any pets?"... "uh, I do not have any pets".... "really?" "Yes"... ha ha, every one likes it a lot.
It's kinda fun to be able to understand just enough Chinese... more than they realize. Today I road back with the headmaster in his brand new Honda wagon nicely purchased by the school for his personal use (wonder who's idea that was). Anyway, road back with him and like six other Chinese teachers. They were all chatting away, and then they started talking about me. This is what I heard,
"Can she understand what we're saying?"
"No, she can't speak Chinese."
"Does any one here speak English?"
"I don't.........I don't..........I don't.........ha ha ha ha ha"
"Isn't she pretty?"
"Where is she from?"
"She's from America."
"America, oohh."
"She is so pretty."
"She's so young"
etc etc etc
Yadda Yadda yadda! I just sat back and listened. It's kinda like the feeling you might get if you overheard people talking behind your back. But I was cool that I could understand so much, and the fact that they think I'm absolutely clueless makes it really fun.
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