Babies

In the last two days, I have received two, three-month-old kittens. One boy and one girl. They are siblings. It's now 3:30 a.m., and the only way to keep the little boy from crying is to sit up with him in the living room. There were some initial worries about a missing girl, but she was just well-hidden under the couch. Then there was the coaxing of the boy down from the ledge of my fifth floor balcony. There was also the constant crying of the boy when he arrived, and it seemed to stop once I got him in the same place as his sister, Fizz. This early morning, however, he doesn't seem so satisfied with sibling love. I'm guessing he misses his mommy. Strangely enough, no amount of petting or holding seems to help. NO. He simply wants me to be AWAKE and in the same room. Ugh...... The crying has finally stopped, and I imagine my neighbors are extremely happy about that. I'd really love to be asleep. Anyone who knows me knows I do NOT function very well on much less than seven hours of sleep. Alas, what we'll do for our babies.

I'm still working on a name for this boy. Both kittens are white. Fizz, the girl, has brown eyes, and the boy has blue eyes. They look a little bit like aliens with their pointy heads and huge triangle ears, but they're so cute.

Oh no, it looks like another round of crying might begin. Sigh....wonder how long this will last. I might have to find someone else's apartment to sleep in if this continues.

I'd Like to Buy a Homonym

By, not buy.

Aisles, not isles.

Language degeneration should be listed as an occupational hazard for EFL / ESL teachers!

Lately

As soon as I stepped off the plane and into the steamy heat that pervades Shantou summers, it felt like my summer of freedom had entirely evaporated - a memory that once was real, maybe. This really is a place where time stops and continues on its own agenda, carrying you with it, kicking and screaming, or not. It is a place of uncontrollably frizzy hair, sweat stains, mosquito bites, and noodles of longevity. I'm strangely surprised to find that it's also finally becoming a place I'm familiar with, at least the STU campus. I definitely have some hesitation about writing positive things so early in the year - I'm a bit superstitious about how things will turn out if I do so. However, this could be a really good year if the teaching goes better. I'm at least excited about the possibility of enjoying life here.

Thus far this semester, we've kept the STU-ELC traditions alive - enjoying the faculty meeting and seeing the new resident laowai for the first time, the classic ELC faculty and staff photo post bland ACC dinner meant not to offend anyone, apparently, nor impress anyone, apparently, and the painful experience of performing a song and dance - think "Hokey Pokey" -  on stage for a crowd of 1,000 + freshmen, although this year we were only live in front of a few hundred while all the others piled (due to fears of H1N1) into separate classrooms to watch the festivities via t.v. broadcast. We all highly enjoyed the comedy of upper-classmen performing for their freshmen peers - chief among the perfomers was a fantastic MJ tribute by one fancy dancer, though the most startling award may have to go to the English Corner coordinators who decided to take the evening from a PG rating to, well, at least PG-13. Following the freshmen orientation night came the comedy of errors that is the oral placement exam. There were some real jewels in the mix, as always. Before I write a couple, just let me say - I really respect the students here. They are brave and eager and always willing to jump into communication. They are not afraid of making mistakes. I realize that. So as I write, I do so simply out of enjoyment of the idiosyncratic ways this language of English can be put together. In fact, this is one of the highlights of language teaching for me - seeing the strange ways people put language to their use and thinking "Hey, why DON'T we do that?". Anyhow...just a few:  

[After about a minute of silence:] "When we do something, we need a plan because."

[explain the proverb "Honesty is the best policy."] "They think you are the political person, and you have the best policy."

"As we all know, the Chinese child live in China." 

Next up on the agenda is written placement test grading and the extra-curricular activities night. Have you ever wondered if you could actually suffocate due to lack of oxygen in a room? That's pretty much the feeling of the EAC night. There are hundreds of bodies pressing in on you, eager to ask their well-rehearsed questions, oblivious to the fact that you've already answered about a hundred times before that night, "Yes, I can eat with chopsticks." "I came to China because I like Chinese students." "Yes, I like white rice, sometimes." "Well, I haven't been to many places in China. No, I haven't been to _________(insert name of random students' hometowns here)." Ahhh...the fun! Maybe I'll be surprised this year with enlightening discussions on the political future of the country, the near neighbors and new ways of viewing them, or the rampant and deleterious (though seemingly benign) ethnocentricsm here and reasons of why it is so accepted.

More to come later, I'm hoping. This sight is officially blocked at the moment, so I'm scrambling to find ways around. There may come a day when it's not so easy to skirt the "harmonizing". But don't fear. If I drop off into a communication black hole, that's why.

The Curse

Year 1 – B-6, 402

Gas doesn’t work, doesn’t heat the water until after much tinkering, then mysteriously disappears faster than at other apartments despite more or less comparable use.

Strange occurrences with electrical outlets and malfunctioning television occur.

Remote control for t.v. will lower the volume, but not raise it.

DVD player is bought. Refuses to work. Then neighbour’s DVD player is borrowed. It will play a DVD, but the image shows up in static greys.

Toaster oven bought. Toaster oven plugged in and turned on. Toaster oven produces smoke and electrical burn smell. Toaster oven sent back to store via my lap on the bus full of people.

Clothes drying pulleys break. Maintenance repairs it.

Doors to balcony don’t lock. Door off kitchen found wide open when returning from month-long winter break.

Year 2 – new place, 1 bedroom, above network center

All furniture shoved into one room. No desk. No A/C. No curtains. No bug screens. No stove. No fridge. Hardly any storage space.

Night one – shower floods bathroom, then seeps through kitchen drain and into living room on floor where cardboard boxes with all decorations lie. Boxes piled up on the couch.

Night three – return from Eastgate dinner, door refuses to open. Called someone to call someone to come help me break in. Wait an hour or so. Repair man shows up, tries credit card trick, fails, thankfully. Shoulders his way into door, wish I could have kicked it in. Repair man goes home to get new door handle apparatus. Repair man returns and replaces door handle.

I stay in apartment at random times on almost every day to meet people to install things that should have been put in place during “renovation” over the summer. Wait a day, get fridge. Wait another day, get curtains. Wait another day, t.v. guys whom I didn’t request show up and do who knows what. Wait another sweaty day while AC guys play with wires and fix nothing.

It’s hot in Shantou. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact. Bought my own fan, and now nights aren’t so terrible.

So ready for this curse to end!