Today was Thursday. The last day of May.... wait, what?! The LAST day?! Shooottt.... oh well... for the past almost 23 years, June has always been my favorite month ;)
Well, despite the craziness we are all feeling as our time here really is coming to an end, I wanted to share a few of my favorite moments from my day today (ya know just your typical China day :)....
-Today I taught one class... I began class and quickly was able to determine that yep.. one of my boys was MIA... we'll call him "Eclipse" because when he rarely comes around to class, and yet when he does make it to class, he leaves quite the impression and most certainly changes the tide of the class in terms of attitude. It's hard to miss him when He does appear! And today, noticing his fifth absence of the semester, I gave a heavy sigh. I told him two weeks ago if he missed another class, I would be unable to give him the oral final, per department's rules. If it was up to me, I would let Eclipse's absences slide because a) I have an unfortunate soft spot for this little troublemake b) he does have rather good English- he just happens to be bitten by the lazy bug most days! Anyways, about 10 minutes into class, Ecipse makes his glorious appearance! I make a sarcastic comment, and then I stop in his steps.
"Eclipse, you are late to my class. It is not acceptable to be late to my class. Please go to the stage, you must sing us an English song". (Now despite Chinese culture being relatively 'performance' based, what with KTV and all, it appears this late/tardy policy does the trick for punishment!) But as fate would have it, Eclipse far surpasses my expectations to rise up to the punishment, (or challenge ;) He bravely takes the stage without faltering, turns to me, says, "I will sing I want it that way". I shrug not really registering the name of the song, but as soon as he bursts forth in the first note, the little girl in me begins jumping for joy... ah yes, simply music to my ears as (one of my favorite boys) Eclipse strings together the lyrics to Backstreet Boys! Class highlight. (period end of story!)
-Splashing through the rain puddles in a rain jacket and shorts with my teammate Megan as we braved dawn with an early morning run, or rather 'tramp' through the rain! Oh and it wasn't that we were just soaked to the bone being washed cleaned by the rain during our laps around the track, we also had quite the crowd at 5:30 in the morning! A group of students who normally meet in the early mornings on the other side of campus to practice pronunciation poems, decided to meet under the stadium covering by the track. As soon as they spotted us splashing around the track, they began cheering us on each time we passed them... only in China :)
- During class today, I passed around a sign-up sheet for our last class together. I have decided to make it into a class talent show! Well, today one of my boys made my day when he came over with the sign up sheet. He had written his name, and then under "Activity", he had written 'eyes and..' then he looked up at me pointed to his nostril and said 'this!' So I said "nostril"... he proceeds to write down nostril after eyes, then spent another 10 minutes trying to explain the talent he was going to sign up for. I attempted to solve this by guessing at all of his miming and chinese vocabulary, but lo and behold, never quite hit the nail on the hand. Eventually he went to other classmates and then came back, and said, I will use my eyes and nostrils to hold things! Oh wow... hahahaha can't WAIT for this talent show ;)
-Going to order warm papaya milk (which hey before you begin hating... give it a try- it's LEGIT!), only to have my horrible chinese result in just a small cup of warm milk. Bummer.
-Cab ride tonight. After being downtown for a weekly study, my teammate Abby and I were so blessed with catching a taxi right away! Usually we walk for miles and spend 40 minutes trying to catch someone! But, not tonight! And as we settled into the drive, the cab driver began speaking to us in Chinese. Instead of shirk away from the communication interaction as usual, Abby and I rose the occassion. We searched our notebooks and her kindle to do our best at peicing together a conversation with this man! And it was the funniest experience I've ever had in cab! And if I do say so myself, we were quite successful! In my notebook, I only had written my lesson on houses... so I just asked him if he lived in a big house! haha! Great convo right?! And he said no, and then asked me! I tried replying with saying I had a 2 room house, but that was lost in translation. Then he repeated one question at us for awhile before we realized he was asking our age. So we successfully told him our age and found out he was 35. Then I asked him if he was born in Changchun and he just shook his head in the affirmative... and then that was a dud. Then, I saw on my paper the words for friend. So I told him pointing at me and pointing at him, "zhong hua"! And he started laughing and repeating what I was saying! It was the funniest experience, lots of laughs, lots of repitition, but he seemed to enjoy making fun of us, and we enjoyed being brave in our final weeks immersed in the language!
-Writing this whole blog out saying it today was Wednesday, publishing it, then re-reading it and realizing oh wait... it's actually Thursday!! BAH! haha
Hope you have a beautiful Wednes-AHEM- ooops sorry Thursday, last day of May, as well!
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