Hakunamata the desert snowboarder

Friday afternoon.....another week hath been survived. However I must admit that however lame and 85-year old womanish it may be, in order to survive today I had to go to bed at 6:30 last night. I taught 6 full classes yesterday and this week I basically lectured on the Olympics and while the students really liked my dopey demonstrations of jumping in and out of the bobsleigh and doing shooting for the biathlon, lecturing over the voices of 65 children in each class was sometimes a strain on the voice. Then yesterday as I was walking out of the school gates to go home for lunch, I was corned by an admin lady asking me to take part in English Corners (english speaking club) after school that day and that my topic was school rules. Ha, what if I had told her no? Of course I wouldn't turn it down; I get paid extra for it, and it was with my favorite little junior 1 kiddos. But...this meant staying at school well past 6, talking and handing out prizes (provided by the school in the form of pens, erasers and little sweets) to 12 year olds for answering questions such as: "Tell me three school rules," "Tell me two rules you would make if you were a teacher" etc. The most popular prize was the eraser (Bill Yi (aka Bill Gates)) told me it was because in the shops that eraser costs 3kuai and the pens and candy were less than 1kuai.

I came home, contemplated venturing out for dinner...b/c yes I am still living on my couch and will be until oh Tuesday...but instead I grabbed and apple and yogurt and crashed before the evening news came on. I normally teach at 7:45am on Fridays (and all other days now) but today Jack, the English teacher for Junior1Class2 (the 7:45 Friday class) asked if we could swap times b/c he was giving his students a test and some wanted to start early before school. So, of course i said fine and I was able to sleep until 8 and then teach at 8:40. Do no worry, I didn't actually sleep 14 hours last night....i woke up about 3 for a bit which coincidentally coincided with the live coverage of the ladies' figure skating finals. I watched a bunch of women fall, and one beautiful Japanese girl not fall and then popped back to sleep.

My last two classes of the week were attended by 4 or 5 Junior 3 English teachers who had heard from my friend Qingling that I have interesting classes. Alas, I got to make an idiot out of myself in front of my 15 year olds and their teachers today. However the activity I ended class with made teaching each class this week worth it. I asked each student to write a short story about being an Olympic athlete. I made an example: I stuck my face on the body of Ice hockey star Mike Modano and made a story about my name being Hildy Sveldma from Sweden and how I was 39 years old and competing the Turin Olympics. I got some wonderful responses but my favorite was from a student named Abner: "Hello, my name is Hakunamata. I come from South Africa and I am playing snowboarding for my country in the Olympics in Italy this year. I have never seen snow, but I am going to Italy to play snowboarding. My father and I practice the snowboarding on the desert for 15 hours every day. We go home at night and my mother cooks potatoes. I think snow will look like mashed potatoes. Go South Africa" See...sometimes teaching the kiddos is rather rewarding.

Here's my debunking of common thought for the moment: I've heard from many people, as well as on many movies that if you exude confidence and look someone in the eye, then they're not going to look down and see what you are wearing. Well I chose to extend this little saying into including personal footwear. But, in China, for me, it's oh so wrong. I smile brightly at just about everyone I see...it order to melt those leers into smiles on passerby. They usually smile right back but I can't keep their gaze; it goes down to my feet. I think this is becuase people here are not used to seeing women my height and they figure that I must be wearing heels. But, much to their dismay I am wearing flat shoes and not just flat shoes, flip flops. In case you didn't know, flip flops are 'poor mans' shoes here and so in their head, my passing by had caused quite a conundrum....why is she tall, why is she a foreigner wearing the poor shoes? So much for blending in and being smiley....it doesn't prevent the double, triple and quadruple take.

Speaking of takes, my friend Tim and I are going to be in mattress ads here in Shenzhen! Hahaha. One of my student's fathers own a mattress factory in the SEZ and the student asked my good friend Xiaoxia (his English teacher) if she would ask me if me and a 'tall, handsome' friend would be in the adverts. Xiaoxia has assured me that it is legit, we'll be sitting on mattresses, fully-clothed etc. hahaa. Xiaoxia is 45 and is my Chinese mama, so she's looking out for us and will be our translator (i dont know much mattress lingo in Chinese). This all transpires next week. The money is great....for 3 hours tim and I get 3/4 the amount we're paid for teaching each month. Super!