Only room for 7

Ten weeks from yesterday…I’ll be back in the United States of America. It seems uncanny that 9 months have passed already and that Easter is next weekend. However, seeing as religion is still somewhat of a taboo issue to speak of publicly, not much will be happening in the way of Easter festivities. That being said recent weeks have not been devoid of entertainment.

This past week I taught a lesson on the Titanic. This was a direct result of a student asking me if we could view the movie Titanic during oral English Class. I had to say no based on two reasons, one being that the movie is almost three hours long and would take up almost all of the rest of class time this term to watch, and two, there are scenes of nudity and suggestive sexual nature that aren’t appropriate to view at school. However, I liked the idea of the Titanic, so I did a little research, found out when it sank, how many people were on board, how many survived and what kinds of people were on board and voila…..a lesson for 12 classes. I gave the students some info regarding the ship, and we worked on how to say fractions in English by deciding what percentage of people survived the shipwreck. Then I asked them for a list of all the jobs they knew how to say in English. This list varied in length and creativity depending on the level of English in the class, but they usually came up with about 30….the most interesting of the week being 1) Churchman 2) Terrorist 3) Counterterrorist 3) Pig-feeder 4)Toilet Cleaner 5) Spy and 6) Thief. The usual doctor, lawyer, teacher etc were in there and I taught them some new professions such as architect, construction worker, and president. Then I showed the class a slide of a lifeboat and said that there were only 7 places in the last lifeboat on the Titanic and there were 30+ people left having those 30+ professions that they previously came up with. It was their job to come up with the 7 most important to save and give me reasons why. With the sporty boys, the famous basketball player was always the first one to be saved. In one class a group came up with saving a model b/c she would be ‘light’ and then they could take someone heavy in the boat and eat him first. Then in one class the students knew the word butcher and asked that the butcher and headmaster be in the lifeboat so that the butcher could cut the headmaster up into pieces (oddly enough I got this response 5 times this week…people really don’t like the headmaster). One group said to save the churchman so he could talk to God and ask for help…how righteous. Then there were the ‘cool’ boys who learned that adding ‘ess’ to most jobs made it a specifically female job, so they wanted to save the waitress, the stewardess, the model, the wizardess (yes that’s the female version of wiazard), the butcheress, the hostess, policewoman and actress. They wanted everyone that was saved to be female and ‘good to look at.’

I finally got an office at school …..with 9 weeks left of school. It’s on the 5th floor, has a great view of the school, a water cooler with no water bottle and no computer. If they ever managed to put in a computer, I’ll spend some time up there, otherwise it’s merely an extra key on my keyring.

My Chinese friend Abby got me a tutoring job downtown for this month. Her boss is going to America in May and wants to improve her English. It’s nice to teach someone who really wants to learn, versus kids who verbally assault you in Cantonese and you cannot do anything about it.

It’s amazing how my mood here is dictated so much by the weather. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the weather was beautiful and walking to tutoring (mine in Chinese or Ella’s in English) was pleasant and I was able to run in the park by the reservoir and see all my usual ‘friends’. There is the man who rides his yellow bike around this circular path for 45 minutes everyday around 5pm. Then there is the cheeriest lady who carries an open umbrella (rain or shine), a plastic bag with her shoes in it, and proceeds to walk the whole of the park paths backwards and barefoot. There is the posse of old men who sit at the lake and fish all day long and catch heaps and heaps of fish and keep them in this tank and then at 5pm everyday they toss them back in so they can repeat the same action again tomorrow. There’s the woman who sits in the ticket booth at the entrance of the bonsai garden all day long, smiling and I honestly don’t know how she can do it….no one ever pays the 10 yuan to get in. On the weekend there is a man who always plays tennis with himself in the parking lot using a long piece of elastic tethered to his racket and the ball and there are also an uncountable number of fan dancing groups. Awesome. However the last four days it has rained. It’s depressing, and slippery. My quality of life takes a nosedive on rainy days.

I’ve got a holiday coming the first week in May. In China it’s called Golden Week. All of my good friends are going on a cheap package trip to Bali, but I’ve been discouraged by the higher Nelson powers that be not to go….plus I’ve been there 6 times. So, that leaves me with few other options. But I rang up a friend in Beijing and I think the two of us might be bound for Thailand….Phuket to be exact to have a similar beachy-type holiday. Lack of funds and the expensive nature of Japan have finally ruled out my thoughts for Tokyo and Osaka. I think, on recommendation by Jenny, that I will go with maybe 3 or 4 other friends to Macau for my birthday. I think that could be a lot of fun. Some fellow male teachers are there this weekend doing a farewell to one of the guys because he is heading back to the states the beginning of next week. They all have had suits made at the train station and wanted an excuse to wear them. The plan was to go to the casinos in Macau all decked out. Ha, as if they have any money to spend. This week seems to be a week of leavers. I think 4 or 5 more people will leave before the 15th of April.