March 22nd: Easter lesson and S vs TH

Day 187

This week is the Easter lesson, which I thought was going to be gangbusters. With the first class, I got through everything and still had half the classtime to fill. I tried to find an online Easter game we could all play and I ran out the clock doing that. I worked on pronunciation for the second class and filled the time better. After lunch I got the St. Patrick's Day pictures from last week and added a "review" period at the beginning of the lesson to eat up time and practice their comprehension.

Jeni dropped by for tea, then got hit hard with a napping fit. She grabbed some winks while I wrote and listened to Ben Neill's "Tryptical." I woke her at quarter after one, and she dashed off to class.

In the apathy crew, one kid told me he would hide the Easter eggs in "his mouse." I drew a mouse on the board and looked at him puzzledly. He pointed at his mouth. "Ah," I said, "Mouth." He wouldn't say it correctly. Then he wouldn't say it at all. He stood and banged his ruler on the desk and looked around thinking I would get bored and move on. He was wrong. My job is to get students to speak correctly. I took a chair and waited for him to say it up until the bell rang. "S" and "TH" are not interchangeable. Let's say he went to America and told a girl he was going to "pleasure her with his mouse." This could cause some problems. Either she'd leave the room in a huff, or excitedly grab some PVC pipe from under the bed, but either way, our little friend said something he didn't mean.

Dinner was a little unsatisfying, so I got some vegetable snacks with "black pepper taste" and some peanut butter/chocolate Oreos (does Terry Willis know of these?) and ate them all. It was the damned MSG, I couldn't stop eating. For the next couple of hours I felt the food as a rock in the center of my chest.

I rode up to Dongzhou around 8ish to join Jeni and Rhys at dinner (not to eat, mind you). We sat at the blue pacman place and were subjected to a kung fu TV show that was more full of verbal-sparring than actual combat. Lots of "ha-ha-has" and head-throwing back. If I could write in Chinese, I would send a letter to the producers: "More whupass, less posturing. More Karo syrup trickling from the corners of mouths and less laughing. K? K."

Rhys and I went to Kedu, which rumor has it is closing. The shelves were half-full and people swarmed the check-out queues. Apparently, everyone had heard of the 25% storewide discount. I picked up some coffee for Erin, then headed across the street for sugar at Times. The dude wouldn't let me in with my backpack. There were no more lockers to put it in, and beyond that, Rhys and I are the most conspicuous men in Haimen. With eyes on us at all times, what could I hope to shoplift? I left the bag with the liquor counter girl and we made our rounds.

I dropped some juice off for Heather, who had been asleep all but four hours that day. She's a bit under the weather, poor lamb. I rode back, gave Erin her coffee and DVD player. She had been stricken with napping fits today as well. Perhaps this is where all the women will give birth to weird platinum-haired children with spooky powers like "Village of the Damned."

I wrote for a bit, retired to my cozy bunk.