March 24th: authority issues and soccer

Day 189

The Ultraman class was delightful as usual. I showed them the St.Patricks' Day picture (since last Thursday classes missed out) and when I pointed out Tom Willis, they went nuts. "Oh, very cool!" They held up their notebooks with the Paperback stickers on them and cheered. Some told me they've been going to the website. Get your visas, boys. Looks like you may have to tour here. The power went out for the last part of class, so I lost my overhead projector abilities. I held up the pictures of the vocab "over my head", so I guess I was still overhead projecting.

After lunch, the power was still out and I was going batshit from boredom. I risked going over to the arts building to play piano, and luckily found a room open. I played both albums and started redoing a couple songs when Feng Jao Li came in. I asked her (in grunts and pantomimes) about my dictionary and she said she'd have it tomorrow. From the awkward non-exchange that one could file under communication in a Dian Fossey environment, it's evident she's not using it anyway.

The next class was very bad. Everyone was chiseling away at little stone obelisks with scalpels, some sort of art class project and I had to stop class, tell everyone to out them away or else they became Mr. Willis's. Not a minute later, a kid in the back was back, chiseling away. I went back, demanded he give it to me, and he pretended he had nothing, pointed to his eraser. I took that, went back to the front of the class, sighed in disgust. One student said, "Don't cry." That cut it. I wrote on the board, "20 lucky things." After telling them to shut up, I ordered them to take out a piece of paper and write down 20 things that are lucky. They sat quietly and I was able to have some peace and order. My dude in the back wasn't writing anything and made it clear he wasn't about to. I told him, "You have not written anything. You do not want to be in this class, so you must leave the class. Go to the teacher's office." He avoided eye contact in hopes that would thwart me. I got in his face, said, "Go to the teacher's office. Now." He had the nerve to tell me "No."

"Ok." I went out of the room to the next class and motioned for the teacher to come over. I'm not sure she understood what I was saying ("I have a very bad student. Can you take him to the office?") but followed and nodded anyway. She stuck her head in the window and the kids filled her in via pu tong hua. She exchanged a few lines with the bad kid and then he got up and went out. There was a barely audible "ohhhh" from the other kids. "Now,"I said, "Anyone else want to be bad?" No one else wanted to be bad. They started turning in their lists of lucky things. Some kids had the right idea and had curious concepts of good fortune: "Bring Bush to tea," "Bush cooks for me," "play with snow," "drink seawater." Most of the class missed the point and just made lists of English words: monkey, sheep, flowers, matchbox, lantern; the strangest of which was "luster." Reading and laughing at these got me in a good mood.

My next class was all about "play football." I told them if they were good, we would go out and play football. They were, and we sped through the lesson and we went out to the field. They kept saying things in Chinese that I knew to be "pass to the lao wei" and I kept correcting them,"Boo shir lao wei. I am peng you or may guo ren. Lao wei is bad." They kept letting it slip. It was fun playing soccer again and a comfort to know my skills were still there even if the energy is decreased. I still know how to trap, dribble, and I got in a midfield header. I'd say my years of hackey-sacking improved my skills, too. Crazy. Were it not for the language barrier, I'd love to be their soccer coach. Right now, they mostly have enthusiasm. A few fundamentals and drills could get them decent.

The power came back for the last class, so I had overhead capabilities again. Another long Thursday put to bed. Huzzah! I rode up to Dongzhou, collected Heather and we went to the music shop so I could get in some more "playing in front of other people" time. The light didn't work, and I was running out of daylight.The last two songs I played through squinted eyes. We went to Kedu for more wine and such, and to write down the funny Chinglish on certain products. Some highlights: "That is the best laugh with someone because you both think the same thing is funny." "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." and lastly, these sound eerily like Fudgie and Fufu lyrics: "We like the new taste. We need the quality. And we need the best food. You will find what you want. Cool fashion need cool taste. You are the new man. How delicious and can not fotget (sic), special taste, return the turn falvour (sic)--."


Rhys, Jeni, Heather and I had tree dumplings for dinner. When I was attempting to pay, a guy berhind the counter noticed my wallet and I pointed it to him, said "Eat My shorts." He nodded, repeated "Eat My Shorts" with a quiet reverence that we all found hilarious. (For those of you who don't know my eccentricities, I make wallets out of cereal boxes and my current one is made from "Eat My Shorts" cereal, a Simpsons cereal I found in the UK, featuring syrup-flavored multi-grained shorts.) When we sat to eat, I went over and ganbei'd him by declaring "Eat my shorts." The only problem was, it wasn't him. I toasted some starnger an inside joke I'd made with another gentleman. A few minutes later, he sent his son over with a tiny glass of beer and hetold us, "Next year I will go to Dongzhou. I look forward to learning from you. I hope we will be good friends." Cute. But now we had to be on our best behavior.

Afterwards we drank wine and watched "Napoleon Dynamite" again, laughed ourselves silly. Tiredness and wine spun me in its soporific web and soon I was fast asleep.