June 17th: gulliver pain and roof snipers

Day 274

Using the class 1 "horror story" of cancelling next week's party kept the remaining classes in line. Kip (Very Angry), Percy, Vinnie Bufante, and Sleepy LaBeef were all well-behaved for once. I let them watch NBA at the end of class, drew a map on the board and showed them where Detroit and San Antonio were in realtion to Ohio.

After lunch, I tried to find Principal Shen to get reimbursed for the plane ticket. The tower was crawling with investor-type folk, none of whom could give me an answer to where he was. One guy held out his hand for my plane ticket and I laughed in his face. One: he was not remotely connected with the school. Two: He just wanted to look at the plane ticket because he was curious, not because he wanted to help. There seems to be an innapropriate curiosity in China, akin to a three year old who must reach out and touch the shiny thing. At the post office, clerks who aren't even waiting on me will come up and root through the contents of my box, not to check for contraband, but just to be nosy.

Erin had me deliver a note to the primary teachers claiming she was sick, when actually she had stayed up until 5:30am at the tents getting stinko, slept through her alarm. I dropped it off, walked to the arts building to practice, but the piano room was sickeningly teeming with mosquitos. I tried again to access the principal with no luck.

I developed a headache which the energy of class 7 did not help with. I was extra patient with them since they love me and were giving me presents and were just generally excited, as opposed to junior 2 classes who just want to whip me needlessly into a frenzy.

Class 8 had no AC so they begged me to go to the next room where there was AC. I agreed and then discovered it was a room-in-porgress with only desks and chalkboard, every chair creak, every chair scuff, every whisper, reverberated tenfold, made everything deafening. Not the best environment for a headachey Mr. Willis. I made it through somehow, without blowing my top and settled into my apartment, realizing I had just completed my last week of official teaching. Next week would be all parties (except class 1) and then a few days until exodus to the states. All so soon.

I rode up to the middle school, watched "No Good Deed" while the others had their school dinner. Mine consisted of popcorn and Oreos (not the best, but not Chinese food, which my stomach still wanted to spar with at every opportunity.) When they returned, Heather and I watched "Mallrats" until water balloon hour struck. Then, we took our post lobbed a few. Heather at one point went, "Now! Them!" and we hurled at two boys cycling by. I actually hit the kid instead of the ground before him. He got off the bike started cussing in Chinese at Mike's window.

We took the arsenal back downstairs, wnet to Mike's room under the guise of having some tequila with he and Allen, but really just wanted to check to see if the victims had gotten their attention. With the windows closed and the AC cranked, they were oblivious. Whew.

Mike came up with us and we barraged the citizens of Haimen, sparing working men and all women (unless they were biking and fucking around with their cell phone). We used up the whole pack, finished the tequila, made plans to get more the next day, generally laughed our asses off. Jose Cuervo tucked us in with a warm agave blanket over our chests.