Universal Behavior

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Meg

I did some Mad Libs with my new teenage class. This is secretly a test to sort out English speakers from nodders. I can’t even fault them for faking it… I spent most of my high school chem class pretending I understood what we were doing. Basically, I call out the part of speech, they call out words, then I read the Mad Lib, and I see who laughs at the story, and who nods like it’s serious.

Wonder if that would work in a chemistry class. “Haha! Covalent bonds! That’s what she said!”

Nah. Chemistry just isn’t funny.

I grabbed the Mad Libs from this site, we did the Ghost Story on Monday and the Love Letter on Tuesday. The kids really liked putting each other’s names into the stories… even the nodders got that we were writing a story about their classmates. The kids knew what I was doing the second time, and got a lot more creative with their words.

A little too creative, though, since one of my boys used his pocket translator to look up and then shout “I know a noun! Erection!”

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In Today’s Mail

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Meg

…spell check doesn’t like Neuromancer. It wants me to change it to Necromancer. I think spell check has been playing too much D&D. …

— Allison

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Postal

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Meg

In September, I took a picture of the post office down the street from our house, because it was pretty and had more character than the grey blocks nearby.

Sadly that post office is gone, and has been replaced by a gray block.

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Odd News

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Meg

We turned on the TV for a few moments while we were setting up an episode of House, and we ended up watching CCTV9 for quite a while as the newsanchor read a list of countries who support the middle kingdom’s actions in that place with all the mountains. It was a pretty extensive list, but as we watched, I felt like the worst dumb-American stereotype ever, because there were countries I’d never heard of, and some names I recognized, but couldn’t find on a map.

There were some countries that I instantly recognized, but I’m not sure that saying North Korea agrees with your actions is really the best way to prove legitimacy.

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Former Veggie Market

Posted on March 22, 2008 by Meg

This is not the world’s greatest photo, but it’s the only picture I have that shows the great hallway of produce outside our gates. Christina snapped it when we found the market, right after we arrived in Beijing, and I’ve been going there at least once a week since then. I have a fruit vendor and a veggie vendor here, who are friendly and don’t overcharge me.


I went there yesterday to restock, and found this instead.


Rumor has it that the Beijing subway will soon be making it’s way to Yihai Hua Yuan. It’ll be nice to be connected to the rest of the city, but I’ll have to find a new market.

More photos of the wreckage.

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The Lion, The Witch, and The… German Fighter Pilot?

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Meg

Stick and I picked up the Narnia movie from Gua Ye (now that I know her name, I should probably stop calling her DVD Lady) the other day. Neither of us had seen it, and I was hoping to use The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, as morphine for my Harry Potter addiction. You know, so I could still get my fix of adorable British kids saving magic land from Evil, without boring poor Stick to death.

If I didn’t live with Stick, I would fall asleep on the couch every night watching one of the Harry Potter movies. I try to tone it down for him, because unlike my wonderful roommate Kristine, he can actually get sick of Hogwarts (I fast forward through the muggle parts).

I don’t like most recent movie, Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix. It’s not the continuity problems, or ways the movie differs from the book. But somehow a film about the government-appointed administrator with no educational background who makes teachers’ lives miserable and ruins all chance to actually educate students, just doesn’t offer the same fantasy-world escape.

Anyway, I was finishing up dinner when Stick put the Narnia DVD in.

“I think we were duped!” Stick called into the kitchen, “Unless… you read the book… Are there Nazis in Narnia?”

Turns out, the beginning of the movie is, uh, shot from a Nazi pilot’s perspective in the London blitz. Not quite what I expected, but I knew Gua Ye wouldn’t let us down.

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The Flip Side Of Spitting

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Meg

On the bus today, I blew my nose and then looked about for a trashcan to get rid of my tissue. There wasn’t one, so I pushed my tissue into my pocket to throw it out at home.

I noticed a girl staring at me, but thought nothing of it, until she poked her friend and pointed at my pocket. I don’t know what she was saying to her friend, but she was clearly as disgusted by my tissue use as I am by clearing one’s nose into the street.

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At Least It Wasn’t Blue!

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Meg

I started my new job at the high school today. We did a good warm-up where I told the kids that everyone is strange, and asked them to tell me something strange about themselves. We talked about “strange” and “unusual” and I started by telling them that I think soda is disgusting, I never drink Coke.

Then I asked the class to each tell me their English name, and something odd about themselves. They really got into it, one girl told me she likes to eat baby food, a boy said he likes to hide in the bathroom so his parents won’t give him chores, another said she hates to watch TV, and so forth. It’s a rocking icebreaker, it got everyone talking.

One girl, who has that haircut that Stick and I call “the window”, told me her name. Then she grinned and lifted her bangs to show where she’d accidentally shaved off half an eyebrow.

I wanted to ask her if she’d had an accident in Transfiguration class.

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Today’s Mail

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Meg

I was going to send you an e-card, but the stupid company doesn’t have Dead Caesar Day cards.

-Eric

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What Color Is The Sun?

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Meg

Yesterday Stick made a bulletin board for his class, showing the kids’ vocab words “morning”, “afternoon” and “evening” with the sun in the obvious positions for each time of day.

“It looks okay,” his TA said when she saw it. “But why did you make the sun yellow?”

“Uh… what color should the sun be?”

“Red, the sun is red.”

So he took down the yellow circles and made red ones.

Edit 3/15 I asked Stick to take a picture of his illustrations of Krypton, but before he could, the school decided to renovate the corkboard on the classroom walls, so his artwork was pulled down. We’ll have to take his word that it was awesome for the 30-odd hours it lasted… isn’t that a day on Tatooine?

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