My home state, New Jersey, warns locals not to eat squirrels from the toxic dump.
A lead-contaminated squirrel was found in the area two months ago, prompting the agency, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection, to send out letters advising that adults eat squirrel no more than twice a week and even less for children and pregnant women.
Today I asked my students to choose the most important holiday in their home country and tell me how that day is celebrated and why it’s important. I thought this would be an interesting topic that everyone would relate to, and it would lead smoothly into a lesson on proper nouns. (We’d look for countries, dates, holidays, family members’ names and so forth in the students’ papers.)
This is the kind of topic I’d get really excited about in Yantai, only to have the first student say Spring Festival, and the rest of the students say “Yes.” On the way to class today, I was so excited to hear what such a diverse class would have to say, and it seemed like an easy, fun, non-threatening topic that would lend itself well to freewriting, reading aloud and discussing.
Unfortunately for me, I have one student from Haiti and two from the Dominican Republic, so the discussion about Independence Days turned very tense very quickly.
In China, I blogged and read blogs because I just didn’t have enough English speakers around me. I needed to read TalkTalkChina, Sinosplice, Humanaught, OneManBandWidth and other blogs to remind myself that other people were surviving and exploring the wild East. I started blogging into the vacuum, but then I started to get anti-foreigner hatemail so I knew I was being read.
Here, when I write, I’m a few feet away from Stick on his computer, which means that for every sentence I type, I’ve been subjected to three or four YouTube clips. Look, Meggie! It’s a guy playing a themesong on an unusual instrument! Check this out! It’s a pet acting like a person!
The only time I really get any peace is when he’s in the other room, cleaning up after me.
No, I haven’t been playing Burning Crusade all week, I was working on this week’s Faster Than The World article on soft power and Civ 4.
On Sunday, Eric and his family had a Welcome Back party for me. Eric made a huge Bon Voyage sign and then taped “Welcome Back, The Meg!” over it. He seems to think that he’ll be able to get more use out of that one.
Being home again reminds me of one of those speed-of-light logic puzzles, about who’s aged more, the traveler or the home. I got to catch up with my college friends, torment Carolyn’s new boyfriend, play a bizarre house-rules version of Cranium, and descend on Mama Hoffmann’s food in a way that make me kind of glad that I was the one with the camera.
There’s absolutely no excuse for me to have MapQuested directions to Eric’s house. If there are two cities in the world that I should be able to find my way between, they should be Amherst and Sterling. But I wasn’t exactly sure, so I printed directions.
Today I was driving Stick’s car to my first day of my new job. Stick was at home, so it was just me, my amazing French Vanilla coffee and my MapQuest directions. Actually, two sets of directions. Both sets of directions involve words like “202” and “Palmer”. Both routes are familiar because Stick’s driven me there in the last week.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
It’s the beginning of the semester, and I need a new parking pass. At UMass, I go see Marcus but at Local Community College, I end up waiting for a while, trying to catch the attention of one of the employees. When I finally do, she says “Not here, go to the library to pick up your parking pass and ID,” before turning to her AIM-chatting colleague and adding “Which you would know, if you read your orientation packet.”
I giggled and explained I was picking up my Faculty parking pass. YEAH! Despite showing up at eleven for a ten o’clock interveiw , I was hired to teach an ESL class three days a week at LCC! Which is actually not that local for me, but whatever, I’ll drive. I got to quit my temp job today! (It wasn’t horrible, actually it was as nice as a temp job could possibly be, but it’s great not to see endless months of alphabetizing invoices and stuffing envelopes in my future.)
Stick thinks I should see if my awesomely amazing Faculty sticker works like a medical license plate (“Officer, there’s a subject-verb disagreement on the other side of town, and it could turn ugly.”). Also, Stick can’t decide if he wants to call me Professor The Meg or Doctor Girlfriend, and so he compromises by saying things like “Hi Professor the Meg! Doctor Girlfriend, how are you?” In the interests of fairness, I should add that what he usually says is more like “Professor the Meg, could you posssibly not leave your clothes all over the floor, Doctor Girlfriend?” or “Doctor Girlfriend, are you drinking from any of the glasses you’ve accumulated around your computer, Professor the Meg?”
I have to go… I haven’t stared at my Faculty sticker in at least twenty minutes and I have to make sure it’s still there.
Today I stopped by the Asian market in Amherst (Mom’s House on College St., not the one on Route 9 near the bridge) , planning to pick up some cheap noodles and fresh veggies for dinner. When I went inside, I smelled that familiar siren call of soy sauce and oil, and before you could say “total hypocrite”, I was asking the price of the ready-made food, and bringing a white carton home.
American Chinese food is totally different from Chinese Chinese food.
Although I’ve recently written a lot about it, I don’t want you to think that Chinese businesses have a monopoly on consumer exasperation.
This is the locked pharmacy counter at a nearby supermarket… because no one would want to buy condoms at night.
(Fortunately I was just picking up Gatorade, bagels and other much-missed Western food.)
There are so many great things about being back in the US. Seeing Harry Potter 6 with other English books, instead of being the English book.
And Dunkin’ Donuts. Wow, I love Dunkin’ Donuts and their amazing French Vanilla coffee. The smell of chocolate glazed donuts. The Neanderthal grunts of the guy working there. The amazing realization that after being tai peng le! for a year, I’m not the fat girl anymore, which is followed by the realization that most of the other patrons are hugely, massively, out-of-breath-walking-from-the-car overweight. It’s enough to make me a Krispy Kreme devotee.
And Stick. Somehow this sounds like paperbacks and coffee is more important than seeing Stick every day. It’s the long-awaited triumvirate of literacy, decent food and the boy… even if he did kinda slip in there in a Crassus or Lepidus kind of way.
We’re in the car, in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot when when it happens.
“Are you sure we can make it by ten?” I ask, expecting to be reminded that the MassPike is Stick’s personal Autobahn.
“You said your interview is at eleven.”
“If by eleven, you mean, ten.”
“And if by ten, you mean eleven.”
And that’s how No-Sense-Of-Direction Girl and No-Plan-Ahead Boy began their adventures.
