Thursday, March 10th, 2016
Smog Level: All 3 Mountains
Early to bed and early to wise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
or
Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, but socially dead.
I’ve always been toward the latter, but it doesn’t seem like they’re mutually exclusive. I’ve been hitting the hay around 10 and getting up around 6:40am. 12am used to be considered early for me, while 10pm was blasphemy. This is why I want to push for jobs where I can manage it whatever time I like. For the time being, let’s see if this makes me feel “healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
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| Teacher's Lounge From Where We Enter |
The kids were a bit more difficult today. I had to delve into my memory banks of all the punishments used on me as a kid to dole out similarly to the kids in the class. I try to be a bit more creative with it, and attend to the problem itself, though our hands are a bit tied. The trouble makers are either the fastest or the slowest learners. Either they get it too quickly and it’s a joke, or they are struggling to the point of giving up. Or maybe they really couldn’t care less about it, who knows. In either case, there’s not much more work I can assign to them, and their english skills aren’t developed enough to assign additional work that would be challenging, yet fun.
Instead, I’m forced to use some of the old gems of making them stare at boring walls, or stand without a chair so that they burn off a little energy from standing instead of sitting. I may even resort to squats or pushups. Jumping jacks crossed my mind, but… those are a bit too attention grabbing, and some of them like the attention.
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| Quotes All Over, Written in the Slabs |
I started out too soft when trying to figure out the job. Within the week, I’ve been forced to tighten up, if it wasn’t obvious enough. Today, at least two kids from both my classes had to be held back after class and talked to by the Chinese teachers. My coteachers are great, if I haven’t already said it. Teamwork!
One of the girls in the class has lost her top front teeth. The snack for today was apples. It was hilarious, yet sad, to watch this little Chinese girl with a mild case of bobble-head painfully struggle to tear off small chunks of the apple to eat.
After class, I was using the urinal in the school’s bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I always find it awkward when a bunch of little boys are running around in the bathroom. It can be difficult enough to go when there’s a lot of commotion behind you, but harder still is when a random boy walks up and stands, unabashedly, staring at your nether regions. I’d heard of these things happening, but this is my first experience with it. “Git!” I said, giving him a light push and sending him on his way. Geez, kid! I was later told by Josh that adults will also do this sometimes.
The rest of the night consisted of studying mandarin, and unwound for the rest of the night by listening to the BBC radio dramatization of William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” while playing a game.
And again, hitting the hay at 10pm. Bleh.
Words of the Day
English - Mandarin [pronunciation]
meat - ròu [row]
beef - niúròu [neo-row]
chicken (meat) - jīròu [jee-row]
Pork - zhūròu [juu-row]
mutton - yáng ròu [yong-row]
Note: drop the ròu from any one of these and you just get the animal. (niú = cow, jī = chicken, etc.)
The only exception seems to be fish.
fish - yú [yüü] - both fish and fish meat. If you want to be specific about meat, you’d say yú ròu, but that’s not as common as the above meats. Same as english, really. Fish vs fish meat.
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