The Seventh and Final Day

In a nutshell...

Today, i got to skip out on regular teacher duties to drink tea and learn a computer program.

i sprinted in a relay race.

i peed 10 times.

i bought a ticket to ride the world's fastest train.

My friends painfully convinced a policeman to let me break the rules.

Because i'm a foreigner.

Another police officer went running with me to escort me to a shuttle bus.

A friend asked me if i want to do some nude photography.

It was totally unclear whether it was me posing for her, or her for me.

And i got drunk by myself.

And now... i have seven days off.

Amen, Golden Week.

Attempts at Subversion

On a grammar sheet i made, focussing on proper use of 'Because", i asked students why some people might NOT like China.

After clarifying for some adamant students that the question was correct, and no it was not supposed to say "Are there any people who do not like China?" i got these responses.

Some people do not like China because they are not Chinese.
Some people do not like China because people habve prejudice with China.
Some people do not like China because China has bad environment.

but the best...

People not like China? I don't believe!

Pressure to Find a Mate

Grade 1 science is kinda fun. i get to talk about how you can't have babies alone. How males and females must arduously seek one another in order to procreate. i draw lots of cute cartoons and lots of hearts so they get the message.

A handful of kids yell out how Mr Wang and Miss Woodland "mate." And i lamely turned a deaf ear on it, choosing to focus on the smooching fish.

Let's call it a translation issue. Kids also thought that mosquitos "mate" with people since they "kiss" us.

The Names Rock

One duty i had as gr 1 teacher was to dole out English names to all the kids who needed one.

The names are ideally: monosyllabic, easy to spell, using different initial letter, and semi-recognizable as a name. My criteria, not the admin's.

So (of course) i dug up bunch of musician names.

We got
Art (garfunkel)
Mick (jagger) though he started calling himself Mickey by day 3
Lou (reid)
(ian) Curtis
Ian (curtis)

Um, i think there's more but i can't remember any rt now.

Oh, and sorry if i sound like a sexist bastard, but the fact is that most women in the Great Musicians website i looked at had names which i thought were dull or inappropriate or too complicated. Maybe someone could write a women's studies thesis about this phenomenon.

Let's Make Friends

Ok. Even last year i had every intention to make more friends in BJ when this year rolled around. So now i'm trying to do that.

So i put an ad out in the Friends section, but that only got one reply from an aussie woman who sounded like we had zilcho in common.

But also i met a couple thru Heza's friend (who just moved out of BJ, unfortunately).

i met up with them and a friend of theirs last wk, and this wkend we're planning to see 8 bands playing guns 'n roses covers. This is good, 'cause i just read Slash's hilarious autobiography. It fucking rocks.

Also, H will pbly meet up w/ a girl who is the gf of the guy who helped me record that song last fall.

Tight circles we're running here. But it feels ok.

Savage Politics

Yes, on rare occasions i have my own opinions, but i really do love it when someone like Dan Savage can research it and state it so much more concisely and cuttingly than me. So i'll let Dan do the blabbing about hockey moms to be wary of.

Speaking of hot teenagers and asshole parents and vows that you may come to regret...

The 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, the GOP's vice-presidential nominee, is pregnant. The news was released by the McCain camp during a busy week—a hurricane, the Republican National Convention, Dick Cheney getting us into a war with Russia—so it didn't receive the coverage it deserved. To recap:

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin got her ass knocked up five or so months ago by 18-year-old Levi Johnston. Among the hobbies listed on Levi's since-yanked MySpace page—"fishing, shoot some shit, and just fuckin' chillin'"—was this revealing tidbit: "I don't want kids." But Bristol, says her mom, "made the decision on her own to keep the baby," and is now engaged to Levi "Shootin' Shit" Johnston.

As the adoptive parent of a child born to a pair of unwed teenagers, I'm certainly not in favor of abortion in all circumstances. But I believe that it's a choice teenagers should be able to make for themselves—with input from their families whenever possible—and, so it seems, does the GOP's VP nominee. Sarah Palin is pleased that her daughter made the decision—on her own—to keep the baby.

But Sarah Palin doesn't believe that other girls should be able to make their own decisions. Sarah Palin believes abortion should be illegal in almost every instance—including rape and incest. So Bristol Palin is being celebrated for making a choice that Sarah Palin would like to take away from all other American women. Apparently, today's GOP believes that choice is a special right reserved for the wayward daughters of Republican elected officials.

Oh, and Sarah Palin also believes that birth control shouldn't be made available to teenagers, she opposes medically accurate sex education, and she backs abstinence-until- marriage sex "education."

Sigh.

The GOP has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence "education" programs during the Bush years. I believe this enormous investment of public funds begs the obvious question: Is our children abstaining? Sarah Palin's aren't. Despite this massive outlay on the part of the American taxpayer and the example set by her Christian parents, Bristol Palin became sexually active while still in high school. Excuse me, but if abstinence education can't keep the daughter of the evangelical governor of Alaska off the cock, what hope is there for the daughters—and some of the sons—of average Americans?

I'm a cad for writing this, of course, because shortly before Bristol and Levi were paraded before cheering throngs at the Republican National Convention, the Palins asked the media to respect their daughter's privacy.

Another special right: When it comes to respecting your family's privacy, Palin and the GOP see no need. They want to micromanage the most intimate aspects of your private life. And if their own kids fail to live up to the standards that Palin and the GOP seek to impose on your family, well, that's a private matter between the Palins, their daughter, their God, and the thousands of screaming imbeciles in elephant hats waving McCain/Palin signs on the floor of the Republican National Convention.

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Thanks, Dan

workworkworkworkwork

12 and 13 hr days at the school have been putting statusq into an awful mood. why is it that people say he's such a great teacher but he feels like things are barely held together if at all, and even if he likes working with kids, he hates preparing lessons.

Nothing is helped by the fact that he's at the maximum allowable teaching load, is still waiting for textbooks, and is trying to deal w/ a few students from gr 1, 2, 7, and 8 who can't read or speak much English.

He was completely fucking braindead by the end of the week, which felt like a month.

One staff member asked how statusq stays so calm and easygoing about it all. H told her that sq was actually very stressed out, but aparently it wasn't apparent. i guess that's good.

sq was so not on top of his game that he didn't even realize until Friday afternoon that Monday is a holiday.

Thank god.

Begin the Begin

Today was the 1st day of school.

Some long prep hours.

Annoyance at my increased workload from last year.

Grade 1 Eng, Math, Sci; Gr2 Sci; and 4 classes of gr8 & 9 ESL.

But so far, my stress level is super low compared to last year.

Knock on faux-wood.

Heza and i share a bunch of classes so we work together.

Seems ok.

Maybe good:

constructive work, and not exactly about "us".

H wants things to be normal between us again.

But it hasn't exactly been very long since...

So fuck, i think things are shockingly normal between us already.

Not exactly normal.

But pretty normal.

All things considered.

Like the situation.

The environment.

Our lack of outside social lives.

Ongoing differences.

And electricity probs in the apartment.

'Cause we still hang out.

Go out for din.

Have beers.

Watched a flick.

Shoot the shit.

Even if i don't look her in the eye so often.

What can you say.

It's exactly the life i asked for.

i think.



Begin the Begin is an old REM song, btw. Didn't get it, did you.