resuscitation

finals, visitors, travels, visitor, start of semester, excuses, excuses.

We're already a quarter of the way into second semester. My freshman class has shaken the dust off their atrophied English skills since vacation and my 9 sophomores have solidified their hatred of the language. I have one writing class with them, which I really enjoy thanks to the writing textbook Jeff & Claire left behind for me to use, and my other five classes are all Listening & Speaking, four times per week with the freshmen and once with the sophs. (I should have two writing classes with the sophomores but they hate it, and usually me, and I don't love them, so I dropped one and am waiting to see how long it'll be until someone "important" confronts my liberties with the schedule.)

Everyone came back to school with new shoes, new coats and freshly sculpted anime hair: curled, swooped, frizzed, straightened, black, purple, or "blonde," which, properly translated, is "orange." The magic of having a foreign teacher has worn off for most of the students, except the ones who aren't actually in my classes, and only see me in the dingy hallway of the writing class building, grabbing their friends' attention to stare and giggle or call out, "Hallooo! Nice-tew-mete-yooh!"

Spring is at winter's back door with fickle temperatures and mostly gray skies sagging with showers, but Megan was lucky to get 68 degrees on her birthday a couple weeks ago. Simon and I came to her class to play shark pit and "the circle game" (that's what I'm calling it anyway) outside, which was a lot more fun than when we repeated the event the following week with my class, who, true to form, cheated. The freshmen boys are bedazzled by my new and awesome iPod; Jack pointed and said, "How much," and Martin held out his hand and demanded, "Give to me." Jack had the same question-as-statement last semester of my running shoes that I brought in for show and tell (hard to believe, but I do teach college and not kindergarten) which was followed by Martin's charming show of his pack of cigarettes, and tell, "I like smoking. That's all." Boys.

Hopefully we'll have some committed spring temperatures by next weekend for Easter/Qingming Festival aka Tomb Sweeping Day (interesting coincidence) when we get Monday off (and don't have to make it up!). Some of us are thinking of getting a bus down to Hangzhou, the lovely city near Shanghai where Megan and I started our winter vacation travels. Loreta's stipulation is a church and Tim's is beer, and thanks to Google (.com.hk, mind you) we know Hangzhou has both. All I need to do is figure out exactly how much I overspent by on our travels -oops- and see if I have the funds to go.