Long Time No Blog

Or hao jiu bu boke, as we'd say in Chinese... maybe... I'm not really certain about that word "boke".  I don't talk about blogging much in Chinese.  

Anyway, I haven't blogged in what feels like a really long time to me, which is not because I hate writing, but is because life has been in.sane.ly. busy and even when I do have some time, either the internet is being funky or I can't conjure up the mental energy to try to put words together coherently.

Why is it so busy, you might ask?  Great question.  We're now giving finals, which is is busy at best and is even busier when a lot of classes need to be rescheduled due to the Dragon Boat Festival which is happening Monday-Wednesday next week.  I've discovered that when it comes to finals, teachers and students have some conflicting goals... Teachers want them to be done as early as possible, so that we can get grading done sooner rather than later.  Students would like them to be done sooner rather than later, but they don't really want to take them sooner rather than later.  They want more time to prepare.  Which is quite fair.  But it makes everything complicated, especially when you don't all speak the same language to start with.

Aiya. 

There's a lot of time hanging out with family on campus, because awesome things are happening.  And they are all pretty fun.  ^_^

A few random stories:

me:  "So Marcus, how did you get your English name?"

Marcus:  "Because I like the man, the German man, the... philosopher..."

me:  "...Marx?  ...I'm glad your name is Marcus..."

*during a class presentation*

"My mother is not my mother... not only my mother!"

"We human beings are sometimes self-contradictory."

"How did you find out our class qq number?" -- question from my monitor... not sure how thrilled he was that I had that number...

from my text message archives:

"Two best answers for ways to describe food:  Unforbelievable and verjuiced."

ALERT: one of my students' goals is to "Run 8 hundred miles once a week" so if you see a female Forest Gump, it's probably her!!

Also, one of Simon's goals is to teach English to children in the countryside :) melt my heart!  P.S. Accidentally wrote "wart" instead of heart the first time.  Yikes!

hey, Hannah, the final exam will come!  the daily grades include what?  [this one made me laugh primarily because he asked this after the final review class... not at the beginning of the semester...]

And that is life.  :)

--
overcome evil with good