Sometime after 9am: I roll in later in the morning when I don't have morning class and sit down to write lesson plans and otherwise kill the 4 hours until I go to afternoon school. It takes about an hour to get to the office from my apartment in south Shanghai, so missing rush hour is key for having a more relaxed morning.
Between 9am and 12pm: I make one or two trips out with a colleague to get a snack. This a nasty habit on account of the snacks being less-than-healthy. I write a lesson plan or two to submit to someone. I Skype my sister. I sort my desk. I bother my colleagues. I sing to myself. I play Angry Birds. I read my Kindle if I'm feeling smart. (Yes, that means when I'm playing Angry Birds I'm feeling stupid.)
My desky desk.
12pm: The doorman/guard guy (honestly not sure his title and there's two of him) comes up and yells "chi fan" and gestures wildly at us, his two fingers imitating chopsticks scooping into a bowl of rice. He does this repeatedly until someone makes a move towards the door. He looks concerned for our well-being and turns to go down to eat.
12-12:20pm: No matter how long I try to draw out lunch, it never takes more than 20 minutes. It's bizarre. I could chew each bite 40 times and it would still take 20 minutes to get food and eat. On Tuesdays and Thursdays the meals have meat. Last week there were some duck necks. Yum!
12:20-1:30 or 2pm: See "Between 9am and 12pm" section and add in a few more interactions with my Chinese coworkers. Today, one walked in with the name tags for my tiny tots class. As I looked through them, I laughed quietly at the potential for one of my friends being the namesake for Little Fatty, mentioned in an earlier post. Anyway, I'm perusing name tags and I come across...
Good grief.
...which is clearly not a name. Dammit! How did this happen? I gave them a very nice list, intending to prevent names like Poggy, Stone, Elderwise and Also. Also? This is insane. I look at the list and saw the note at the bottom, indicating that one girl in another class needed a name in addition to all my tiny tots. I had circled "also" and written "Julia". I guess the circle had confused my colleague, so I was this close to having a kid named Also singing the ABCs for me.
Note: The foreign teachers (us) are never asked to help choose names and make name tags. I'm not sure why not, but the point is that the Chinese teachers use baby name books from 1952 or something and every class has a Cindy, a Wendy or two, and a Judy. They may or may not be male. Whoops!
1:30 to 2pm: Someone comes screeching into our desk area saying "Get in the van! We're leaving now, hurry hurry hurry!" We are rarely given warning for this occasion, but we are always in a huge hurry. Like, something might explode if we don't make it to the van in 8 seconds. In short order, we're in the van and then we sit for five minutes while everyone rushes around wildly looking for a missing person and/or the red wire to diffuse the bomb. When it's discovered that the missing person is actually in the van already, we're off!
More on work later!
ellen
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