On immortality

I forget who, but someone in Catch-22 was planning on achieving immortality through cultivation of boredom. For this reason, i suppose, I find myself in a dangerous position to live a very long time. That is to say, for all my worry about being hung up at the border, not getting my ride, all the stuff that i brought with me not working (i need a voltage converter to get that on the road), or being mugged by day one, right now my concerns are very limited.

 

1) will my jet lag go away by tommorow, because i've been exhausted at 7 pm and i teach from 2:30 to 6:30 on monday, and 8:00 to 12:00 am tuesday-thursday. I've been waking up at 6 am local time on my own, which is fine, but i'd like to have more control over that nonsense.

 

2) At present course I will starve to death. I have not been hungry at all. Still getting used to chinese food. I've been walking an awful lot since i got here, which is healthy, but if exhaustion is the problem i seriously doubt malnutrition is the solution. i think yesterday i had 1 real actual meal, and the rest were just kind of gestures. I must reaquire an appitite!

 

3) There is perilously little to do. This afternoon I need to come up with this week's lesson--- wait, i forgot.

 

So, details on my job. I teach 8 classes each week, 2 a day for 4 days, getting friday off. I kind of get a 4 day weekend, cuz i get thursday afternoon and Friday morning off as well, which is kickin' rad. The odd thing is, each of those 8 classes are different classes. I don't have like, 2 classes that I teach a different thing to every day. No sir. 8 seperate batches of students, teaching the same thing. This semester, I teach for 19 weeks, total. What this means it that, in reality, i need to come up with 19 actual lessons, and 2 speeches to give before the whole goddamn school. This, really, is pretty ok. The other two guys i'm working with teach fewer weeks and give more speeches, which is actually less work, but I'm really ok with the situation. It's much less work than I thought i'd be doing.

 

ANYWAYS, like i said, so, this afternoon I need to come up with a lesson. As in, one. For the whole week. Not exactly a terrible burden. Furthermore, each day coming up, I teach either in the morning or the afternoon. So what the hell am I going to do with my time?

 

This will be less of a problem once i get my internets, a chinese language tutor, a bank account, a phone, etc etc, most of which should be sometime this week. I dunno. Maybe I'll take up writing again?

 

I just noticed that the roof of this net cafe has I HEART U written on it, but it's an actual heart, like <3 not like written out. Weeird.

 

So, once I can get internet on my own computer I can show y'all fun and/or exciting pictures of where i'm at. The nice thing about Peihua U. is that it's really walking distance from pretty much everything. I saw an electronics market that really wasn't very far, but you have to kind of walk through one of those laberinthine collections of alleyways and I don't want to get lost, but that could seriously burn like 2 days of fun times. Like fry's but with a language barrier and also weirder stuff. FASCINATING.

 

Anyways, i'm absolutely riddled with anxiety regarding my first class tommorow. There's work to be done! I need to learn to speak slowly and clearly, using as few syllables as will do. Also, i'll be talking about England for like an hour, and then I need to lead discussion, with students who will allegedly rather engage in mortal combat (Kombat?) for my amusement than try and speak english before the class. The trick is to ease them into it, I am told (by Grant). The ol' "form groups of 4 and answer these 5 questions" trick is supposed to be a good way to go about it. I figure, if i find myself 30 minutes shy of an actual class I can just talk about myself. Narcissism may just see me through the week! (?)

 

worst case scenario, i've got all week to get this one lesson down. It should be hammered out by thursday. Tommorow, however, may be a bit of a drag.