75%

This morning there was no water, so I went to class in the three-digit weather after sponging myself off with a wet rag.  It was gross, and I was uncomfortable all day.  After class, I went straight to the dorm to take a shower, and afterwards I went into the neighborhood to have lunch, since it was probably too late for the cantina.  I went to the same place I had gone to the day before with E; there were lots of dudes, eating their noodles alone.  It was quiet. 

I watched them order and get their noodles, but due to the Chinese custom of ordering food as soon as your ass hits the seat, I wasn't able to benefit from that knowledge.  Tomorrow, maybe.  So instead, I had the exact same plate of food I had last night; beef with peppers.  And a bowl of rice.  I think they thought it was extravagant to order a dish like that, instead of the usual plate of noodles for the dude with no friends, and maybe it was extravagant.  It was double or triple the price of loneliness noodles, and by that I mean 12 kuai, so less than two dollars. 

After lunch I bought a bottle of water and wondered what to do next.  The skies were blue and bright. 

I walked a few blocks to the train ticket office and bought my ticket to Shanghai for tomorrow.  It was a nice walk in the sunshine.  I saw some people taking siestas under the viaduct, and a sichuan restaurant drying shrimp in the sunlight.  I would have taken pictures, but I had forgotten my camera.  Dammit, there's a USD $100 prize for the best photo of the summer, which I know I'm not going to win. 

Anyway, once my ticket was bought, I wandered back to the dorm.  On the way, a well dressed man in a scooter asked me for directions.  Really?  My answer to him was incoherent and I kept walking, but I thought, yah, he thinks I'm a local!  What a joke. 

I was almost back at the dorm when I heard my cell phone alarm go off.  Why do I set a cell phone alarm?  Oh, it's so if I decide to take a nap, I can wake up in time for my TWO O'CLOCK ONE-ON-ONE CLASS!  How could I have forgotten?  I picked up the pace a little, walked five floors up to my room, got my bag, and hustled across the bridge to the classroom building, up to the 12th floor.  By the time I got there, my shirt was drenched in sweat.  I went to my classroom and saw...  another student.  Eh?  I went next door and asked another teacher where I was supposed to be for my one-on-one, and she said, your class is back at the dorm, you better hurry! 

So all the way back to the dorm, and up six floors to show up late to my one-on-one.  I told her the whole sob story, starting where there was no water for a shower.  I will probably use that story for my oral exam tomorrow. 

Afterwards, I chilled out in my room a little, and then met everyone else for Chinese Table, a program where we go out to dinner with teachers.  I've never been, because it's always the day before the test, and I've always wanted to study.  I decided this time, screw it, I can take a test in America.  So I went with them to the sichuan restaurant that had been drying shrimp earlier in the day.  There was a lot of discussion about how much spicy hot we could handle, but I just said whatever and let everyone else order.  The food was all good; it included some ampalaya and a spicy soup with blood jello cubes.  But none of it seemed spicy to me.  At one point, my lips were burning, but the inside of my mouth never felt hot.  It's a very different spicy hot experience than from what I'm used to in the ol' USA. 

It's time to go to bed now; tomorrow is test day.  And then I'm going to Shanghai again. 

This will be the third weekend in Shanghai, for anyone who's counting.  After coming back from Shanghai with E last week, I got pretty toxic pretty fast (in terms of attitude, not blood sugar, mama) so I'll be glad to take another short vacation from CET.  When I get back, it will be finals week. 

So I've been talking to some of the teachers about teacher stuff.  I told one about how she held her hand in front of her mouth when she talked, and so for the first week I couldn't see her mouth, so I didn't know what she was saying.  She got a kick out of that. 

Another teacher today saw me trying to unscramble a ridiculous sentence with a structure that we NEVER STUDIED;  I told her I didn't think the activity was communicative, and started telling her about the ACTFL proficiency pyramid when the academic director walked in.  Oh, I said, she totally knows about this!  And she totally did, she started filling in some of the info hadn't yet drawn into the ACTFL chart. 

When they both understood it, I said, ok this is my level, down here... and I pointed to novice, at the bottom of the inverted pyramid.  The AD wanted to place me a bit higher (apparently she thinks I can narrate a story in the past, describe people and objects, and list characteristics...) but whatever.  The point is that the difficulty level of the unscrambling sentences was way up in the superior range, which was why some of the teachers themselves had a hard time unscrambling some of the damn sentences. 

I was pretty happy about myself after that exchange; I got to talk about teaching and express some of the limitations of the textbook and homework we've been facing, and show the teachers that I'm no slouch when it comes to second language pedagogy. 

Of course, I didn't have time to prepare for tomorrow's test after I finished my homework, so I'm predicting a 75%.  The teachers are saying the test is easy, so I may revise my prediction after having taken it.  I predicted 85% for my last two tests, and scored 89% on the first one and 85% on the second one. 

It was a lucky guess of course, but I told my teacher it was intuition, and she was impressed.  If I really had that kind of intuition, I would use it to grade papers.  Wouldn't that be awesome, grading papers by intuition instead of marking corrections that no one will look at?  Ha, that would probably get me into trouble. 

What am I saying?  I'm not a high school teacher anymore....