Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Joyce and bread

Every time I look at Joyce, whether to call on her, check homework, or if I just happen to be facing that direction, there is a 70% chance that she either has a piece of bread in her mouth, or has her mouth open and is just about to bite into a piece of bread. Each time I catch her, I would frown and point at her and she would freeze. At that point, depending on my mood, I either nod or shake my head. Usually I shake my head and she puts the food back into her bag, but sometimes I let her eat and she happily chomps away during the lesson.


Bread also doesn't just mean bread, although sliced bread is included, it's also all different types of buns and sandwiches.


One time, her friend in my other class, Judy, wrote in her notebook (as a journal entry) that Joyce stayed over her house for a weekend. "Joyce eat all of the food in my kitchen," Judy wrote. "My mother was surprised. Joyce is a very hungry girl."


I asked Joyce about it recently, and Joyce nodded with an affirmative "Hai!" (yes in Cantonese).

"In morning, I can eat three bread and still be hungry!"

She patted her stomach. "I have very strong stomach."

Then, she offered me a croissant.

Introducing: Joyce

I haven't talked about Joyce that much yet, but from the very beginning, she has been...well ok, let's start from the beginning.

First class.
Me to class:"Tell me who you are, what are your hobbies, etc etc...."
Joyce: "I am Joyce, my hobby is kiss."
Me:"What?"
Joyce:"Kiss. Kiss." points to lips.
Me:"Um ok."

Next class.
Me to class:"So, ask me any questions you might have."
Joyce raises hand."How many muscle you have." She speaks slowly, usually with a slightly loopy smile, and emphasizes each word with a nod of her head.
Me: "Um..."

Another class.
Me to class: "Give me a verb, any verb."
Joyce shouts out: "Kiss, Kiss!"
Me: "Ok...give me any noun, any noun."
Joyce: "Teacher, teacher!"
Me: "Um."

But, after awhile, the "date teacher" and "phone number" requests went away (not to mention the 3-part love/drama/action story she and two of her friends [also my students in another English class] wrote about an unnamed teacher and a student), and now I hang out with her and the other students in that class before and in between classes. Every now and then, I even chat with Joyce in Cantonese, since she's from Hong Kong, but even in Cantonese, she speaks the same way, wide-eyed and like she might burst from smiling any second.

Besides Joyce, in that class there's Jenny, her silent and shy best friend, Andrew, who was Anny's boyfriend, and Leo who was another of Anny's friends.

All in all, that class is my closest-knit group. In this second semester though, half of the class has disappeared, some to higher level classes, and others to another country. But, at least I still have the English stylings of Joyce.

Use the word "peeked" in a sentence that shows you understand the meaning of the word. As recounted on cole's blog, Joyce's answer was "Bitch always peeked the person who dressing clothes."

I asked her in Cantonese why she used the word "Bitch" the next class, and she said she thought it was a normal word that she heard all of the time, like at the grocery store. Er, not exactly, I explained. Eventually, I figured out that the word she wanted was "pervert."

Today. Speech. What are some of the pros and cons about capital punishment?
As a pro, Joyce says, "A dog cannot teach to eat its own shit."
Me: "Um...."

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Taipei

We wanted to like Taiwan, really we did. In fact, we planned to spend two weeks there, first in Taipei, and then traveling south to Tarako Gorge and then to the beaches at the coast. The weather though, had different ideas. Every single day we were there was cold and rainy....every single day. Not only that, Taipei is where Nicole developed her twenty day long migraine.

In the end, we gave up and went back to Hong Kong early.

















































Friday, February 20, 2009

My friend in the drawer

Today I opened my drawer to get my stapler, and Conks (who sits next to me in the office) screamed, Denis, Denis, your drawer! and then scurried over to the other side of the office. What? What is it? and I peeked around, and there hanging on to the end of my drawer was an extremely large and perfectly calm cockroach. It twitched a bit, and swayed its antennae to and fro. I grabbed a couple tissues to do...something to it, but by the time I was ready for action it had disappeared.

I've checked all of my drawers, and looked through all of my papers. No cockroach, but now I know that I can be doing anything: grading, sleeping, reading--and Cockroach xiansheng (Mr. Cockroach) could pop out of anywhere.

Oh China.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

It's us?

Last night, six of us went to eat at a diner in Gubei, an expat suburb. It's been awhile I since my last diner experience. Pancakes, fries, milkshakes, 50% off teacher night....the Jersey in me was excited.

So we get there, and at first we're the only customers. The diner has the appropriate 50s vibe, red and white checkers, posters of fords and elvis. Pancakes arrive and they're decent. Biscuits and gravy, not that good (gloppy, soggy mess). Still, everything is going well (even though I get occasional strange looks from the waitresses, probably because I can say some things in Putonghua perfectly yet sound awful otherwise, and because I was hanging with a bunch of laowai).

The diner starts to fill up. In the table adjacent to us is a group of teachers from the Livingston American School, behind is a grandmother(?), mother, and young son. The discussion at our table starts to get louder, and then Brian W. asks me and cole if we want to have a kid soon.
"NO!!" we both say at the same time.
"Unless we can sell it," I conclude.
"People love halfies," cole says.
"We could probably get a good price," I agree. "Or otherwise leave it on Baise Lu somewhere."
The conversation continues for a while after that, veering off in disparate directions, with shouts of "Whore!" and "Prostitute" chiming in. Then I catch the face of the grandmother sitting behind us. Is she giving us a dirty look? She is giving us dirty looks! And the kid next to her, the one that looks about five years old, is...half Chinese.

And then I realize it; we have become those Americans. If only for a night, we are those loud, obnoxious stereotypes.

Maybe it's because we live in the outskirts of Shanghai, where there aren't any other foreigners and no one understands English. How to act when there are actually people who know what we're saying?

I wonder how it's going to be when we finally get home. Will we be unfit for society?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

a tree

cole pointed out the tree first, but not really pointed out. We were trying to avoid the workers blocking the main path. Stacks of trimmed off branches. She swerved off to the side, over to a patch of muddy, trodden-on grass hidden beside the faded yellow wall of the Chinese division building. Where are you going? But she stopped her bike, and I sat on mine, with one foot resting on the ground to balance myself.

One tree lay on its side, roots bound, still waiting. Another was newly planted. It was skinny, maybe five inches wide. Halfway up its trunk was a coat of white paint, like all of the other trees. A forest of neat, evenly spaced, white-painted trees. Its limbs were bare. Just a few branches here and there. Fifteen or sixteen feet tall. There was a sign on it, for Anny, and flowers gathered around.

I need to find some of my stickers, is what I said. The ones I used for their tests. I brought them from home, and found others here. The ladybugs stickers were the ones I used the most.

Then we left and rode towards the North Gate. The grass is really green, I told cole. And we can't walk on it, she said.

We took the 973 bus to South Station and had lunch. Fried dumplings and curry rice.

When we got back, I couldn't figure out where to put the sticker.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Today...

I talk to my kids for the first time, and I just realized that I left Anny on both my english and ecology class rosters, and that I'll probably won't delete her.

Last Saturday, one of the teachers, Richard Gordon, passed away too. Some kind of cardiac arrest.

It's a strange beginning to the semester.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Why I will never understand

Anny drew occasionally in her notebook, but more often than not, she wrote careful, thoughtful words, evenly spaced, each letter flowing into the next. These words though, were never about herself. She would contemplate, and I could see her trying to work through her obstacles, brows furrowed, her eyes staring intently into empty space until she came to a conclusion. Every quiet day would be followed by a content one, and all of her concerns would be redirected to those she cared about, her family, her friends.

Is a model student. Works extremely well in groups. Gets along with and helps her classmates.

She would walk down the hall, arm in arm with her best friend. She watched, wide-eyed, to Spirited Away, though she must have seen it half a dozen times already.

Willing to put in effort to improve. Has the ability to excel.

She lived across from us, in the boarding students dorm. I startled her once by eating in their cafetaria. Sweet and sour chicken with white rice. We chatted for maybe thirty seconds, and then I said that I would see her the next day. She smiled, and said goodnight Mr. Wong.

Is sure to get better in the next semester. Considerate and selfless.

I'm sorry Anny that you won't be able to become the person that you were supposed to be. I'm sorry because you should have had the chance to do anything everything whatever you wanted, though in the end you would have cared more about others than about yourself like always.

I'm sorry Anny because I don't know what else to say, except that I will never understand.


...