Top Seven Things I Have Learned from Student Papers

Well, it's research paper season, and even though we're only in the outline stage, I have already discovered some surprising new facts from my students. If you're into facts for the day or top ten lists, please enjoy the following trivia for this week:

7. The Eiffel Tower was built for the French Revolution.

6. Winfrey’s mother can not stand the crazy child’s behavior, she intends to put the Green into the justice, the beds happen to children is full, she was out. (What I really learned from that sentence: Electronic translators are bad! . . . Oh, wait, I already knew that.)

5. The mummies of the Egyptian pyramids had been protested well.

4. Princess Diana was a good mother because she never let her sons join the recreation.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr., signed the emancipation proclamation.

2. If you stand under the Eiffel Tower, you can feel lots of poems and writers who are come from the last century.

1. The destruction of Pompeii was not a bad thing because it can promote tourism development.

Desiree

Pregnancy Pictures

Sorry! I posted some pictures on Facebook and totally forgot to put them on our blog. But for those of you interested . . . here they are! This is at about 6 months.

The Name Game

It was always a girlish dream of mine to sit around with my husband and discuss baby names. (You know, girls are forever discussing these kinds of things—like wedding colors, for instance.)


That dream ended shortly after Dave and I got married.

While there are loads of things that Dave and I enjoy discussing, it became obvious very fast that naming our future children—especially those who would be female—was not going to be one of them. Conversations went something like this:

Her: What about Madeline*?
Him: No! That sounds so pretentious.
Her: Oh! I know! Sylvia*! I love the name Sylvia!
Him: That makes me think of an old lady. . . Hey! How about Prometheus!
Her: Dave! That's not even a girl's name!
Him: Promethia?
Her: Dave!
Him: You know what I think is a cool name? Magor-mis-abib! It means "Fear on every side."
Her: ::Stunned silence::

So we stopped talking about it—until it became absolutely necessary. In fact, I decided I wasn't even going to bring up the subject until we knew whether we were having a girl or boy—to cut down on the discussion as much as possible.

After we found out we were having a little girl, my mission could not be put off any longer. I had us both sit down and write a list of at least 10 names that we both liked. (Dave ended up with 8, and I ended up with 15, but it was a good start.) It was a surprising success for two reasons: 1) The name Magor-mis-abib did not appear on either list, and 2) we actually had quite a few names that we both liked!

In case you're interested, here they are (in no particular order). We're going to keep thinking about them until Baby Talbert actually makes her appearance. Please feel free to comment on them or give us other suggestions!

Possible first names:
Evelyn
Chloe
Fiona
Katherine (to be called Kate)
Pheobe
Sophia

Possible middle names:
Marie (my middle name)
Elizabeth

We'll see what actually happens come June (or July).

Desiree

* I apologize if this is your name. Please know that I love your name. It would have been one of my first choices!

Through a Student's Eyes

The following is an only-slightly-edited paper that was turned into me for the assignment 'write a detailed description of one of your teachers.' If you're not a friend of mine, this might not do much for you, but it left Des and me in tears. I've included a recent picture of myself for reference.


Dave is a tall and big man. He has a large strong body with a small head. He does not have very dense hair on his head. But he has bushy eyebrows and big eyes. So he has big eyes, his eyes are shortsighted. I always have many questions about College English and the Art of Public Speaking. I always go to ask his question and stand beside his large strong body as a monster. I like standing his large body side because it looks just like bird.

There are dense brown moustaches on mouth. The brown moustaches has a little long. The appearance that Dave touches the moustaches is handsome curiously just like a supter start. His mouth is not very big with pink color as a cherry. Dave’s skin is more white than me as the Princess White Snow. His mouth matches with his nose. Dave’s hand with much meat. I think you have very great power. I can feel that when his interviews me, he shake hands with me.

Dave’s waistline is one time the size of me. Through Dave’s clothes, I can see your chest swell proud flesh. When he takes our class and he was so excited that his chest became electric motor. He feet are so huge that they can endure a heavy pressure. Dave is always wearing a blue-color shirt and brown-color overcoate like Helmet first. I don’t know whether Dave always wears the same trousers.

The first time I saw Dave was in front of building Eight. Dave made me surprised and frightened. He is too huge that maybe can crush me to pieces. After Dessire described her husband at class. He is tall, fat, bald and so on. I know Dave and Dessire has married. Dave is very humorous when having a class.

Dave’s personality is as lovely as his body. He always make all the student largh. He have expression used for overstating very much when speaking Maybe if Dave don’t give me many lovely and beautiful vocabulary, excited quiz and test, and difficult homework*, he will be a perfect man in [Chinese].

by [name withheld to protect those on Facebook]

Dave

*I have an in-class habit of always describing my quizzes, tests, handouts, and homework in glowing terms, hoping that my enthusiasm will rub off on the students. So far it hasn't.

Hooray for Food Poisoning!

Well, maybe not quite "hooray." But a year or so ago, a friend of mine was robbed, and he sent an email (in the spirit of Matthew Henry) enumerating what he was thankful for on that occasion. I've been thinking about that email recently, particularly since I spent half of this week moaning and groaning and hanging out close to the bathroom door.

I don't know why I got sick. The popular Chinese phraseology would be that "I ate some not fresh food." That seems about right, although nothing that I had consumed in the 24 hours leading up to my attack of the plague appeared suspicious. For whatever reason, though, I did, and I've put together a little mental grist for just such a situation. I am thankful ...

• That I had only food poisoning, and not Sumatran Creeping Doom or flesh-eating disease or that thing I saw on Star Trek where your head turns into grape Jell-O.

• That although food poisoning can be lethal, it did not prove to be so in my case. I’m not even paralyzed! Not even from the waist down!

• That I was afflicted only with gastrointenstinal suffering, and not with breathing difficulties. I’ve had breathing problems before – worst feeling in the world.

• That I have a job where I can take time off if I’m sick, rather than being employed as a U.S. Marine or an enslaved salt miner or something like that where they make you work no matter what you feel like.

• That I had an illness that actually allowed me to do a lot of desk work, rather than being confined to my bed.

• That I could stay at home instead of going to a hospital and being put in a quarantine ward with nurses in HazMat suits. My insurance probably wouldn’t cover that.

• That I have an audiobook version of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (a modest 33 hours long), so that I could listen to something interesting even if I felt too sick to read. Some people can only listen to the radio or watch TV – two possibilities worse than silence.

• That I have an incredibly kind and loving wife who took care of me and made pitying faces at me all week instead of spending her time rereading the life insurance policy.

• That I have a lot of loving friends who live close to me and kept dropping by, asking about my health, offering me medicine, etc.

• That a lot of those friends are nurses, so their offers of medicine have actually helped me instead of making me shrivel up and die or go into raving delusions.

• That I live in a nice little apartment with a modern bathroom instead of in a tent out on the tundra somewhere.

• That I got better after only three days and was actually able to reschedule some of my classes, so I’m only a little behind.

• That my students sent me kind (if occasionally incoherent) messages wishing me good health and a speedy recovery and offering me sometimes dubious medical advice. They didn’t even seem to be too upset when I revived in time to teach a few English classes on Thursday.

In short, it really turned out great. In fact, writing this list has me half-convinced that it was some kind of a vacation.

Then again, that might just be the medicine talking.

Dave

Baby bump benefits

Last week, I accomplished a great feat. Last week, I succeeded in looking pregnant.

This is an important task in China because being pregnant (as long as it is accompanied by looking pregnant) comes with a few key benefits.

The most important of these is The Right to Sit in the Yellow Seat. You see, all buses in China have three sections:
1) The standing section--the sad domain of the majority of travellers. It is uncomfortable because of the terrible braking and veering that inevitably tosses you around, and it is especially bad when the bus is crowded because it means that you may end up practically plastered to the slightly inebriated gentleman or the woman carrying the live chicken (common occupants of the bus realm).
2) The normal seats (usually blue, green, or gray). This is the best you can hope for. People have been known to trample slightly inebriated gentlemen and women carrying live chickens for one of these seats.
3) The special seats (a.k.a. the yellow seats). These four or five seats are reserved for three types of people: Women with babies, old people (usually frail-looking old people), and pregnant women. Other people may sit in them, but they will be quickly be shown to the standing section by the ai-yi* if one of the privileged types boards the bus.

The other day, I got on the bus, saw that no seats were available, and tried to find a comfortable corner to stand in for the rest of my trip. With my coat on, I didn't think that I looked pregnant enough to try to take advantage of my new status. However, after she took my money, the ai-yi patted my tummy for confirmation and suddenly grabbed at the man sitting in the closest yellow seat. She indicated that I should sit and seemed to even apologize to me (I heard her say, "I didn't know!").

This weekend, I went shopping with some students and had to take a dreadfully crowded bus. I didn't think that the ai-yi could even see me, and I noticed that at least two of the yellow seats were already occupied with mothers carrying small children. Almost immediately, my two students called out in unison to the ai-yi, and she made her way to the last yellow seat, plucked out the student who had been sitting there, and told everyone to let me sit. I was very thankful to have a seat on that bus ride in particular, and afterward, I told my students how much I appreciated them speaking up. One of them responded, "No problem. It is your right!"

So, while prenancy in China does have a few disadvantages (such as being scolded by students any time I hop, jog, or use my cell phone), it definitely has its privileges. I just better not use my cell phone while I'm sitting in the yellow seat.

Desiree


*Pronounced I.E., this is the woman that gives out bus tickets. Actually we use this Chinese word (which literally means "aunt") for almost any woman in a blue-collar job.

Useful Things I Have Learned This Week

1. If you take three things to the copy center and and ask them to make 115 copies of each, and then you accidentally leave your lesson plan there, the copy center staff, ever diligent (and unable to read much English), will make 115 copies of your lesson plan. These can then be used for paper hats.

2. If, while making a serious point in class during which is it crucial to have the attention of all sixty students, you accidentally launch a glob of spit onto a girl in the front row, your serious point will be lost in a chorus of shrieking and laughing.

3. If your class of sixty students is shrieking and laughing, and one girl in the front row is jumping up and down and wiping her coat with a kleenex, it will take a minimum of thirty seconds to restore order.

4. If the students' Chinese psychology teacher happens, out of an interest in English, to drop in on your class and observe your lesson, the students' responsiveness and attention to said lesson will increase markedly.

5. If you teach a critical thinking class in which your definition of logic plays a central role, and the same students in your English class the next day cannot recall that definition, nor any of the words therein, nor even if there be such a thing as logic, you will be disappointed. Don't take it too hard. You probably did that to your teachers, too.

6. If a student fails a test, sometimes she will cry. This is a bit awkward, but pretending to receive a phone call and rushing from the room is not the wisest course of action.

7. If you steal a french fry belonging to your wife and replace it with a lemon slice of roughly the same size and weight, she will still somehow see through this clever ruse. I recommend that you try this with your own spouses and resport the results; perhaps mine is preternaturally alert.

8. If your sister tells you that she is planning to make an explosive device "just for fun" when she visits her friends over the weekend, and you point out to her that this is completely insane and on the level of someone who says she is going to learn to juggle flaming chainsaws over the weekend, your sister will think you are angry.

9. If your exercise routine for the past three months has consisted of strolling down to the kitchen to see if there are any brownies left, pushups are hard to do.

10. A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

Dave

P.S. You didn't really think I did that to the crying student, did you? I gave her a tissue. I mean, what else could I do?