Under the Radar

You may have been wondering why we haven’t posted on this blog since May. Some of you have asked me as much. While busyness and sloth play their usual role, the main reason is that the blogger.com domain has been unavailable to us (and to everyone in China) for about a month and a half. Safe in the warm embrace of the Motherland and protected by the vigilant gaze of the guardians of social conformity, we have been saved from falling into that abscess of lawlessness that is blogging. Thanks, guardians!

And in the meantime, of course, we’ve been prevented from contributing to that abscess. I’ve finally decided to work around this wonderful safety net by sending our compositions to a buddy in the States, who posts them for us. Anway – we’re back! Tell all your friends!

Dave

Why I hate electronic translators: Part II

You might remember a previous post about this same problem, but recent student papers have made us remember our loathing of these little tools. What can we say, there's a reason that people still need to learn languages. But some of our students still need to learn this lesson....

From one student's research paper:

"Although collects the impression profound breadth, some regions have not represented, for example the watering can, in the Japanese sado's Ming time last stage and the cake tray the incense and candle box which does. Overall, [the topic] has some 7,000 Chinese artware--from Stone Age to the present--900 are just now bright the ceramics. Although collects makes the person impression profound breadth, certain domains have not sent representative to attend, if supplies the watering can, incense box and cake tray in latter Ming dynasty time Japanese sado."

Anyone want to guess her topic?

Desiree

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