Day 220: Bad Start, Pretty Good Finish

So some bad things happen to begin the day. I woke up at 4:30 am, unexpectedly, after a bad dream where somewhere was holding someone hostage in my house. Someone else in the house told me about it, and I calmly dialed 911.  Then I woke up. And I couldn't get back to sleep. So I had only about 3.5 hours of sleep. Then, I checked my e-mail: I found out that I didn't get either position that I applied for at Century--Student Success Co-Coordinator or the D2L Trainer. Ah well. It's not that I expected either, but I thought that I had a chance, at least with the D2L one. I'm curious about who they chose. As I was making breakfast this morning (grilled cheese sandwich), I burned the back of my right hand when some butter jumped from the pan. IT REALLY HURT. Currently, I'm typing this with blisters on my hand. And, of course, Kerry is sick. I asked him to assist me with the Didi. It's a good thing I did....because today mine wouldn't work. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I tried to hail a cab, but he couldn't understand me. So we used Kerry's phone: no problem. I later discovered that my phone had inadvertently been put on airplane mode. Geez!  And, again of course, I missed the 7:15 bus, so I had to wait almost an hour for the 8:15 one. I made it to school with about 15 minutes to spare, around 9:50 am.

Fortunately, though, my experience at SISU today was pretty good. The weather was absolutely gorgeous--it was fun to walk around, and even my office had a normal temperature. My Short Novels class is discussing The Awakening; I also gave a lecture on symbolism. Group discussion with group reports to the class seems to be working for this class. I just have to draw out the discussion leaders sometimes. They don't want to talk unless I say, "What do you think?" Still, they brought up some good points and had interesting things to say.  After the class, Shenghong, Yanmei's friend, took me to lunch at a restaurant near campus that I didn't even know existed. He insisted on paying. I had a chef's salad and some pizza: both were delectable. Shenghong is a bit sharp and pointed in his questions sometimes, but he's very nice, and he seems to support the idea of me returning to China, which excites me a bit. I seriously would consider moving here if I could get a position as a full-time American Literature professor at a university, which has always been a dream of mine. And Kerry would have to find work as an ESOL teacher as well. So...never say never. I think it would be interesting to come back in some capacity. Once lunch was done, I relaxed a bit (including a successful bathroom trip--I'm getting better at the squat toilets), and then the grad students showed up for their reading group. They were eager to talk about "Mrs. Spring Fragarance," a short story by Sui Sin Far about a clash between American and Chinese values. They all seemed to have opinions today. Most of them said the story was "old-fashioned," but they could see Chinese culture within it. One student noted that the protagonist's name, "Jade Spring Fragarance," should have been translated as "Spring Fragrance Jade."  "Family names are always only one character," she claimed. This is a perspective I wouldn't have gotten from teaching this in the USA!  We also had fun talking about Chopin's "Desiree's Baby"; they liked the surprise ending. Lots of laughter and sharing of cultures with this group--so wonderful! Then I headed to my Honors class: lectured on contemporary American literature, and then we talked about some poems by Angelou and Alexie, as well as Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried." I wanted them to discuss what they learned from the story about American culture. I also collected their proposals for their presentations today; I'll look them over later--at a glance, they seemed interesting. One student, Alison, asked good questions after class about lines from the Alexie poem that she didn't understand. I marvel at how these students ask content-based questions.  After class, I hopped on the bus home.

However, things took a different path for me. I called Kerry from Chifeng Station, and he hadn't started out to get Randy yet. I knew he was feeling crappy, so I offered to accompany him, and he accepted. I bought myself a fruit tea and Kerry a milk tea at Heetee.  And then we were on our way: we had to change lines twice, but we finally did meet up with Randy at the Science and Technology Museum stop. This turned out to be a good choice because it wasn't crowded there at all, unlike People's Square (which we had to transfer through there and back). We stopped at Hongkou Plaza on the way back to nosh at Burger King (first time in Shanghai--I got a Whopper), and then we noticed that the subway entrance was closed. It was about 10:06 pm by this point, so we decided to get a cab. I flagged one down (pushing some guys out of the way), and told the driver where we were going, mucking up the number a bit, but Kerry managed to show him the correct address. So it all worked out this time. We showed Randy around, he gave me my Century gifts to give to others, we chatted a bit, and then Kerry and Randy went to sleep and I started typing this blog entry!

Tomorrow should be interesting--Randy wants to go to Yu Gardens. Kerry will probably stay home and rest.

Here are a couple pics:

Randy and Kerry at the subway.

Me and Randy.