Today was a fiasco. Well, at least it wasn't a complete loss. But I've learned some important lessons.

The May holiday is this week. Last year, students had a whole week off, and it gave them a chance to go home and see their families. Most of my students are rather far away from home, so we end up talking about homesickness a lot in class. They've all been looking forward to seeing their families.

However, today we found out that the holiday this week is actually only Thursday, Friday and Saturday; Friday's classes are being held on Sunday. And some of my classes have class on Saturday. So instead of having a holiday...they have a weekend two days early and then a seven-day week. They were understandably angry.

They spent the first part of my class venting, and I spent the whole class wracking my brain for ways to cheer them up. We ended up talking about local customs. I ended up 'reenacting' an American traditional wedding for one group, and talking to another in depth about American perceptions of time and why we expect to be notified about schedules ahead of time. The best way I could explain it is that we consider people who are either late or excessively early to be selfish and inconsiderate, because they aren't taking the other person's time into consideration when they do their own planning.

Anyway, they know I love them. They know I'm outraged on their behalf, because they were planning on going home to see their families and now they can't, with two days warning. And they left the class in a little bit better mood. I wish there was more that I could do, but that's about the limit of my capacity in this regard.

This afternoon was supposed to be a double-dose of two different classes watching one movie together. And that's where the fiasco part of the day came into play. I should have known better than to let my students handle this one, seriously, but they just took it out of my hands and wouldn't let me be involved.

I had checked with both classes last week, and found out that they didn't have class between 3:45 and 6 on Tuesday afternoon. I knew that one class had class every other Tuesday from 2-3:20...or so they said. So last week, I asked the class monitor from one class to sign me up for a specific room that I'd already checked out and made sure was empty that entire afternoon. Everything cool, right? I thought I'd covered all bases.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from that student asking me if it would be okay if we had our class from 3-5. I checked with the other class (or rather, had Dan check) and sure enough, they were free. So, cool. Whatever, I said, if that's what time you'd rather have it. I let the other class know that class would be at 3 o'clock.

Today, I show up to the classroom at 2:40. I was twenty minutes early, or so I thought, and everything was all set up. But...my students are already watching a movie. And there's a whole (but single) class in there. Bridget Jones' Diary is playing on the movie screens. And that is most definitely not the movie I wanted them to see. The class monitor comes up to me, and says, "Where have you been? We thought you were supposed to be here at 2! You're so late!" ... No...I'm early. There was a misunderstanding, seriously.

Then I got a phone call from another one of the foreign teachers, who says, "My students told me they need to leave my class early for your class!" Uh..what? The class she's got right at that point is the class that has the class monitor responsible for scheduling the whole schebang in it. There's NO WAY that she didn't know she had a class right then. I told her to come down and get the movie from me, and they'd watch the movie later.

I let the first class finish watching Bridget Jones' Diary. With the craziness of this week, I'm not going to make them sit in class for another hour, when they already had their vacation stolen from them. And then I came up to the room that the second class was watching the movie in and found out that they'd co-opted the other foreign teacher's class and had been watching it in her class time. Agh. At least Elissa (the other teacher) liked the movie.

Alright, whatever. It's dealt with. I'm never leaving it to a student to do alone ever again. Seriously.

Finally, I get out of the mess. Class is dismissed. We invited one of my 3-year freshmen out to dinner with us (she's a bit neurotic and needs a bit of cossetting sometimes) and ran down and tried out a new dishes restaurant. Pretty good. I run away and jump on the bus, and Dan wanders off to find a piano on campus, which is apparantly a succesful quest.

Got back to the old campus, and checked the hidey-hole that I was certain his birthday present was in. He'd convinced me I'd brought it over to his apartment; I was still convinced it wasn't here, and I'd gone through every single little hidey-hole I would have put it in here. Oddly, it was exactly where I thought I'd left it. Present found.

Home I went. Engaged in a little art project regarding Dan's birthday. I'm not very crafty, but hopefully he'll like it.

When he got home tonight.... he managed to drop bread on his stomach, jam side down. WIN! He's totally getting clumsier, and it's totally from associating from me. My life rocks. ;)

Today's lessons learned:
The perception of time in China is a lesson in zen patience. Seriously. You have to accept, rather than react.

If you want something done right, especially when you've got a cross-language boundary, do it yourself. Or go along. Don't do it over the phone. Ever. Nobody will understand anybody.

My klutziness is contagious.


Another website for today: www.bookglutton.com
Basically a book club online. Find a book, find a book discussion group. It's pretty sweet. ;)